A Two Movie Weekend

[Dave Mitsky]

This past weekend I saw two current movies, "King Kong" and "Walk The Line". Despite the mostly first rate CGI, I wasn't terribly impressed with Peter Jackson's labor of love. "King Kong" was far, far too long (many people in the audience grew restless during the drawn-out prelude to the start of the non-stop action scenes), the special effects were sometimes just too over the top (was it really necessary to have Kong battle a trio of Tyrannosaurs simply to top the 1933 version?), and Jack Black was adequate but not really convincing to me in his role as Carl Denham. Naomi Watts did a fine job as the plucky Ann Darrow, however.

I pretty much agree with these reviews:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2005/12/08/king_kong_2005_review.shtml

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=11177

http://www.7mpictures.com/inside/reviews/kingkong_review.htm

OTOH, the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk The Line" was eminently enjoyable, with noteworthy performances by Joaquin Phoenix as The Man in Black (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash ) and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter. The music was pretty good too.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2005-11-17-walk-the-line_x.htm

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051117/REVIEWS/51107006/1023

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ae/movies/reviews/3460511.html

Dave Mitsky

[suntrack2]

Dave, thanks for keeping interest of wathing movies, that's a good job, but do you think that today's movies are just at par or giving some special message always? why not the best movies run for a long time on the screen ?

sometime movies teach the people and doing very nice duties for educating the society throughout the world, there is a great impact on the indian minds about hollywood movies.

sunil

[Gillianren]

I wrote a review of King Kong for my Rotten Tomatoes journal. I gave it a 3 (out of 10)--one for every hour of my life that it drained. I personally liked the plot bits and found the action pretty tedious; I think Jackson would've been better served to have picked one or the other instead of trying to shoehorn in both.

As for Walk the Line . . . my boyfriend, who pays for tickets (on account of having money), doesn't like dramas. It's simply amazing how many really good movies I've missed in the theatre after having had King Kong and The Medallion inflicted on me.

[Brandon Pilcher]

Kong was great. True, the pre-Skull Island sequence does drag a little, but afterwards, it was emotionally stimulating AND it had ***-kicking dinosaurs.