View Poll Results: KONG: SKULL ISLAND

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Thread: Kong: Skull Island (Jordan Vogt-Roberts)

  1. #1
    In the belly of a whale Henry Gale's Avatar
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    Kong: Skull Island (Jordan Vogt-Roberts)

    Last 11 things I really enjoyed:

    Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
    Safe (Haynes, 1995)
    South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
    Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
    Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
    What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
    Diva (Beineix, 1981)
    Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
    The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
    Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
    Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)

  2. #2
    In the belly of a whale Henry Gale's Avatar
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    Got to see this last night and really kinda loved it.

    It thrives in two gears: As a style piece and as a gooey, gory monster movie. But with a cast of at least a dozen discernible actors, tons of varying locations and creatures for them to play around with, there's a lot of variety of personalities and cinematic textures to bask in, even if with all of those human characters, many of them don't quite get to feel incredibly realized. John C. Reilly fares best because he's the most distinct and least of a walking archetype, in addition to arguably being the most important character in a lot of ways. It also helps that he gives a super funny and heartfelt performance.

    But the whole thing is just so wild and fun, with Vogt-Roberts having at least one stunning visual idea per minute, that any misgivings you might have had with it as a script in plain text on white paper falls by the wayside with just how much morbid joy and silly verve it exudes on screen. If this is the sort of lesson WB learned from Fury Road, to just let a filmmaker go nuts and let all their strange, shaggy impulses come to fruition unhampered, then I can't wait for what else they might allow to happen under their studio banner in the future.
    Last 11 things I really enjoyed:

    Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
    Safe (Haynes, 1995)
    South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
    Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
    Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
    What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
    Diva (Beineix, 1981)
    Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
    The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
    Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
    Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)

  3. #3
    Evil mind, evil sword. Ivan Drago's Avatar
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    Fuck yes. As a fan of The Kings of Summer, I'm so happy to hear Vogt-Roberts was able to do his thing with it.

    Can't wait to see it!
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    M3GAN (Johnstone, 2023) 3.5
    Turning Red (Shi, 2022) 4.5
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  4. #4
    Moderator TGM's Avatar
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    Yeah, this was a lot better than I was honestly expecting. Real fun flick!

  5. #5
    Sunrise, Sunset Wryan's Avatar
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    A good time was had by me. A little too much soundtrack and most of it a little too on the nose. There are, however, three things in this that are particularly amazing:

    1) Good god the filler dialogue was banal as shit. Just amazingly terrible.
    2) The crunching action and deaths were shockingly brutal. Very good spatial awareness in action scenes keeping things clear. Very well-shot in almost every way. Lots of fun tropes got carpet-pulled.
    3) Wholly remarkable how much pathos Reilly wrung out of this character with such little time. He's a goddamn marvel. I can't help but feel that as the number and size of the monsters get bigger, his kind of character investment is going to shrink by a lot. But I'm sure many will be fine with that.
    "How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and forgot how to drive?"

    --Homer

  6. #6
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    nobody has mentioned the monkey's cock yet so I assume this movie will disappoint me

  7. #7
    Sunrise, Sunset Wryan's Avatar
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    There's a kind of mound in some shots. Also, not to be anal-retentive, but don't apes have like the smallest relative junk among mammals? I'm sure I heard that somewhere.
    "How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and forgot how to drive?"

    --Homer

  8. #8
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Wryan (view post)
    There's a kind of mound in some shots. Also, not to be anal-retentive, but don't apes have like the smallest relative junk among mammals? I'm sure I heard that somewhere.
    Not from apes.

  9. #9
    Moderator TGM's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Irish (view post)
    nobody has mentioned the monkey's cock yet so I assume this movie will disappoint me
    I expect a full review centered entirely around this subject once you get around to seeing this.

  10. #10
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    I mean, honestly, once there's dong on the screen, I am just staring at that floppy little boy. The actors could be saying any kind of dialogue about the most important things, and I am studying that whole downstairs situation. It's not even about jealousy or some sort of buried bicuriosity. Free-range dong is just so damn rare. It's like when my family was car-tripping across the Midwest once and saw bald eagles flying around a bridge. We stopped the car, and our lives just became about watching a pair of birds we knew we'd see maybe once or twice more in our lives.

    That's what it's like, except instead of a pair of majestic birds, it's computerized balls.

  11. #11
    This was pretty terrible. Kong himself was great, but not on screen nearly enough, and he certainly didn't have a cock and balls.

  12. #12
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    This was a great time. Much better than Godzilla. Couple of notes first. The after credit scene felt tacked on and expositiony. [
    ] Bri Larson is now my #1.

    The first half of this movie felt great. It had build. Tension. A purpose. I was invested in the characters. Good start. Love the journey. The second half was just OK. HATED some of the action when they were in the valley. The scene where Loki picks up the gas mask and is cutting birds in half was a joke. Equally a joke was Loki convincing the platoon to turn on Packard. I was dead wrong about the comic relief though. Riley was fine. Some of his lines hit. Some missed. Loved the bather when they were fixing the boat. Loved the tribute to him at the end.

    It was also shot in a way that felt very new to me. I have no idea who this Jordan Vogt-Roberts guy is, but I want more from him. I was so close to calling him the poor man's Zack Synder with all the slow-mo shots, but they are not the same type of slow-mo that Synder uses. There's also a lot of top-down shots (like Wes Anderson) and close up cuts (like Wright). I really enjoyed that and it added a different flavor to me.

