KONG: SKULL ISLAND - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Saved By Great Monsters, John C. Reilly

John C. Reilly: The only thing resembling a human being.

Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Scr. Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, Derek Connolly
Sty: John Gatins
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson,
John Goodman, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Why it took four writers to come up with the lame, dull Kong: Skull Island screenplay is beyond me. Then again, given the sheer emptiness of most studio pictures these days, it shouldn't surprise anyone since it takes a whole lotta boneheads to generate a whole lotta stupid. An American President called Donald Trump is proof of that.

If truth be told, I can almost even forgive inept imbecility. What I can't forgive is tedium and this mostly horrendous reboot of the Kong franchise is nothing if not mind-numbingly boring for most of its interminable 118-minute length. Much of what makes the movie dull are the missed opportunities it took four writers to conjure up.

Things begin promisingly enough with the pre-credit sequence. It's WWII and two soldiers - one American, the other Japanese - crash on the remote Skull Island. Ah, tantalizing! Perhaps we will be afforded a lovely action-packed nod to John Boorman's Hell in the Pacific? But, no. We're handed two dull anonymous actors - no Lee Marvin or Toshiro Mifune here. Jesus, I'd have even settled for something resembling Peter Sellers/Burt Kwouk Pink Panther martial arts slap-schtick shenanigans. That, however, would be too politically incorrect by contemporary standards (and sadly, the movie's endlessly shoe-horned P.C. sensibilities are another big problem with the picture). So instead, we get a dull sprint up a mountain and our warring soldiers meet with a far more formidable enemy - Yup, you guessed it, King Kong, the big hairy ape. (But don't worry, ain't nothing too Eugene O'Neill about this hirsute monkey.)

Our movie launches into an annoyingly wham-bam credit sequence detailing American history from the last Great War and eventually leading up to the turbulence of the 1970s. Thank God it stops here - a real decade. Alas, the period detail, in virtually every respect, is woefully inadequate - most annoyingly with the contemporary-speak of the dialogue and the decidedly 2017 timbre of the delivery of said dialogue.

Of course, this being 2017, in spite of the movie being set in the 1970s, we don't get to meet a cool adventurer seeking passage to Skull Island, say along the lines of showman Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong in the 1933 version, Jack Black in Peter Jackson's 2005 entry) or even a delectably sleazy oilman like Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin in 1976). What we get is the supremely unimaginative, ineffectual government hack Bill Randa (John Goodman) and his earnestly plucky African-American geologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins). Randa is such a useless schmo that it takes his right-hand Houston to convince a Senator to bankroll the expedition.

Welcome to 2017. And not that I have a problem with this smooth young Black male weaselling dough out of the Senator instead of boss man Whitey, but it might have been far more interesting to have a character like Randa, written-for and played by someone with some balls, like Laurence Fishburne for example. The role of this character, or character-type, requires - Nay, demands someone in his august years (or at least in the case of 1976's Grodin, one of those 30-something guys who feels like he's in his 50s or 60s) and more importantly, someone who has the smarts to squeeze oil out of an empty drum.

But, I remind you - it took four writers to generate this screenplay.

Can't go too wrong with a cute prehistoric muskox.

So, off to Skull Island we go. Randa assembles a stock, boring team that includes former British Special-Ops mercenary James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston, a great actor in a nothing role), gung-ho army dude Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson, a great actor, but more boring than usual in this stock role), looking for more carnage now that the Vietnam War is over and perhaps most sickeningly, Mason Weaver (Brie Larson, a great actress with a completely idiotic role), a self-proclaimed "Anti-war photographer" (whatever that's supposed to mean). Of course the team is replete with other soldiers, scientists and bureaucrats in order to provide ample food for the monsters.

The movie plods through all of its uninspired machinations as our team essentially needs to get off the island as soon as they land on it - there are monsters, after all. Our leading lady is, of course, not the "beauty who killed the beast", but rather, the beauty that the beast thinks is kind of okay and not a danger to him. Our leading man is boring and does little more than argue with the gung-ho army guy and acquiesce to the madman's needs to kill monsters to avenge the deaths of his soldiers. Of course, the ineffectual adventurer Randa is so useless that we almost forget he's in the movie until he gets eaten. Then, we get to forget about him all over again.

