Tags: blog, film, horror, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday February 01st, 2026
Portrait of a Bin on Fire
Celine Sciamma can make a decent claim to be the greatest living film maker. The only other film makers whose work I anticipate as eagerly are Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou. Look back through Celine's back catalogue and it's wall to wall classics. Not just the ones she directs herself but the one's she writes and hands off to other people as well.
Here she co-writes alongside the star of A Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Noemie Merlant, who also directs and stars. Quite frankly I'm not sure who's showing off more.
Set in heat wave stricken Marseilles, three very different friends meet a good looking neighbour and party with him. It all goes horrifyingly wrong.
The Balconettes returns to themes of A Portrait... but whereas that film kept a very firm lid on it's anger, only letting it escape in a long pressurised scream at the very end, this film comes out howling and swinging from the very first shot.
That first shot being an extraordinary, sweeping, one-take crane shot of an entire Marseilles neighbourhood that settles onto a super tight close up of one of the greatest murders ever committed to screen.
After that it goes a little off the rails. A lot off the rails. It pin wheels around between erotic thriller, body horror, feminist revenge, heist job, intimate friendship drama and slapstick comedy. It is ridiculous and knowingly so. It plays with it's ridiculousness, plays with the absurdities of life that put the characters into such ridiculous situations and is absolutely furious about it.
It never lets that fury overwhelm anything though, just uses it as fuel for whatever direction the film is heading in at that particular moment.
It's a difficult film to assess critically because it never settles on one particular genre long enough to be judged along side other similar films. But who cares about assessing a film critically when you're having this much fun, like being on a psychological, philosophical, fairground waltzer. There's nothing else quite like this and that is arguably its greatest strength.
So yet another belter from Celine Sciamma gets tossed on her pile of outright classics. A pile that's beginning to rival the likes of Powell & Pressburger for both depth and breadth.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, animation, sci-fi, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday January 27th, 2026
Emo's in Space
OK, let's start with a controversial opinion/hill I will die on: Luke Skywalker is a bland, boring, uninteresting and unlikeable character who only works because the rest of the movie(s) is so spectacular. It's not until Rian Johnson turns up that he actually gets a personality.
Sadly, Lesbian Space Princess steals Luke's personality traits for it's main character, Saira, and then proceeds to do absolutely nothing with it.
She is terminally dull. She starts the film with no personality beyond 'Sad she's been dumped' and ends with no personality beyond 'Is OK to have been dumped'.
The main villains of the piece though, the Straight White Malians, actually are kind of fun. They look out for each other, role play through their feelings, try to build for a better future. They're arseholes, obviously, but they're still more rounded, lively characters than Saira. They even have a multiplayer Daytona cabinet.
I really don't think that the film was aiming for a message that being a straight white male is more interesting and fun than being a lesbian, but it accidentally implies it all the same.
Does the film get away with such a dour character by making the surrounding world vibrant and interesting? No. There's less plot and less comedy here than a ten minute episode of Pinky and the Brain. Everything is so incredibly slow and obvious. The jokes are good but when you can see all of them coming round the corner they lose their shine.
If you want an hour and a half of knockabout screwball animated comedy, just go watch The Day the Earth Blew Up, it's great.
You could edit this down to a decent half hour episode of a tv series, especially if it took it's cues from the other great tv show about lesbian princesses in space1 instead of the film it's actually riffing off, what's it called? You know... the one about the space hairdresser and the cowboy… he’s got a tin foil pal and a pedal bin.
Spaceballs! That's the one. Just go watch Spaceballs again.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. The actual hill I will die on is that She-Ra and the Princesses of power is one of the truly great modern tv sagas. If it was a re-booted He-Man, N.D.Stephenson would be lauded alongside Genndy Tartakovsky as one of animated tv's current heroes.
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Tags: blog, film, drama, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday January 25th, 2026
Failing and succeeding at the same time.
The endlessly watchable Brendan Fraser stars as Philip, a struggling actor in Tokyo who falls into a job playing fictional parts in peoples real lives. And finds a lot more than he expects when asked to play the role of a father to a young girl applying for an elite school.
This is a film all about a friction. The friction between how we try to help the people around us and the lies we tell to them and ourselves in order to do so. Can a good deed ever be meaningful and lasting if it's built on a lie?
But the friction between dualities is everywhere you look in this film. It's both a Hollywood film set in Japan and a Japanese film starring an American. It's a crowd pleasing mainstream film with a clear theme and an art house film that leaves much to interpretation.
The problem is, that whilst the film clearly wants to explore that friction, it doesn't seem to know quite how to resolve it. It's an interesting area but the moment Philip lies to Mia, the young girl at the heart of the film, my brain noped out at the obvious ethical red line that's been stepped over.
