Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

IMBD Rating 8.4/10

A team of explorers and soldiers travel to an uncharted island in the Pacific, unaware that they are crossing into the domain of monsters, including the mythic Kong.

Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts

Writers: Dan Gilroy (screenplay), Max Borenstein (screenplay) | 2 more credits »

Stars: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson

PG-13 | 2h | Action, Adventure, Fantasy

IMDB link Here

Mix King Kong with The Lost World, spike it with a bracing dash of Apocalypse Now and you've got Kong: Skull Island, in which Warner Bros. finally gets the effects-driven fantasy adventure formula right again after numerous misfires. This highly entertaining return of one of the cinema's most enduring giant beasts moves like crazy — the film feels more like 90 minutes than two hours — and achieves an ideal balance between wild action, throwaway humor, genre refreshment and, perhaps most impressively, a nonchalant awareness of its own modest importance in the bigger scheme of things; unlike most modern franchise blockbusters, it doesn't try to pummel you into submission.

Leagues better than Peter Jackson's bloated, three-hour Kong of 2005, this one looks poised for strong returns and potential sequels co-starring hinted-at monsters from movie lore.

            Smartly operating under the theory that exposition in this sort of thing should quickly be dispatched in order to get to the good stuff, the director, screenwriters Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein and Derek Connolly and story creator John Gatins have made Skull Island and its environs into a storm-enshrouded location in the Pacific Ocean that has never been charted or found. As the war ends, old-time secret op Bill Randa (John Goodman) convinces the Nixon Administration to back a small expedition to try to find and map the place “where God didn't finish the creation, a place where myth and science meet,” as Randa alluringly puts it. Goodman gets several of the writers' best lines, including one designed to reference Vietnam but that will register with modern viewers: “Mark my word, there'll never be a more screwed up time in Washington.”

In the end, though, it's not the characters the audiences will have come to see, but the monsters, and the film doesn't stint in supplying them. This Kong, who makes his entrance a well-timed half hour in, is far bigger than any before him, about 100 feet tall. Still, he faces fierce competition on the island from, among others, some toothsome lizards who happily take advantage of the change in diet offered by the new human visitors.

There is considerable emotional investment to be made in Reilly's character, who is no doubt not named Marlow for nothing. Despite his decades of deprivation, he's the best-adjusted character on hand, his relaxed acceptance of his odd destiny becoming palpably moving at times, a reaction never sought or expected in this sort of film. At least as far as the humans are concerned, Reilly steals the film.

All the requisite elements are served up here in ideal proportion, and the time just flies by, which can rarely be said for films of this nature, which, in a trend arguably started by Peter Jackson, have for years now tended to be heavy, lumbering and overlong. A post-end credits bit suggests that Warner Bros. already has some famous opponents lined up for Kong's heavyweight belt, beginning perhaps with Rodan. Whoever undertakes any follow-ups will have a high bar to clear.

Read full review at Hollywood reporter

An audaciously loopy creature feature  

If war makes monsters of us all, Kong: Skull Island is a creature feature twice over. It’s 1973, in the twilight days of the Vietnam War. The United States has all but conceded defeat in the ceasefire and the government in disarray. The White House is encircled by protestors, and the Watergate scandal hasn’t even hit its stride.

Kong: Skull Island is the seventh official remake of or sequel to the original King Kong film released in 1933, but the first that could have been pitched as a loopy, audacious B-movie riff on Apocalypse Now. It’s evidently been made on the understanding that merely unveiling an enormous primate isn’t much cause for excitement in itself – even if the new breed is four times taller than the Empire State-climbing original.

A large part of the enjoyment comes down to the sheer earth-shaking lunacy of Kong’s daily grind, even before the human intruders are factored in. Without giving away any specifics of the prizefights in store, let’s just say he’s just one member of a lively ecosystem.

The carnage is flamboyant past the point of cartoonishness, but it’s also frequently outrageous in a way you’re never quite steeled for: for a sense of the tone, imagine Steven Spielberg’s The Lost World if it had been written and directed by Gremlins-era Joe Dante. (The Hawaiian backdrops – and a certain Jackson line of dialogue – are Jurassic Park through and through.)

