Kong: Skull Island

KONG: SKULL ISLAND (Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)

When satellite imagery reveals the location to the unexplored Skull Island in the South Pacific, the race is on to get there first. In KONG: SKULL ISLAND, Bill Randa (John Goodman), a U.S. government official with the organization Monarch, quickly assembles a team of soldiers, scientists, and adventure seekers to claim whatever mysteries the place may reveal. Taking the lead is tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston). With the Vietnam War just concluded, Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) and his men provide the squadron to protect and transport everyone to Skull Island through the nasty weather that encircles it.

None of them are prepared for encountering its enormous creatures, including the ape known as Kong and his reptilian-like predators. Those who survive the casualty-riddled arrival on Skull Island are separated, with Conrad’s group, which includes photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), crossing paths with American pilot Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly). Marlow wrecked there during World War II and has lived among the natives in the intervening years. He considers getting off the island to be a foolish venture but has a makeshift boat in need of repairs that might help if they want to take the risk.

KONG: SKULL ISLAND believes bigger is better, from its unbelievably huge monsters to a primary cast big enough to field two softball teams. The number of main players can be a problem because there are so many characters to serve, even if just in a minor way to give each a distinguishing moment. For all of the mayhem, there’s not a heightened sense of danger because there are plenty of targets. Losing one or five doesn’t have an appreciable effect. They’re all types, even the presumed leads, rather than well-rounded protagonists. Reilly manages to stick out because of his funny and distinctive oddball nature.

To a large degree the lack of character-driven material doesn’t matter all that much as long as there’s enough spectacle. KONG: SKULL ISLAND delivers in that area. Whether Kong is swatting helicopters like flies, wrestling with a giant octopus, or battling his nemeses, the intimidatingly-dubbed skullcrawlers, the special effects impress as state of the art illusions and in their scale. While this and the 1933 KING KONG are not equals as films, the descendant understands the thrill of showmanship in its roots.

KONG: SKULL ISLAND spins a K-tel collection of Vietnam War film rock hits and is casual with its references to APOCALYPSE NOW, but there’s no grand vision of commentary about foreign conflicts or colonialism. That is all window dressing on a monster movie with an entertainer’s eagerness to please. If you want to see cinema’s great ape smash stuff up with the latest technology has to offer, KONG: SKULL ISLAND certainly delivers the goods.

Grade: B

Crimson Peak

CRIMSON PEAK (Guillermo del Toro, 2015)

In CRIMSON PEAK Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is an aspiring writer of ghost stories, although the publisher wishes she would come up with something more conventional and romantic. Edith admits that the ghosts are metaphors for the past, but she has been visited by the spirit of her mother bearing the warning not to go to Crimson Peak. She meets Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) when they come to Buffalo to find investors for his invention. Thomas and Edith become romantically involved against her father’s objections, but after tragedy strikes, Edith weds Thomas and accompanies him to his crumbling family estate in England.

Director and co-writer Guillermo del Toro has made it a point of emphasis while doing the publicity rounds that despite the film’s ghosts, CRIMSON PEAK is not a horror film but a Gothic romance in the tradition of JANE EYRE and REBECCA. In truth there’s not really much romance in it either. Edith and Thomas’s marriage is an arrangement of convenience and exploitation. Although feelings change, CRIMSON PEAK never boils with erotic passion between husband and wife or inside one of them.

And yet while CRIMSON PEAK lacks heat or surprises in its conventional story, del Toro captures the imagination with sumptuous visual treats throughout. The spacious, decrepit house is a marvel of production design and art direction. The intricate costumes manifest the emotional undercurrents, with Edith dressed as though she’s wearing a chrysalis while living at Allerdale Hall and Lucille bound in what she wears as tightly as she and her brother are connected to their home. The clay-reddened snow that looks like it’s been bloodied is such a striking image, especially with that imposing manor looming over it. These elements contribute to the mood, which del Toro treats with primary importance rather than investing energy into the familiar plot. The romance, it turns out, is with the look and feel of rotting mansions and scarred psyches. In that CRIMSON PEAK has more than enough to keep one captivated.

Grade: B

The Deep Blue Sea

THE DEEP BLUE SEA (Terence Davies, 2011)

THE DEEP BLUE SEA opens with Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz) reading the suicide note she’s left for her lover, Royal Air Force pilot Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston).  While her passion for him is as intense as ever, she can no longer stand the imbalance in their feelings for one another.  Hester’s attempt is unsuccessful and does her no harm, but considering the place and time--London, around 1950--the act itself could get her in a great deal of trouble as attempted suicide is a crime.  Although Hester’s husband Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale) was deeply hurt when she left him for his younger friend and refuses to grant her a divorce, he shows no indication of wishing to use her bid to end her life or his position as a judge to gain revenge.  

After being revived Hester lingers in a daze in her rented flat reflecting on the events that brought her to the point of preferring death to the pain of her unmatched fervency for Freddie.  She makes a desperate pitch to elicit the desired response she wants from him but is resigned to knowing she will always need him more.

As Hester tries to hold onto the ephemeral remains of what once existed in her relationships, THE DEEP BLUE SEA is lit so as to catch the dust in the air, the smoke from her cigarettes, and the breath on a chilly night.  While visible, those fleeting byproducts can never again return to what they were.  Florian Hoffmeister’s painterly cinematography wraps the film in a shroud.  What’s gone is gone, and Hester inhabits the wreckage of her choices just as Londoners get on with life among the destruction and ruins from World War II.  

Love becomes malignant when it is dampened or when it mutates into lust in writer-director Terence Davies’ adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play.  Per William’s mother (Barbara Jefford) extolling the virtues of guarded enthusiasm over passion, his affection for Hester is kept at a polite remove.  Hester requires ardor in her relationships, even if it is not reciprocated, and is willing to chuck comfortable but cool certainty with William for the heat of carnal attraction to Freddie.  
         
Hester is trapped between a rock and a hard place.  Neither William nor Freddie can supply or share the acute emotion that sustains her.  Weisz’s sensitive and finely modulated embodiment of yearning and torment speaks of the internal decay that has taken root in Hester.  The character is a victim of her own decisions, but Weisz’s bruised performance in THE DEEP BLUE SEA yields empathy for being battered by doomed romanticism.

Grade: B+