Happily, the movie introduces us to Lieutenant Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly, playing the older version of the American soldier introduced at the beginning of the movie). Marlow has been living on the island since WWII in the protective custody of the island's indigenous Native population. Thank God! A real character with an irascible sense of humour. Reilly not only makes us laugh, but he's really the only person we care about. Stupidly, the writers have relegated Marlow's Japanese counterpart to that of a corpse - someone who is talked about fondly, but whom we don't get a chance to know. It would have been amazing to have a great veteran Asian actor quipping with Reilly and doing battle with the monsters, but you know, there were only four writers, so you can't expect creative miracles.

Even more boring than most of the film's non-characters are the island's tribesmen. What a ho-hum lot. They appear to be pseudo-Buddhist types who do little more than cast inscrutable glances every which way. This is strangely even more ethnocentric (and perhaps even downright racist) than the previous incarnations of "ignorant", "bloodthirsty" "savages" in the 1933 and 2005 versions. At least those people had something resembling "life" infused in their ooga-booga personae.

Kong looks forward to some yummy octopus tentacles.

Other than Reilly's delightful performance, the only thing else left are the monsters. I won't bother attributing any of the picture's "success" in this regard to the by-rote direction of Jordan Vogt-Roberts (his boring nods to Apocalypse Now notwithstanding), but rather, all the magnificent SFX geniuses who designed the myriad of creatures. Kong's battles with the other behemoths are pretty damn spectacular and perk things up ever-so thrillingly. There's a phenomenal aquatic cage match twixt Kong and a humungous octopus which culminates in a wonderful moment in which Kong slurps up a few tentacles. One can, I suppose, attribute this to one of the four writers. Kudos, dudes!

That said, all previous incarnations of the Kong story were a whole lot more than just the monsters. They had, uh, characters, a solid story arc and were chockfull of wonder. They were sheer magic. There's nothing like that here - just a whole lotta tedious expository (and stupid, 'natch) nonsense to setup the inevitable sequels and franchise "universe". I'm coming to hate that word. "Universe" should conjure up feelings of expanse and possibility - not more of the same.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *½ One-and-a-Half Stars

Kong: Skull Island is in wide release via Warner Brothers

INVICTUS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - This great film about Nelson Mandela well worth experiencing!

Anthony Peckham's superb screenwriting as directed by the venerable Clint Eastwood seems a fitting movie to experience after Nelson Mandela's Death on Dec. 5, 2013.

Invictus (2009) ****
dir. Clint Eastwood
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Great screenwriting - and I mean TRULY great screenwriting is in such short supply these days that when you come across a picture as exquisitely written as Invictus you're more than likely, as I was, to second guess your impulse to bestow the necessary laurel leaves upon it. Therefore, wanting to make sure I wasn't entirely out of my mind after the first taste, I went to see the picture a second time the very next day and was relieved to discover that on this sophomore viewing, it was as rich and dramatically satisfying as the first. It's also held up very nicely on subsequent Blu-Ray viewings. There are, of course, many reasons for this: Clint Eastwood's direction, a fine cast headed by Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon and the sort of sumptuous production values one naturally expects from a major motion picture.

And then there's the writing.

With additional helpings of Invictus, I was even more impressed with Anthony Peckham's great screenplay. It is pure meat and potatoes writing of the highest order. As a script, this is no hipper-than-than-hip word-wanking groove-ola-fest, nor is it a hodge-podge of half-baked genre tropes thrown into the blender to serve up a mess of special effects and most certainly it isn't the horrendous by-committee screenplay so prevalent in this day and age. It's a straight-up, classically-structured, old-fashioned story that's actually ABOUT something - REALLY about something. It's replete with food for thought AND works as rousing, thrilling, exciting and inspirational entertainment. In fact, it might actually be what young audiences need more than ever: a movie designed by a team serving the interests of a director who is old and wise enough to be everybody's grandfather (and who, in turn, is wise enough to work with a great screenplay).

