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!
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday December 09th, 2025
File under: Did nobody read the script?
Whilst this is based on 'true events' I can't judge the veracity of the story or the characters of the people it's portraying. I can only judge it as a film. And quite simply, this is one of the most misjudged films I've ever seen. Most of the film has the tone of a regular domestic drama, of a man making poor life choices and then learning to deal with the consequences.
But these are not poor choices, they are the work of a borderline psychopath. A serial, compulsive, inveterate liar who's selfishness wrecks the lives of just about every person who he comes in to contact with.
You can gloss over the traumatising effects of armed robbery in a film if you make it slapstick enough, and that's clearly the memo that Peter Dinklage got, as he plays his character superbly as a panto villain.
But you can't gloss over inveigling your way into a divorcees life by spying on her and then ingratiating yourself with her teenage daughters by lavishing them with gifts. Which you've stolen. These scenes are played first as a rom-com meet-cute and then as a heartwarming family drama. I watched the whole thing through gritted teeth, dumbstruck that nobody seemed to have realised that this constitutes sexual assault.
The film does show the character coming to terms with what he's done and the harm he's caused. But by failing to honestly portray the pathological behaviour needed to get to that point, that realisation comes across as self-serving and self-pitying.
Absolutely baffling how this got made.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday December 06th, 2025
He's a lumberjack and he's ok
This film is a curious mix of artifice and naturalism. On the one hand, the natural lighting of the American landscape is down to earth and gritty. But we're so used to unnatural lighting in films that it invites us to think about the production. The use of the 3:2 aspect ratio literally puts a frame around the screen, also reminding you of the artifice and craft involved.
The camera work switches modes depending on the moment, sometimes staying still for an entire scene, sometimes locking to the character and moving the world around them. It all works well and it's always engaging and effective. But sadly the story or characters didn't draw me in enough to land with me.
The film puts a lot of effort into portraying Joel Edgerton's logger as a decent and kind every-man and completely succeeds, but he's just not interesting. Every aspect of his personality is almost entirely sanded off until the only thing we can really say about him is that he's a hard worker and quietly spoken.
None of the other characters that he meets throughout his life pique much interest as most of the dialogue is theatrical and staged. Each character espousing their opinions at each other, none of it ever connecting with each other or with the viewer.
The worst aspect is the music which is just awful. Plinky-plonk pianos play wistfully, alluding to a tune, alluding to emotion, alluding to meaning but never actually generating any. It's the film soundtrack equivalent of a Coldplay or U2 record. A well crafted shell that sounds important but offers nothing.
Which is a slightly mean way to describe this film. The expanse of the landscape, the length of the time-frame and the philosophising of the script allude to a meaning that the plot and characters simply can't provide.
It's worth a watch for the beautifully shot American forests but nothing more.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, drama, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday December 04th, 2025
Joyful and Triumphant
A new film from Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker is always a highlight of the year.
Whilst their recent films have gradually expanded the narrative aspect, increasing the amount of plot and the runtime, this goes back to basics a little, re-focusing on what they do best.
Which is, quite simply, generate empathy.
We get to spend some time with a small family, moving back to Taipei and trying to make a life for themselves running a small noodle stand. There's nothing extraordinary in the plot to create drama or tension. It's all supplied by the characters and the never ending human ability to generate love and friction out of nothing.
Lord only knows how they manage to do this so effortlessly. It all seems so simple and easy. Like Shih-Ching Tsou just placed a camera and let everything play out. But if it were that simple, literally everyone would be doing it and these kind of films would be ten a penny. Only the incredible rarity of films as effective and moving as this indicates that it's a work of rare talent.
There is one revelation in the film which has already been done so dramatically by a UK soap opera that it's passed into British folklore. Which, admittedly, took me out of the scene and their lives for a moment.
But then at the end of the film, a look is exchanged. Lasting for a fleeting moment, barely more than a few frames, it reduced me to such a blubbering wreck that my mind and my heart are still with them and their beautiful, messy lives, days after the film finished.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, thriller, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday November 30th, 2025
Paul Thomas Anderson is an idiot.
Paul Thomas Anderson is an idiot. What the hell is he thinking? This film is two hours and forty two minutes long. It should be slow and languid, allowing the characters to slowly chew over the themes of the film with endless expositionary dialogue.
Instead, this film starts at rocket speed, the opening salvo is an entire two hour long movie edited into thirty minutes. Come along, keep up, chop-chop.
After that, it only slightly lessens the pace. The next two and a bit hours, effectively being one extended chase sequence, manages to pack in more ideas than most multi-series tv epics.
If PTA wanted to make money, he'd split this up into one hours episodes, show every single story thread to it's conclusion and get Amazon/Netflix/HBO to pay umpty-million dollars per episode for five series at ten episodes a pop.
What an idiot.
Thankfully PTA's poor financial decision making has gifted us with an absolute banger of a movie.
After his radical activism past finally catches up with him, Bob (played by DiCaprio) is separated from his daughter, Willa (played by Chase Infiniti), and spends the rest of the film desperately trying to catch up with her. Fair play to Leo, he's taken on a role here where he's very much not the hero. Hell, he's not even the main character. Instead, much of the film is spent following him as the main story happens around him. Bob is persistent but does nothing to affect the plot.
Instead, the film is very clear on who and what is making things happen as a wildly antagonistic ecosystem of interests battle each other out. From the militarised police/immigration control to the left-wing, pro-community organisers to the wealthy elite that own the industries that employ the immigrants and benefit from both sides. It's tempting to say that we see this escalating battle play out through Bob's eyes but he's mostly oblivious to it, focusing entirely on keeping his own shit together and finding his daughter.
There's no question as to who the true hero's of the movie are: All the regular people who take the time to help Bob and Willa. Highly organised, highly motivated and fighting tooth and nail, risking everything to help out people they don't even know for no more reason than they're on the same side. Benicio Del Toro turns up in a minor cameo role and nearly steals the film. Without wishing to belabour the point, if PTA was after the money, there's a whole spin off series right there.
The breadth of the political vista on display here is breathtaking. It's a breakneck tour of the sharp end of the US immigration 'debate' and its consequences.
Another notable thing about this movie is its depiction of the police and the elites that control them. Make them too dangerous and they can become exciting and a little bit sexy. But lean too heavily into mockery and you can lessen their danger to ordinary people and the fear they can inspire. This film walks the line between the two perfectly.
Wonderfully, we get to see the things they love about themselves subtly used against them. They think they're cool, heroic and suave, better than the 'wetbacks' they're brutalising. But the reality is the very symbols of their power and masculinity are silly, preposterous and insecure. "Why is your shirt so tight?" should go down as one of the truly great pieces of movie dialogue.
And finally, I loved the way the character of Willa is treated. She's never victimised by the film, even though she's the only character who has had no say in the unfolding events. It's really quite something to see such a profound character arc in a character who has almost no agency.
Like I said at the start, Paul Thomas Anderson is a genius.