Kong: Skull Island
Fun adventure, a very well-directed movie with great filming style, effective pacing and a sense of humour.
Fantastic creature design, Guillermo Del Toro-level. It's pretty much all CGI, but very meaty and convincing. A lot of effects companies today retain physicists as consultants, and it feels like they'd supervised every frame of the bigger fight sequences. Another good idea was setting the film in the 1970s, as the continual interaction with very analog technology such as film cameras and bulky radios gives the film a sense of physicality, which in turn makes the CG feel more believable. It's hard to describe, but it works. Sam Jackson gets a lot to sink his teeth into with his role, and you get the impression he enjoyed it - it's also very hard to believe he's near 70! Most of the characters aren't given particular depth, but as with Godzilla, you do wind up rooting for the titular critter.
Speaking of which, Skull Island feels about as close to Godzilla as it does to the earlier King Kong films. I was very happy to find it's not anywhere vaguely close to yet another Kong remake, and mainly just takes the idea of a titanic ape on a primordial island. It's also infinitely more enjoyable than the 2014 Godzilla, but it does feel that there's a shared creative ethos. Kong himself has a personality that's more in line with the big lizard's human-neutral king-of-monsters than the lonely beast hopelessly in love with a tiny blonde woman that we've seen since the 1930s.
Only downsides for me, and they're minor: the audio mix in the second half gave me a bit of a headache (same goes for Godzilla actually), and some of the creatures (Kong in particular) roar too goddamn much. I'm not sure where filmmakers got the idea that monsters and animals have to roar whenever they have a spare moment, but it needs to stop. Visit a wildlife park, guys.
But yeah, solid four stars. And that's despite coming in with a negative bias, as I'm not a fan of the previous Kong films (or of 2014's Godzilla), and after the numerous remakes and sequels, didn't think we needed yet another giant gorilla film. But the trailer looked good, and it's very much representative of the film. Definitely worth a cinema trip.
