Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday August 10th, 2025
I put more effort into this review than was put into the making of this film
Terrible.
1 Star simply because it passes the Bechdel test like it's not even a thing.
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday August 10th, 2025
Picking up where we left off
I've loved Danny Boyle since the start. Literally the start of Shallow Grave, when the sound of Leftfield hits you in the chest and the camera hurtles off down the streets of Edinburgh. What an introduction.
I loved him 1as his career exploded, taking him to Hollywood. I loved him as a couple of critical and commercial duds brought him back from Hollywood.
I loved him even more after his absolutely astonishing made-for-tv not-quite-movies.
So when I went to the cinema to see his ultra-low budget, niche-genre, horror film 28 Days Later it felt like there was something at stake, namely his career. It needed to prove to the wider world, people who weren't already on board the Danny Boyle fan train like I was, that he should be given money to keep on making astonishing films.
And that sense of risk was shot right through the film. It was a film that came out swinging, determined to land punch after punch, knowing this could be the last chance its creators got to be this…this much.
But post 2012 Olympics, I’ve found his work…not bad…worse…uninteresting.
-A tepid thriller - Yawn
-Apple Guy : The Movie - Pass
-Exciting young guys are now old and boring - Err, no thanks.
-Rich people : the TV show - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-What if : Not The Beatles -Absolutely Not
-The Sex PisFUCKOFF!
I haven’t watched anything of his since Trance. Some of it’s probably good but why would I bother when there’s so much more interesting stuff in the world? And what if it wasn’t good? Do I really want to watch as an artist I deeply love slides into mediocrity. No, I absolutely do not.
Boyle revisiting the world of 28…Later was not something I had any enthusiasm for, like a past-it band touring their seminal album on a re-union tour, why would I want to go back to that? Especially as the Zombie/Infected/Undead genre that 28 Days brought roaring back to life has now been thoroughly flogged to death again.
But that trailer though!
So again I go into a Danny Boyle zombie movie with a sense of trepidation, a worry that maybe this won’t work out, a sense that something is at stake. Because failure here means having to admit it’s over, that we’ve drifted too far apart. I’m risking a part of myself just by watching this movie.
Gloriously, this is Garland & Boyle pushing everything as far as they can, trying to be as fresh as possible in a very stale genre. Boyle, my Danny Boyle, is very much back.
Where to start? Firstly, whilst Garland & Boyle understand the genre, they also understand people. Almost all zombie movies and tv shows since 28 Days… have understood the former but not the latter. So here we get people who behave like people, not walking plot devices. 28 Years Later is largely free of the neo-liberal wet dreams of constant, violent individualism that pervades the Walking Dead shows.
Secondly, it’s a British movie. I mean the Brexit analogy is pretty much thrust upon it by default2 but the cutting in of old British movies, the use of actual historical archery techniques and of course, Rudyard Kipling, gives this a heft and feel that’s unique to the genre.
Visually, there’s been a lot of effort put in to just about everything. The movement of the actors playing the infected is particularly impressive. It’s not just some extras running/shuffling around going “aaarrrgghh”. Shaun of the Dead on FFWD, this is not. The motion of the infected is itself grotesque, disturbing and inhuman.
The most commented on camera technique is the use of a bank of iPhones to get a grungy, Matrix style “Arrow-Cam” effect, which is interesting and fun if not revolutionary. However, there’s a scene in a Happy Shopper that is visually stunning. It’s a situation that’s been done a thousand times before but I’ve never seen it shot like this. Shocking, grotesque and beautiful, it’s moments like this that make the film stand out from the pack.
If I have a criticism it’s that I can’t fully form an opinion on the film until I see its sequel(s). This is very much a Part 1 that ends on a To Be Continued… Which means that whilst you would be hoping that the film would wind itself so tight it explodes at the end, that doesn’t happen here. Instead, the film gently, but emotionally, tapers off into the denouement. Which, in a way, is highly atypical of the genre and another reason this film is a bit special. But it does mean that we’re going to have to wait to find out if the early promise resolves into something truly special.
It will be the first Danny Boyle film I’ve been excited about for a long, long time.
1. It’s worth pointing out that Danny Boyle usually works as a team with writer John Hodge (and later, others) and producer Andrew Macdonald. ↩
2. Mainland Britain almost entirely populated by rage-fuelled psychopaths that the rest of Europe want to stay well away from. This shit writes itself. ↩︎
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday August 02nd, 2025
In praise of mid-range TV
Great art should be challenging. Great art should challenge what is possible, should challenge what I am capable of comprehending.
But when I've got home after thirteen hours working two jobs, when I've only got a few hours to sit down and decompress, before I have to go to bed and get up ready to do it all again, I don't want to be challenged. I want to be entertained.
