Kong: Skull Island [2017]

Just some brief thoughts on the latest King Kong film, Warner Brothers' Kong: Skull Island, directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts. (For the record, I really liked Universal Studios' 2005 King Kong, directed by Peter Jackson.) The time setting of Skull Island - immediately after the end of the Vietnam War - was nice and made for some decent basic storytelling. And aurally and visually the movie was amazing. Unfortunately, there is one action sequence in the middle that seemed so out of place style-wise that it took me out of the movie. Taking me out of the movie is bad. However, it's the characters where the movie really falls short. First off, John C. Reilly stole the show from everyone else in the movie. Hands down the best acting performance in the film, Toby Kebbell and Terry Notary's work as Kong included. Samuel L. Jackson's performance, on the other hand, would have worked... had the whole film been like the over-the-top action sequence I previously mentioned. John Goodman's early scenes were great, but he wasn't much more than an extra after that. Aside from Reilly and Kong the only characters that actually interested me were a few of the soldiers - the two played by Jason Mitchell (Straight Outta Compton) and Shea Whigham (Agent Carter), in particular - and the two young scientists played by Tian Jing (The Great Wall) and Corey Hawkins (The Walking Dead) - who we hardly got to know. The film-makers could also have done so much more with the character played by Miyavi (Unbroken). Have I forgotten anyone? Oh, yeah. Two unknown actors would have benefited greatly from simply being in this film, had the roles of two characters who were simply in the film not gone to Tom Hiddleston (Thor) and Brie Larson (Room). A bit of hyperbole, but not by much.