Movie Review: King Kong (1976)

King Kong (1976) directed by John Guillermin

This lavish remake follows the general plot points of the 1932 classic: A ship of Americans go to legendary Skull Island and discover a primitive society there that worships a giant ape called Kong. The girl in their group is kidnapped, first by the natives who offer her to Kong, then by Kong who takes her deep into the island. A group from the ship pursues the ape and the girl, eventually bringing both back to the ship. They return to New York City where they plan to make a lot of money displaying Kong to amazed crowds. Kong busts free when he sees the girl being menaced. He kidnaps her yet again and heads for the tallest building in Manhattan, which he climbs, carrying the girl. Aerial combat brings down the big ape, who fatally falls to the ground, surrounded by awed crowds.

The 1932 film was set in contemporary times and followed a Hollywood producer who wanted to make the greatest action film ever. He took a common girl off the street to be his romantic lead. He had a secret map that led to Skull Island. The girl bonds a bit with the ape on the island which helps them to capture Kong, though it's really one of the sailors that rescues her and keeps her safe. The producer is excited about the Beauty and the Beast angle to the story which he features in his New York debut of Kong. Things go haywire, leading to the famous attack of the biplanes at the top of the Empire State Building. The movie ends with the producer pithily claiming that "It wasn't the planes that got him. It's Beauty that killed the Beast."

The remake is set in contemporary times, specifically the 1970s. So the producer is replaced with an oil magnate (Charles Grodin) who thinks there's cheap and plentiful oil on Skull Island. As he sets out on an oil tanker, Jack (Jeff Bridges) sneaks on board. Jack is a primate expert who has heard legends about a creature on the island. He's soon found out but a storm comes up. After the storm, a lone lifeboat comes alongside the ship, carrying an unconscious Dwan (Jessica Lange). She's a shallow socialite who gets stuck on the petroleum search. They land at the island where she eventually winds up being offered to Kong by the natives. Kong is very aggressive, even sexually pawing at her. When they get back to America, the oil magnate puts on a big production to introduce Kong, even aping the way the natives offered up Dwan (and yes, that is not a misspelling, she made her name that way to be distinctive). Kong breaks out of his unbreakable cage and eventually catches her and climbs the World Trade Center, where he is shot down by helicopters. He falls. The crowds gathered around the gigantic corpse are more or less silent at the tragic ending.

Unfortunately, the film leans too much into the 1970s setting. Where the ambitious Hollywood producer has a more universal quality about him, the oil exec is just smarmy and is the villainous embodiment of the unpopularity of gas prices in the 1970s. Dwan is free-spirited and superficial, a liberated woman who does not have enough self-respect to not be treated like a sex object by everybody. The boat crew is excited to have a female onboard. Jack makes some passes. Kong often leers at her, lending some credibility when the oil exec claims Kong tried to rape her on the island. The other big 1970s concern is environmentalism, with Jack spouting a lot of "don't wipe out the species" and "don't exploit the locals" jargon so popular then. At the end, Kong is wheeled out inside of a gigantic gas pump, both a humiliation and a tasteless exploitation by the evil gas company. It all looks a bit dated and silly at this point, fifty years later.

The Kong effects are mostly amazing and do hold up. His face is very expressive (more than just the leering) and he has a bit more personality in this film. Too bad he's a bad boy from the 1970s! The ending is very downbeat, without a pithy one-liner from anyone, just wallowing in the tragedy of Kong's demise. The environmental message is a downer, lacking the pithiness of the 1930s producer's take on the situation.

I don't regret watching this but I do think it is more a product of its times than a story for the ages. The good stuff is taken from the original film. The new stuff is so contemporary that it looks fifty years old.

Mildly recommended--if you are a Kong completist, you should check it out.

Game Review: Holiday Hijinks Master Detective Collection Part I

Holiday Hijinks Master Detective Collection published by Grand Gamers Guild and designed by Jonathan Chaffer

The Holiday Hijinks Collection gathers a dozen 18-card escape room games designed over the past several years by Jonathan Chaffer. Each game comes in a small tuck box and contains a mystery centered on a holiday theme. The games use a website to confirm correct solutions and provide hints if players find a puzzle too difficult. The website also provides some codes and other information that might be used in the puzzles (like Morse Code or ASCII, things like that). The designs are compact and meant to take an hour or so for one or more players to solve.