Clint Eastwood is the father and the grandfather of us all. He might actually even be Jesus Christ Almighty! No, let's make that God! The Father, that is.

Eastwood, as if he has anything to prove anymore, proves that he's as great a filmmaker as the very best America has delivered. And, with Peckham's solid script, he delivers a profoundly moving and intelligent story. Adapted from John Carlin's non-fiction book "Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation", it focuses upon Mandela's first order of business as President of South Africa after the fall of Apartheid - to bring the country together and to find a way of crossing the divide of race, of colour and to hold to a process of reconciliation rather than revenge.

The film proceeds to detail Mandela's belief in using the country's national rugby team (the Springboks) as the primary tool and symbol of a united front. He has his work cut out for him though since there was a long, deep-seeded history of the Black population intentionally refusing to cheer for their home country. As the team represented South Africa and its subjugation of the nation's Black population, the Black rugby fans would lavish cheers and applause on every OTHER nation. After the fall of Apartheid, this does not change. In fact, the hatred for the green-and-gold-uniformed Springboks becomes even more bilious. Even the White population begins to lose faith in the team since under the leadership of its captain Francois Piennar (Matt Damon), the overwhelming effect of this hatred crushes their morale and the team experiences one embarrassing defeat after another.

Mandela urges his sporting counsel to have faith in the team and he begins a deep courtship/friendship with Piennar, offering mentorship, an almost spiritual guidance and, in an odd way, a bit of side-coaching. With Mandela's near-obsessive support, the Springboks miraculously claw their way out of a deep hole and eventually face the mighty New Zealand All Blacks who have brutally decimated every other team in the world. The showdown has the added resonance as the 1995 Rugby World Cup game is being hosted by South Africa and the eyes of the world are aimed squarely at a country on the verge of major changes.

One of the nice things about Peckham's screenplay is the deft way he manages to focus on Mandela, while at the same time, peppering the story with rich characters at every turn - even down to extras. There is absolutely no on-screen individual who is NOT given an engaging purpose to support the story's forward movement. We get vivid, information-packed snapshots of everyone in Mandela's sphere - from secretaries to assistants, from bodyguards to chief bureaucrats and from visiting dignitaries to domestic politicians. Furthermore, we get colourful portraits of Piennar and his family (including their Black domestic), Piennar's teammates and most extraordinarily, two small, but important characters (verging on being background extras) during the climactic game where we see a coming together of Black and White.

While sticklers might have a problem with seeing all the country's problems solved with one rugby game, both Peckham and Eastwood know there are two higher purposes - to present a general plea for unity amongst race, creed and colour while delivering thrilling, rousing entertainment of the highest order. Eastwood as both an actor and director truly understands the notion that there are ultimately no small parts and Peckham's script provides a great opportunity to fulfil this.

Peckham's screenplay superbly takes this one slice of Mandela's life and infuses it with enough detail that we get a magnificent snapshot, not only of Mandela's existence up to that point, but a very good idea of the before-during-and-after of Apartheid. In retrospect, there are a few moments that are obviously expositional, but it is to the screenplay and Eastwood's credit, that the film never wears its exposition on its sleeve while we're actually watching the movie. Even when such old-fashioned, tried-and-true elements threaten to rear their heads during the movie, Peckham quickly engages us in some expertly wrought detail that moves us ever-forward. Exposition is just fine in ANY movie, it's only when we feel it and/or see it working that it's problematic. In retrospect almost never counts and subsequent viewings allow you to experience the craft in all its glory.

While the script itself plays a tiny bit fast and loose with actual events, it at least does so in the spirit of said events. (It is a movie, after all, and needs to compress such matters effectively, so long as it does not take us out of the drama as we watch it.) For example, only a persnickety egghead would quarrel with the fact that the title not only represents its meaning in Latin, which is "unconquered", but is used as a dramatic element of the film in that it's the title of a poem Mandela used to keep himself going in prison and which he gives a copy of to Piennar as inspiration. In reality, it was an altogether different poem that Mandela used in real life. Big deal. It works perfectly here, and most importantly, for the story that's being told. As that great line from John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance reminds us: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." (Note to all burgeoning writers everywhere: great drama exposes truth even when you need to bend the truth to create great drama!)

