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Monday, March 20, 2017

See Kong: Skull Island, Forget The Belko Experiment

Kong: Skull Island blew me away by making a fun action movie set in the 70's with some subtle references to some classic Kaiju details and styles from the same era. That includes a long nod to Apocalypse Now, a short kill out of Cannibal Holocaust, which I don't recommend to watch and men and women in agencies in silly suits that only seem to exist in Japanese Kaiju and and Bond movies.

Kong: Skull Island, was just a pleasure to watch, it wasn't a so bad it's good movie, it wasn't the greatest film, but it's what every Hollywood movie should strive to be, entertaining.

And every moment with characters you start to care about, before they die horribly, draws you into the story instead of away from it. John C. Reilly, steals the show from Tom Hiddleston whose suppose to be the star. Oh, and they finally toned down the guy getting the girl story you see in every movie. It's not even the same old Kong lusting over the lead actress, Brie Larson this time.

Go on a trip to Skull Island and watch a giant monkey talk on monsters and the army.

The Belko Experiment fails by just being a let down. Instead of the over-top kills that you wanted, it's a drawn out mess of basically some jerks killing people in an office in some very boring ways. If you wanted someone having scalding hot coffee thrown in their face or a phone shoved down their throat it's not here. If you wanted someone stapling someone's mouth shut or blinding someone with white out in their eyes, once again the film can't be that creative.

It boils down to a simmering watery broth with chunks of everything you need to make an over-the-top office kill movie, but you get a tasteless indie that'll be forgotten in a few months. It's so bland, it needs to be infused with some accountants crunching numbers and fingers, some fun one-liners. Just don't bother with the blandest take of the film from a director who continues to have a bad track record.

I guess writer James Gunn didn't come back to do rewrites or gave all his best ideas to (hopefully) Guardians of the Galaxy 2.