Watching...

King Kong. Here's a basic rule of drama that goes all the way back to the Greeks: if you are telling a story about a big monkey that climbs a building, put the monkey on top of the building before the paying customers' butts get numb! Three hours and seven minutes! Lordy! And the shame of it is, once he gets up there, it's fabulous. It looks great, and feeeeeeels like it's waaaaaaay up high in the sky, and pays off on a well-earned connection between the Beauty and the Beast. There's just too much slogging around in the jungle, and on the ship before that, and too little Ape Runs Wild in NYC. The jungle stuff is not only overlong, it's shot too close, and edited too choppily, to be really involving. (Compare the bronto stampede to the Oliphaunts in LOTR - TROTK.) I would have rather seen another couple of scenes of Kong destroying NYC, and a few more minutes fighting the planes on top of the ESB. Lots of monsters fight in exotic jungle locations against heroic men and savage beasts. Only one carries a girl to the top of the Empire State Building and battles airplanes. Put him up there!