Movies and DVDs

The first reviews are coming in for Peter Jackson's remake of "King Kong," and so far the thumbs are trending upward.

Reviewers rate Jackson's new Kong

Early United States reviews of King Kong say New Zealand director Peter Jackson has matched the giant ape with a true giant of a film.

While King Kong premiered in New York yesterday, it is not set for general release until December 14 so many newspapers are waiting to publish reviews, but New York Daily News writer Jack Matthews didn't hold back: "This ape rocks!' he wrote. "Its colour, soundtrack and physical landscape are spectacular and its computer-assisted effects deliver a Kong so realistic you can smell his breath in the back row of the balcony."

Matthews did not mind the King Kong-sized length of the film. "At three hours - divided among exhilarating action sequences, raucous humour and romance of both human and bestial variety - the latest version of the classic 1933 beauty and the beast story feels less like a remake than the original film revived, expanded and pumped up on steroids."

Summing up, Matthews said the film would enhance Jackson's standing as a director. "King Kong will further Jackson's reputation as the leading visionary among fantasy filmmakers and it restores the Empire State Building to the stately glory of its past."

Newsweek's Devin Gordon was also impressed. "Some critics will complain that the film's length is an act of Oscar-drunk hubris, but while 'Kong' may be indulgent, it's not pretentious," he wrote."And it's certainly never dull. Jackson has honoured his favourite film in the best possible way: by recapturing its heart-pounding, escapist glee." Gordon said King Kong was a tender, even heartbreaking, film...

Cutting out the plot breakdown, here's the scoop from EW:

Munich

The thriller is a gloriously amoral form. We might be watching a heist artist, a cop, or an ice-blooded sniper — what counts, before anything, is the deftness of the action, the ruthless pleasure of pulse-pounding risk and reward. Munich, Steven Spielberg's spectacularly gripping and unsettling new movie, is a grave and haunted film, yet its power lies in its willingness to be a work of brutal excitement. It's a movie about killing that invites the audience to share the terror and the rush, the adrenaline of vengeance, only to leave us sliding into the horror on the other side...

...Spielberg shoots Munich without showy virtuosity, yet his camera seems to be everywhere at once, and John Williams' score is like a telltale heartbeat. The result is a thriller that seeps into your central nervous system..