Oh is it Kong time already? This year's take ditches the beauty-and-the-beast romance and city-stomping and focuses instead on what has traditionally been the 'jungle bit in the middle', where a band of forgettable guys battle with a series of monsters - most of which manage to resist being simply bored to death by the sound of Tom Hiddleston's dull-as-fuck voice.

Despite its pretensions (Heart of Darkness again), it really is no more complicated than that. If there's a surprise at all, it's how well made it is. Even if the script is a bit of a dud, Jordan Vogt-Roberts has done a great job of staging the thing, putting some real wit and panache into the monster fights, and styling the picture after the post-1933 B-movie Kongs and their histrionic poster art: an upscaled Kong framed against flame and tearing choppers apart.