Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Bill Randa is a man on a mission, and that mission is to visit Skull Island.  What will he find there?  He’s not quite sure.  It’s the last undiscovered piece of land, so no one’s really sure.  It could be the next cure for something.  It could be nothing.  Either way, he has to go.  He even hires James Conrad, tracker extraordinaire, to guide the mission and arranges for a military escort led by Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard.  Joining the group is photographer Mason Weaver.

The group makes it to the island safely.  That safety lasts about five minutes.  Once they start dropping seismic charges, something attacks, and it’s big.  It starts throwing the helicopters back at the rest of the formation.  Yes, it’s Kong.   He’s mad as hell and he’s not going to take it any more.  All of the helicopters are destroyed, leaving a few survivors.  Those survivors have three days to make it to the other side of the island to be rescued.  If they don’t, they’re going to have a lot of time to get to know the big ape.

Along the way, they meet the island’s natives, who have been hosting downed pilot Hank Marlow.  Marlow seems to know the area pretty well.  He explains that Kong is like a god to the locals.  Killing him would be a bad idea.  Packard develops an Ahab-like hatred of Kong, which is understandable.  A lot of his men have died at the giant’s hands.

The carnage isn’t even limited to the initial encounter.  There are a lot of other creatures on the island, many of them huge.  Several people are attacked by a giant spider.  Others are killed by these weird looking things I can’t even describe.  Several dozen people land on the island.  Don’t expect to see most of them in the sequel.  (There is a post-credits scene linking this movie with the upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong.)

It’s odd that for a shared universe, the first three movies seem to have such little continuity, especially since Godzilla and Godzilla: King of the Monsters are both about the same creature.  Kong, I can understand being different.  It’s about a different creature that will be brought in later.  However, Godzilla was one of maybe four characters shared between the other two movies.  (There are a few common references, like the Monarch organization and the theory of a hollow Earth.)

This entry was at least decent.  It was a solid, single-track story.  The movie doesn’t jump around from one story to another.  It’s about a group of people trying to make it off an island they had no business being on in the first place.  We get to see a fair amount of action, but there‘s also some dialogue.  (Most of it is about war, as the movie starts on the last day of the Viet Nam War.)

I had seen this in hopes of watching next year’s Godzilla vs. Kong, although I don’t know that it will matter.  As I may have indicated, there doesn’t seem to be much overlap between this movie and the others.  In fact, Godzilla vs. Kong will seem to have a few characters in common with Godzilla: King of the Monsters.  Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much in common except the title monsters.  I guess I’ll have to watch the movie to see what happens.

IMDb page

Flight (2012)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

I had wanted to see Flight in theaters.  It looked like an interesting premise.  A pilot played by Denzel Washington is able to safely land a plane, but catches flak for it.  I was interested to see how this played out.  I figured most of the movie would be about the aftermath, which it was.  I eventually got to rent the movie through Redbox.

The pilot’s name is Will “Whip” Whitaker.  He’s piloting an Orlando-to-Atlanta flight.  He manages to take off during heavy rain.  He’s able to skillfully land the plane when a mechanical failure occurs. He’s also drunk and stoned out of his mind the whole time.  Of the 108 people onboard the plane, only six die.  He managed, while impaired, to pull off what most people couldn’t even attempt sober.

That’s not the point, though.  He never should have been on that plane.  We know it. His lawyer and friends know it.  Whittaker even throws out all of his alcohol, but the message doesn’t seem to take.  He has no problem placing blame on a defective part.  (I suppose if I were facing the possibility of six felony counts, I would do the same.)

Most of the movie is spent preparing for an NTSB hearing.  This makes giving a detailed analysis difficult.  There’s a lot of legal maneuvering and a lot of trying to keep Whittaker sober.  This isn’t easy.  At the start of the movie, he finishes a warm beer and snorts a line.  While talking to passengers before takeoff, he makes a family-sized screwdriver.  (Before you leave a comment, he actually pours several mini vodkas into a large container of orange juice.)

