KONG!

King Kong was amazing. THE HUMAN MIND was not meant to process such THRILLS I say. The montage of depression-era NYC started it so beautifully. Skull Island was incredible - not so much the natives bit, but more the Brontosaurus LANDSLIDE? Or the scene with Kong and 2 T-Rexes and the girl caught in vines in a ravine? Or the BUGFEST in the crevasse?

But what was most amazing was that Kong really felt REAL - sure there were some moments where he looked a bit CGI, but there were as many moments when the PEOPLE looked CGI too (rag doll effect). But the facial expressions and the hand movements were very organic, and really created a REAL creature for me.

Some comments: First, me and my buddies had a STRONG urge to leave at the end of the Skull Island sequence, because we all know what happens in New York... Secondly, I do think that through some judicious trimming a half hour could have been lopped off... Jack Black was FANTASTIC in his role, as was Naomi Watts.

And finally, this movie owes a debt to Kerry Conran - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow really blazed the trail for this retro-realism and showed us that you CAN make a movie like the good old days, only BETTER. You could argue that Conran and Jackson were playing from the same score, but really, before Sky Captain, nobody had tried to truly recreate the "feel" of an old film quite like this.