It's times like this that I miss the days before "prestige" tv, before multi-series story arcs and a cast of thousands. I miss being able to switch on an episode of Columbo or Quantum Leap or Star Trek TNG, know who all the characters are within the first few minutes, and then get a story with a start, a middle and an ending.
Poker Face gets this, it's not a challenging show. You don't even have to work out who the murderer is, it just shows you right off the bat. But what Poker Face also understands is that I'm not an idiot and I don't want to be condescended to.
Poker Face is smart. It just puts those smarts into producing a solid, witty, delightful story into every forty five minute episode.
It does have some concessions to modern tv mores. The first and last few episodes of each series act as story bookends, setting up and paying off Charlie Cales' dealing with the Mob and the FBI. But it's not where it's at it's best. It's at it's best in the middle episodes of the series which most closely hew to the syndicated shows like Columbo and Murder, She Wrote that it's so clearly enamoured with. Episodes 5 to 9 of Series 2 in particular is an astonishing run, every one a belter. The John Cho & Melanie Lynskey helmed "The Sleazy Georgian" is the standout. Fun, funny, smart and deeply empathetic. The kind of storytelling that makes you feel connected to the world and the people around you. That makes you feel good about going to bed and getting ready to start the day anew.
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday June 08th, 2025
Wanna see a bunch of Nazis get fucked up?
Of course you do, who wouldn't. Well boy have I got the film for you.
This is a portmanteau film featuring four, based on real-life stories (spoilers), all taking place over twenty fours hours in Oakland, 1987. And it is a blast.
The music is absolutely amazing, it is relentlessly funny, the gore is off the scale, every performance is absolutely nailed. There's a surprise guest cameo appearance from someone who abso-bloody-lutely understands the assignment.
It's a love letter to Oakland. To the eighties. To films. To kicking the shit out of Nazis. To teaching clowns how to juggle. To just having a good time.
An actual riot of a film.
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday May 31st, 2025
Outdated plot, contemporary and beautiful people
I've not seen the 1993 film that this is a remake of. It's somehow passed me by despite being a big fan of Ang Lee. So I don't know how much has changed from the original. But good lord this film feels weird at times.
The plot is characterised by the kind of high-concept, situation lead set-up common to rom-coms of the eighties and nineties. But the direction takes a little bit of a back seat, allowing the actors the time and space to make their characters entirely believable, despite the patently absurd (and staggeringly predictable) situations the plot places them in.
And it works. That time and space is where the comedy lives. There are plenty of proper belly laughs that come from nothing more than a sideways glance or muted 'harrumph'. Youn Yuh-jung's grandmother managed to steal almost every scene without even moving her face. Understated, character-led comedy is exactly my kind of thing and this film has it in spades.
If I have a criticism of the film, it's the cinematography. It's very basic and lacks flair. It's arguably not a problem for a rom-com, except... art plays a big part in this film. Both Bowen Yang and Han Gi-Chan play artists whose work is genuinely beautiful and yet the film seems almost completely un-interested in exploring that. Which is an issue when that art plays a part of one characters plot-changing and emotional decision. The moment works, the characters make it work, but it would have been so much more powerful if you saw in the art what that character saw. But the film doesn't give you that opportunity.
But I loved this film. It's relentlessly funny. And I believed in the characters even if I didn't believe in the plot. Beautiful.
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday May 20th, 2025
There's an episode of the tv series Spaced that features the greatest depiction of clubbing in cinema history. It's greatness is that it understood that a truly great night out isn't just about the club you go to. It's what you're running from, to get to where you end up. It spends most of the episode detailing the tensions and problems of the cast, the bit in the club is literally just a few minutes. But because of the time spent on the tensions and anxieties and problems and fears, you get the release of an epic night out.
Anyway...part way through the second series of Andor, fifteen episodes into a relentless narrative equivalent of a Shepard tone, there's a wedding party scene. And it goes OFF
And maybe Spaced doesn't have the best club scene anymore.
I don't think I can add much to the conversation regarding Andor's greatness, other than my slightly shonky Spaced comparisons. Pick an element: music, costumes, acting, script, anything at all, it's all superb. However, I do want to mention a couple of personal highlights.
Firstly, the brokeneness of the antagonists. Every single character working for the empire is a shell of a human being, living half a life. Too many movie and tv villains are hyper-competent, charismatic, sexy bastards. When the reality is these kind of people are deeply pathetic, emotionally limited turds.
Secondly, all of them are punsished for their loyalty and competence. Literally every single one of them is crushed by the weight of the system they are trying to uphold. If any of them had just clocked in, did the bare minimum and clocked out again they'd have been fine. But the one thing fascism absolutely demands is comformity. Stick your head up too high and it's going to get scythed off.