Normally, I hate movies like this.  It’s painful to watch someone on a downward spiral.  The movie isn’t heavy handed about the alcoholism, though.  Yes, he makes a lot of bad choices.  Yes, every time he blames the mechanical failure, I know that he knows that he shouldn’t have been in the plane.  On the other hand, I found myself hoping that he’d avoid trouble.  He’s as functional as they come, but he had no business endangering over 100 people.  Here’s someone that should have gone to AA a long time ago, but has always found a reason not to.  (There was one point in the movie that I felt was a little painful to watch, but I can understand why it was included.)

This is not a movie for children.  Aside from the drugs and sex, there are a lot of things that young children wouldn’t understand.  They may not get the subtleties of the maneuvering.  They may not understand why or how Whittaker could come across as someone we could empathize with.  I think if I had seen this movie when I was 10 or 15, I would have had a totally different take on it.  I would have seen Whittaker simply as a drunk who happened to get lucky.  Which he is, in a way.  He’s a man who knows that he’s wrong, but can’t quite come to terms with his demons. 

IMDb page

Argo (2012)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions page.

The movie starts in November of 1979.  Protesters are outside the American embassy’s compound and those inside are worried.  The former Iranian shah is in America for medical reasons and the Iranians want him back.  Six of the embassy workers manage to escape, but everyone else is taken hostage.  Those six manage to find refuge at the home of the Canadian ambassador.  The U. S. State Department wants to get them out, but there’s no really plausible way to do that.  Tony Mendez, played by Ben Affleck, finds reasons that each proposal might fail.

One night, while watching one of the Planet of the Apes movies, he realizes that movies will occasionally need to film on location.  This gives him the idea of posing as a studio employee meeting some ‘Canadian’ counterparts in Iran.  After a few days of ‘scouting’ for a location, they’ll all catch a flight back to North America.  Not only does Mendez have to train six people to learn their cover stories, but they’re operating under a deadline.  (It won’t take long for the hostage takers to realize that they’re short six hostages.)

There are also a lot of technical details to worry about.  Mendez brings in some Hollywood people to help sell the cover story.  They buy an actual script to use, hire real actors and go through the process of pretending to make a movie.  The even set up an office for Iranian officials to call when the need arises.  There are also bureaucratic problems that they just have to hope will resolve themselves.

Part of the problem with movies based in history is that you may have some sense of how it ends.  Argo tells part of what went on with the Iranian Hostage Crisis, which took place when I was only a few years old.  I saw the movie with my brother, who was only a few months old at the time.  There were a few references that he missed, like to Rock Hudson.  I’m sure that I missed one or two, myself.  (I have no memory of Carter as president.)

Most of the movie focuses on the rescue attempt.  We get to see the hostages a little before they meet Mendez, but it’s mostly to show that they’re getting cabin fever.  They can’t leave the ambassador’s residence for fear of someone recognizing them.  Once they’re out ‘scouting’ for a location, they have to stay in character the whole time.  (On that note, I’m not sure how much of the film was done for dramatic effect.  There were a few tense scenes where the six ‘houseguests’ were out and almost caught.)

One thing I thought about was the screenwriter whose film was purchased to use for the project.  I felt a little bad that it was purchased with the intent of not really making it.  My brother pointed out that it did help to save lives, but the mission was classified.  Mendez, who came up with the idea, was awarded the Intelligence Star, but couldn’t actually take it home.  This is how classified it was.  I don’t imagine that the State Department was going to let some screenwriter in on their little secret.  I’m sure projects fall through all the time, but it must be so weird to find something like that out years later.

I do recommend seeing the movie.  I liked seeing it in theaters.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to posting it until after it came out on DVD.  Another thing I noticed is that the Canadian government did a lot to help us, even jyst by letting the six Americans stay there.  I’m not sure how much that affected their relationship with the Iranians.  Definitely rent this movie if you get the chance.