[{OF}MadD!]

Caught King Kong last night and absolutely loved it. I had my doubts that Jackson would ever impress me again to the degree he did with the LOTR trilogy, but they were definitely misplaced as King Kong is right up their with those movies, and thus right up their with my all time favorites. Jackson has secured his place as my favorite director and I can't wait to see what he does next.

I think they should hand over the Oscar to Naomi Watts right now. What a terrific performance she gave; a wonderful, sincere, tender piece of acting, and by God she was amazingly beautiful. The visual effects were first rate. NYC looked incredible, and Skull Island and all its vicious and slimy creatures were great looking. Kong itself though is what makes it the visual effects go from beyond great. The expressions and body language and the great ape was incredibly realistic and made for a emotionally moving performance.

I thought Jack Black was terrific, I know his performance has received some criticism, his character was a slimly conniving evil bastard and I thought he pulled it off and I freaking loved it! Adrien Brody has also received a lot of criticism as well, but I thought his character worked well. I also liked the development of some of minor crew characters like Jamie Bell's character in the first hour, it had me rooting for them against the dinosaurs more so.

The references to the 1933 Kong got me all giddy and there was a lot of them. From Denhem asking if Fay is available to come along on ship, but his agent or whatever says she's working on a picture at RKO for that Cooper fella. To some dialogue visuals right out of the classic 33 version and even some of the original Max Steiner score was used in the film. The movie also benefited from having a director passionate about the material, and I think when it works, there is no better filmmaking. That's enough rambling...for now.

Go see it!!

King Kong offered every thing I could want in a movie, being captivating throughout and alternationg between being funny, serious, scary, exciting, action packed and heart breaking.