Posted on 12/23/2005 1:45:27 PM PST by Sentis
'King Kong' Mighty But No Monster...
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RELATED BOX OFFICE LINKS ALL TIME - TOP DECEMBER OPENINGS 2005 GROSSES | ALL TIME GROSSES
MOVIE REVIEWS King Kong | Brokeback Mountain | Narnia Mrs. Palfrey | Rent | Walk the Line > MORE REVIEWS
<< PREVIOUS Stay tuned for daily updates... NEXT >> Rank* Title (Click to view chart) Monday 12/19 Tuesday 12/20 Wednesday 12/21 Thursday 12/22 1 THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
3,680 $4,654,664
-52.6% / $1,265 $117,824,308 / 11 $4,915,049
5.6% / $1,336 $122,739,357 / 12 $4,940,386
0.5% / $1,342 $127,679,743 / 13 N/A 2 KING KONG
3,568 $5,638,125
-63.8% / $1,580 $71,819,770 / 6 $5,244,960
-7% / $1,470 $77,064,730 / 7 $4,870,320
-7.1% / $1,365 $81,935,050 / 8 N/A 3 FUN WITH DICK AND JANE
3,056 N/A N/A $3,761,129
-- / $1,231 $3,761,129 / 1 N/A 4 CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN 2
3,100 N/A N/A $2,549,891
-- / $823 $2,549,891 / 1 N/A 5 THE FAMILY STONE
2,469 $1,719,698
-51.8% / $697 $14,240,725 / 4 $1,731,617
0.7% / $702 $15,972,342 / 5 $1,534,284
-11.4% / $621 $17,506,626 / 6 N/A 6 HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE
2,750 $884,221
-54.3% / $278 $253,482,480 / 32 $1,003,321
13.5% / $315 $254,485,801 / 33 $1,007,197
0.4% / $366 $255,492,998 / 34 N/A 7 SYRIANA
1,775 $757,334
-54% / $427 $23,219,696 / 27 $803,307
6.1% / $453 $24,023,003 / 28 $745,481
-7.2% / $420 $24,768,484 / 29
(Excerpt) Read more at boxofficemojo.com ...
C.S. Lewis is the real 'Harry Potter'.....
C.S. Lewis NEVER was a 'real' christian....
The movie is a Hypnotic propaganda work of 'Harry Potter' himself!
Don't let your children see this movie anywhere but in your own livingroom.
Reverlation 6:16....verses......1st Peter 5:8!
If the works of CS Lewis had not showed me a way to Christ I would look you up and kick your a@# for all the times you attack the works of C.S. Lewis. The man has brought more people to the word of God than any attack on him by some misguided fool.
That movie was twisted. I loved it! Watched it recently one lonely night during General Quarters (we're baaaad) on the USS Eisenhower (CVN-69).
Peter Jackson is probably the best director around - he is hardly a hack.
This version of King Kong is far more realistic than previous versions - in fact, the realism may be hurting the box office take as it is probably too intense for smaller children.
Of course there are some parts of the movie that one could criticize for realism if they put their mind to it, but you could do that with any movie. It's a movie about a giant gorilla - it's not like Jackson is remaking Othello.
I want to see it but like most people I'm going to wait for the DVD and watch it in the privacy of my home on my big-screen home theater system where I can smoke a cigarette, drink a beer and pause the 3+ hour-long picture when those beers catch up to me! On top of that, I don't have to listen to a bunch of kids talking on their cell phones.
And *this* is precisely the reason ticket sales are falling.
Don't be suprised that the press would ignore this. They ignored Passion as well but the numbers didn't lie.
This will be a huge story in Hollywood. It is SHOCKING that Narnia is surpassing Kong at this 'early' date. Unfathomable to any prognosticators or movie buffs... but not to many Freepers, who predicted such an outcome. I was certainly not one of them.
Having seen Kong, the more frustrating it is to me (as a big Peter Jackson fan) thinking about the film's run time. It simply ruins what should have been a masterpiece.
Every single segment and scene goes on too long. Loving closeups of a silent Naomi Watts go on FOREVER. When they arrive on Skull Island, Jackson shows you skeletons. And more skeletons. After some other scenes, he starts showing you more skeletons again.
The ending atop the Empire State Building was spectacular, but typical of the movie. Jackson isn't content to move in close to the biplanes' details once or twice, but seemingly 20 times. And if there is a camera angle not used in Naomi's simple climb up a ladder, it hasn't been invented yet.
By the end, at 3 hours 17 minutes, you're begging for Kong to die so you can go pee (judging by the rush to the bathrooms, I wasn't the only one).
A real shame. It should have been a classic... at 2 hours 15 minutes, with all it's brilliance and wonder intact. People just cannot enjoyably sit captive for such a long time without an intermission, and I hope Jackson learns his lesson.
That's the word of mouth, and it's hurting Kong's box office. Here's hoping the special edition on DVD has an hour's LESS footage. Or someone with ProTools does a bootleg version at the proper artistic length.
But good for Narnia, which I enjoyed, and conservatives beating Hollywood at their own game once again.
I plan on seeing one way or another, but so far I've told my 11 and 8 years kids 'no', you can't see it. Sounds too intense for them, plus they'd have to sit through 3 hours of it if they do indeed get too scared.
-- Joe
Excellent summary! I agree with every word. BTTT!
I like how everying that walks, crawls, creeps, or flies is gigantic, toothy, and rabid. Except for things in the river. No giant pirhanha, gar, snapping turtles, or prehistoric crocodiles inhabit the waters that Ann and Jack swim through to escape Kong.
I'll probably go see Narnia again this coming week.
Narnia lost by a small margin on Friday but won by small margin on Saturday. Tonight will tell which movie is Number 1 for the weekend.
my family of 5 went to see Narnia yesterday, it was wonderful.
My money is on Narnia!
Well, if you want to get picky, there's no way Ann Darrow could have been tossed and juggled around like she was in some of the fight scenes without dislocating a shoulder or more likely, breaking her back. Yet, she was fine.
It's just a movie. As long as characters behave basically credibly, I don't mind departures from science and physics now and then. As long as the characters are good and behave like normal people (even in extraordinary circumstances), I'm fine with it.
Contrast that with Traffic a few years back, which was the darling of critics at the time. In that film you had a pampered, pregnant euro-housewife go from enjoying an expensive lunch with her rich girlfriends in the first reel to talking trash/showing who is boss to murderous drug dealers in the next-to-last reel. Bogus. Stuff like that hampers my enjoyment of a film - stuff that you mention seldom does.
I'm kinda anal that way and it makes for few truly good movie-going experiences - but when they get it right, I really, really enjoy it!
My parents, my mother-in-law and my daughter (who saw it with us 2 weeks ago) are going tomorrow, so that's another 4 tickets! It's definitely on the "to buy" list when it hits the dvd sales...
My better-half and I took a whole gang of nices and nephews (10 of us and the kids picked Narnia). None of them cared much for Kong. It was Monday where we went and the theater was packed solid with Narnia movie goers...
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