Tags: blog, film, action, sci-fi, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday January 11th, 2026
This one has legs
Oh what an absolute blast!
The plot is simple, the script is tight. There's a protagonist, there's an antagonist and that's it. No extra bells and whistles, no side plots or machinations and everything contains only what it needs to.
The action scenes are terrific. They start off merely ok, but get better and better as the film goes on. Whereas most action movies try to make everything look cool and amazing, P:B instead leans into it's weirdness. The focus is on action that is clever, inventive and funny. There's one fight scene that has Jackie Chan levels of wit and that's not a comparison I make lightly. It's goofy as hell and has fun with it.
Did I say there's 'a' (singular) protagonist, with no extra bells and whistles? That was a bit of a lie. Whilst, Dek's journey is clearly laid out, no such clear explanation is given for Thia. The film very intentionally hides the fact that she's actually the main plot driver of the film and that her character arc is just as important as Dek. The two dovetail together beautifully.
It's a nice little detail for those who want something to mentally chew on in their big, silly, dumb action movies.
But whilst P:B is certainly big and silly, it isn't dumb. It treats it's audience with respect and treats it's subjects with care. The number of great Predator movies stood at One before Dan Trachtenberg came along and now after Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers he's on a personal hat-trick.
Best popcorn action movie for years.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, tv, comedy, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Friday January 09th, 2026
The Good-ish place
The problem with having a really great concept and then nailing the execution on your first try is how do you follow it up?
The first series of A Man on the Inside is such a perfect idea and so well executed that it's difficult how to see how the same trick could be pulled twice.
It's a problem that the show's creator, Michael Schur, has encountered before. Previous success, The Good Place, had one of the all time greatest sit-com first series, ending with a bang that made simply repeating the formula impossible.1
And you can see the lessons learned from that shows evolution on display here, A Man on the Inside doesn't try to pull the same trick twice. For a start, Charles Nieuwendyk is actually good at his job now. He's grown and improved.
Now the 'inside' is a university campus that Charles must infiltrate by posing as a temporary lecturer. The contrast is obvious, going from old people nearing the end of their life to young people just starting there's. Which makes it curious that the show makes no use of that switch whatsoever. The students barely exist in this, instead it concerns itself mostly with the teaching staff whilst also pulling across half the cast from the last series as well.
It ends up having too many characters to keep track of to truly make any of them stick. There's too many stories that start and end neatly in the same episode. Everything rattles along a little too quickly for its own good.
The flip-side is that there's always something happening and nothing ever stands still. It never suffers from trying to replicate it's past success, it's too busy moving forward. Plus, having such a wide variety of characters means that there's always someone or somewhere to pull a joke from. This season is consistently, effortlessly funny.
It also features a genuinely great heist in its penultimate episode. It's no Relay or How to Blow Up a Pipeline but it actually feels believable.
It's let down a bit by the final episode which doesn't really make sense. But the ride to get there is a fun and entertaining jaunt. Just don't expect the same level of heart as the first series or anything like the depth of The Good Place.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. To be clear, the following series of The Good Place are fantastic as well.
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Tags: blog, film, thriller, comedy, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday January 07th, 2026
I mean, say what you like about the tenets of New Apostolic Reformationism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
Three films in to the Knives Out series and I'm beginning to understand how Rian Johnson sees the murder mystery genre. He views these films not in terms of genre but in terms of form, like a limerick or haiku. He's not interested in making the perfect who-dunnit. He's interested in what he can say, using the form of a who-dunnit.
Glass Onion was a spiky and sharp skewering of tech-bro oligarchs. Wickedly funny but relatively simple in its pointedness.
Here he uses the congregation of a small town American church as a microcosm of right-wing Christianity in America. Using division and an in-group/out-group mentality to gain control and power in an ever dwindling congregation. None of which is very subtle but it is smartly done. As is the murder mystery itself, which contains enough twists, red herrings, subterfuges and revelations to work as a solid entry into the genre.
Where it stands out though is through Josh O'Connors depiction of Father Jud Duplenticy, the initial suspect in the case who must fight to clear his name. And that fight will cause him a crisis of faith.
And where it really stands out is how that crisis is depicted. Usually, films depicting doubt amongst the believers has them questioning their beliefs in their religion, their god or their church. But Father Jud's troubles are depicted more as a crisis of character. It's a crisis in his faith in himself, of whether he can truly be the person who he's trying to be.
