Eileen and I have seen three movies in the last week or so, and being a movie buff I quickly developed a few opinions about where these movies fit in my very own personal categorization scheme.

Last weekend we saw King Kong directed by Peter Jackson. He also did the Lord of the Rings trilogy; I had to point that out even though its completely obvious to everyone over the age of six. :^)

Much like Tolkien with regard to LOTR, Peter Jackson needs to learn when to cut material that may be interesting but isn’t moving the story forward. Tolkien’s book drags on and on at points, many times spending pages and pages with nothing but singing Elves, and yet this extraneous material was omitted from the movies in order to keep up the pacing. In a very similar way King Kong is three hours yet could easily been cut to two hours or so. The original King Kong story is basically a story of:

1) move from NYC to the island
2) meet the natives and the big ape
3) capture the ape
4) get the ape back to NYC
5) put the ape on stage so he can escape
6) chase the ape up the Empire State building
7) watch the ape fall from the Empire State building

Peter Jackson spent way too much time on 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. He spent the right amount of time on 7. He also spent a lot of time with the “gross out the audience” scenes with giant bugs eating the extra cast members, and way too much time watching Kong vs. Dinosaurs fight scenes showing off the wonderful effects he could buy. Lots of extraneous backstory was inserted into 1 & 2. The first half the movie is wrapped up in getting the characters to the island, the second half primarily deals with meeting natives and chasing the ape, the last fifteen minutes deals with NYC and the falling ape, and frankly its boring, predictable and downright lazy. 6 out of 10 at best.

Today we saw two movies back-to-back. The first was Casanova. My expectations were low based on the advertising, but we got a positive recommendation from friends so we went anyways. It was very funny and the comparisons to Shakespeare in Love are quite appropriate at multiple levels. Heath Ledger does a reasonably good job of acting but Oliver Platt and Jeremey Irons give way better performances. Its a clever, witty story that moves along at the right pace. 8 out of 10 minimum, recommended by both Eileen and myself.

Next up was Capote. This is the story of Truman Capote and the writing of his prize winning novel In Cold Blood. It was a really fantastic movie with excellent acting by the entire cast. Eileen knew way more about the story than I did but we both found it very enjoyable. It’s a powerful story and its quite an interesting and entertaining story. If you don’t know anything about Capote then please see this movie as you’ll be introduced to one of the most significant American writers of all time. Easy to see why this movie is getting a lot of buzz. 10 out of 10.