The Kringle Caper (2020)

Christmas morning starts with an invitation from Santa to come to the North Pole to help investigate a crime! Though the crime is not immediately obvious, you follow clues and solve puzzles involving the Christmas theme, using popular songs and Santa's workshop to discover the culprit.

The mystery is fun even if the solution does not quite make sense. Not every card had a puzzle on it, some just provided more clues or information to make other solutions. Like other escape room games, some clues are scattered about, showing up before they are needed, though it was always clear what was relevant to the current puzzle. We enjoyed solving this one.

The Independence Incident (2021)

Visiting a museum for Fourth of July, players are drawn into a mystery trying to defeat the Culper Ring, a group bent on hiding secrets from the rest of America. Players examine a lot of museum exhibits for anomalies to solve problems and get to the next stage of the conspiracy.

The storyline is interesting and the puzzles are fun. Each puzzle is built around some aspect of American history or politics, making it a fun little civics review in addition to the creative puzzle-solving. This was easier and more enjoyable than the first one. 

The Pumpkin Problem (2021)

The most horrible Halloween discovery ever--someone has substituted the contents of candy bar wrappers with raw vegetables!!! To find the culprit (and the hidden stash of authentic candy), players have to hunt down the trick-or-treaters and get information from them about the suspicious house on the street, solving other puzzles along the way.

This had a nice variety of puzzles and used the fronts of the cards in creative ways. We only had two challenging puzzles that needed hints (or the bonus information on the web site). The whole thing was very satisfactory and took less than an hour. Nice design job (except for the genuinely horrifying theme)!

The Cupid Crisis (2022)

You have an awesome Valentine's Day date planned at a fancy restaurant. The restaurant also has an awesome plan. You show up early and get locked in by yourself. The door has a keypad lock to get out, but you'll have to go through a lot of puzzles to find the right combination.

This was the most satisfying yet. The puzzles are thematically tied to Valentine's Day and to fancy restaurant stuff (like the reservation book, menus, dance floors, etc.). We only needed hints once or twice and relied on the sets of codes a few times. The humor is good and the creativity of using the cards is very enjoyable. We also liked that we could solve puzzles in different orders since we didn't immediately get what some of them were going for.

The Birthday Burglary (2022)

A birthday party for you is a bit spoiled by the fact that no one is there. A bunch of stuff has been left around, including presents and party games. As you look through all the stuff, you slowly uncover the secret that is waiting for you not too far away.

Players have to interact a lot more with the website. Found items become tools to use with other items or devices. For example, there's a cotton candy machine that needs a little maintenance before you can get yourself some flossy goodness. One object will fix the machine, another will let you get cotton candy from the machine. But don't try the lollipop, because it's too short and that would be too much sugar (or so the website said when we tried it). The puzzles are fairly intuitive and move along at a good pace. We were stumped by one because we made a wrong assumption on how to solve it. Other than that, it was a fine time.

The Groundhog Gambit (2022)

You are trapped in an inventor's mansion where the code pad to open the front door is locked, alarmed, and frozen over. As you explore the inventor's home you solve various puzzles that all lead back to the front door. Again, and again, and again. Just like that movie where Bill Murray has to relive the same day over and over and over.

The game goes through a lot of loops varying the puzzles as it goes. At first, the set-up was frustrating for us. Then we got into the rhythm of the repeats and things felt like they were moving faster. About half-way through we got the option to take a break and come back later, not realizing this was a double-length mystery. The box says 120 minutes and highest difficulty but we didn't look at that till afterward. With so many puzzles, we did use some hints, especially when we reiterated through one that needed a hint on the previous run. 

In retrospect, the design is very clever, using the same elements with one or two shifts to force the players to find different answers. The intricacy and variety were amazing, especially toward the end when we were able to use solutions to puzzles that didn't work earlier. Ultimately, this was a very satisfying experience.

So far, the last one has been the best one. More reviews in the future as we work our way through the back half of the box!

Book Review: The Body of This Death by Ross McCullough

The Body of This Death: Letters from the Last Archbishop of Lancaster by Ross McCullough

This epistolary novel set in a not-too-distant future presents letters from an unnamed archbishop dealing with a lot of modern problems. Artificial intelligence and virtual reality dominate pop culture and a lot of life, so much so that people ike the archbishop, who participate only minimally, are seen as pariahs. He cautions his correspondents about the dehumanizing effects. He also deals with the rise of Islam, writing to a woman who is concerned about her daughter interacting with a young ward of the archbishop's who might be converting the daughter by her example and conversation. The government has become more totalitarian and thus much less tolerant of the teachings of the Catholic faith. Things come to a head as he is accused of a crime by the state.