What good will this fight do for him, if winning it means losing his sense of self?
There's a moment part way through the film, where the tension is mounting, Father Jed is being backed further into a corner and the mystery is deepening. When suddenly a character of no consequence to the film ignores the conventions of the murder mystery genre and simply asks for help on a completely unrelated and deeply personal matter. It's a breathtaking moment as we realise that this is the whole point of the film right there. We recognise the pivotal moment that's just happened, but will Father Jud?
The moments after this tell us everything about how he will handle the fight ahead.
Rian's point here, deeply made and deeply felt, is that religion isn't about Creed and doctrine. It's about Culture and the people that make and practice it. If we lose sight of that, we lose everything. If we remember it and care about people above all else, we can fight anything.
And to top it all off, this film is funny. It gets more slapstick mileage out of dead bodies than any film since Weekend at Bernie's. And there's a Big Lebowski joke that is one for the ages.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
As an addendum to this review, may I heartily recommend this four part Reith Lecture from Kwame Anthony Appiah which has stayed with me since listening to it nine years ago and helped me appreciate this movie a little more.
Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday January 04th, 2026
Next time is next time.
The first thing that Hirayama does when he steps out of his front door of a morning is look up. Every day, without fail.
He spends quite a lot of time looking upwards. Often, it's just a glance. Sometimes, like when he's is the park, surrounded by trees, he'll take the time to drink in the sky as he tilts his head back to drink his carton of milk.
He takes pictures of the leafs of the trees as the sunlight dapples through them.
What is he looking for, exactly? It's never explained.
It's a curious habit for someone who spends most of their time looking down to care for things. Hirayama works as a toilet cleaner, meticulously and methodically caring for the state of Tokyo's public toilets. And in his spare time he likes to find tiny saplings growing in inhospitable places and care for them in his small scale arboretum in his front room.
He seems happy and contented in his deliberately simple, small scale, human scale routines, all contrasted against the huge Tokyo sprawl and the colossal Skytree tower. And we're happy following those routines, following the satisfaction taken in a job well done. But why is a man who is clearly a dreamer and a thinker, whose natural instinct is to look up, looking down at toilet floors?
Why is a man who clearly cares for little things, not just for their intrinsic value, but for the value they bring to everyone around them, not caring for bigger things? Like whole people, loved ones or dear friends?
We get a hint of something in the background when his niece turns up unannounced. He doesn't break his routines though, he just lets her tag along and for a brief time he gets to care for her as well. It doesn't last for long before he gets his unaccompanied life back but not before we see something he may have lost. And may even be hiding from.
Before the film ends, he's given one more hint of a possibility of something more, something outside of his routines.
How does he feel about it?
We don't know. In an extraordinary scene we get to see all his emotions fully let go, but without an explanation as to what those emotions are.
This is a film that explains nothing. It asks so many questions but always expects you to come up with your own thoughts. This should be infuriating but the deep love it shows to its subjects, not just Hirayama but the entire world he inhabits, draws you in and captivates you.
If I were to list all the delightful small details in this film, this review would take as long as the film itself. And whatever conclusions you draw from them will be your own.
Many thanks to vga256, the creator of the kiki software this blog runs on, for recommending this film to me.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday January 01st, 2026
And why not?
Obviously this should have been posted days ago, in the arse end of 2025, but life gets in the way so I'm starting 2026 by looking back at 2025.
Top Ten lists are fun so here's my favourite movies that I watched last year. The majority of them were released in 2025, but not all. I'm not going to do a list for my favourite tv shows as A. I haven't got time and B. it would just be me writing Andor over and over and over again.
If there's anything you'd recommend I watch, then feel free to message me on Mastodon: KickingK
Number 10: Tornado
I don't think this will stick in my mind in quite the same way that Slow West did, I don't think the story is quite strong enough for that, even though the telling of it is. But what I can't get out of my mind is the cold, crispness of it. The way it depicts the biting wetness of the Scottish air is unlike anything else I've seen.
Number 9: Maria
Serendipitous that just a few months after watching this we get my personal album of the year, Lux by Rosalia. There's a thematic link between them, beyond just genres, that I can't put into words, but I can certainly feel.