Great drama is, of course, what Eastwood's name has become synonymous with. His direction crackles with excitement. Many critics unimaginatively fall back on the word "stately" to sum up Eastwood's mise-en-scene. While there is definitely a majesty to much of Eastwood's work, it's so much more than that. Having been mentored by some of the best directors in movie history, Eastwood is more than a merely proficient director. He has learned wisely and well, but also knows enough to use that mentorship as a springboard for his own controlled, yet ultimately dazzling approach to the material. Yes, he has his camera exactly where it should be for virtually every dramatic beat, but the work is infused with such a strong, clear voice, it's apparent that Eastwood is ultimately a born-filmmaker.

Given Eastwood's own prodigious talent and experience as well as being mentored by the likes of Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, it's no wonder that this particular inspirational tale of mentorship appealed to him and why he attacks it with the frenzy of a zealot.

When we get to the final game, it becomes even more apparent what a great filmmaker he is. Treating the game like a massive action sequence - one of war, one of guts, one of determination - Eastwood creates scenes that had me and the audience trembling with excitement and mounting tension and finally, pure orgasmic elation. Even though I knew the outcome, I somehow forgot about all that and sat on the edge of my seat, raptly paying attention to every detail and occasionally needing to almost look away when the suspense became too unbearable and, I must demurely admit, to finally cheering the team on with the same gusto that has struck me very few times at the movies.

Those moments of pure animal savagery on my part are still vivid in my memory and include: Charlton Heston barking the "damn, dirty Ape" insult to the gorillas in Franklin J. Schaffner's Planet of the Apes, the sweet-faced little boys in Mark Rydell's The Cowboys as they extract the most vicious, brutal revenge upon the killers of John Wayne's character - most notably when they allow Bruce Dern to be dragged to death by a horse, Will Sampson's "Chief" in Milos Foreman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest wrenching the huge marble sink out of the ground and using it to crash through the windows of the asylum to escape and, most recently, when Sylvester Stallone single-handedly butchered hundreds of Burmese infantrymen during the climactic bloodbath of Rambo. With this in mind, I'll allow you, dear reader, to see Invictus and guess for yourself which extraordinary sequence during the final game had me releasing spontaneous "huzzahs" and applause.

This is, quite simply, a wonderful movie! Eastwood keeps delivering the gold and at this rate, I pray for the sort of miracle that will keep him going until long after I'm gone. Though, even better, is hoping he will at least make a few more movies with screenplays as magnificently wrought as Peckham's. Great directors can only be as great as their collaborators and the whole kit and caboodle can only really be as great as the screenwriting allows.

"Invictus" is available in a lovely Blu-Ray via Warner Home Entertainment.

MAN OF STEEL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Best Superhero Comicbook Movie Since Raimi's Spider-Man Series

Man of Steel (2013) ****
Dir. Zack Snyder
Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, Laurence Fishburne

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I've never understood why director Zack Snyder is looked upon as a hack. Yes, he's humourless, but so is Christopher Nolan who frankly, isn't one pubic hair the director Snyder is. Snyder, you see, can direct. Nolan can't. Snyder has a natural affinity for shooting action. Nolan has little affinity for anything - especially action where he's a total tin-eye with no sense of composition or spatial geography. Stylistically, Snyder has genuine flair, but Nolan is possessed with little more than obvious, ham-fisted fakery that bamboozles the Great Unwashed as well, and rather inexplicably, all the others who simply should know better.

And now, here we be, at sea, with a new vessel containing yet another superhero franchise reboot. However, in spite of the clear divide between the two aforementioned men of the cinema, they're working as a team on it. Not a bad team, either. Nolan's got producing and co-writing duties whilst Snyder helms and results, happily, in Man of Steel, the best superhero comic book movie since the Sam Raimi Spider-Man series.

