King Kong

The eyes have it. Of all the multi-million $ visual illusions created for King Kong, the most critical to the film are the prehistoric, 25 foot Gorilla's eyes. However breathtaking the CGI generated action sequences, and they are superbly filmed and edited - it is the real sense of a primitive creature forming a meaningful attachment to a single human being around which this frankly preposterous story pivots. The importance of the eyes as a means of conveying 'innerness', thought, personal identity is a cliché of cinema acting. Quite how the eyes, even seen through the camera lens, communicate this sense of 'another' is a phenomenon as subtle as it is genuinely profound.

The Kong of the original 1933 movie and this faithful remake is essentially anthropomorphised, especially in the thrilling, CGI choreographed fight scenes with other pre-historic animals. The haymaker swings and punches are very exciting but hardly I would have thought gorrilla-like. This isn't a nerdy complaint: the dramatic effect of the breathless chases and titanic battles is all that matters - and it works. But the achievement of a sense of individuality for Kong is conveyed with a subtlety that really puts the more crash bang wallop of CGI action in the shade. Without a sense of Kong as a kind of individual, protecting the human to whom he has formed a unique attachment - there is no movie. With all these acutely observed anthropomorphised behavioural signals in place, we then 'read' genuine emotion, even pathos, into those great eyes. It is worth noting that the close-up in movies places us within the most private, intimate space of a character, gorilla or not, only achieved in real life in very special conditions of personal intimacy. Part of the unique power of the eyes in movies perhaps. And the basis of its inescapably voyeuristic quality.

Peter Jackson is a frustrating movie-maker. He can brilliantly set up a mis en scène of 1930's New York in 5 minutes of economical editing and evocative cinematography, then drag out getting to Skull Island and the first appearance of Kong for another 40 minutes or so. Learning from Spielberg in Jaws, Jackson builds up tension before Kong appears, its just that the intervening 40 minutes is pretty dull and uninspired. However, while the unbearable, cumulative tension of Spielberg's movie virtually evaporates as soon as we see the clunky metal reality of the phoney shark, Jackson's Kong stands up to every scrutiny and never disappoints. But Jackson's movie-making sprawls across the screen, in this case taking 187 minutes to cover essentially the same story, in a sense the same film given its faithfulness to the original, which came in at 104.

Jackson's editing willpower seems to desert him with CGI footage. Instead of being an immensely powerful means to achieve a dramatic effect, it simply becomes an end in itself. This tendency began with the LOR trilogy and persists here. At least KK only has one ending. As Jackson piles impossible thrill upon impossible thrill in the second hour of the movie, one at times begins to suffer from astonishment fatigue. So many creatures, so many battles, so many shocks your brain jams with overload. And this lack of pacing makes an already pretty average script clunk even more than it should. LOR and KK despite their amazing and highly entertaining strengths, share the same inherent weakness - a lack of cadence. Their narrative seems to have only two speeds - slow or flat out. Only late on with the scenes with Naomi Watts sharing the beauty of a sunset with a 'contemplative' Kong does the movie achieve a kind of stillness that allows the illusion of an impossible relationship to breathe a little credible life.

Casting is patchy. Naomi Watts is good in an impossible part and deserves an Oscar for the longest unbroken sequence of reaction shots in movie history. Jack Black just can't seem to make off-the-wall entrepreneur-come-filmmaker Carl Denham quite fit and despite a good crack at writer Jack Driscoll, Adrien Brody looks miscast. The rest do a good job with pretty cardboardy characters to work with including a confident Jamie Bell in an add-in part. But the heart and soul of the movie of course is Kong and the credibility Watts just about manages to convey of an affection and empathy between impossibly disparate species. (I'd leave any psychoanalytic concepts in the car for this one by the way). The third star of course is CGI. A star who many Directors are beginning to discover, is becoming far too big for his boots, prohibitively expensive and starting to suffer from the law of diminishing returns.

The end result is an at times breathlessly exciting movie whose subtext morality tale plays no better nor worse than the original - which is pretty marginally. And Kong reigns absolutely supreme as the most realistic cinematically generated creature in movies so far. In his faithfulness to the original it is a pity I think that Jackson leaves himself open to the same criticism levelled against the first film's portrayal of the native people of Skull Island. Why oh why are aboriginal people always portrayed in such a crass, ignorant, farcically stereotypical way? Leering, filthy, witless, pitiless 'savages' just there as fear fodder. It may seem a bit precious to refer to this in a review of an old-fashioned adventure yarn movie and I'm not talking from political correctness, but this story could have been enhanced not harmed, by a more intelligent portrayal and use of this aspect of the story.

Well worth a visit. But be warned - the 12A certificate is yet again misleading. I would think twice about accompanying any child under 12 to this at times graphically scary movie. Like the latest Harry Potter, KK demonstrates that the 12A certification needs serious re-thinking as it is misleading parents into taking too many too young kids to too many too scary movies.

I agree, some scenes maybe are a bit too long. But what do you expect from a 3 hour movie? That it is short?