Number 8: Freaky Tales
Unquestionably the most flat-out fun film on this list (only The Naked Gun matches it this year for laugh out loud enjoyment).
Number 7: Left Handed Girl
The least surprising film on this list. Another film from Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker? Of course it's amazing.
Number 6: Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues
The biggest surprise on this list. I really wasn't excited to watch this film. I'm in the minority of people who think that Best In Show is a better film than Spinal Tap. And Paul McCartney? Uuggh! But it's glorious and manages the rare trick of a sequel actually enhancing the original.
Number 5: One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson is a bit hit'n'miss for me. Some of his films are masterpieces and some of them interest me so little I can't be bothered to watch them. This was going to fall into the latter category until I saw the trailer that used Beyonce's Freedom at which point: 'Hello!' The film is everything that trailer promises and then some.
Number 4: Relay
A masterclass of how to use the background hum of politics to add weight to a film. Everything in this film has extra heft because you're personally invested in this fight. We all have our skin in this game.
Number 3: Sinners
Most ambitious film on this list by a mile. This film takes aim at the stars with a gattling gun. Occasionally it misses but mostly it hits and the results are some of the most stunning moments I've ever seen in a film.
Number 2: Ghost Cat Anzu
I think this is the most subtly subversive film I've seen this year. Karin and Anzu are the most 'Anti' of Anti-heroes imaginable. A film where the message is that it's good to be a dick as long as you're a dick to the right people. And to love the people you're surrounded by, especially if they're dicks as well. This one is wedged in my heart like a splinter. I can feel it there and I hope it never comes out.
Number 1: Bird
I'm not very optimistic about the short term prospects of, well, just about everything at the moment. And I think that Hope will be a common theme among my favourite films for the next few years, we all need to keep hoping when times are dark. So it's not really a surprise that a film with that exact theme is my favourite of the year. Deserves to be as big as The Shawshank Redemption, with which it shares it's message. I think this is better.
Honourable Mentions
Baby Assassins
Baby Assassins: 2 Babies
Baby Assassins 3: Nice Days
Baby Assassins Everyday!
For me, this year has been the year of the Mahiro & Chisato. One advantage of coming to something late is that you get to gorge yourself on the entire back catalogue. And whilst none of the films were quite good enough to make my top ten individually, cumulatively they've occupied my thoughts like only Ghost Cat Anzu and Andor have managed this year.
Tags: blog, tv, comedy, action, essential, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday December 30th, 2025
So whatever it is that makes you unhappy...I'll wreck it for you.
Just how badly can you make something and yet it still somehow works? Most of Baby Assassins Everyday seems like an attempt to answer that question. Outside the duo themselves the acting is mostly terrible. Only mostly because occasionally it's awful. Sometimes you can see the pause before an actor remembers it's their line.
The plot doesn't make much sense. The script is clunky as hell. Entire scenes go absolutely nowhere and then are completely forgotten about. Multiple characters seem only to exist for the purpose of annoying the viewer. Multiple episodes go by without a single fight scene.
The first half of this series is only held together by the effortlessly charming duo of Mahiro and Chisato. The extra space afforded by a tv show allows the two to diverge and differentiate their personalities. We see just how awkward Mahiro finds human interaction, trying her best and failing. And we see Chisato fret and care over Mahiro even more, compensating for her friend's deadpan face by turning hers into a rubber ball of expressionism, bouncing from one emote to another.
But even that is barely enough, those first six episodes are a tough watch at times.
And then the second half of the series kicks in.
Episode 7 sees the pair visit Chisato's family and hooooo boy, what an episode. No action, not even any drama, just the two of them spending quality time with people they love and loving life. It's like somebody took the sweetest bits of Bob's Burgers and just rolled them up into a single episode. This also takes the time to highlight the nature of their friendship, something that's been left open to interpretation up to now. But here it walks us right up to the point of saying it explicitly and then stops just short. Just. The message is heard loud and clear all the same.
And then from there we get an increasingly dark storyline where the two are split up and have to deal with bullying office politics and company loyalties. The shonky production is still there but seeing the two pushed to their limits, to the point of their friendship beginning to break down, by a toxic work culture is heartbreaking.
