What a piece of work is Kong. The big ape with a heart of gold has been hanging around America's popular consciousness for decades now - almost like it was the Empire State Building. Now in his third official cinematic incarnation, thanks to director Peter Jackson, the supersized simian is just another lonely guy with a tragic weak spot for the blondes. Or is he, somehow, symbolic? "Kong has emerged in the last decades as one of our great culture heroes," wrote critic Elliott Stein in "Cinema: A Critical Dictionary," "an absorbed and central personage of the American mythos." [More]