Cheap King Kong (Full Screen Edition) (DVD) Price
CHEAP-PRICE.NET ’s Cheap Price
$14.96
Here at Cheap-price.net we have King Kong (Full Screen Edition) at a terrific price. The real-time price may actually be cheaper — click “Buy Now” above to check the live price at Amazon.com.
There's no point in rehashing the entire plot, as every movie aficionado is more than familiar with the trajectory of King Kong; the challenge facing Jackson, his screenwriters, and the phenomenal visual-effects team was to breathe new life into an old, familiar story. To that degree, they achieve what could be best called a qualified success. Though they've assembled a crackerjack supporting cast, including Thomas Kretschmann as the Venture's hard-bitten captain and young Jamie Bell as a plucky crewman, the first third of the movie is rather labored, with too much minute detail given over to sumptuous re-creations of '30s New York and the unexciting initial leg of the Venture's sea voyage. However, once the film finds its way to Skull Island (which bears more than a passing resemblance to LOTR's Mordor), Kong turns into a dazzling movie triumph, by turns terrifying and awe-inspiring. The choreography and execution of the action set pieces--including one involving Kong and a trio of Tyrannosaurus Rexes, as well as another that could be charitably described as a bug-phobic's nightmare--is nothing short of landmark filmmaking, and a certain Mr. Spielberg should watch his back, as Kong trumps most anything that has come before it.
Despite the visual challenges of King Kong, the movie's most difficult hurdle is the budding romance between Ann and her simian soulmate. Happily, this is where Jackson unqualifiedly triumphs, as this unorthodox love story is tenderly and humorously drawn, by turns sympathetic and wondrous. Watts, whose accessibility balances out her almost otherworldly loveliness, works wonders with mere glances, and Andy Serkis, who digitally embodies Kong here much as he did Gollum in the LOTR films, breathes vibrant life into the giant star of the film without ever overplaying any emotions. The final, tragic act of the film, set mostly atop the Empire State Building, is where Kong earns its place in movie history as a work that celebrates both the technical and emotional heights that film can reach. --Mark Englehart
| CATEGORY: | DVD |
| THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE: | 14 December, 2005 |
| MANUFACTURER: | Universal |
| MPAA RATING: | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) |
| FEATURES: | AC-3, Color, Dolby, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC |
| TYPE: | Action, Action / Adventure, Adventure, Feature Film-action/Adventure, Horror, Movie |
| MEDIA: | DVD |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
| UPC: | 025192626128 |
Related Products
Customer Reviews of King Kong (Full Screen Edition)
A Great Rmake & More Fun Than Barrel Of Monkeys The remake of King Kong .. is more than good, it! great movie watching. I love it & I like it, Kong .. was super & I feel so much for him. He was almost human. But , I miss Fay Wray, alot, she was the one King Kong loved in King Kong of 1933 movie but, again it works well & well done as a remake. I still , like the 1933 King Kong the best. Why? Well .. I grow up with as a kid & kids never forget a movie they love. Both are great .. so take time & watch them both & have a fun time watching. Give Them both 5 stars .. as great movies .....
What's wrong witth this Kong? (and right)
My wife and I watched this beast of a movie over the course of two nights separated by about two weeks. She asked me what I thought, and after I thought I came up with these points, both right and wrong.
<
>
<
>Right:
<
>
<
>1. The beginning. I really enjoyed hanging out in 1930's New York and getting to know the characters. "This is going to be a deep and thoughtful treatment of the King Kong story" I thought. That lasted until the infamous dinosaur chase scene. More on that later.
<
>
<
>2. The ending. I also thoroughly enjoyed Kong's final minutes climing up the Empire State building and his valiant but futile effort to fight off the fighter planes.
<
>
<
>
<
>Wrong:
<
>
<
>1. The end of the beginning: So, all of a sudden this movie that I'm really getting into becomes another stupid stunt-fest starting with a ridiculous and seemingly endless chase scene with humans running along with a stampede of dinosaurs. Hey, those guys would have been dead in a few seconds. Wouldn't it have been smarter to stand close to the canyon walls and let the dinos run by? That's what I would have done.
<
>
<
>2. Stunts, stunts, stunts. Ann "Gumby" Darrow gets jerked around enough to put her in a whiplash collar for years but suffers no ill effects. In fact, we know she doesn't die during the King Kong story so all this putting her in front of snapping T-Rex nasties is a total and laughable waste of time.
<
>
<
>3. The beginning of the end: So, Kong is finally overcome by chloroform and all of a sudden he's on Broadway! How did they get him on the ship? I really wanted to see that!
