Less grandiose and romantic than Peter Jackson’s King Kong, more action-packed and pulpy than Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island feels like a throwback to a more innocent era of cinema – a period where movies had titles like The Valley Of Gwangi or Warlords Of Atlantis. Tom Hiddleston stars as a buff hero vaguely in the Doug McClure mould, though inevitably, he isn’t really the main draw here – no, the true star of Skull Island is, of course, a certain colossal ape who first appeared in 1933....

Before Li even arrives, Jack Black’s Po is already in the thick of it. Having earned the title of Dragon Warrior, he’s now being pushed into a mentor role by Dustin Hoffman’s Master Shifu, who wishes to quit his teaching post and sit in a cave for thirty years in order to master the mystical powers of chi. Po, of course, makes a complete hash of these new responsibilities in a humorous slapstick sequence early on....

Legends of Tomorrow Season 2 Episode 15 It’s weird, Legends of Tomorrow has been on such a hot streak lately that an episode that was just okay feels like a disappointment. I am probably being a little tough on it, but after several episodes that didn’t even slip for a minute, this one’s problems were magnified because of it. In order to do so, they need the blood of Christ. Rip, being a major party pooper, won’t let them go back to the Crucifixion, so they figure out an alternate path....

One of the chief pleasures of the Lego video games seems to be their simplicity. Break stuff, collect rewards, play as familiar and favorite characters; even the sounds, from the little “poof” of switching between characters to the authentic Star Wars lightsaber buzz, are simple fun. The latest installment seems to invite a well-discussed question for reviewers – is cute fun “enough” to make a game good? In this case, despite some disjointed control schemes, the answer is yes....

Lethal Weapon Season 2, Episode 19 “The people who you surround yourself with are a reflection of who you are.” Leo Getz’ wedding is the perfect setting for a crime and the premise understandably injects this episode with an extra boost of energy as Getz’ frantic, non-stop concerns punctuate every move that Riggs and Murtaugh make on this one. Frankly, I would have even been on board if Lethal Weapon had gone full-on Agatha Christie this episode and turned Leo’s wedding into a calculated whodunit murder mystery....

Lethal Weapon: Season 2, Episode 20 “Feels like Mars to me…” Riggs is an enigma that’s wrapped in a riddle that’s wrapped in a truck. There’s a reason that the character’s therapy sessions are such a crucial part of the series. “Jesse’s Girl” tries to answer some of the fundamental questions that define Riggs and it’s kind of heartbreaking to learn that in a much simpler time, all that Riggs ever wanted was to have a family and to be a good dad....

1.1 Pilot The thematic centre of Neil Burger’s 2011 feature Limitless, based on Alan Glynn’s novel The Dark Fields, was what we’d all be willing to sacrifice for knowledge and power. If you were offered a psychotropic devil’s bargain that would make you an uber-capable genius at the cost of your safety, would you take it? The CBS spin-off show poses no such question. Not in the pilot at least....

This time around, Gerard Butler returns as secret service agent Mike Banning, once again charged with protecting US President Benjamin Asher, played by Aaron Eckhardt. Banning, we quickly learn, is a family man these days, with his wife on the verge of giving birth, and him gazing at a saved template resignation letter on his Macbook. For London Has Fallen starts going wrong quickly, sadly. The opening of Olympus Has Fallen was arresting, beginning with something that set the stakes for the rest of the film, whilst throwing in a genuine element of surprise....

MacGruber has been gone a long time. For ten years, in fact, he’s been living in a monastery in Mexico, while the world has believed him to be dead. He was attacked at his wedding by his arch nemesis, Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer). Except there’s no proof Von Cunth did it, and in the ten years MacGruber has been living underground, Von Cunth has risen to be a prominent businessman with lots of political connections that make him untouchable....

This review contains spoilers. Far Away Places was about trying new things, both for the show’s characters and its writers. Orange sherbet, LSD, jerking off anonymous cinema stoners, and giving Mad Men a Rashomon-style makeover were all attempted for the first time, some more successfully than others. In many ways, Mad Men’s elliptical dialogue and predilection for ponderous, self-absorbed staring is the perfect fit for an LSD story. Roger and Jane’s trip finally provided Mad Men’s naysayers with an answer to why the show is full of characters having half a conversation then gazing determinedly at dust motes for twenty minutes....

