I figured I would start doing this on Mondays. I’ve been writing reviews of every movie I see for about six years now, and saving them for maybe four or five years. They’re all in a file somewhere. Anyway, since I do this on Mondays anyway, I thought I’d share my cinematic wisdom here. I rate on a scale of 1-10, with 7 and higher being a recommendation to go see the good movie.
Be warned I don’t go to the theater that often. I’m more a TCM girl. You may come back next week to see a review of Casablanca.
King Kong: 9/10
Big ape comes to New York. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
The first hour of King Kong indicates to me that director Peter Jackson either didn’t know what he had, or didn’t want to edit out the misdirections once he found his footing. There is back story on Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) we don’t need, long conversations over coffee we must endure, and hints of stories of crew members of the boat that are never fulfilled. Certainly we needed the opening for time and place; 1933 New York. Soup kitchens, incredible poverty, and hints of fabulous wealth just around the corner. The picture painted is beautiful; nostalgic but not idealized. But it was waaay too long. If it had been 20 minutes instead of an hour, we would have learned as much, and the movie would have been more true to itself.
Because let’s face it, this is a story of the primal jungle, and such a story is essentially non-verbal. Even Jack, the screenwriter (Adrien Brody) tells us it’s not about the words. Ann figures this out when she engages in animal posturing. She’s an acrobat, so when Kong bangs his chest, Ann does a cartwheel; when Kong roars, Ann backflips, and soon this non-verbal form of communication has created a bond between them that gives the film its heart.
King Kong is only partly heart though; the rest is spectacle. Again, Jackson goes too far; the T-rex fight and the scary bug fight should each have been trimmed a lot, and the brontosaurus (or whatever they’re called now) stampede should have been trimmed a little. We did sort of get it by then. Enough can be enough. Still…thrilling.
Hats off to Adrien Brody, by the way. His role will be unsung in this; we will talk about Jack Black as the bombastic director, we will talk about how absolutely and inarguably amazing Naomi Watts is, and we will forget the soulful, natural complexity of Brody’s Jack. It’s lovely to be that funny looking and still that sexy, it’s surprising to be that nerdy and still that heroic. And oh, did I mention he looks almost exactly like Arthur? So that’s fun too.
