Alan Rapp

King Klong & The Island of Monsters

  • Title: King Kong
  • IMDb: link

See what happens when you reward a director for 4 hour CGI heavy movie! King Kong is a maddening film. Peter Jackson has been dreaming of making Kong for years now.  Who would have thought his dream would become our nightmare?  There are some good moments and acting but it’s all been hidden beneath so much CGI that you can hardly see it.  I preferred the remake of Mighty Joe Young with Charlize Theron or the 1976 King Kong with Jeff Bridges to this monstrosity.

The story in a nutshell is this…  Filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black) along with his writer (Adrien Brody), stars Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) and Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler) and his crew travel to the mysterious Skull Island to film a movie.  After about a third of the film’s running time they arrive on the island and Miss Darrow is taken captive by a aborigine tribe of pole jumpers (who mysteriously appear and disappear completely in the film) who plan to sacrifice her to Kong (voice by Andy Serkis).  While trying to save Ann the group encounters every kind of CGI monster you can imagine including numerous bugs, velociraptors, T-Rexes, oh who gives a crap, there’s a bunch of monsters okay?  After saving Ann, Carl decides to capture Kong and take him to Broadway to make his fortune.

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Golden Globe Nominees

Can a gay cowboy film be best picture?  The Golden Globe nominations hit the air this morning and the question could be a resounding yes.  With seven nominations including picture, director, actor, and supporting actress Brokeback Mountain (which just yesterday won the NY Film Critic’s Circle best picture award) it’s the belle of the ball.  It’s competition includes Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck and Woody Allen’s Matchpoint.  Clooney also could clean up and take home four trophies (three for Good Night and one for Syriana).  For a full list of the nominees click here.

The 63rd Annual Golden Globes
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After the Sunset

  • Title: After the Sunset
  • IMDB: link

I’m not a huge Brett Ratner fan, but of all his movies this is probably my favorite.  I like heist flicks and After the Sunset is a good, though not great, one.  Brosnan’s charm, Harrelson’s wackiness, and Hayek’s beauty make this an enjoyable little film.

Max (Pierce Brosnan) and Lola (Salma Hayek) pull their last heist in Los Angeles stealing the second Napoleon diamond from FBI Agent Stan Lloyd (Woody Harrelson) before retiring to the Bahamas.  On arrival Lola is content with retirement, but Max grows bored.  His boredom comes to an end when Stan shows up telling him that the third Napoleon diamond is on it’s way to the Bahamas and dares him to try and steal it.

Max is in a quandary as Lola wants nothing more than to be married and leave their criminal past in, well, the past.  Also involved is a local gangster Henri Moore (Don Cheadle) who wants Max to steal the diamond to help him pay for his gun running, prostitution, and drug business.

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“The Most Brilliant Comic in America”

We were saddened this weekend to learn that Richard Pryor had passed away at the age of 65.  Pryor had been battling multiple sclerosis and succumbed to a heart attack in Los Angeles on Saturday.  The transcendent stand-up comedian of his era Pryor’s straightforward and outspoken style of comedy won him fans the world over.  With an angry yet sensitive stage performance he spawned many imitators but no real successor.  Explicit, raw and emotional, Pryor was a storyteller who could find the humor in even the bleakest circumstances through his conversational comedic style.  His comic success moved him into a wide variety of movie roles such as The Toy with Jackie Gleason, Harlem Nights with Eddie Murphy, Brewster’s Millions with John Candy, Superman III (um, let’s forget that one) and his collaboration with Gene Wilder that produced Stir Crazy, Silver Streak, See No Evil Hear No Evil, and Another You.  He also co-wrote, directed, and starred in the semi-autobiographical Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling and wrote an autobiography Pryor Convictions.

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Chronicling Disaster

  • Title: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
  • IMDb: link

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe based off of the book by C.S. Lewis is a stuptifyingly horrendously awful mess.  I HATED this film.  The film chronicles the four Pevensie children as they are given the job of leading an army and killing any non-believers to help out a lion who sounds quite a bit like Qui-Gon Jinn.  Poorly edited (140 minutes) with amateurish special effects and bad TV acting produce one of the worst films of the year and the most inept, violent, subversive, and intolerant children’s film ever made by Hollywood.  (Kudos guys!)

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