johnregan1999

First movie of 2025...and it's a bit of a dud.

Firstly, a positive. There's some pretty cool action scenes here. I'm not familiar with French cinema but the main actor Guillaume Canet was great and really sold me on his tough guy persona. He really was the emotional core of the story, aside from just being an outright badass. The dude does everything : parkour, driving, martial arts....you name it!

However, "Ad Vitam" really struggled to hold my attention throughout its short run time, and just comes across as a cheaper and inferior version of the "Mission Impossible" series. The story didn't grip me at all. The majority of the film is one big flashback that doesn't even get to the main plot introduced at the start of the film until just over an hour in. For an action film, it's incredibly slow and plodding, and doesn't seem to have any momentum or pace until it suddenly ramps up in the last 30 minutes. It feels like a solid 40 minute pilot episode of a TV series stretched out to 95 minutes to be considered feature length.

Overall, it's not a film I'd recommend. It's typical of what you'd expect from a January Netflix film I guess!

Peter Jackson's take on the "King Kong" tale is arguably the most epic that's ever been put to screen. Unlike most remakes; this is the rare example where I'd say it's on par with (and arguably surpasses) the original. Jackson achieves this through not only paying loving homage to the source material, but expanding upon the characters and storyline to make the stakes higher and make the plot more compelling.

The visual effects are genuinely stunning. Apart from a single scene (dinosaur chase scene), the effects have aged extremely well, and look better and more realistic than most modern day CGI work. The character of Kong is brought to life in such a unique way, with his personality developed beyond simply a big brute destroying everything he touches. This is a sympathetic Kong, which only makes the final scenes harder to watch.

Like Kong, the human characters also get a significant upgrade from the original version. Jack Black is a particular stand-out, who gives a career best performance in my opinion. Naomi Watts is perfect as Ann, while Adrian Brody and Kyle Chandler are brilliant as always. That's not even mentioning Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis. My god this movie has it all.

Essentially, Peter Jackson's "King Kong" is more of everything. More characters. More action. More content. While more is not necessarily better, and the run time is astonishing at over 3 hours (for a monster movie no less!), Jackson produced a true blockbuster epic that I can't help but love.