The book provides a lot of interesting reflections on contemporary issues. The imagined future of virtual reality and associated technology is plausible if pessimistic. The decoupling of our human bodies from our "spiritual" or "real" selves has been an ongoing problem exacerbated by medical and technological experimentation that does not respect the human person. Trying to sort out a genuine ecumenism with Islam has been a problem for centuries with fundamental divisions keeping progress from being made. Overbearing states have been a problem for a long time too, from the Pharaohs to the English Henrys (I'm thinking of II and VIII) to Communist and Fascist governments of the twentieth century. The theology in the book is solid and well thought out.

My problem with the book is that it tries to be too clever. The back has a quote comparing this to The Screwtape Letters, something that immediately caught my interest. My expectation was set far too high because C. S. Lewis is a very high bar to get over, something McCullough does not manage. A lot of the phrasing apes the nifty paradoxical style of G. K. Chesterton, though again it just did not work for me. The book ends with a bunch of posthumous letters that were either never sent or found later. The earlier, presumably chronological letters, have notes guiding the reader to specific posthumous letters which have more or less related discussions. Again, I found this more artificially clever than genuinely interesting. Reading this book was very unsatisfying to me, even though I agree with the a lot of the ideas.

Not recommended--the structuring and style obscures the content too much.

TV Review: Untamed (2025)

Untamed (2025) created by Elle and Mark L. Smith

A young woman falls off of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, almost taking out two mountain climbers coming up the face. National Park rangers show up to investigate, including the Investigative Services Branch Agent Kyle Turner (Eric Bana). He's a bit of a prima dona and is clearly very competent but not very popular with the regular rangers. For help (and to keep tabs on Turner), he's assigned the relatively new Ranger Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago), who came over from the Los Angeles police department. They have an uneasy but growing professional relationship as they work to discover who the girl is and why she ran off the cliff edge. The investigation involves an odd assortment of park employees and residents (including a hippie compound hiding out inside the park) and a lot of painful history for Turner. His young son died six years ago in the park under horrible circumstances, an event that did a lot of damage to him.

The story begins with interesting mystery and good character development. The cinematography is beautiful and the unfolding of the mystery is handled well if slowly. Turner's backstory is very moving and Bana gives a great performance that buoys up the slower moments of the show. Unfortunately, a lot of the elements become very familiar and the last two episodes of the six-episode arc look more like a soap opera than a mystery thriller. I was losing interest fast but they managed to finish out before I lost patience.

Barely recommended--watch for the scenery and the good acting.

Currently (March 2026) this is only streaming on Netflix.

Book Review: Justice League Unlimited Vol. 1 by M. Waid et al.

Justice League Unlimited Volume 1: Into the Inferno written by Mark Waid, art by Dan Mora, and colors by Tamra Bonvillain

The Justice League has reformed and includes every meta-human on Earth, earthling or not. They've banded together just in time to face The Inferno, a mysterious organization that is heavily financed, highly powerful, and completely random. They're after South African mines, the Amazon rain forest, and the G20 world leaders. Inferno also manages to get a spy on The Watchtower, a large space station that is the League's headquarters. If that weren't enough problems, recent events in the DC universe have mixed up where meta-humans' superpowers have gone, so the League also has a project trying to return superpowers to their original owners (including members of the JL). 

The story is action-packed and sprawling, just the sort of situation you want for the ultimate superhero team-up. The cast is so huge that it includes characters I have never heard of before. I am not sure if they are old, obscure characters or brand-new ones. Whatever the situation, they are well-developed enough to be interesting, a bit of a trick in a single volume. The whole package is entertaining.

Recommended for DC fans.

Movie Review: The Princess Bride (1987)

The Princess Bride (1987) directed by Rob Reiner

This classic (almost forty years old!) adventure film has it all--swashbuckling action, comedy, romance, dramatic confrontations, and creative world building. The hero Westley (Cary Elwes) is a lowly farmhand in love with the beautiful Buttercup (Robin Wright), who likes to boss him around but has affection for him. He is unexpectedly kidnapped by the Dread Pirate Roberts, who takes no prisoners, leaving Buttercup inconsolable. Five years later, she is engaged to Prince Humperdink (Chris Sarandon), a schemer who has lots of other plans besides marriage. He has Buttercup kidnapped by a trio of brigands who will take her to Guilder, his country's sworn enemy, and leave her dead body on the frontier. As they sail off to the other coast, a ship comes up behind them, piloted by a man in black who is after the soon-to-be princess bride. 

