Looks like I picked the wrong night...
... to go to the latest showing of King Kong, given that I have to get up early.
In summary: Zoologically flawed.
Chiefly: What was the deal with the ape?
Flippancy aside: A very, very good film, especially if you're able and willing to suspend more disbelief.
But: quite dark and disturbing, perhaps scary. I wonder how it warrants only a 12A rating.
Impressive: how the Empire State towers over its 1930s neighbours. Given that I was impressed even by the height of buildings in Birmingham, I suspect I haven't quite grasped just how big a skyscraper is...
Now: Haste me to bed!
In summary: Zoologically flawed.
Chiefly: What was the deal with the ape?
Flippancy aside: A very, very good film, especially if you're able and willing to suspend more disbelief.
But: quite dark and disturbing, perhaps scary. I wonder how it warrants only a 12A rating.
Impressive: how the Empire State towers over its 1930s neighbours. Given that I was impressed even by the height of buildings in Birmingham, I suspect I haven't quite grasped just how big a skyscraper is...
Now: Haste me to bed!
posted by Z31 at 12:48 am
2 Comments:
I had severely mixed feelings about this film... I thought the first hour was absolutely fabulous, the imagery was just stunning, but I couldn't help feeling that it went downhill a bit from the point where the big monkey was introduced. Also, I got the distinct impression that Peter J. had just gone through an encyclodedia to pick out more animals for either Kong or the people to fight. I'd much rather have had a couple of fight scenes cut and have the whole film half an hour shorter (three hours is far too long for any film in my opinion, I'd prefer to have 2 1/4 hours and be left wanting more than 3-and-a-bit and be glad it's over)... I thought certain scenes smacked of attempts at one-upmanship on the original (the dinosaurs) or were just aggravating (giant flesh eating slugs? Please...), but overall I really enjoyed it. It was sort of difficult to feel too sad when monkey-boy pegged it, but I guess that's the problem with a film about a monkey. Kudos to whoever did the graphics, I'm impressed that they can show Kong onscreen for that amount of time and not have him start to look unconvincing.
In summary, it was cool, but I think next time he does a film I'd much rather see Mr. Jackson do the sort of film you get for the first hour than the sort of over-the-top action scenes he's become known for... on the grounds that I thought it genuinely had a really individual character and charm to it, whereas the whole 'CGI battle sequence' malarky is getting distinctively repetitive, regardless of who's doing it (I swear there were scenes in Narnia that could have been copied and pasted straight out of LOTR...)
As an aside, I was vrey impressed with how well Jack Black did (up until the last line, anyhow). Good bit of casting.
Jack
I think I'd agree with much of this. Peter Jackson is in danger [?] of being 'that guy who makes epic films', I think. And I agree that it's hard to have sympathy for the ape. There were actually rather few sympathetic characters in the movie, and certainly no more than a couple of unambiguous "good" or "bad" guys. Not that that's a bad thing.
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