{"id":5866,"date":"2017-03-21T15:21:34","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T21:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=5866"},"modified":"2017-03-21T15:21:34","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T21:21:34","slug":"kong-skull-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/?p=5866","title":{"rendered":"Kong: Skull Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I feel bad about this, insofar as it implies things that are not true. See, I saw the new Kong movie<\/a> like 10 days ago, on opening weekend. And yet, no review! The implication, of course, is that I didn\u2019t care for it, when the implausible truth is that I just completely forgot to write anything. (I mean, I remembered once or twice while being busy with other things, but basically not at all until I finished the book I\u2019ve been for some reason reading, and then remembered, wait\u2026 uh-oh.) So now here I am, both late to the party and simultaneously devoid of credibility.<\/p>\n

Through such predicaments I forge ahead! Here\u2019s the deal with this movie. It\u2019s a monster movie, and those are always, at heart, as dumb or as cool as you think monster movies are. Of course<\/em>\u00a0there\u2019s no uncharted island in the Pacific populated by humans co-existing with giant prehistoric beasts. Of course there wasn\u2019t in the 1970s when this is set, either, even though it\u2019s mildly more plausible from a \u201cwe haven\u2019t charted every square meter of the world yet\u201d angle. And either you\u2019re the kind of person who nods at what I\u2019ve just said and goes on with your day, or you\u2019re the kind of person who says, I know there isn\u2019t such an island. But wouldn\u2019t it be cool if\u2026? On top of that, it\u2019s a Kong movie, which means that an oversized ape is going to fight oversized non-ape monsters and helicopters, and some people are going to respect him while others want to use him, and he\u2019s going to have a soft spot for diminutive blondes. All of these things are inevitable, and you\u2019re either cool with them or you\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

My point is this: if you are<\/em>\u00a0cool with those tropes and inevitabilities, this is a spectacularly executed example of the genre. Samuel L. Jackson, in one scene, portrays Captain Ahab as well as I believe he has ever been or will ever be portrayed, and John C. Reilly\u2019s character would be enough to carry a lesser movie by himself. (The leads are pretty good too? But with less to work with script-wise, since they are busy being leads.) Plus sexy special effects, an Apocalypse Now visual sensibility without getting bogged down in being anything like Apocalypse Now as a story, and a post-credits scene that has me salivating for this movie to make back enough on its investment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I feel bad about this, insofar as it implies things that are not true. See, I saw the new Kong movie like 10 days ago, on opening weekend. And yet, no review! The implication, of course, is that I didn\u2019t care for it, when the implausible truth is that I just completely forgot to write […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[464,106],"class_list":["post-5866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","tag-action","tag-fantasy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5868,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5866\/revisions\/5868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}