Inevitably, it all has to end in violence. Mahiro's promise to kill everyone is delivered like a marriage proposal and I sobbed my heart out.
Because the team behind Baby Assassins know exactly what they've got. They've crafted the finest queer, neurodivergent, kung-fu depiction of teenage love in the 21st century by focusing entirely on the characters and shooting people in the head.
Would it be better if it was made by people who could write and edit and act? Maybe. But somehow, the awkwardness of it all perfectly fits their characters. The only time the show isn't stilted and awkward is when they're fighting goons or goofing around with each other. At which point it's the most wonderful thing in the world.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, horror, recommended, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday December 29th, 2025
Victor was not a 'Tech Bro', ok?
Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein is, I think, the most considered film I've ever seen. The amount of care and attention is overwhelming, pause the film at any point and everything is there for a reason. Every item in the camera frame, every plot point, every camera angle, every costume, every musical beat, every word of every line of dialogue, everything, everything, everything is there because someone who is a master of their craft wanted it to be just so.
And yet... I'm sorry, I'm going to spend most of the review of a fantastic film criticising it. I've spent a month trying to write a review where I didn't do exactly this, but I've failed miserably, so here we are.
And yet... No matter how hard del Toro tries to inject everything possible into this movie, to push everything to the limit in order to jolt us out of just how comfortable we have become with the legend of Frankenstein, you always feel like there are conventions here that just won't be stepped over.
For me, Guillermo del Toro's best films1 are the ones where there's a sensation that he's not quite playing by the rules. That everything's taken a wrong turn a way back, you're not sure where, and now you can't find your way out again.
The scene where the Pale Man wakes up in Pan's Labyrinth makes your stomach turn cold because none of this is supposed to happen like that. But you've invested yourself in this and, just like Ofelia, you can't back out of it now.
So yes, the film is overwhelming. Richly, grandiosely, beautifully, horrifically so, but it never gets under your skin.
Another criticism I have is that, contrary to many opinions on the internet, I don't think the story of Victor Frankenstein resonates in our current age. For instance, this review from the excellent Blood In The Machine makes the same mistake that Guillermo del Toro makes, which is drawing parallels between Victor and today's tech bros. And, to be fair, those parallels are astute and well drawn. But the basic problem is that whilst Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg and Frankenstein are fanatical arseholes, Frankenstein is also a genius. None of our Tech oligarchs are smarter than the average caller to LBC Radio.
Trying to conflate a man who discovered the secret to creating life out of dead flesh to the man who bought twitter by accident doesn't seem right to me. These people don't create anything, they just spend and buy. If they were in this movie, they'd be Harlander. I think most of those personality-free middle-managers-who-got-exceptionally-lucky would actually quite like being compared to Frankenstein.
So what I'm left with is an exceptional film, that floods the senses with how extra it is, but never quite felt dangerous enough to truly shake me.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. And for the record my favourites are: The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy 2 and Nightmare Alley
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Tags: blog, film, thriller, recommended, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday December 28th, 2025
Crime and Mediocrity
Another gem from Kelly Reichardt sees her combining the themes of both her previous films, crime and art. Josh O'Connor plays JB, an unemployed carpenter and married father of two, who decides he wants to rob the local art gallery.
The setup and plot is completely boilerplate, about as standard a heist thriller as you can get. All the tension of the film is supplied by the incredibly skittish jazz score by Rob Mazurek, which is worth the price of entry alone. Not that there is much tension here. Reichardt's dispassionate eye takes almost every opportunity to lower the stakes, to show that JB has options. It's just that those options always have consequences.
Which brings us to the actual theme of the film. Just as First Cow isn't about crime and showing up isn't about (capital 'A') Art, The Mastermind isn't interested in the heist, it's interested in watching a privileged guy ruin his life by being unable to realise just how mediocre he really is. And just how incapable he is of taking responsibility.
About half way through the movie, as his inability to make a connection with another human being, let alone care about them or see things from their perspective, becomes painfully obvious, we realise that there's no way he's going to get away this. Not because he's too stupid, but because he hasn't realised he's not the main character in the world.
This film felt like a reaction to American Animals. The crime is almost identical, as is the comfortable backgrounds of the protagonists. But where that film failed is that it didn't want to be too harsh on it's subjects, eventually irritating with it's failure to truly condemn them.