Skull Island’s actual director, working from a pithy screenplay by Dan Gilroy and Max Borenstein, is Jordan Vogt-Roberts, whose earlier coming-of-age comedy The Kings of Summer had the same heightened, bone-dry sense of humour. As with Gareth Edwards, whose 2014 reboot of Godzilla is slyly nodded towards here in anticipation of a coming team-up, this is only Vogt-Roberts’ second film – but it’s characterful and accomplished with a personal streak.

 No members of the ensemble cast could be described as indispensable, but that’s because many of them are specifically there to be dispensed with. (Even Hiddleston, who gets star billing, could be easily chopped out of the plot without derailing it.)

Larson’s character, who’s far closer to Lara Croft than a Fay Wray scream queen, is probably as close as any come to non-negotiable, and her leather-holstered 35mm camera is often pointedly contrasted with the firearms toted by other team members.

Along with the film’s vinyl turntables and slide carousels, it’s Exhibit A in Skull Island’s fetishy soft spot for analogue technology – which is also reflected in the film’s flat-out ravishing look, which mixes deep, swoony Ektachrome colours with electrifying up-to-the-moment action staging. In truth, the whole film is a kind of eccentric retro-artefact with fun at the forefront of its mind: less Heart of Darkness than darkness with heart.

Read full review at The telegraph

King Kong Kicks Butt In This Gorgeous Pulp Adventure  

The film, budgeted at around $185 million

While the film is technically a prequel to the Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, it stands entirely on its own in terms of content and visual style. The 2014 monster mash was a grim and foreboding affair, shrouded in darkness and mystery while offering the barest hint of humanity amid its jaw-dropping visuals. Skull Island goes almost the opposite route, plunging us immediately into the world of its quirky human characters and wasting little time giving us what we came to see and delivering most of its thrills in broad daylight.

Shot by Larry Fong, the guy who almost had me giving Batman v Superman a positive review, this is an utterly beautiful motion picture. The naturalistic visuals, imbued with a particular hot orange vividness, gives the film an absolute authenticity of time and place and at least the appearance of realism even when we are clearly watching special effects. I saw this in glorious 2D, but I imagine it’s worth the IMAX 3D upgrade as the broad daylight action will probably survive any 3D glasses-related dimness.

And the title creature is a marvel, standing 100 feet tall and exuding animalistic menace no matter which side he’s fighting on at any given moment. His major introductory beat is a superb action sequence, even if it’s structured more for action-adventure thrills than horror or intensity. The film manages to humanize its main monster without being overly patronizing. This Kong is a protector of Skull Island. But if you get into his turf, he will bat you out of the sky without thinking twice.

The picture loses some of its character focus in the second act as certain characters split off from other characters, which leaves some of the more interesting folks out of sight and out of mind for a while. But the finale comes together in an exciting and satisfying fashion, delivering a climax that pays off the film’s Apocalypse Now and Moby Dick themes while providing the required monster mash action. And while there is less of a sense of awe to be found than Peter Jackson’s more overtly romantic take on this story, there are any number of gorgeous moments of vivid cinematic beauty and iconic imagery.

Kong: Skull Island is an action spectacular that offers large-scale monster mayhem, moments of cinematic poetry (like the grand moments of Kong standing tall amid the sun-drenched carnage) and memorable character work by a cast of overqualified thespians giving it their all. Skull Island is the very definition of a complete package. While the movie exists due to its IP and hopes for a larger cinematic universe, it justifies itself as high-quality popcorn entertainment and works as a piece of pop art unto itself.

While I admit will admit that the overall effect is less wondrous than the Naomi Watts/Adrien Brody/Jack Black fantasy, that’s also because movies like King Kong are a lot more commonplace than they were in 2005. Whether you prefer Peter Jackson’s epic romantic adventure or Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ lean and mean war story, they exist side by side along with the 1976 remake as artistically valid interpretations of the 1933 classic. Kong: Skull Island is a confident, pulpy, character-focused, big-scale adventure story that just happens to be a backdoor pilot for an expanded universe. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

P.S. Yes, there is a post-credits sequence, but it is terrible. It feels like it was shot during a lunch break and is not required viewing to understand Godzilla: King of the Monsters or the untitled Kong versus Godzilla movies. If you have to leave when the film ends, don’t feel too badly about it.

