The Importance of Being Idle

The Eighth Wonder Of The World!

Past few days haven't exactly been action packed, but I've managed to keep myself busy cleaning, applying for work and generally messing about. I've also, somehow, managed to watch THREE movies in the past two days, and I'm buggered if I don't know how. I'm not gonna tackle them in any particular order, so here we go:
Domino: I know it got something of a critical mauling, and disappeared at the cinemas quicker than a thing that disappears really quickly, but it was everything I hoped it would be: psychotic, dizzy, convoluted and beautiful! Tony Scott's direction here isn't as amazing as it was in Man on Fire (and truth be told, this movie isn't a patch on MoF, lacking the emotional centre) but its still damn trippy and really really cool! And Mickey Rourke is still really cool!
Jarhead: Another movie that suffered critically and at the box office, this time it seems for not being what its audience expected. That's a shame, cos if people'd stopped wanting it to be about America's current desert escapades, and just watched the movie for what it is, they'd discover a something that seeks to it's generations Apocalypse Now. Okay, nothing IS as good as ApocNow, but it certainly has the same dreamy, occasionally hallucinogenic quality to it, full of beautiful and disturbing imagery, and flat out craziness (I love the whole oil fields sequence, for instance). Its also a fantastically shaggy war story, with our protagonists only ever coming under fire from their own side (when they're "friendly fucked" by a couple of A-10s) and never once firing their weapons at or even NEAR the enemy. Its never dull, always absorbing, and highly recommended.
Finally we come to Peter Jackson's King Kong. Now, as I think you all remember, I've made it quite clear that I wasn't interested in this movie. Not when it was announced, not during production, and only a teeny tiny bit once I'd seen the trailer. Let me just say I was wrong, really really wrong! I LOVED every fucking frame of this movie, and for the life of me I couldn't tell you why! I really was thoroughly absorbed in the adventure for the whole three hours, and I think the time spent establishing the characters is time that pays back by the barrelful later on! Kong himself is an amazing creation, a truly state of the art combination of performance and technology. Skull Island is almost a character in itself with such wonderfully ancient looking forests and ruins and whatnots! And the spider pit! God that is vile! And timed SO perfectly, it's like the darkest moment of the whole movie and its just an absolute trough of despair. Brilliantly done. I suppose the greatest tribute I could pay to the movie (at least as far as PJ would be concerned) is that its made me want to see the original movie again (something I've not done since I was nine or ten years old, and it didn't really make much of an impression on me).
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... King Kong!

posted by BadMonkey @ 8:53 PM