7.13 The Milk And Honey Route But The Milk And Honey Route didn’t venture into Betty’s subconscious, instead showing her impassive outward response to learning it was the end. Whether it was shock or Zen acceptance, Betty put up the emotional barriers and made good on the bumper sticker promise that if she was indeed going to die young, she’d leave behind a good-looking corpse. One dressed in blue chiffon and mink....

Scorsese’s adaptation of Charles Brandt‘s nonfiction 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses, about mob hitman Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, has been in the works since 2010. The film marks the ninth collaboration between Scorsese and De Niro, who first worked together on the 1973 mob classic Mean Streets. The pair also collaborated on Taxi Driver, New York, New York, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Cape Fear and Casino....

3.1 Laws Of Nature This truly felt like a sequence from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or at least like one of the loveable One Shots that they used to make. The set-up was simple, the effects were cool, and there was a sense of tension and fun to proceedings. Add to that the reveal of the new half-plane/half-helicarrier base (how on Earth are they bankrolling this?), and you’ve got a massive statement of intent....

Whether you find that story satisfying or not will depend on your ability to understand character motivations and the many twists waiting for you on the battlefield. This is certainly not the place to discuss story. What I can say, if you haven’t beat it already and have managed to avoid all of the spoilers on the internet, is that, while the tale has definite presence in the game, there is an obvious shift in focus on Kojima’s part to make the gameplay the dominant force in this entry....

Below are what I consider to be the highlights of his career, minus Taxi Driver, which was covered in the Scorsese piece and Psycho which was addressed in the Iconic Movie Music Themes article, linked below. It’s quite amazing that one of Herrmann’s earliest scores was for a film that is widely regarded as the greatest film of all time. Welles was reportedly so enamoured with Herrmann’s compositions that many scenes were shaped to bring the most out of the music....

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was not one of those films. It was a hit precisely because its seemingly specific subject matter transcended cultures and time periods. It was about families welcoming in outsiders, and formerly repressed individuals defining their identity. Those things are still relevant today, yet one of the main failings of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is that it entirely, seemingly willingly, misses that point. The gang all arrange to chip in for the ceremony, adding the big-ness, fat-ness and Greek-ness to proceedings, while Toula and Ian navigate the realities of being two first-time parents with a daughter going off to college and no time for each other....

The pilot episode of any show has it easy. Its sole purpose is to set the scene for the series to come, and its faults can be easily forgiven if the following episodes make good use of the foundations laid down by the maiden episode. Unfortunately, it did utilise a few clichéd elements that, by now, are so common in this genre of telly that they actually trigger involuntary Pavlovian yawns....

1.8 No Ordinary Accident Last week, the plot got a welcome shot in the arm when it transpired that the super-human killer, the Watcher, wasn’t quite as two-dimensional as he’s so far been presented. No Ordinary Accident is all about Jim losing his powers, which is probably the oldest superhero story there is. And how is this resolved? He was allergic to Stephanie’s lip gloss! No, really. It was that dumb....

For the penultimate episode of the current series of Not Going Out, the show transported us to fireworks night. As usual, that’s just the basis for something a little more complex, as thrown into the mix is an old lady who walks into Lucy and Lee’s flat, hunting for her son. And, after initially chucking her out, Lucy soon sets Lee the task of retrieving her, and making sure she gets home safely....

The people behind the excellent Viewtiful Joe, and the not so-excellent, but still great Godhand were beginning to show the kind of unique and innovative ideas they could produce, with perhaps their greatest triumph being the quirky, Zelda-esque cell-shaded epic, Okami on the PS2. The gameplay was almost identical in its approach to Nintendo’s Zelda, with some even proclaiming that this was the PS2’s very own Zelda-killer. And while the term Zelda-killer may have been a little optimistic, Okami was undeniably excellent, and without doubt one of the best games to grace the PS2....