PERHAPS the biggest film release in some time, Godzilla vs Kong lands quietly in the UK. A huge launch over in China should see this MonsterVerse mashup earn back its budget, but, closer to home, it’s video on demand only.

One is a giant, prehistoric sea creature with a penchant for distraction. The other an oversized ape, the so-called eighth wonder of the world, also with a penchant for distraction. With Godzilla and King Kong not having shared screen time since 1963, Godzilla vs Kong has been a long time coming for fans.

From Death Note director Adam Wingard, the film serves as a direct sequel to both 2017’s Kong: Skull Island and 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters. It’s the fourth in Legendary’s MonsterVerse and sees role reprisals for Kyle Chandler and Millie Bobby Brown. The real stars of the show, however, can only be the film’s titular behemoths. You’re not checking into this one for intellectual stimulation. The bigger, the badder, the better.

To that end, Godzilla vs Kong delivers in bucket loads. 50 years of growth have seen Kong triple in height. At just 104 feet, 2017’s King would have been no match for the 393 foot Godzilla. Now? He’s 337 feet and ready for a clash of the ages.

Getting to the point takes rather longer than one would hope - 40 minutes of exposition drag in the lead up to the first meeting of lizard and ape - and a sense that there’s little point to it all will be more apparent to home viewers than might have been the case in cinemas. That said, there’s something pure and inexplicably enjoyable in those scenes that allow Godzilla and Kong to simply let rip. It’s hard to imagine that those seeking spectacle will come away all that disappointed.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, a quick word for Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari.

Semi-autobiographical in construction, the film tells the story of a family of South Korean immigrants who try to make it in rural America during the 1980s. Steven Yeun leads an outstanding cast and has quite rightly received Academy Award attention. As has the film itself.

Chung’s script shifts betwixt Korean and English, utilising a sparing score to heighten the humility of the whole. It’s gently, radically, engaging material and a world away from massive battling beasts.