Kong: Skull Island

I really love kaiju films, so I'm heavily influenced, but I had a great time watching Kong: Skull Island! Kong is excellent here, the effects are stunning, there are great monsters and incredible action scenes, and there are also interesting characters. Simply a thrilling spectacle for the movie theater. And to top it off, that fantastic poster with the green signal smoke! (12/03/2017)

A rather weak screenplay, balanced by excellent tricks and fine actors. A movie buff’s enthusiasm is evident in Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ work as director, and lots of great ideas and situations are just what I hoped for. Unfortunately, some catalysts leading to these situations don’t make absolute sense (very conveniently located chains and ship’s propeller in the last fight, gas grenades and the simple stupidity of some characters). This is a great shame, because it really spoils the effort. Interesting casting is confronted by a screenplay where for instance the wonderful Sam L. Jackson’s behavior occasionally defies common sense. But all it needs is a little more depth to his motivation. (14/03/2017)

Kong: Skull Island is very different than it is presented in trailers. It has much closer resemblance to a classic adventure film, and those expecting the seriousness and maturity hinted at in the trailers will not find it. That said, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, an debutant blockbuster director, occasionally delivers some very nice shots and handles the epic monster battles flawlessly, and there are more of them than you would expect. Unfortunately, when Kong disappears from the scene and it comes to the human characters, it becomes significantly worse. For a moment, the film tackles Samuel L. Jackson's war traumas from Vietnam very seriously (and quite impressively), only to change into John C. Reilly's comedic relief the next minute. And in the meantime, a boring Loki and a bunch of other people run around, whom you really won't care about. Overall, it's okay, but I won't deny a slight disappointment. I suppose I'll watch a compilation of the battles at most in a year, but the entire film will be quite difficult. (15/05/2017)

A very well made but increasingly worse film as time passes. Alas. I was looking forward to it, and I can't say that I didn't get to see some good scenes (nothing beat the helicopter attack) and ideas, but somewhere after about half an hour the script got into a rather annoying loop of "period song - walking - monster appears - battle/escape - period song - walking - monster appears," very strange situations and scenes (the ship) and most of all I didn't care about almost any of the human characters. Why would I, when most of them were completely useless (Tom Hiddleston, for example, just walks through almost the whole film and doesn't do anything extravagant), unused (John Goodman, unfortunately) or downright annoying (John C. Reilly)... Seriously a shame. I wasn't expecting a second Godzilla, but at least some good fun. (10/03/2017)

At first I was loving this romp unburdened by logic, and I wanted to come back to it repeatedly, but after a second date, the flaws in the form of the overly stylized script (as if the story was pieced together only around pre-conceived cool shots and scenes), the unfunny dialogues and the almost zero atmosphere don't do it anymore. I like the film as an ultra-loud, polished audiovisual spectacle, and for its sincere nature of a simple, fun blockbuster, the impressive 70s feel full of period songs, and the looks of the mesmerizing Brie Larson, but I can't forgive it for its reprehensible waste of a subject promising atmospheric goosebumps like Edwards' Godzilla. There are a few scenes that are genuinely hilarious and John C. Reilly steals the second half, but this could (and should) have turned out differently (and a little better). 70% (09/03/2017)