You know how the duration before you start watching.

I was thinking give it an eight or a nine. I chose nine. Because overall this still is a great adventure movie for sure.

The more recent Kong: Skull Island is a fun watch as well, but more like a fast paced action movie of it's time.

This Peter Jackson version has it's fair amount of action and still pretty good effects and tells a better and more complete story.

Typical Peter Jackson, however gonna watch the even longer extended 3 hours 20 minutes edition in 4k, not watched in years but the picture is epic apart from it being too warm for my liking. The sound is the unusual DTS-X high def sound and already is gorgeous!

However enough of the technical borefest hahaha... this film for me is stunningly shot... some of the shots of the city are incredible. It really is a grand film and for me better than his LOTR trilogy which I may well resist soon.

However its the cinematography and sets that set this film apart from most films... integrated so well with XGI which even in 4k is holding up well... stunning is all I can say, actually old school filming with modern techniques!

Classic tale and story that recreates the original for the modern era. Even Jack Black is watchable but the stunning Naomi Watts is very very watchable hahaha.

This film doesn't get the recognition it deserves!!! As an achievement in cinema alone its a 10/10. You want blockbusters that have a story and a smidge of empathy with the characters with possibly the greatest ending of all monster films ever... this is how you do it.

Marvel and DC and all the other nonsense need to take a step back!!! This is how you combine live action, real sets and CGI into an epic tale...

If a movie is three hours or longer, that usually means it already has two negative points against it. But even as the three hours and seven minutes passed, I didn't take my eyes off the television. If the "Rings" trilogies weren't enough to persuade you, now is the time for everyone to agree that Peter Jackson is one of the most imaginative individuals to ever hold the director's chair. This movie belongs to a unique class. Everyone who attempts to replicate "King Kong" should be imprisoned in a rubber room.

Then, you cram this classic remake with moving humanity, astounding amazing effects, and a ton of unforgettable imagery, and you do it all so flawlessly that it's bound to become a classic as well. In a word, Jackson's "King Kong" is amazing, fantastic, beautiful, and spectacular. I'm afraid I can't put it into one word.

1933 New York and two people find themselves in difficult circumstances, albeit for different reasons. Carl Denham is a movie producer who wants to make his big picture but finds the studio unwilling to support him. Ann Darrow is an actress who has hit hard times and is one meal away from having to become a performer in a seedier version of "acting". While frantically searching for an actress that he can quickly convince to come on a mystery voyage to shoot on a distant island, Carl meets Ann and convinces her to come along on the strength of the involvement of writer Jack Driscoll. After an eventful journey, they arrive at the island but to suggest that they face a "troublesome" shoot is a real understatement.

In my 12 hour wait for my "First Class" seat for a transatlantic flight to America I discovered that "First Class" to Continental means "you pay lost more cash but we extend you just the same (dis)courtesy as the economy passengers". With my laptop with me I was at least able to find some distraction with a DVD copy of King Kong. Although I'm sure it loses something by being seen on a comparatively small screen I still enjoyed the film as a big budget b-movie, which is pretty much what it was. Sure, Jackson may have had aspirations to deepen the story and bring real pathos out of his "characters" but he doesn't particularly pull it off and most of the viewers will have been there for the big effects rather than the chance to explore the emotions within a cinematic legend. So in this regard the film works by kicking out the action after a comparatively slow start where we spend a lot of time with lesser characters who don't matter that much in the wider context of the narrative.

However when the action comes it is slick, noisy and visually impressive. The only thing I did have a problem with was how hollow it all was. Jackson does attempt to develop a tender relationship between Kong and Ann, but the material struggles to deliver the goods and all that we are left with is lots of "meaningful" looks as the pair get some sort of unspoken (and unseen!) understanding. At this level the film didn't really engage me – I respected what he was trying to do with it, but I'm afraid I can't relate to those who claim to have cried and felt so much from this "beautiful" relationship.

Faced with such big effects, noise and spectacle, the cast cannot do much other than try and hold their own. Watts has the hardest role as she tries to react and bond with a creature that was never actually there with her in reality – only in a computer. When you remember this, her performance is pretty commendable but when I was watching the film I must admit that I thought she relied far too much on staring and looking sad or having a half-smile on her face; she still did as well as one could have hoped but again I don't get the claims that she was brilliant here when she clearly wasn't. Black and Brody are very much supporting performances that have little to do; Brody didn't suit his role and Black never convinced as a larger than life movie producer. Yet again Serkis does a good job to bring an effect to life although for obvious reasons he is nowhere near as good as he was in the Lord of the Rings films and he can only do so much with expressions.

Overall then a solidly enjoyable blockbuster that produces plenty of noise, action and impressive visual effects. The attempts at depth and meaning are laudable and do add something to the mix but I'm afraid that it doesn't really work as well as some viewers have claimed. Still worth seeing as a blockbuster experience though, despite some of the flaws inherent in the approach and the rather cumbersome running time.