Related movies

• Dead & Breakfast
• King Kong
• Shanghai Surprise
• Superfly
• The Ten Commandments

Related people

• Madonna
• Peter Jackson

DVD round-up from The TOMB

'King Kong' tramples the competition in stores this week.

Apr 10 2006

One DVD towers over every other release this week – Peter Jackson's spectacular, if somewhat flawed, remake of 'King Kong'.

The film is illogical, overlong, and features gratuitous and unnecessary scenes of an animated 'Billy Elliot' running from dinosaurs.

In spite of such shortcomings, 'King Kong' nevertheless succeeds thanks to WETA's amazing special effects work elsewhere and Peter Jackson's masterful choreography of large-scale action set pieces.

Kong himself is a technological triumph that surpasses WETA's own work with Gollum, while the unforgettable creature carnage on Skull Island and a whole host of extensive extras makes the film a worthy addition to any DVD collection.

Aside from that there's little else of note hitting stores this week, no doubt thanks to distributors running scared from the oversized monkey.

Special editions of 'Superfly' and 'The Ten Commandments' are worth a look if you like pimps, drug dealers or God, while 'Dead & Breakfast' is a low-budget zombie flick that features a fine line in comedy gore.

As for the 'one to miss' this week, it's got to be 'Shanghai Surprise', a monumental mess of a Madonna movie that Time Out called 'vulgar' and 'embarrassing'. It's still better than 'Swept Away' however.