MCU picks its
blonde Wonder Woman to fight
shapeshifters and Jude
Click the pic below to watch the TRAILER:
Tag: Samuel L. Jackson
KONG: SKULL ISLAND (2017) movie review
What do you expect? It’s King Kong. Huge hairy beast destroys all in his path save the lone girl love interest. Kong, we know, has a heart and a weakness for blondes. So is he truly the monster? As with all good monster flicks, there is always a bigger problem and you’re “gonna need a bigger boat.”
If your expectations mirror mine, they will be more than met with twice the explosions and ten times the classic Samuel L. one-liners (including his iconic JP “Hold onto your butts”). Amazing.
Brie Larson is a gem, as always. Believable, determined photojournalist with a bleeding heart to let photos end wars, she bravely tracks into the unknown jungle island with the baby-faced band of troops just leaving Vietnam. 
What few of them realize is that their mission is skewed from the start, and now they need two men to help them escape: Tom Hiddleston, rugged, cut-jawed, tracker-for-hire and quirky, marooned WWII pilot John C. Reilly.
The cast is lovely. Sweet Thomas Mann (from last year’s Me & Earl & the Dying Girl) adds to this outstanding gang of hopefuls. Believe it or not, I’d watch it again just to hang out with these people. They chose a cast of people I’d want to have dinner with. They are all delightful, even though, yes, many get squashed by a Kong foot or skewered by a giant spider leg. The sequence in the Kong graveyard is so beautifully filmed it’s worth the price of admission.
It’s fun. The pace works. The cast works. The film feels comprised of thousands of hero shots, mostly of Kong himself, the true hero of his film.
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (2016) movie review
Visually stunning, this film contours the blue hues of the prim aristocracy then allows a wash of yellow sun on African grasslands before swinging through the dark jungle.
As much as this revival film was a visual win, it attempts to crescendo but fails to payoff. It tries to be both classic story drama and action and fails to find either side. Lots of build up and running toward the action. Lots of discussion about “what Tarzan will do to you when he finds you…”
Pretty man, Alexander Skarsgård, speaks very few lines, but believably crosses between man and beast. Christoph Waltz is the quintessential bad guy now. And Margot Robbie was a surprise. I’ve never been a fan of her work, though I respect that she is smart enough to know what she is selling. I’m also grateful that they chose a woman to play the role, not a Twiggy personality-less girl with a ready save-me scream. Robbie’s Jane is sassy and playful and believably hearty enough to have grown up with a tribe near the jungle.
On a final note: did filmmakers forget to mention that Samuel L. Jackson was going to be in almost every scene and have almost ALL of the lines in the film? He is almost the main character, yet he isn’t shown in the trailer and isn’t billed early enough to notice. Suddenly, he shows up in England at the beginning of the film with his unmistakable presence as the American ambassador with a plan to stop the bad man from selling slaves. 
He follows Tarzan back to the jungle and tags along as witness to Tarzan’s violent family reunion and subsequent battles. Though I cannot remember his character’s name, the attempted comic relief of Jackson one-liners became the pervading score in his sarcastic tone-filling role.
Tarzan 2016 felt like that nice trip to the grocery store where you find a lot of great things you wanted but get home and realize you forgot the one thing you went for.
Splatter: on FILM 