It's not as gobsmackingly phenomenal as Spider-Man 2 (which unleashed Raimi's mad sense of humour in all its glory), but Man of Steel does come closer to the dour sensibilities of Spidey 1 & 3. Frankly, this doesn't at all bother me. Great superhero comic books are, at their core, rife with darkness and when or if humour creeps in (not tongue in cheek, mind you), then it's a few extra maraschino cherries on the choco sundae. That said, if one's ice cream is rich, flavourful and drizzled with taste-bud bursting syrup, the cherries are nice, but not necessary.

Snyder hasn't attained the heights of Raimi's "Master" status, but I suspect he eventually might - albeit in his own unique fashion. Here he directs David Goyer's script with the same resolve he brought to bear on 300 and his compulsively obsessive flourishes on Watchmen (and lest we forget, the criminally underrated Sucker Punch). It results, in the parlance of a crotchety and late lamented old film distributor I knew, "One helluva good show!!!"

By now, we're all familiar with the ins and outs of this tale from both the comics and previous big and small screen incarnations. Krypton is a doomed planet. Scientist Jor-El (Russell Crowe) puts his newborn babe on a spaceship bound for Earth before the planet explodes. Like Baby Moses in the bullrushes, the child is discovered in the cornfields owned by the All-American Kents (Kevin Costner, Diane Lane). The childless farm couple adopts the baby as their own, christen him "Clark" and hide the evidence of the space craft. They know this is one special baby and fear what the government might do if the kid is found to be an alien.

Baby Moses grows up to be Baby Jesus and with the threat of world wide annihilation at the hands of the evil Krypton war-monger General Zod (Michael Shannon), Clark (Henry Cavill) becomes Superman and enters into all-out battle to save mankind whilst getting all google-eyed with intrepid Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams).

Goyer, who wrote all of Nolan's lamentable Batman pictures, here delivers an engaging structure rooted in flashback with an accent upon the science fiction elements of the old chestnut that have never been adequately plumbed. Add to this, the near film noir post-war sensibilities, so prevalent in the original first season of the 50s Superman series with George Reeves and Man of Steel grandly delivers the goods and then some.

What sells the picture is Snyder's spectacular handling of the action pyrotechnics. It's everything one would want. He seldom stoops to the contemporary annoyance of too many close-ups and confusing machine-gunfire styled cutting. Great compositions, breathing room when necessary, plenty of wide, long and medium shots and a few terrific moments of nail-biting suspense all add up to "one helluva good show!"

Yes, Snyder employs a lot of rapid-fire cutting, but it smartly employs genuine PICTURE cutting so that everything serves the forward motion of narrative (even if the narrative often involves extreme pummelling and shit that blows up real good). The big difference between Snyder and his untalented colleagues (Christopher Nolan, J.J. Abrams, Sam Mendes, Justin Lin, Shane Black, Gary Ross, Joss Whedon and Marc Webb) is that his editors are never forced to resort to those awful cheats of using sound almost exclusively to propel a cut because the footage itself is so haphazard. Snyder's action moves furiously, yet seamlessly because we are responding to genuine visual cuts. Action - rooted in narrative and character, not just pyrotechnics - is what moves, so to speak, the action forward.

What Snyder has going for him here - in spite of the pseudo darkness Goyer slathers upon the story - is the pure joy he delivers in one stunning image after another. Snyder clearly loves the D.C. Superman series (from a variety of periods, it seems) and paints gorgeous comic book panels that spring magically to life and are never weighed down by either crushing portent nor, frankly, the utter moviemaking incompetence of the aforementioned list of non-directors who have nary a shred of ability to adequately render action sequences.

Narratively, the only scenes that weigh the film down are those involving the Daily Planet newsroom. Amy Adams is always wonderful and while I was happy to see her in the Lois Lane role, she's still well behind the gifts displayed by Phyllis Coates and Noel Neill in the 50s TV series and Margot Kidder in the Donner/Lester features. The worst element here is Laurence Fishburne as editor Perry White. He sleepwalks through his role and displays none of the snap, crackle and pop Perry needs (a la Jackie Cooper in the 80s). The result is an incredibly dull subplot during the action scenes involving the perils faced by the newsroom team. The last 45 minutes or so is devoted almost entirely to action sequences and the rhythm here occasionally sags under he weight of this stuff. It's not enough to destroy the climactic pyrotechnics, but one wishes the screenplay simply had excised the stuff for being one thread too many - especially since Fishburne is so dull here.