Instead the film is at it's best in the final half hour. When everything starts going wrong and it shatters into a kaleidoscope of stories, each one following a different character, that's when the film suddenly bursts into life. Free from the awkward balancing act of the first part of the film it's able to let each story shine and finally get under the skin of the characters.
Maybe that's the message of the film, that you can only be yourself when your free from the lies. But it's not convincing and the resolution doesn't manage to square anything off.
A special mention has to go to the cinematography which is simple, basic even, but has an incredible eye for a good shot. It's interested in it's subjects and in turn you can't help but be drawn in. Keep an eye out for the range of fabulous sweaters worn throughout the film, the camera crew certainly did. And one scene involving the old man and a much older tree is just stunning, a genuine show stopper of a moment.
It's an odd film to recommend because I feel that, on it's own terms, it fails at what it's trying to do. But it succeeds at everything around it so spectacularly that everyone will get something meaningful from it.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, comedy, horror, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday January 17th, 2026
When there's no room left in hell, there's an app for that
The party goers at a queer night club have to work together to defend themselves in the middle of a zombie outbreak. Drag queens, butch lesbians and everyone in between fighting the apocalypse.
The early word of mouth of this was pretty poor but I'm glad to say I had a pretty good time with this. Mostly because it "fixed" a couple of issues I often have with the zombie movie genre.
Problem One: People arguing with each other to create drama. Usually, this is just poor script writing. The characters are tense and scared, how do we show that? Just have them yell at each other for no reason. But when those characters are drag queens, it's a delight. "You don't look a day over 50... pounds over a weight". It just works.
Problem Two: Society goes to shit instantly as everyone selfishly fights everyone else for precious resources. This one never sits right with me. Watch any real life large scale disaster and you'll see communities mostly coming together to help each other. Humans are social, empathetic creatures designed to work best in small groups. This idea that as soon as the shit hits the fan, people turn on each other is usually nonsense.
Here, whilst everyone bickers and argues (see point one) there's never any question that the group are sticking up for each other. It may be a team of individuals but they're definitely a team.
And what individuals they are. The cast are uniformly excellent, with clearly defined and memorable characters. Margaret Cho in particular is fantastic, having a truly fantastic entrance and an equally dramatic exit.
Sadly, the main draw of the film for me, Katy O'Brian, is massively under-utilised. Despite being at the centre of the story she doesn't actually get to do anything.
Worse, the cinematography lets everyone down quite badly, everything looks flat and dull. I can't remember ever watching a film where there's such a contrast between the glamorous costumes and the unstylish way in which they are shot. I know this is a super-low budget film, but The Paragon has no budget and still looks far better than this.
Thankfully, the soundtrack manages to just about hold everything together. There are dirty, electro pop bangers dropping all over the place. Even when the script is de-flating, there's a tune to keep everything pumped up.
Ultimately this is far too thin a piece to truly recommend but it's still a fun entry into the low-budget zombie horror comedy genre.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
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, 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, 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.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, comedy, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday November 29th, 2025
The trying is the point
First of all, let's get this out the way: it's a Spinal Tap movie. The jokes are amazing. Wallace & Gromit no longer have the best cheese related jokes.
But the biggest joy of the movie is in watching three old guys heal their friendship.
When we meet them at the start of this new film, they've been separated for a long time. Each has poured their energy into new obsessions. Nigel sells cheese and/or guitars, David writes muzak and Derek runs a glue museum. All of them are a little reluctant to get back together, fearing their past divisions are insurmountable.
But as soon as they start making music together, they begin to find some common ground, as well as some new arguments. An early cameo by Paul McCartney should be revoltingly cringe but the way they tentatively jam together is so earnest and collaborative that it becomes beautiful. They're not good, that's not the point. Four old guys, fumbling around, trying to find a musical relationship together doesn't make great art. But it's the trying that's the point.
A later cameo by Elton John is equally wonderful as by now, with a lot of practice and a full band behind them, they're much more together, much more in sync. A lesser film would have shown this progress as a montage but Spinal Tap II shows the arguments and pettiness and effort needed to improve. They're still not good, after all they're still Spinal Tap, but it's the trying that's the point.
The thing we learn through the film is that they can’t express their friendship or resolve their differences in words. Conversations that attempt to address the situation are clumsy and a failure. Nigel tries to write a song about it, the earnestness of it contrasting hilariously with it’s awfulness. Obviously, the moment they do try to resolve things with words, in true Spinal Tap fashion, it's howlingly funny.
But in playing together they find something that none of them can get elsewhere. The shared goal, the shared effort, the sharing in and of itself.
Not only is this a great sequel, but it adds a new dimension to the original. What we're left with is a pair of films about male friendship. About a bunch of mates who gradually come to realise that, whilst they can't explain why or how, they all need that friendship in their life and need to put the effort in to try to make it work.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, action, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday November 23rd, 2025
Clean up in aisle six
The janitor of a Japanese high school is actually a yakuza assassin sent there to look out for his boss’ daughter. When her dad is killed, she becomes a target, with every other assassin in the area converging on the school to capture her.
