King Kong Kickass!

Slight spoiler ahead...

After hauling myself out of bed this morning at the ungodly hour- well, ungodly by Christmas holiday standards - of twenty-past eight, I got a lift to Cork with my mother and hit the shops looking for my father's Christmas present. He (my father) has given up the subtle art of dropping hints like clangers about what he wants for Christmas, and this year has simply told us directly that he wants a rather obscure yet popular traditional Irish music CD this year. God forbid that it would be easy to find, and after searching specialist shops, Golden Discs, HMV, and Virgin records, I was still empty handed. I ended up getting one of the shops to order it in, and fingers crossed I'll have it on Thursday. Other than that, that's my Christmas shopping taken care of. Our family, thank God in heaven, have opted for a Christmas Kindle setup this year, and that suits my moth-infested wallet down to the ground.

Anyway, at about 11 O'Clock I got on a bus out to Mahon Point shopping centre. Two things about Mahon point: It has one of the best shopping centres for miles around in Cork, along with one of the best cinemas as well. The other thing is that it is in ...erm...Mahon.

I have yet to come across an area anywhere in Ireland that is as drab, grey, and utterly uninspiring as this place. Housing estates as far as the eye can see, that are serviced by a bus route that is really rather shit. Hell is not other people, it is not war, it is not Bray (thank you, Linus), it is Mahon. Add to this the thought that in my attempt to escape the rabble that infest the cinemas of the city centre, I may have jumped out of the Wok and into the furnace. Oh well...

So into the shopping centre I went, found that King Kong was about to start, nabbed an early bird ticket for only EUR2.50 (the munchies were 13 fucking euro, but that's something else) and settled down to enjoy.

You don't have to know your directors to know that this has come from the maker of the Lord of the Rings. The visuals are as striking as they come (as someone who doesn't handle heights very well, I squirmed at the shots of Kong on top of the building being attacked by aircraft, and the scenes with the overgrown insects were...*shudder*) but there is still a decent heart at the centre of the film, and there aren't many in the kind of directorial company kept by Jackson that can effectively combine the two. The sets of New York in the 1930s were spot on - at least to me - and the characters all gelled well together. Naomi Watts can scream with the best of them, and Adrien Brody, whom I last saw in The Jacket, is fast becoming one of my favourite 'character' actors ("That performance was effluent"). Jack Black's film director, well, headed for caricature, but there you go.

I also liked the 'Heart of Darkness' thread running through the background, and have a look at the chase scenes with the dinosaurs and reflect on how another director has been outclassed by Jackson. You know who I mean.

Anyway, it was sad at the end. The outcome was not what you would hope for, but one that you knew was coming. Not like Godzilla, for example, where you wanted the thing dead, nay, anyone involved in the making of the film dead, by the time the end had rolled around.

So there you have it. Denis heartily recommends. Go see. The only downside was that the shitness of the transport service was highlighted when I had to wait 40 minutes afterwards to get a bus back into the city.

But the best thing? The sum total of the viewing population during this film: Four. Me, and three elderly noiseless pensioners. Just the way I like it.