Quickie review -- Wow and wow again! Jordan Vogt-Roberts' KONG: SKULL ISLAND amazes

Just in case you were debating with yourself about spending the time and/or money to see KONG: SKULL ISLAND in its theatrical release, do yourself a favor and go. This is a model monster movie: smart and relatively swift (even at a two-hour running time). Its near-documentary style put us at the forefront of what's going on and makes it all seem extraordinarily real.

Even in this day of ultra-special effects, the ones here have simply never been equalled  It's not just that the monsters, including Kong and a whole bunch more, have been created with great skill and cunning, what they do is even better: specific, unusual, and so eye-popping and attention-grabbing that you cannot look away. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (shown at right) gave us the charming Kings of Summer a few years back, and as much as I enjoyed that little movie, I'd never have pegged this guy to come thru with one of, maybe the best monster movie of modern times. Well, you never know. He's done it, in any case.

How? Well, he uses that documentary style, together with (seemingly) hand-held cameras about as well as I've ever seen. He's cast his film with A-list stars -- Tom Hiddleston (above, center), Oscar-winner Brie Larson (center, left) and Samuel L. Jackson (below, left) -- together with a bunch of great character actors and a handful of excellent small-but-fine actors in even the more minor supporting roles. All this lends a kind of credibility you don't often get in a monster movie.

If the script is best in the first 20-minutes-or-so set-up to the cast's arrival on Skull Island, afterward it remains at least good enough to get us where we're going, providing decent characterization, especially via John C.Reilly (above, center), who, once he comes into view, carries the movie through its amazing conclusion. There's only a single use of that stupid, old-chesnut command, "Hurry! Quick!" when characters are racing for their lives. Otherwise, if the script is not super-literate and witty, it's at least a journeyman effort. Dialog, after all, is not what audiences flock to monster movies to hear. They come to experience a great adventure. And that's exactly what they'll get here.

Death and destruction comes to many, many cast members, and you won't at all know which ones (or how this happens) much earlier than their demise occurs. Surprise is important in monster movies, and Vogt-Roberts understands this about as well as any current director. He also manages to avoid the necessity of night-time action used to mask so-so special effects in which many moviemakers indulge (Godzilla's Gareth Edwards, for example). The effects here are so spectacular, rich and real that they carry the movie.

So, yes, seeing Kong: Skull Island -- from Warner Brothers and running just under two full hours -- in a movie theater is a fine idea. Click here (then enter your zip code and click on either Fandango or MoviePhone) to find those nearest you. 

Even seniors and movie snobs might buy Galletta/Vogt-Roberts' KINGS OF SUMMER

So bright and sunny and frisky and fun is THE KINGS OF SUMMER that I am tempted to call it a kind of Leave It to Beaver for this millennium (or maybe a Leave It to Biaggio). This new film, written by Chris Galletta and directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts (shown below), is also quirky, smart and (for all its nods to the look and feel of "independent" movies) quite mainstream in its goals (parents are indeed wonderful, loving people, so there!) That it has been hit with an "R" rating is one of the idiocies of our current ratings system. (Yeah, it has some naughty language: so the fuck what?!) This one of those rare films about teens that young people ought to see, fer Chrissakes.

Telling the tale of two best friends -- one of whom decides to leave home, build a house in the nearby "forest," and live there for the summer -- who are joined by a third oddity (who is not even a friend, let alone a "best"), the movie is full of funny dialog that generally seems real, crazy situations that manage to squeak by one's disbelief threshold, all abetted by performances cool enough to pass muster with both sophisticated audiences and the peers of this movie's more-or-less teenage cast. And it's all just different enough to register as some-thing genuinely "new" in the summertime, non-blockbuster, forget-your-troubles-come-on-get-happy mode. As the guy once said, You could do worse.

As you might expect concerning teenage boys, fantasies abound, and these are well imagined, too, given that our crew has not yet experienced sex. The objects of two of the team's affection is Kelly (played nicely by Erin Moriarty, shown at bottom of post), while the parental and/or sibling roles are extremely well handled by Nick Offerman (above, right) and Allison Brie (above, left) and well-enough handled by Megan Mullalley and Marc Evan Jackson.

It is the work of the three leads, however, that makes-or-breaks the movie, and the filmmakers have cast three winners: left to right, Gabriel Basso, Moises Arias and Nick Robinson. Basso has the beefy beauty and sweetness of a still virginal male, while Robinson possesses the charm and intelligence that ought eventually to make him good leading man material. But it is Mr. Arias who, more than anyone, owns the film. He is oddball joy incarnate, and while he might not be remotely believable out of this context, he certainly comes through here.

The movie is an almost coming-of-age story, in which, via puppy love and puppy rejection perceived as betrayal, real anger blooms and take its toll, and boys begin their journey to manhood. This, as all else, is handled surprisingly well and turns the tale into another chapter on the road to adulthood. We've all traveled here and so should  identify readily with feeling and understanding. I don't want to overpraise what is basically a well-done genre piece, but I think it's safe to suggest putting The Kings of Summer on your ought-to-see list now.

The movie --from CBS Films and running 95 minutes -- opens today, Friday, May 31, in New York City at the AMC Lincoln Square and Landmark Sunshine; in Los Angeles at the Arclight Hollywood and The Landmark.  On June 7, you'll find it in opening in another 22 cities. Click here and scroll down to learn which ones.