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Reviews
King Kong (2005)
Watch it in separate sittings. the comedy/farce opening, the Noir steam tramp mystery, The horror/adventure on the island and then the NY finish , just to finish.
King Kong 2005 is brilliant in a lot of ways, but its several entirely different movies for very different audiences which makes it hard for either to enjoy and the pacing problems make it very hard to watch in one sitting
It starts as an excellent comedy/farce.. moves to noir classic tramp steamer movie.. then the spectacular set pieces at the opening of the island scenes.. and all those can hang together, but the monster/chase scenes move into pure horror movie territory . If you enjoyed and were here for that comedy/farce opening part you probably didnt care for the horror section in the middle and vice versa. The complete LOSS of that sense of humor and playfulness the film opened with .. is a distinct loss for the film for the rest of its length. Certainly the sense of the absurd and black humor would have a great part in the ensuing death, chaos , horror and bathos..but its all played in a sort of stunned wonder .. straight.. instead.
The relationship between Ann Darrow and Kong is developed well. If you've known many woman who have strong attachments to their dogs its pretty easy to see how she 'fell' for the great ape in exactly that way.. and as the lonely last of his kind surrounded by an unlikely ecology made entirely of predators... her entertaining him with juggling and vaudeville schtick.. another bipedal primate for company.. could just about work. Shes a funny girl in the haha sense and a show person. (twas not beauty that brought the beast..but humor and hijinks and companionship.. Anne Darrow could have been any age or shape and the same would have worked for the ape..if not for the audience).
Two caveats you have to work with.. ignore the inverse square law for size of *anything* in this film.. or the structural strength of anything to support them.. or the SCALE of anything really.. the '25 foot gorrilla' varies in size from hundreds of feet down to about sixty..though perhaps the corpse might have been closer to that scale. Virtually all the CGI does that 'as big or small as it needs to be for this shot' shifting but unless you're nerdy about things like that it wont jar too badly.
I'll start by saying Jack Black steals the show as Carl Denham the narcaistic monomaniacal con man who moves the plot. Its a brilliant part and a brilliant performance, possibly his best and by god he really sells it, but the ending is scarred by his utter lack of consequences. He has a ton of karma to answer for and that lack is.. a satisfaction that a film like this should certainly have provided, and didnt.
Darrows relationship with the Jack character is exactly as developed as it should be ..unspoken and awkward but still satisfying in the end.
On more lighthearted note I *really* want to know who made that slip Ann Darrow was wearing and out of *what* because most heavy canvas field gear would be shredded in the first five minutes of some of those jungle scenes.
The Princess (2022)
Just no. I want my hour and a half back.
Just a bunch of fight scenes barely strung together with platitudes ,clichés and stereotypes. My impression is that either some movie company was using this as a warm up for actually making a real movie or as make work to keep otherwise idle hands busy... and because of the really stilted and just utterly off messaging involved that its probably a Chinese production company trying to break into the US market.
A few of the fight scenes rose to the level of 'ok' and the stuntmen/actors clearly new how to follow direction and the camera crew and editors did good professional work but the often fight choreography was just absolutely *awful*.. and the logic beyond the pale of all known stupid.
If the direction and concept was the only thing being reviewed it would be one star or less..but the production crew.. did ok. But I've seen better fight scenes in cheap tv series so really this felt like someone experimenting and then handing it to the editors and saying "I was just noodling around ..see what you can make of this"
The King (2019)
Worst possible screenplay and story ...everything else was fine but so what?
How does such a ridiculous excremental childish script and story ever get produced? Thousands of talented people put in time..the actors, the camera crew , the costumers, and set dressers and all the other people involved in the collaborative art that is film did their jobs really well. Real money was spent on the production.. but the story and script ..oh god... why? why? would anyone fund such a pro-nationalist flag waving 'us good and peaceful enemy evil and ludicrous' idiot piece of propaganda? was it made for children? It reminds me of the worst of 1950s cold war "Combat with Vick Morrow" type tripe. The utterly transparent and crass way they try to yank on heartstrings like a yoke would have been insulting enough.
At WORST they could have at least cribbed the best parts of Shakespear..someone needs to do a 2 hour 'Henry IV pts 1 and 2+ Henry V' sometime..but no, the skipped that....