The cast, though, is generally first-rate. Henry Cavill is a fine Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman. George Reeves was, in the first truly great season of TV's Superman a bit more square-jawed, two-fisted and pudgier than Cavill; Christopher Reeve was funnier, more charming and imbued with nicely traditional good looks and Brandon Routh...well, he was...uh, well, he was Brandon Routh. Within the context of Goyer's revisionist take on the Superman legend, Cavill acquits himself very nicely in the bearded itinerant blue collar wanderer portion of Clark's life, transitions very well during the ice sanctuary sequence and once in full-blown vengeance mode, he's one kick-ass mo-fo. He seems less assured in the romance department, but part of this is how the role appears to be written and that I suspect he'd just come off idiotically if given a chance to shift gears into the almost Cary Grant-like charm of Christopher Reeve in Superman I and II. (Alas, we're given a hint in the Man of Steel coda-like dénouement that the sequel might well jettison this poor actor into that territory which, I suspect, he might not be up to.)

As for General Zod, are there better actors on this Green Earth than Michael Shannon? Well, maybe a few who are just as great, but none better. His varied character starring turns in Take Shelter, Bug, The Iceman, My Son My Son What Have Ye Done, not to mention his endless hit parade of astonishing supporting turns can now include a bona fide blockbuster villain. While he allows himself a few tastes of ham, his Zod is tremendously restrained (given the opportunities) and from time to time, we actually feel for his genuine passion for his planet and people, as well as experiencing the gradual shift to Hitlerian madness.

In supporting roles, Costner and Lane are ideally suited to the elder Kent Couple. Costner, still one of my favourite screen personalities is easing gracefully into these types of roles whilst Diane Lane is gorgeous and appealing as she always is. If she's had any "work" done on her visage, I can't see it. I doubt she has. This woman is ageless, radiant and sexy as all get-out. Most actresses need only to look in Lane's direction to realize what freaks they're making of themselves with Botox and plastic surgery. Lane, I suspect merely eats well, exercises and perhaps indulges in nightly applications of Oil of Olay. Whatever she does, the camera loves her while she in turn, loves it with her continued fresh, appealing and winning work as an actress.

A word about Russell Crowe as Jor-El is in order since for me, the definitive portrait of Superman's Kryptonian Dad is STILL the King of Corpulence, Marlon Brando. Who will ever forget Brando's insanely overpaid extended cameo in the Donner/Lester Superman pictures? Even now, I can hear Brando as he intones in his trademark nasal-tinged drawl:

"They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show them the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son."

Given that Crowe is a might pudgy these days, I'd have preferred it if he'd been afforded the opportunity to deliver all his lines with his nostrils clipped. Alas, he is not Brando-ized, but it's also a solid performance.

All in all, I think Goyer and Nolan have delivered a fine coat hanger for Superman's derring-do. The "darkness" isn't glopped on like melted butter over a corn cob at the carnival. It seems to come rather naturally out of the science fiction elements of the tale. I especially appreciated the childhood sequences wherein Clark is horrified by his powers. When he begins to develop his x-ray vision is genuinely harrowing. Why wouldn't it be? The kid's sitting in the classroom, gets a mo-fo of a headache then starts seeing everyone's innards. This would be enough to mess a kid up and it fits nicely into the latter sequences where Clark becomes a wandering lost soul. It's dramatically appealing and hardly the doom and gloom drudgery Nolan crapped out in The Dark Knight trilogy.

This Diet Coke "darkness" is perfect for a comic book picture - especially given that Snyder has both visual gifts and an eye for action. Man of Steel is precisely what this genre needed right now. A real filmmaker.

"Man of Steel" is currently in wide release via Warner Brothers.