King Kong (Full Frame) (2005) - Oscar® Winner!

"Break out the popcorn and prepare to be blown away. King Kong is the most pulse- pounding and heart-stirring romantic adventure since "Titanic."  Lou Lumenick, New York Post
"King Kong rules over all others. As big, breathlessly exciting and relentlessly thrilling as any epic adventure the screen has seen in many years!  Pete Hammond, Maxim
"Thrilling!, Epic!   Devin Gordon, Newsweek
"...rousing, exciting cinematic adventure!  Scott Mantz, Access Hollywood
"Here is the jaw-dropping, eye-popping, heart-stopping movie epic we've been waiting for all year.  Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"What a movie! This is how the medium seduced us originally.  Jack Mathews, New York Daily News
"One of the wonders of the holiday season.  Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

Editor's Note Despite his origins as a low-budget filmmaker with a taste for the unsavory side of life, Peter Jackson has turned into an "event" filmmaker--someone who can conjure up a movie on a scale unlike anything we've seen before. KING KONG is his sprawling, epic remake of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's 1933 movie of the same name, and it is as big as the gorilla that runs riot through Jackson's rendering of Depression-era New York. Keeping the simple yet effective plot intact--a film crew travels to the mysterious Skull Island, picks up Kong, and brings him back to New York City--Jackson expands on this basic premise by drawing on the jaw-dropping talents of his special effects team to satisfy his thirst for the grand spectacle. The movie posits Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow, the starry-eyed blonde beauty whom Kong falls for; Jack Black as Carl Denham, a low-rent Orson Welles look-alike who drags the crew to the island to make his movie; and Adrian Brody as Jack Driscoll, a hack playwright who battles Kong both physically and for Darrow's heart. As the men struggle against Kong and the lumbering dinosaurs of Skull Island, Andy Serkis, who made the character of Gollum so believable in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, steps in to form the facial features of the mighty gorilla, lending a real emotional sucker-punch to the scenes between Darrow and Kong. But it's the final third of the movie where Jackson really delivers; his 1930s New York is stunning, and when Kong breaks free from his shackles and stampedes on a lovelorn trek through the city, then iconically climbs the Empire State Building with his sweetheart, it's impossible to not be swept away by the sheer beauty and sadness of the moment. While its three-hour length may prove daunting to some, the payoff in Jackson's KING KONG is ultimately worth it, proving once again that he is a director of breathtaking vision.

	Adrien Brody
	Colin Hanks
	Jack Black
	Naomi Watts
	Andrew Lesnie - Cinematographer
	Derek Whipple - Cinematographer
	Edgar Wallace - Story By
	Fran Walsh - Screenplay
	Fran Walsh - Producer
	James Newton Howard, et. al. - Original Music By
	Jamie Selkirk - Editor
	Jan Blenkin - Producer
	Merian C. Cooper - Story By
	Peter Jackson - Director
	Peter Jackson - Screenplay
	Philippa Boyens - Screenplay

Rolling Stone
"Jackson worked fresh magic at his Weta studios in his native New Zealand, where he had Kong do battle with prehistoric predators on Skull Island..." 09/08/2005 p.122

Entertainment Weekly
"[T]he movie seals Jackson's reputation: He's the most gifted big-picture artist working today....What resonates is the story, which is a very human tale of compassion, greed, loss, bravery, creativity, foolishness, and love." -- Grade: A 10/16/2005 p.58-59

New York Times
"[Jackson] succeeds through a combination of modesty and reckless glee, topping himself at every turn and reveling in his own showmanship." 12/14/2005 p.E1

USA Today
"Jackson is a visionary filmmaker who is not only a technical wizard but also a master storyteller." 12/13/2005 p.1D

Los Angeles Times
"[A] witty comment on the darkness at the heart of adventure stories, a bazillion-dollar spectacle that reserves the right to question the morality of spectacles, and, mostly, a tender love story about a melancholy girl and her tragically misunderstood monkey." 12/12/2005 p.E1

Entertainment Weekly
Included in Entertainment Weekly's Top Ten Films Of The Year -- "[I]t has a marvelous fairy-tale kinetic grandeur....KING KONG attains a primal-pop romantic glory..." 12/30/2005 p.114

Sight and Sound
"Once in the lost world, Jackson reproduces the breathless pacing of the 1933 film, tipping from one huge set-piece to the next..." 02/01/2006 p.66-67

Uncut
4 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's made with love, care, and tremendous intelligence?.This is still a moving love story at heart..." 05/01/2006 p.150

Widescreen Review
"[The] picture does a great job of creating the period of the storytelling....The fantastic mix is energetic and invigorating." 06/01/2006 p.68

ReelViews 9 of 10
Despite three prominent human actors, the star of the movie, as one might expect from the title, is the giant primate. Kong has gone from being an 18-inch high clay puppet to a man in a monkey suit to a beautifully rendered CGI creature. His range of motion and ability to react believably have improved with each incarnation. This Kong uses an amazing range of facial expressions and, when you look into his eyes, you can't believe he isn't real. Andy Serkis, who helped Jackson by "playing" Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, lends his motion capture skills to Kong, and the results are so stunning that one is tempted to believe that Jackson went to a South Pacific Island and found a 25-foot high ape. Kong shows nearly every emotion across the spectrum: puzzlement, rage, amusement, bemusement, possessiveness, tenderness, and affection. And Kong does some things that couldn't have been accomplished using any other special effects technique. Try orchestrating the T-Rex battle another way. - James Berardinelli

Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
The result is a surprisingly involving and rather beautiful movie - one that will appeal strongly to the primary action audience, and also cross over to people who have no plans to see "King Kong" but will change their minds the more they hear. I think the film even has a message, and it isn't that beauty killed the beast. It's that we feel threatened by beauty, especially when it overwhelms us, and we pay a terrible price when we try to deny its essential nature and turn it into a product, or a target. This is one of the year's best films. - Roger Ebert

Variety.com 9 of 10
Opening reels views of Manhattan are breathtaking in their detail and sense of a recaptured past. Curiously, there's a more artificial feel to the areas depicted during the climax, at least until Kong ascends the Empire State Building, whereupon the perspectives are extraordinary. - Todd McCarthy