Heritage Cinema is too easy to sniff at. Likewise, populist historicals are too often the recipient of critical derision. Indeed, much of my own criticism for Theodore Melfi’s recent Hidden Figures was perhaps even guilty of this. Broad strokes in cinema can grant a complex issue vital accessibility, a fact that should absolutely be celebrated. That said, it’s a fine balance and I maintain – for now anyway – that Hidden Figures takes simplification just too far in its crowd pleasing to fully enable a more than surface-level depth.
Who would win in a fight between King Kong and Godzilla? My Dad, ahead of our seeing Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ new picture Kong: Skull Island, reckoned it’d be no contest and that a giant sentient ape would have no issues in crushing a big lizard with little arms and a pea-sized brain. What my Dad was quite evidently forgetting is that in his last big screen outing (Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong) Kong measured up at just 25ft compared to the 355 feet that Godzilla clocked in at in Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla from 2014. That’s presumably why this latest reboot in the character’s eighty-four year history sees Kong boosted to his mightiest height yet, an impressive 104ft. As we all know, bigger always means better, right? By that logic Skull Island could only be incredible, yes?
Were it not for the opening scene, in which a young, black man, alone at night in a dark suburbia, is assaulted by an armour-clad figure and dragged into a white car to the vintage strains of Flanagan and Allen’s ‘Run Rabbit Run’, Get Out might easily have been a comedy. On paper, the film marks the directorial debut of Jordan Peele – the man who wrote and headlined last year’s action-comedy Keanu – its stars include the comedic talents of Allison Williams (Girls) and Stephen Root (Dodgeball, Finding Dory), and it has a plot reminiscent of Greg Glienna’s Meet the Parents. Ba dum and, of course, tish. Do not, however, be fooled. Whilst Get Out is undoubtedly a feature with some genuine belly laughs, they’re laughs that come with a distinctly nasty sting.
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