KONG; SKULL ISLAND **

More JURASSIC PARK than KING KONG and, probably thanks to Dan Gilroy's contribution to the screenplay, a surprisingly robust monster movie, (and the monsters look terrific). This is a King Kong movie that owes nothing to any of the other King Kong movies that came before it; indeed Kong is very much a supporting character, though a pretty spectacular one. The cast are mostly fodder for Kong and all the other creatures on Skull Island and it's a good cast, (Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L Jackson, Brie Larson, John C Reilly almost stealing the picture, John Goodman, Toby Kebbell). Of course, in a movie like this it's the CGI and the action sequences, not the actors, that are the attention grabbers. The critics hated it and it's unlikely to be spoken of with the same degree of affection, if any, as previous Kongs but I found it to be very entertaining and a good old-fashioned night out at the pictures.