Reichardt's take on the subject may seem dispassionate but there's no doubt on how damning her conclusion is.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, action, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday December 21st, 2025
There's little hope but the fool that I am
There’s an interesting shot near the start of this movie where Ben Richards crosses the street, weaving between the traffic. And all the cars are retro-futuristic. A vision of the future seen from the perspective of the nineteen eighties. It’s a lovely little homage to the original movie.
But it’s never made clear what this tells us about the world we're in. Is this an alternate world where their future aesthetic is our past fashion? Or is it our future that's become nostalgic for eighties design? It's never explained and whilst it's a minor and incidental detail, the films inability to explore its own setting is what causes it to fall flat on its face.
Glen Powell is excellent as Ben Richards, just the right mix of down-to-earth charisma and nothing-left-to-lose craziness. He's ably directed through a series of action set pieces by Edgar Wright who reigns in his more extravagant side but keeps everything moving forward at a decent pace. But whilst Ben's story is clearly told, everything else that's going on in the background is merely hand waived away.
The Running Man tv show is supposed to be a tool of a totalitarian government/corporation to subdue and placate its citizens, and Ben's success is supposed to be a threat to their power. But beyond the occasional piece of stulted exposition, the shape of that groundswell of support is never explained. How is Ben killing everyone supposed to undermine Josh Brolin's slimy tv exec? The answer is more torturous plot devices and a shrug.
Eventually, a character the film has long forgotten about suddenly returns to literally 7-Zark-7 the next bit of the plot. At this point the film simply gives up, gives you the most basic ending you could have imagined from the start, and leaves you wondering why you bothered investing any time in this.
It gives me no pleasure to dislike this as I absolutely love Edgar Wright, but this is an unmitigated disaster.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, drama, musical, recommended, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday December 13th, 2025
I have a web of friends everywhere
Technically, almost the entirety of this film takes place in a prison cell with just two inmates, Left wing activist Valentín Arregui (Cassian Andor, sorry, Diego Luna) and Luis Molina (Tonatiuh). One a political prisoner, the other inside for 'gross indecency', or 'being gay' in other words.
To while away the time and to take their mind off their impending torture, Molina describes his favourite movie, Kiss of the Spider Woman, starring his idol, Ingrid Luna. We then see his vivid description come to life and we get to see the film he's obsessed with as he sees it.
Which is where Jennifer Lopez comes in, playing Ingrid, her character Aurora and the villain of the movie-within-a-movie, the titular Spider Woman.
Lopez puts in a Star (capital S, should probably be a ! in there as well really) performance for the ages. She's absolutely phenomenal, all power and strength and glamour. She has the easy grace of someone whose greatest skill is making it all look so easy, big wide grins and sly winks, bang on the beat, doing something so athletic and intricate it must have taken a dozen takes.
The costumes and choreography work overtime to accentuate how much of a star she is and how much Molina adores her. In every scene she's in there's always a huge amount of action happening in the background and yet, anytime I tried to focus on any of it, I found my eyes sliding inexorably back to her, like a marble rolling towards the spout of a funnel. She's the almost literal gravitational centre point of the movie and everyone and everything in it, including the viewer, are pulled in towards her.
The movie she's in isn't even that great, Molina even admits that from the start, it's the performance of a lifetime that's the point. And it's through that performance that we get to see the two men's friendship grow.
Gradually, through the shared fantasy the two grow closer together, seeing the world through each other's eyes. Arregui begins to understand that class struggle and liberation is only worth it if you embrace the joy and freedom that it offers you, and bring everyone along for the ride. Molina starts to realise that he can find the dignity he craves in solidarity with a cause.
And all of this through the medium of Jenny-from-the-block high kicking her way through latin show tunes.
The meta-narrative of the film-within-a-film is curiously obvious. I was always aware, during each and every scene, of what the film was trying to do and say. It had a slightly distancing effect, I could never truly lose myself in a scene, always aware that I was watching a movie.
But that didn't stop that message from working. There was a cumulative effect to each scene, each one piling on top of the other to the point where I was completely invested in what was happening and why.
Watching this so soon after One Battle After Another made it feel like a lovely little companion piece to that film. Explicitly showing the joy, hope and expression behind community struggles against fascism.
And also J-Lo. Just Wow!