 Read full review at Forbes

Movie Rating ★★☆☆☆  

 The Vietnam movie no one needed to see  

John C. Reilly boasts a fairly specific cult following thanks to his character Dr. Steve Brule, the pseudo-life coach who occasionally appeared on Adult Swim’s Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! to yell things like, “Go to bed early, you doofus. ‘Cause when you’re sleeping, there’s no lonely times, it’s just dreams.”

John C. Reilly also, confusingly, seems to be playing Dr. Steve Brule in Kong: Skull Island. Sure, here he goes by the name Hank Marlow, but he’s the same awkward, inappropriately loud fake-sage who slurs like he’s taken a little too much of an advantage of the hotel’s 2-4-1 piña colada deal. In Skull Island, for example, his preferred angle is wielding a katana and attempting to compliment women by declaring them, “more beautiful than a hotdog”.

Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts attempts to make every ‘Nam movie trick shot in the book: the hazy light of the setting sun breaking through the jungle canopy, highlighting helicopters and mud-smeared faces as Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Bad Moon Rising’ plays. It’s as unsubtle a thematic tribute as you can get, at least, until the film – not once, but multiple times – features intercutting shots of Packard and Kong making death stares at each other while surrounded by napalm explosions, playing out like a Tarantino parody.

However, the real issue with Vogt-Roberts’ tonal clash is that it loses complete sight of what the central appeal of a King Kong movie was in the first place. Crank it through whatever stylistic blender you like, but at the end of the day it should still feel like a monster movie. Mainly, because it is a monster movie.

Skull Island is the second entry into the universe established by Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla; direct references superficially connect the two, but tonally they’re worlds apart. What Godzilla may have lacked in character development – which is arguably only marginally improved upon here – Edwards made up for in bounds through atmospheric direction.

It’s a film that, somehow, takes the fun out of watching a giant monkey slam-dunk a helicopter into the ground. Now, could we get the Steve Brule ‘Nam movie, Apocalypse Now, Dummy? instead?  

Read full review at Independent

Movie Rating ★☆☆☆☆  

Only de-evolution can explain this zestless mashup  

This fantastically muddled and exasperatingly dull quasi-update of the King Kong story looks like a zestless mashup of Jurassic Park, Apocalypse Now and a few exotic visual borrowings from Miss Saigon. It gets nowhere near the elemental power of the original King Kong or indeed Peter Jackson’s game remake; it’s something Ed Wood Jr might have made with a trillion dollars to do what he liked with but minus the fun. The film gives away the ape’s physical appearance far too early, thus blowing the suspense, the narrative focus is all over the place and the talented Tom Hiddleston is frankly off his game. Given no support in terms of script and direction, he looks stiff and unrelaxed and delivers lines with an edge of panic, like Michael Caine in The Swarm.

This is a Kong deprived of his kingship and his mystery, and even the title is a jumble, unsure of whether it’s the ape that’s the star or maybe the island itself, seething with loads of huge animals, scaring the borrower-sized humans who have rashly dared enter this domain. It comes to us from director Jordan Vogt-Roberts – known for his comedy before this – and screenwriters Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, Derek Connolly and John Gatins. The script here feels like the umpteenth rewrite with almost all the humour and nuance chucked out to make sure it plays in non-English-language territories.

The dramatic presence of Kong himself is muddled. The film tries to make him the island’s noble-savage deity, the hairy good guy, as opposed to the huge baddie lizards who are scuttling around the place but are kept in check by the mighty Kong. The script makes a half-hearted joke about not knowing what to call these lizards; I suspect none of the writers could agree. How did we get from the 1933 King Kong to this? A theory of de-evolution is needed.

Read full review at Guardian