If you haven't seen this film, I don't want to spoil any surprises that come as the plot unfolds. Things move along at a great pace with a lot of character details given to the whole cast. All the actors give fine performances. The fight scenes are well-choreographed and the early sword fight between the man in black and one of the brigands is a great treat, as great as the sword play back in the 1940s and 1950s with people like Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone. The movie is very delightful and well worth watching. If you haven't seen this film, you really should.

Highly recommended.

Game Reviews: Scott Almes Solo Game Sampler

Here's some reviews of games designed by Scott Almes to be played solo. They are all published by Button Shy, so they are all 18-card games. The Simply Solo games are crafted to be "one player only, light on rules, and big on replayability."

He's designed more games than I am listing here, these are just the ones I have.

Food Chain Island

An island full of animals is the perfect place for a food pyramid scheme! The cards are laid out in a four by four grid of animals, each with a number that represents its size and a special rule on the card. The objective is to have as few animals as possible left on the island. Play stops when no animal can eat another because the numbers are too far apart or the cards are too far apart in the play area. 

The animals are only allowed to eat orthogonally and only a number that is 1, 2, or 3 less than its own number. So the Rat (#5 card) can only eat the Lizard (#4), the Mouse (#3), or the Spider (#2). The predator card moves on top of the prey card, replacing it on the island. If it eats again, the stack of cards gets even bigger. Written on the bottom of each card is a special rule that must be followed after the predator eats another card. The Rat says "Move one animal 2 spaces," which could be the Rat or any other critter still on the island. The lower numbered cards have more useful abilities. The game also has cards for the Whale and the Shark that can be used at any time to help the player rearrange the other cards to maximize eating. The Whale and the Shark don't eat (poor things!).

The player wins if only one, two, or three animals (stacks of cards) are left on the island.

Middle of a game

While the art is cute, I found the game not very thematic. Some of the food chains are not quite convincing (sure, the Rat is bigger than the Mouse but would it really eat a cousin?). Some abilities are thematic (the Bat can fly around to anywhere), others are just random (moving other cards or requiring certain actions to be taken). The game mechanics make you plan ahead as much as you can, so there's a little brain burning going on but nothing too tough. Occasional layouts are hard to manipulate into a successful outcome. I was never excited to come back to this game the couple of times I tried it. It isn't bad but it isn't my thing.

The game does have expansions but I don't have them and thus haven't tried them. Maybe they would spice things up.

Mildly recommended.

The Royal Limited

It's the swinging Sixties in England, where celebs are traveling in style which means they travel by train. Regular people want a chance to see them, so they get on the trains too! To support their endeavors, the player will build a train and populate it with celebrities and common folk. The game has twelve Train/Passenger cards, five VIP cards, and one Conductor card. The Conductor is used as a timer, keeping track of the four rounds of the game (the card is rotated at the end of each round). At the beginning of the game, the player draws two random VIPs and uses either side of the card.

At the beginning of a round, the player draws five cards from the Train/Passenger deck. Each card has a color (all pastels--either blue, green, or red) and a number (from 0 to 3). If a card is played as a train card, the player has to discard cards from their hand equal to the number on the card. Subsequent Train cards must not have the same number or color as the rightmost train card. That's how the train is built.

The player can also place a Passenger or VIP onto one of the train cards. The color or number of the occupant must match the Train card's color or number. VIPs only have a color, though some of them have no color and can be put in any train card. But the VIPs have special requirements, like being placed between specific values of passengers or in specific cars after the train is three cars long. So picky!

Once an occupant is placed, the special ability at the bottom of the Train card is activated and must be followed. Once the player is out of cards or doesn't (or can't) play any cards, the round is over. The Conductor card rotates (assuming it's not the end of the fourth round), any cards still in hand are discarded, and five new cards are drawn. 

A final situation--not good!

The score at the end adds up all unused cards (including unused VIPs) and an unoccupied Train cards. The picture above shows a score of six--five unused cards and one empty train car. Four or more is a loss, two makes you a Beginning Conductor, 0 makes you the Royal Conductor.