Good lord this is bad. The first half of the film is interminable. Actors playing character-less characters monologue their way through scene after tedious scene. A decent script writer would have blitzed through this in ten minutes before getting straight to the action. Sadly, this does not have a decent writer so it takes almost an hour.
But once the action starts it picks up, right? God no. Each assassin turns up, does their bit and is despatched.
There’s no sense of geography, no sense of place, no sense of escalation or threat.
The fight scenes are terrible. Stunt men throw endless haymakers at each other, throwing in the occasional kick, filling up their allotted time before we can move onto to the next bunch of fist-fodder.
The music is some of the worst I’ve ever heard in a film. It’s the same off-the-shelf dramatic music used in cheap-shit reality game-shows, pasted over each scene without care or thought. By the end of the film it had given me a headache.
The single glint of light in the whole film is the first appearance of the Baby Assassins. It’s easy to see why they gave them their own film as, in the staggeringly brief time they’re on screen, they completely sideline the main story.
If you’re a Baby Assassins completist: watch this but skip every scene they’re not in (almost the entire film, basically), you’ll miss nothing.
For everyone else: avoid, avoid, avoid.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday November 22nd, 2025
Why So Serious?
A free-spirited, fiercely independent black woman with a sexually promiscuous and lesbian past, with a wealthy husband in a loveless marriage in patriarchal 1950’s England. And when we first meet her at the start of the film she’s contemplating suicide.
That character description of Hedda Gabler, magnificently played by Tessa Thompson, gives you an inkling as to what you’re about to watch.
The film very, very quickly disabuses you of that notion. This is absolutely not that kind of film. And Hedda is not that character.
Movie villains tend to exist in one of three categories: The plotting Machiavellian, the agent of chaos who just wants to ‘watch the world burn’ or the opportunist for whom events spiral out of control.
As the film progresses over the course of a single party, held at their preposterous country mansion, Hedda somehow manages to be all three.
Her character is complicated and not at all straightforward, but still nasty, self destructive, unlikeable and utterly magnetic. A human wrecking ball you can't take your eyes off.
None of the other characters come out of this particularly well either. Only Thea comes away with any sympathy and she’s a complete drip.
The film does an excellent job of portraying the straight-laced, stiff upper lipped puritanism of the fifties and how it melts at first contact with the upper classes attitudes towards, well, literally anything that will get in the way of them getting what they want. This film’s opinion of rich people is as black as a hat and revels in giving them enough rope.
The pleasure in the film is in feeling the revulsion for their actions whilst also enjoying the electric tingle at the shock of it all.
The final shot of the film is one of the best super villain inception moments you’ll ever see. Nia da Costa’s previous work for Marvel implies this is entirely deliberate.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday November 11th, 2025
Viva Macau
Colin Farrell plays Lord Doyle, a Baccarat player, mired in debt, trying to play himself out of a hole. Fala Chen plays Dao Ming, a hostess and loan shark who helps out addicted gamblers with their short term liquidity problem.
Set in Macau, the scenery and cinematography is stunning. The grandeur of the tackiness, the beauty of the monuments to gaucheness. This films captures the concept of greed better than anything I’ve seen. The gluttony, the hunger, to consume, to win, to ingest, constantly, infinitely, never satisfied, never sated, always chasing, always needing.
Volker Bertelmann's music is terrific. Playful and propulsive. It’s the sound of Satan getting behind you and giving you a shove in the back.
Unfortunately, the film pivots around the relationship between Doyle and Dao Ming. But her character is little more than a thumbnail, a sketch. Her story isn’t fleshed out or explained. So their relationship never makes sense, either financially or emotionally.
Consequently, when the revelation happens, it carries no weight.
If the film had been more of a double hander, focusing equally on Fala Chen and Farrell, it could have worked. But now I’m tilting into reviewing the film I’d wish I’d seen.
The film I actually watched is stunningly presented but missing a core.
One quick coda to this review: I'm really appreciating the extra mile that some film makers are going with their end credits. Both this and the recent Caught Stealing have added small amounts of well thought out animation to the credit reel at the end. Mix in a terrific choice of music and it ends the film on a little flourish. Given the turgid state of tv opening and closing credits, where every show has the exact same lazy formula, it's a little point of differentiation. A nice way to show that a little extra care was taken.
It feels like the end credits have been reclaimed after the Marvel era where they were just a thing that added gaps between the 'to be continued' sections.
Not only that, but in this case, somebody in the crew has clearly watched Medusa Deluxe (otherwise known as the film with the greatest end credit sequence ever1) and thought "We'll have some of that". Cracking stuff.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Seriously, watch Medusa Deluxe, the film is weird and wonderful and the end credits are incredible.
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