And lastly, if there's one point that Andor hammers home relentlessly, it's that fascism contains within it the seeds of it's own destruction. Fascism won't work, can never work, will never work because it will always create the conditions that will bring it down. The harder the Empire pushes, the more the people push back.
To go back to that G.K. Chesterton "quote"
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
Andor tells us that whilst that victory is long, painful and must be fought for, it is inevitable.
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday May 11th, 2025
Turns out that "Borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered '80s" is great, actually
Lisa is a misunderstood, lonely teenager. Her dad doesn't understand her, her cheerleading step-sister doesn't understand her and mental health nurse step mum positively hates her. She spends her free time in a decrepit grave yard talking to the gravestone of a dead poet, whose zombified body she inadvertently resurrects.
Cue journey of self discovery as she tries to hide, fix and date her hot zombie poet boyfriend. The problem being that what Lisa discovers about herself is that she's an absolute dick.
And this is what makes this film an absolute riot. Whilst Lisa is always entirely relatable (all of us were a this self obsessed at one point in our teenage years), watching her gradually embrace her new found self confidence to the point of serial murderer is glorious.
A Diablo Cody script being sharp, warm, funny and insightful is hardly a surprise. But Zelda Williams 80's-to-the-Max aesthetic really is. It's not nostalgic as she doesn't remember the eighties. Instead, she leans into the idea that this is an eighties teen comedy made by someone who's never experienced the actual eighties and instead has pieced together what it was like from pop-culture. It's familiar but new and I loved it.
One of the films of the year for me, an absolute belter.
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday May 11th, 2025
Dick Turpin and His Essex Gang
Over the last ten years or so, sit-coms seem to have gradually shifted in tone. Less snark, less sarcasm, less satire. More inclusive, more diverse, more hopeful. It's not just that the news is so relentlessly grim that people want something to take their minds off it. It's also the fact that the news is so utterly stupid that it's impossible to satirise, so completely shameless in its stupidity that even if you did there would be no point.
And whilst I loved the snark, sarcasm and satire of the comedies of my youth. A combination of wearied age and experience means that I'm very much enjoying this new inclusivity, diversity and hope.
The latest sit-com to push those qualities to the fore is Noel Fielding's Dick Turpin, which is amiable and good natured to a fault. It's border-line 18th Century Ted Lasso.
Dick wants to be a famous highway man but also wants to be good and kind. Much of the comedy comes from this incongruity. His crew want to be a team of tough criminals, but they also want to be *themselves*. Even more comedy from this. It's often delightful, occasionally laugh out loud funny.
There's a couple of stand out performances: Hugh Bonneville is in cracking form, and Kiri Flaherty is a delight as Little Karen.
Only Connor Swindells disappoints as Tommy Silversides and that's only because his character is so clearly inspired by Lord Flashheart that it's impossible to avoid the comparison. And comparison to Rick Mayall is never going to end well.
So it's not Blackadder. It is however, very much Maid Marion and Her Merry Men. Which either means my initial observation about the changing tone of sit-coms was wildly incorrect. Or Maid Marion... was massively ahead of its time.
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday April 15th, 2024
Peak Minty
Whisper it: I think this is the funniest thing on iPlayer.
Diane Morgan has taken the essence of the 80's British sitcom, it's idiotic main characters, it's absurdly contrived plots, it's mixture of utter banality and occasional surrealism. She's jettisoned all of the set-up, all of the fluff and filler, anything that isn't generating a laugh every few seconds. And she's ended up with a fifteen minute show that's a rocket fuelled gem.
She's improved upon her influences in just about every way. Let's start with the main character, Mandy.
Each episode see's Mandy Carter trying her hand at a new job, usually at the behest of her exasperated Job Seeker's officer. And each episode it goes disastrously wrong. But not because Mandy's stupid or clumsy. It's usually because she's just bored (something we can all relate to at work) or distracted. Sometimes it's because she's actually hyper-competent and ends up taking things too far.
Because Morgan clearly loves Mandy. Mandy isn't an object of scorn or ridicule. We laugh at her, yes, but it's always with affection. Mandy is, in a very bizarre way, somebody to be admired.
Then there's the celebrity cameos. A combination of Morgan's eye for casting and the fact that each episode is so brief means that there's an avalanche of celebrities of all stripes prepared to give up a day (probably significantly less) for filming, all looking like they're having the time of their lives.
And each one is a surprise. Either because the cameo is deliciously played against type (Sonia-from-Eastenders channeling her inner Don Logan from Sexy Beast is an absolute treat) or because the setup is so misdirected and obfuscated that the punchline is glorious.
And finally there's the surrealism. The sheer pace of the jokes and inventiveness leaves no place for something as boring as reality. If it's funny: it's in. So even though the form of the jokes feel familiar, the way each joke jackknifes the plot further away from mundanity makes everything a surprise.
Just glorious, an absolute gem.
Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking...