Can you believe it’s fall already? It just seems way too early for it to be fall. Don’t get me wrong, I, too, have been gorging on pumpkin spice and Halloween candy. Yeah, I know it is early but someone’s got to make sure there aren’t any razor blades or poisons in these mini candy bars before I hand them out to children.
If you are like me and your fantasy football season has already gone up in smoke (seriously, why are your ACLs so flimsy, humans? You guys need to do something about that), you’ve got a little time to kill and what better way than with a pair of movies?
This month, we have …
Kong: Skull Island (2017) [PG-13]
Let’s start with the divisive one first, shall we? I’m not going to sugar coat it for you. There are some straight-up lazy and boring things about Kong: Skull Island.
Buuuuut . . . . I have to admit, I had fun watching it. Maybe I’m a little biased and like to see humans getting beat up by “wild” animals but if you can’t enjoy watching a giant monster break stuff, well, you need to lighten up, friend.
The story, such as it is, revolves around the pair of John Goodman and Corey Hawkins who work for the Monarch organization. They manage to convince the government to fund an expedition to the recently discovered, and certainly not ominously named, Skull Island. Of course, they don’t tell their military escort that they believe monsters may live on the island. When they show up and there is a giant gorilla, well, you can pretty much guess where it goes from there.
Despite having a fairly distinguished cast, the acting is passable. Now, there is a bright spot here. As seems to be par for the course, John C. Reilly is pretty darn good. Speaking of things that are pretty darn good, I have to say, the movie looks fantastic. Director Jordon Vogt-Roberts may have never made anything of this scale before but he certainly does a good job with the material he was given. The effects are good and Kong looks fantastic to my eyes.
So, if you can suspend your disbelief a little, I really think Kong: Skull Island might just win you over a little bit. It’s loud. It’s full of plot holes the size of New Jersey. But it’s also a heck of a lot of fun to watch a giant ape smashing helicopters and people being eaten by giant lizards. Don’t lie, you know you like that too.
6.5 paws out of 10
Baby Driver (2017) [R]
Next up, we have Baby Driver. If you aren’t familiar with it, this is a heist movie. But it’s also a comedy. And it’s an action movie with great stunts. Oh, but it’s also got this great soundtrack and they sort of turn the movie into a mix tape.
You may think “Great, this sounds like a huge mess,” but surprisingly, director Edgar Wright, his cast and his crew do a fine job of melding this all together into something that is pretty good. Not great but pretty good.
Here’s the rundown for you. Baby (played by Ansel Elgort) is a getaway driver with a bad case of tinnitus. To counter that, Baby is constantly listening to music from a wide variety of carefully curated iPods. He meets a waitress, Deborah, played by Lily James and the two get caught up in young love and thoughts of escaping their daily lives and just driving away.
But then Baby gets coerced into doing one more job. And, of course, that’s when things start to go wrong. The life that Deborah and Baby had hoped to build together is put in danger. Will the two young lovers get to drive off into the sunset together?
I suspect you can already see that there is plenty of room for plot holes and lazy choices that Wright has to avoid. And for the most part, he does. The action is moving fast enough that you can kinda let them slide anyway. There are also points in Baby Driver where things get just a little too “cool.” I did feel like it tried a little too hard here and there.
But, honestly, the performances are mostly good. The music is good and helps to propel the story. The car stunts are almost as jaw dropping as The Fast and The Furious movies. You could do far worse on a Friday night than grabbing some nachos and popping on Baby Driver. I actually debated giving this a slightly higher score and just chalking up my issues with it as just being a grumpy old cougar but this seems like a reasonable score.
7 paws out of 10
As always, if you have a movie you think I should check out or you want to talk further about one of these reviews, drop me a line at collincougar@collin.edu or leave me a message on Facebook.