Martyn Brown

I loved King Kong for many reasons but it did not need to be three hours long. The whole homo-erotic sub-plot involving the cabin boy Jimmy and the Ship's first mate was deeply pretentious. Heart of Darkness is about the ravages of the primordial environment on the human soul. King Kong is about a silver-back gorrilla.

Some of the not-so-special effects were seriously crap, for example the scene in which the natives are vaulting over the rocks and any time the main cast is replaced by CG versions of themselves. I must say Jack Black and Adrien Brody were excellent in the lead roles and Kong was wonderfully rendered. I think its time Peter Jackson ditched the 3 hour plus films and stop being so indulgent. Phillipa Boyens writing was lovely and poetic in LOTRs but several pieces of dialogue in Kong were too cheesy and despite being rather poetic did not fit the movie's tone at all. Overall I must say I loved most of King Kong and Ms Watts as Anne Darrow was beautiful and her soft (fake) Brooklyn accent was brilliant.

I just saw Mel Gibson's bloody and bloody awful telling of the last few hours of Jesus H. Christ, the film was badly made and Monty Python did a better job. Mel Gibson's film as no characterisation, no new slant on the story of Jesus and the acting apart from a good performance by James Caviezel was bordering on the non-existent.

The visuals were typically arty but I did enjoy the last half an hour on the march to Golgotha, the white buildings and sand contrasted well with Jesus' mutilated body. The much talked about violence is for once quite true, the scene with the claws ripping against the skin of Jesus is close to unwatchable, but its a highly manipulated attempt by the director to symbolise Jesus' suffering, it had to violent and bloody or else the film would have been rubbish and it is!

The ending is supposed to be uplifting but its just dull and drags on until guess what! Jesus is resurrected, all to the sounds of The Stone Roses 'I am the Resurrection', only joking!

I'm sorry but this film may have been made out of conviction and belief but so are a lot of things, all in all the film is a Hollywood bunch of pap. If you wanna see a good film about faith and religion see Pasolini's 'The Gospel According to St.Matthew' is incredible or 'The Life of Brian' which is just great, 'Blessed are the Cheesemakers' and 'Welease Woger, he's a wobber and a wapist'.

I saw 'Dawn of the Dead' this afternoon and whilst it is not a patch on George Romero's classic, Zack Snyder's film is a rollicking action flick with a brilliant third act and a great cast, though there are way too many characters in it, Sarah Polley, Jake Weber and Ving Rhames were great and the actor who played C.J. was cool too, extra credit goes to the dog Chips for his wonderful and daring mission through the sea of zombies towards the end, that dog ruled. The CGI is a bit ropey and the story moves far too rapidly, the controversial decision to make the zombies fast and athletic works better than in '28 Days Later' but there was not enough gore for me, the cannibalistic element was not played up like in the original. A great effort though, I hope the same director makes a sequel to the film. Zombie's rule and with intelligent scripts and cool action sequences, they could have a whole new era of zombie movies.