There hasn’t really been a decent King Kong movie since the original one 84 (!) years ago. But “Kong: Skull Island” finally sets things to right with a version that’s thrilling, a little bit scary and surprisingly funny.
It’s weird to think how well frights and laughs go together. Go back and rewatch the original Jurassic Park,” and you’ll find what is essentially a comedy with gruesome ingredients mixed in. The new Kong movie has a similar mix of awe, excitement and chortling.
In this version, set in 1973, Kong roams his lonely island in the South Pacific like a fallen god from Olympus. He is worshiped by the few humans living there, who appear to be wayward souls whose became trapped.
There’s also one castaway of more recent vintage, an American WWII pilot played with great mirth by John C. Reilly. When a new crew of soldiers and scientists arrives in their helicopters, his warnings about angering Kong go hilariously unheeded.
Among the new interlopers are Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Toby Kebbell, John Ortiz, John Goodman and Corey Hawkins. They all have their roles to fill, from half-crazed warrior (Jackson) who makes it a personal battle of wills with the great ape, to the peace-loving hippie photographer (Larson) and the survival expert (Hiddleston), who doesn’t actually do such a great job at keeping people alive.
Kong is truly massive in this iteration, the size of a skyscraper, and he’s got some well-justified grudges that drive his dour demeanor. Like the first film, we arrive at the end with a mix of fear and sympathy for him.
Sometimes the third time's the charm, or as with “Kong: Skull Island,” something like the
23rd.
Bonus features are quite robust, and in an increasingly rare instance for video releases, don’t require an upgrade to the Blu-ray edition. It and the DVD version have the same extras.
These include a director’s feature-length commentary track, deleted scenes, a fake backstory on the “Monarch” monster research group and several making-of documentary featurettes. The most interesting one is Larson’s photographs from the production set.
King Kong, along with Godzilla, are the great white whales of moviedom. Their first iterations were unforgettable classics, and since then there have been multitudinous attempts over the decades to recapture lightning in a bottle.
Most have fizzled, and even the best failed to spark half as bright.
Every 12-15 years or so, studios and filmmakers -- and, they think, audiences -- will have forgotten the last (probably disastrous) movie and decide there’s still gold in them thar cinematic hills. So off we go again on another big-critter hunt.
Peter Jackson, fresh off the “Lord of the Rings” movies, gave us his dreary “King Kong” in 2005, and his career hit a slump that lasted until he ran back to Tolkien. “Godzilla” from 2014 managed to hide the monster until the halfway point, which is like manufacturing a sports car that has a top speed of 180 m.p.h. but takes three minutes to get from zero to 60.
So here comes “Kong: Skull Island,” and gosh darn if I didn’t enjoy the thing. It’s goofy as all get out, it has lots of stars but no single compelling character, and it has the sort of final fight scene where the big baddie we think is dead is going to need a couple more tries to get it right.
It’s a fun and surprisingly funny bit of popcorn movie-making. Tonally, it’s all over the map. You’ve got scenes of extreme gross-out deaths and dismemberments -- this may be hardest PG-13 ever given -- set off by silly quips, often within seconds of each other.
On several occasions after a primordial beastie leaps out of nowhere and kills off a couple more members of our intrepid party, they’ll get ready to soldier on and one of them will say something like, “Are we NOT going to talk about what just happened?!?” And the rest will in some way glumly respond that no, we’re not going to talk about what just happened. (Which, of course, is a way of talking about what happened.)
Smartly, big K appears within a couple of minutes of the beginning. He’s got a classic look, grand and majestic and threatening. Kong’s stature has grown with his legend. Climb the Empire State Building? Dude IS the Empire State Building.
Here he’s a lonely god-king, lumbering around his hidden island in the South Pacific circa 1973. He’s angry but also seems sad, and we’ll find out why later. When a bunch of scientists and Army types show up on an exploration mission, dropping seismic bombs and causing a ruckus on his turf, Kong quickly lays down some smack. But he’s got other things on his plate, and humans are just the pesky crumbs.
You want a plot summary? I’m not sure we really need one. Kong rules his secret island, the humans have come in helicopters to find out what’s there, and they quarrel. All 14 choppers are crashed, so it becomes a quest for survival by those who are left.
This is not the sort of movie to quibble over details. You want to know why there are prehistoric monsters on this one island? Let the eggheads bicker about subterranean vents and whatnot. How can there be a permanent hurricane surrounding the island, cutting it off from previous exploration? What are you, a damn meteorologist? Go find some low-pressure systems to warn Aunt Bessie about.
The ensemble cast is a collection of types rather than characters: Tom Hiddleston is the burnt-out British survivalist with suspiciously tight T-shirts and frosted highlights; Brie Larson is the “anti-war photojournalist” (her words) who represents the group’s soulful side; John Goodman is the kooky scientist running a fringe government agency called Monarch that searches for bigfoots, and Corey Hawkins is his dweeby protégé; John Ortiz is the uptight bureaucrat whose role is to be the lawyer in “Jurassic Park;” Samuel L. Jackson is the guts-and-glory wing commander who makes it a personal grudge with Kong; Toby Kebbell is Jackson’s resolute No. 2, who writes “Dear Billy” letters home to his son, which becomes a running theme among the rest; and Tian Jing is the inconsequential Asian supporting character included only to shore up the Chinese market.
The guy who probably had the best time making the movie is John C. Reilly, who plays an addled American pilot who crash-landed on the island during World War II, and can’t understand why nobody listens to the guy who actually knows what’s what. He gets a lot of great one-liners and milks them for every drop.
I also enjoyed Shea Whigham as the taciturn older soldier who’s been around and isn’t fazed by much; after Kong has torn up all their Hueys he offers, “That was an unconventional encounter.” He’s exactly the sort of character who’s kept around to make a noble sacrifice near the end, which goes exactly as we think, but also not.
Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein and Derek Connolly wrote the screenplay, along (I hear) with a host of uncredited others. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts was an interesting choice; his only other feature film credit is “The Kings of Summer,” a tiny coming-of-age indie that made its way around the festival circuit awhile back.
Peter Jackson was originally set to direct “Kong: Skull Island,” but I guess somebody finally got around to watching his first Kong movie. The project banged around and ended up in its current weird but rather wonderful form. Hell, a King Kong movie that throws in an “Oldboy” reference can’t be all bad.
I was going to end this review by harkening back to the first paragraph, which some professor once taught is the mark of a good essay. But I decided it was giving away too much, and if you stick around till the very end you’ll see why.
“Straight Outta Compton” is getting a lot of buzz about landing an Oscar nomination for Best Picture -- we’ll know by the time you’re reading this -- which is an intriguing idea.
While it’s not among my top picks for best films of 2015, it was certainly a very good one, an exploration of the gritty early days of “gangsta rap.” And certainly the Academy has a regrettable history of ignoring African-American stories and filmmakers.
Director F. Gary Gray and screenwriters Andrea Berloff and Jonathan Herman are essentially doing the “authorized biography” version of rap icons N.W.A., as Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, the two enduring giants of the group, are producers on the film. Cube’s real-life son, O’Shea Jackson Jr., even plays his daddy (and does a standout job).
At first glance it might seem like a typical rise-and-fall story of musical success, with egos and nefarious hangers-on leading to strife and disbandment. The middle section of the movie is a bit bloated, with an overindulgence of scenes of hard partying and female flesh displayed.
But what makes “Compton” rise above is the meaty substance at the heart of the story. These were real South L.A. black kids, surrounded by drugs, violence and police brutality, and their songs were an angry shout to an uncaring world about the reality of their plight.
The cast is rounded out by Corey Hawkins as Dre, represented here as the artistic purist; Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, the hardest of the hardcore and doomed mogul; R. Marcos Taylor as Suge Knight, who muscles his way into a lucrative game; and Paul Giamatti as Jerry Heller, the white manager who put the group on the map, and made sure he got rich for it.
(Not surprisingly, the film has been freshly sued by Heller.)
You can buy the film as either the theatrical version or an unrated director’s cut that adds about 20 minutes to the runtime.
Bonus features include deleted scenes (including one song performance), feature length commentary track with Gray, and a half-dozen making-of featurettes on filming in Compton, the group’s formation and cultural impact, and more.
Even for a total rap agnostic like yours truly, it wasn't hard to recognize the power and brutal honesty of N.W.A. and the other early driving forces of what came to be known as "gangsta rap."
Exploding on the staid late 1980s music scene like a Molotov cocktail at a cocktail party, N.W.A.'s 1988 album, "Straight Outta Compton," gave voice to a generation of young black men who grew up feeling like they had the boot of society in general, and law enforcement officials in particular, pressed up against the back of their neck.
Their music was loud, proud, rude, crude, defiant and energetic. Shocking to mainstream white ears, these were the true life stories of urban youths surrounded every day by violence and drugs.
The movie about them, directed by F. Gary Gray from a script by Andrea Berloff and Jonathan Herman, traces the quick rise and quicker fall of N.W.A., but also aims for more. It's essentially the history of the first decade of a new art form and the seedy, frequently violent business that sprung up around it. We witness the rise of the East Coast-vs.-West Coast rap war, and watch artists pushed aside by thugs.
Keep in mind, this is essentially the "authorized biography" version of N.W.A. Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, the two main driving forces of the group, serve as producers on the film and Cube's real-life son, O'Shea Jackson Jr., plays him (and is a charismatic dead ringer). Not surprisingly, they come off looking the best in the movie.
Dre (Corey Hawkins) is portrayed as the artistic purist, the music producer and idea man who comes up with the beats and polishes the sounds. Cube is the surly, beating heart of the group, who pens rhymes about his young life of struggle and spits them out angrily at an uncaring world.
Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell) is depicted as the accidental front man, a drug dealer who put up the money for N.W.A.'s first album and got recruited to lay down some of the lines others had written. He becomes the overnight mogul of Ruthless Records, and hoards much of the fame and cash for himself. Eazy died of AIDS at the age of 31, and his passing serves as the denouement of rap's innocence.
Other group members DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.), MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) and The D.O.C. (Marlon Yates Jr.) are essentially shunted off to the side. Jerry Heller, played by Paul Giamatti, is the Svengali whispering in Eazy's ear. He's quite a conniver in the film's depiction, a money grubber who pitted the N.W.A. crew against each other, convincing them to leave the "paperwork" of the business side to him -- and always made sure his end was covered first.
Suge Knight (R. Marcos Taylor) wades into the film about halfway through, a brutish bodyguard who muscles his way into the management side of the rap game, promising protection but offering servitude. The real Suge is currently jail after allegedly running down two men with his car, one fatally, after leaving the set of this film.
The music of N.W.A. is the centerpiece of the film, and Gray grandly captures the vibrancy and anger of their lyrics. White suburban kids like me might've been shocked by songs with (cleaned-up) titles like "Eff tha Police," but then I didn't get thrown onto the hood of an LAPD squad car while walking home and have my homework rifled through for drugs.
The middle section of the film is predictably fat, with an over-emphasis on the hard-partying ways of N.W.A., with a lot of bouncing female flesh on display for little reason. One of the key criticisms of rap, and this cinematic reflection of it, is how it objectifies women.
At nearly 2½ hours, the film is too long and too self-indulgent for its own good. But it captures the excitement and danger of N.W.A. and the cultural movement it fostered.
