Kong: Skull Island

The world didn’t need another King Kong film and worse still some googling around tells me this is actually part of a new-ish franchise called ‘The MonsterVerse’, which also involves Gozilla.

In spite of all the horseshit buzzwords the studios like to daub onto their flimsy barrel-scraping ideas (‘reboot’, ‘universe’), Kong: Skull Island is a half decent film.

The director Jordan Vogt-Roberts is best known for his coming of age indie hit The Kings of Summer and seems an unlikely choice to helm a $180m blockbuster, but it proved to be an inspired one. His direction is original without being pretentious and the cinematography is a cut above your average summer fare.

The King Kong story is done to death so at this point it’s about trying to put a different spin on the whole ‘man is the real beast’ idea, and frankly the film has little to offer there.

However, a solid cast (Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, John Goodman among others) and some nifty work behind the camera make Kong: Skull Island a surprise hit.