I found the game very fiddly and arbitrary. I was constantly scoring two to four points after spending a lot of time thinking about moves and rewinding moves that turned into impossible situations. For me, there are too many arbitrary requirements. Having VIPs restricted to certain colors and placing a train car with a different number and color created a lot of unfun tension. I just don't enjoy playing the game. I looked at some strategy tips online and they helped a little with scores but I still haven't gotten a zero score.

The game does have expansions but I don't have them and thus haven't tried them. Maybe they would get the engine running better.

Not recommended.

Unsurmountable

I previously reviewed this game here. Below is a cut-and-paste of parts of the review!

Unsurmountable challenges the player to build a continuous path up a mountain. Play starts with a "base camp" which is a row of five face-up cards. The rules are simple. The player can either place the leftmost card of the base camp on the mountain or use an ability listed on the base camp cards (the card with the ability gets discarded, so use wisely). The mountain is built up as a triangle--cards can only go on higher levels if there are two adjacent cards beneath it. The bottom row has a limit of four cards, the next a limit of three, the next a limit of two, and only one on the top.

A completed mountain with base camp

As the cards are put down, the paths don't have to connect. It's okay to have dead ends or cards that are not part of the ascent. The path has to start from the bottom edge of the mountain and go all the way up to the middle of the top card (the top card does not need the path exiting on the very top). A helicopter card is set aside as a one-use ability--the player can take a base camp card and put it on the bottom of the draw deck. The challenge of the game is to plan ahead in using the cards to build the path or switch things around with the abilities.

The game plays quickly (in about ten minutes) and is a lot of fun, especially trying to plan ahead with the cards. Making a trail isn't too hard until you start using the other limitations (like only one type of card per level or per side), adding more things to plan ahead for. I found myself not using the helicopter. It's nice thematically but the base camp would have to have be a bad combination to make it feel necessary.

The game does have expansions and I have enjoyed playing with them. See my review for more details.

Recommended.

A Nice Cuppa

The player is just trying to relax and make a cup of tea to soothe away the worries of everyday living. It's a simple seven-step process, from selecting a flavor of tea to the enjoyment of said tea. But the worries are ready to make trouble for you. 

Seven cards represent the Steps to make tea. The player shuffles these and plays them out in a random order, with the Focused side up (more about the other, Distracted side later). Seven of the ten Worry cards are shuffled and placed face down under the seven Steps. 

An initial set-up

On a turn, the player flips up one Worry then proceeds down the line of worries from left to right, performing the action listed on the bottom of the card. The actions make the player move around the Steps cards, which could be beneficial or could create problems. After the Worry cards have all activated, then all the Steps that are above an active Worry card are flipped. The other side of the Step cards are the Distracted side, though throughout the game they will flip back and forth. Once the flips are done, if any Worry cards are below a Focused Step, they are removed. As a final action that is optional, the player can swap the places of two adjacent Step cards. Then a new round begins. Rounds continue until the final Worry card is flipped up. Then the player has a last round without flipping a Worry card (since they are all flipped) but doing the other actions (performing the Worry actions, flipping cards, eliminating Worries under Focused Steps, and maybe swapping two neighboring cards).

For a score, all cards to the left of Step 1 are discarded (hopefully none if Step 1 is the leftmost card!). All the cards in ascending order from 1 are kept until there is a number lower than the previous one. The rest of the Steps cards after that are discarded. The player scores two points for every Focused Step card, one point for every Distracted one, and loses one point for every remaining Worry card.

Final scoring situation

The game moves smoothly and it is easy to see how you have to manipulate the card order. Planning to get the cards in proper order, flipped to the Focused side while removing Worry cards is the challenge. The slow build up of greater complications creates more tension, especially if the player gets all seven cards in the right order before the game is done. I found the challenge interesting and not overly taxing. The Worry cards are usually in different orders and the player doesn't see all the same cards every game, making for a lot of replayability.

The game does have expansions and I do have them but haven't tried them. I haven't played the base game enough to move on to more complicated Worries!

Recommended.

So it's tough for me to say whether I like Unsurmountable or A Nice Cuppa more. They both provide interesting puzzles that are not overly complicated or overly restricted. They give a nice brain-burn without brain-melt. I will definitely keep playing them both.