OR they could have gone past Holingsheds chronicles for an accurate and gritty portrayal of the court and the battle....but literally any choice they made was to go as far opposite of historical record they could manage.
OR they could have made a lighter hearted redemption of the Falstaff character..with him at the center and from his point of view...
instead..what a criminal waste of so many peoples time and talent on ..yes indeed the WORST possible retelling of any of this. And this is up for awards? how ? how in the name of anything could this have been nominated for anything but the bottom of a trash can in the editing bay?
Wynonna Earp (2016)
Passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. (thats so rare it alone makes it worth while)
Seriously.. the number of 'not about romance' movies where there is a GENDER BALANCED cast getting a FAIRLY EVEN amount of screen time and lines is so rare its practically a superlative on its own to make this a gem. It does that and does it well. There are strong male characters in the mix but thankfully they're too busy being mysterious to really take the focus off the stars.. the Earp sisters and their quirky ways and problems. The acting is good (but not great in places) but doesn't distract from scripts that have real humor and create engaging characters and their personal lives are very well done in the series...
But there were problems.
The casts gun handling skills are so bad that anyone raised in a gun owning family would do better and its painful to watch.
There are so many careless amateur type mistakes in the supernatural side of the stories that this is ALSO something that you have to gird your suspension of disbelief for (wait, Wyatt Earp was down in the well with Peacemaker for 100 years and was just waiting for someone to throw him a rope? the well on the front lawn of the house Wynona and her ancestors all grew up in?? Also a half dozen 'why not just shoot now?' moments throughout the series). Also that whole "Black Badge" bunch was way too low budget to be a US special operation type thing... I was hoping that in Season 2 it would turn out to be some kind of fraud/rogue operation that duped whats his name into believing it was actually a government department when it really wasn't...and that the whole "Tomahawk Crater" thing was .. as silly a fabrication as it really would be and they all laugh at how gullible folks were to believe it.
I also get the sense that they didn't know where they were taking the series and making up the supernatural stories as they went along so that the writers were always about as surprised as the audience at the end of any given episode.
Anyway.. good banter, engaging and engaged characters .. good interpersonal stories. and the solid gold bit of having a story populated by as many women as men who are actual people and not just romantic foils in the story or something to look at.
Kings (2009)
the *dynasty* part is GREAT.. the Military part is ONE STAR *bad*
Ten stars for the idea... The Bible is a wonderful source of rich stories and characters with a LOT of complexity and depth (if you quietly escort the Bible School teachers out of the room and actually read the thing).. and they used that here and its a great idea...
maybe 7 stars for their "Alternate Reality" version of "Dynasty" with power and wealth and hard choices and weary souls and bright new innocents.. and the obvious road from the latter to the former coming up for some of the cast.
But Every Single moment they spend at "the front" makes me want to bash my head against a wall till i'm unconscious. YES they only needed it to be an allegory AND its only in support of the "Dynasty" elements of the script but its... BLOODY AWFUL there...
SO if you can grit your teeth and get past that ... the series seems to be worth watching.
HOPEFULLY they will FIRE the guy who thought up the sequences at "The Front" after doing unspeakable things to him... like causing him to THINK which will probably cause his cortex to melt in messy painful ways.
Quark: Quark (1977)
A forgotten gem..think 'galaxyquest, the series' 20 years early...
In the vast sci if wasteland that was TV after the cancellation of star trek this show rose above and decided to be sci if spoof. I haven't seen it in 20 years but more than a few moments still come to mind....
the familiar heroic tableau of the landing party on the transporter.... then cut to same heroic tableau on the surface...and then the camera pans downward and they're waste deep in swamp...
a good gag.
then there were 'the Bettie's'... in a society with harsh taboos against sleeping with clones, our gallant captain had a pair of busty beautiful semi clad blonde women in his crew both of whom were very much in love (or at least lust) .. the catch, and the captains endless dilemma was that one of them was the clone of the other and he never found out which was which...(in one episode his dying request was 'which one of you is the clone' and the two Bettie's in tearful chorus cried 'she is!.. sob') the intrepid adventures of this space going garbage scow (literally) deserve far better remembrance ESPECIALLY at sci if cons than ever it got... and I hope the copyrights are clear and that in our day of UNLIMITED channels and 24/7 sci if coverage this hokey pre-computer effects era gem will re-emerge as the camp comedy treasure it was deliberately made to be...