Movie review Kong Skull Island Pretty much everybody likes Apocalypse Now. Francis Ford Coppola’s movie is a visionary masterpiece that was ahead of its time, and has, over the years, come to be held in higher regard than when it was initially released in the late 70’s. The melding of surrealistic imagery, psychedelic music, and taut storytelling signifies it as one of the premier war movies ever made. In my humble opinion, its one of the best movies ever made, period. Now, if anybody has ever watched Apocalypse Now and thought to themselves “this is pretty good, but it would be even cooler with a 300 foot monkey traipsing around” then Kong: Skull Island is for you. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts has fashioned a fever dream in which standard issue explorers land on Skull Island, really for no good reason other than its there. They come across Kong who is bigger, and badder, than every other iteration of the character ever presented on screen. As always in my reviews, no further details regarding plot will be divulged by me. Suffice to say that this movie is a romp! Its awesome good fun, filmed beautifully, and acted well. Tom Hiddleston is fine, Samuel L Jackson is scowling as always (and really, hasn’t he got any other mode other than “perpetual badass”? He’s a bore as an actor, and his military character is stock Jackson), and Brie Larson’s too-tight tank top gets honorary mention. She’s a good actress, and pretty for sure. But wow…who knew? Anyway, go for the big monkey, stay for the tank top. Even the usually insufferable John C. Reilly is good, and the post credit scenes with him are actually quite moving. He’s not at all a favorite actor of mine, but hes pretty good in this. The soundtrack is typical 60’s and 70’s psychedelic rock, and the cinematography is lush. It’s a tropical jungle so why not lovely scenes of setting and rising suns, helicopters emerging from the mist (a’la Apocalypse Now’s famous “copters approaching the beach village scene, mimicked right down to the rock music blaring from the copters speakers) and of course, all kinds of giant creepy crawlies for Kong to beat up on. This is not at all in Apocalypse Now’s league, as a movie. However, it does borrow tone, imagery and timing beats from that masterpiece, in such a way that its nearly an homage. I really, truly enjoyed this. Its relatively mindless, but fun, and cool as hell. Definitely check it out on a big screen if you can.