    One thing that worked really well is you almost never see anything (monsters, Kong etc) to scale- meaning in full plain view from the top of a mountain. There's one scene where Kong is walking in lake but that's about it. You always see the action either from the waste up, head up, from inside a helicopter, through fog, through haze, in front of a sunset. It bodes well to tell the story like.

    Personally, I felt disappointed with Skull Island. By my count, I saw 4.5 "creatures" not including Kong (the half of creature were the birds, and one of the creatures was an innocent log bug.) What was the deal with the Skull monsters? Just give me Dinosaurs Land of the Lost style. Throw in some T-Rexs and call it a day. Did they think it would be too similar to Jackson's? The bipeds were really dumb looking.

    Way more entertaining than I was expecting. It doesn't take itself too seriously like Godzilla did. (thank god).
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  13. #13
    Moderator TGM's Avatar
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    I actually missed the post credits scene and had to find a shitty version on youtube.

  14. #14
    Cinematographer Mal's Avatar
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    Sigh, its hot garbage. Kong was great but considering that more than ten years ago Peter Jackson did the same thing with actual character development... Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson had no business, no reason to exist in this movie. This movie can fuck off.

  15. #15

    Kong: Skull Island (Jordan Vogt-Roberts)

    Peter Jackson's King Kong is mad underrated. He hasn't made a good movie since, but still...
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  16. #16
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    Yeah I love Jackson's Kong.

  17. #17
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Zac Efron (view post)
    Sigh, its hot garbage. Kong was great but considering that more than ten years ago Peter Jackson did the same thing with actual character development... Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson had no business, no reason to exist in this movie. This movie can fuck off.
    They had more business to be in the movie then Aaron Taylor-Johnson did in Godzilla.
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    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
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  18. #18
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    Jackson's Kong is wonderful.

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    ]
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
    Quote Quoting TGM (view post)
    I work in grocery. I have not gotten sick. My fellow employees have not gotten sick. If the virus were even remotely as contagious as its being presented as, why haven’t entire store staffs who come into contact with hundreds of people per day, thousands per week, all falling ill in mass nationwide?

  19. #19
    Cinematographer Mal's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Dukefrukem (view post)
    They had more business to be in the movie then Aaron Taylor-Johnson did in Godzilla.
    Lol no.

  20. #20
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    What's funny?

    I guess in your head, that means if Hiddleston and Larson were the son and daughter of Goodman, that's reason enough to be around.
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
    Quote Quoting TGM (view post)
    I work in grocery. I have not gotten sick. My fellow employees have not gotten sick. If the virus were even remotely as contagious as its being presented as, why haven’t entire store staffs who come into contact with hundreds of people per day, thousands per week, all falling ill in mass nationwide?

  21. #21
    Quote Quoting Dukefrukem (view post)
    What's funny?

    I guess in your head, that means if Hiddleston and Larson were the son and daughter of Goodman, that's reason enough to be around.
    It would help if they simply served the purpose that the movie gives me. Hiddleston is a tracker who doesn't track anything. Larson is a photographer who says she won't show anyone her photos. Does anybody remember the name of any character in this movie? Besides Chapman, who is only memorable because his name is repeated over and over and we see it written on screen. None of these characters are worth watching let alone worth caring about. There's a number of cliche'd character beats that fall totally flat because no character is written with any sort of dimension. The stoney-faced guy sacrifices himself out of nowhere, gives a cheesy random goodbye line, another character screams NOOOOOOOO but other than two or three quippy lines they exchanged with one another there's no evidence that they were friends enough for one to care. I could name another 3 scenes like this that were obviously intended to be emotionally affecting but I was literally laughing out loud in the theater.

  22. #22
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    You were literally laughing in the theater?
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
    Quote Quoting TGM (view post)
    I work in grocery. I have not gotten sick. My fellow employees have not gotten sick. If the virus were even remotely as contagious as its being presented as, why haven’t entire store staffs who come into contact with hundreds of people per day, thousands per week, all falling ill in mass nationwide?

  23. #23
    Quote Quoting Dukefrukem (view post)
    You were literally laughing in the theater?
    Yes. Not as if I was guffawing such that the entire theater could hear me, but enough for my friends on either side to hear me and for us to exchange glances. There were also a number of musical cues (CCR's Run Through the Jungle? Really?) that were so obtuse and awkward I couldn't help but snicker.

  24. #24
    Moderator TGM's Avatar
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    Sounds like you had a good time.

  25. #25
    Cinematographer Mal's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting amberlita (view post)
    It would help if they simply served the purpose that the movie gives me. Hiddleston is a tracker who doesn't track anything. Larson is a photographer who says she won't show anyone her photos. Does anybody remember the name of any character in this movie? Besides Chapman, who is only memorable because his name is repeated over and over and we see it written on screen. None of these characters are worth watching let alone worth caring about. There's a number of cliche'd character beats that fall totally flat because no character is written with any sort of dimension. The stoney-faced guy sacrifices himself out of nowhere, gives a cheesy random goodbye line, another character screams NOOOOOOOO but other than two or three quippy lines they exchanged with one another there's no evidence that they were friends enough for one to care. I could name another 3 scenes like this that were obviously intended to be emotionally affecting but I was literally laughing out loud in the theater.
    allll of this except I rolled my eyes the entire way through the second half of the movie.

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