<
>
<
>4. If only all that time has been spent on character development and deepening the story! Or, spend more time on Ms. Darrow and Kong's relationship. I didn't need to buy the two-disc special edition because I really don't care to watch all the features on disc two. I really don't care to see it at all.
<
>
<
>So, this was a movie that was entertaining for both the right and wrong reasons. I doubt I'll ever want to see it again. At lease I can loan the DVDs to a friend or two and save them a rental fee.
Mediocrity and the Beast
What possessed Peter Jackson, after seeing the script for King Kong, to go ahead with the project at all?
<
>
<
>I mean, the man has talent. After the LOTR trilogy, that is an indisputable fact. So why he'd want to turn this GODAWFUL movie script into an almost-three-hour "Epic" is something I'll never understand. Perhaps he wanted to remake the original, as he felt it ought to be seen. Fair enough. Perhaps he saw the scope of the premise and thought it would make a stunning film. That's understandable, too.
<
>
<
>But the whole point of the King Kong story is that it's a simple retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale. Or The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Or The King and I. Or Mask. Or the Phantom of the Opera. Or... well, you get my point.
<
>
<
>What all those stories have in common are Characters. Characters, people that drive a story forward by the strength of their personalities in the face of physical adversity. So why, tell me, does the script for 'King Kong' completely and utterly disregard all but the most perfunctory characterisation, and instead regale us with lots of stupid, stupid dialogue (there's no nice way of saying that) and *really* lousy performances from the human actors involved??
<
>
<
>No, from a storytelling point of view, this is not a good movie. Naomi Watts is very pretty, but it appears to be a skin-deep talent: any old actress can scream and look lovelorn. Adrian Brody is hopelessly underutilised as the Good Guy, and lacks entirely the physical presence needed to pull off the mode of Hero. And Jack Black??! What the hell were the casting people thinking?? Jack Black, delivering the line "Beauty killed the Beast. ", the last bit of dialogue in the film, with all the conviction and skill of a rhinoceros attempting ballet. None of it works, none at all.
<
>
<
>Extras are pretty blah, too: it's not possible to form any sort of bond with the crew of the transport ship because there's no time devoted to developing them as characters in the film: we couldn't care less about Jamie Bell, Thoman Kretschmann or Colin Hanks' characters because we never get to see or hear them do anything that sets them apart from the rest of the crew. And the grossly racist pseudo-African tribal dance of the extremely savage Savages isn't powerful or effective: rather than looking like devotees of a strange Ape-cult, as they are supposed to, they look instead like rejects from a bad David Cronenberg film.
<
>
<
>Which leads me to the real star of the show: Kong himself. Motion actor Andy Serkis must be given credit where it's due: the Ape, for the most part, moves in a convincing manner. And the computer-generated image of him works, too - this is a character with more personality than all the human 'cast' put together. It is a dreadful shame then, that Jackson decided to camp it up: the wholly unnessecary scenes of visual fluffing (the over-long Jurassic Park Throwback fight with the dinosaurs, the schmalzy and cheap ice-skating scene) show the one major flaw in Jackson's directorial style: egotism. A man who is seen to be able to do no wrong is a danger to his profession, and, very unfortunately, 'King Kong' suffers the very worst excesses of a director in love with his own image:
<
>
<
>We have an hour before the Ape appears, during which the one-dimensional characters are not developed, and a dull-as-all-hell storm scene rages on for ten minutes more than it needed to.
<
>
<
>A lot, a surprisingly awful lot, of the CGI scenes look cheap and basic: most of the time Naomi Watts is in Kong's hand, she either looks like a rag doll, or like she's outlined in blue. The sailors running from the dinosaurs looks ridiculous: the shadows don't match the background. And the fight between Kong and the T-Rex suffers from that fatal flaw of all CGI/Live-Action blend movies: the animated characters move just a little too slowly to be believable.
<
>
<
>The acting stinks. I know, I complained about this before, but it's just so necessary to complain about it again. Jackson was clearly far, far more concerned with coaxing better performances out of his cameramen and special effects team than he was with his human players - and in a movie where the whole point of the story is that it's driven by the ignorance and evolution of man's attitudes towards physical appearances, that's a fatal flaw.
<
>
<
>This dual DVD set is, if you're into this sort of thing, the best option: the picture and sound quality are great and the extras are nice to own - but for the most of us, rental is more than enough to experience the titanic failure of 'King Kong'. It is superficial, it is flashy, it is too long, and it's most certainly hollow.
<
>
<
>A big disappointment.