besides the original, i have a soft spot for the '70s king kong. my glasses are too rose-tinted to declare it objectively great, but i rewatched it within the last 10 years and still really enjoyed it. i'd buy a blu-ray. i only saw it once, on a massive screen, but i loved peter jackson's remake. i think the sadness of the story resonates across iterations. i very recently rewatched the '80s godzilla movie (to be clear, i used to rent it in its american edit as godzilla 1985, but i finally saw it in its original incarnation as the return of godzilla). it's another i wouldn't go so far as to call truly great, but it remains a personal favorite. if you haven't seen it, in either version, it's a direct sequel to the original, visually dark, and melancholy. rewatching it decades later, i wondered how profound an impact it had on what i look for and get out of movies, because i was very young when i watched it. (i did always get a kick out of the "bambi meets godzilla" short that starts the tape.) to my recollection, skull island was heavy on big action scenes, which were certainly important in other kong movies. i'd rewatch it eventually, but i don't remember it seeming to aspire to the gravitas of either the '70s or '00s king kongs or even the first half of the 2010s godzilla, probably because it knew its primary audience didn't want that. if they'd taken the story a little more seriously (not even as much as the 2005), i might rave about it, but it didn't fully click for me.