Tags: blog, film, drama, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday March 11th, 2026
Bookended
This film starts with one of the most beautiful opening shots I've ever seen. A stunning view of the ocean lapping at rocks in the frozen winter, breathing in, breathing out. It's so extraordinary that it took a while for my brain to fully understand what was happening, all whilst marvelling at the majesty of it.
It's way of reminding us that everything has to pass. That the summer we're about to witness is brief and finite.
An adaptation of Tove Jansson's book, this is the story of three generations of a family retreating to their small holiday island, to spend time with each other and grieve the loss of the young girls mother.
Glenn Close's depiction of the grandmother is as majestic as that opening shot. Utterly commanding your attention, emphatically drawing you in to her point of view. Unfortunately, the interactions between the other characters are really flatly directed. There's none of the deftness seen in Left-Handed Girl, I didn't believe in any of their relationships. The moments between the girl and her father feel particularly stagey.
Sadly, this means that I struggled to connect with the experiences that were being shared between them. And failed to be moved by the poetry of their wisdom. I feel incredibly cold hearted saying it, given how admired the source material is, but I just wasn't moved by it at all.
What I was left with was a very basic story, all be it with some beautiful photography.
However, the ending manages to surpass the beginning. An absolutely breathtaking solo scene for Glenn Close, a culmination that makes the film as a whole worth viewing.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, animation, sci-fi, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday March 08th, 2026
Back to the Future's Future
There can't be many films involving time travel where the past the protagonists travel to is our future. Not just a few years either. The past Arco travels back to has robot shop workers, hover shopping trolleys and large, retractable domes covering every house and building from the massive storms and wildfires that periodically rage around the picturesque town he lands in.
The imagery of everyone blithely ignoring the massive electrical storm whilst sat in the comfort of their own garden is a very on-the-nose comment on our current attitude to the climate crisis. It's to the films credit that it lets the imagery do all the work, the story refuses to comment further.
That imagery is suffused with influences from Studio Ghibli. Wonderfully, it's not just skin deep, it shares the same fascination with nature, flight and the small details of peoples lives that Ghibli does. And whilst the quality of the animation can't match up, the colour palette is absolutely stunning. Every frame has a warmth and vibrancy to it that feels deeply cared for. Somebody spent a lot of time ensuring this film looked just right.
The future Arco travels from, by stealing his parent's rainbow flight/time machine cape, is a future where small communities live on platforms above the clouds. The time travel is used as a way to scavenge material to allow them to eke out an existence. The Tech is High, but the resources are slim.
Stranded in this new time, he meets and befriends Iris, a young girl living with her baby brother and robotic nurse maid, Mikki. The rest of the film is mostly concerned with depicting their developing friendship as they battle various adults in their attempt to get Arco home.
This narrow focus feels quite old fashioned for a kids film. There's not much in the way of side plots or narrative complications. It's a simple story, clearly told through the eyes of the kids involved. Background details, like the environmental catastrophe unfurling around them or that Iris' parents are only ever present via projection holograms, are never explained.
This seems perfectly aimed at pre-teen kids who'll love the depiction of childhood friendships and adult stupidity. But it was a little too simplistic for my taste, the story failing to raise the stakes enough to be thrilling, not original enough to surprise. That is until near the end of the film when the results of their decisions come to bear, managing to hit a lot harder than I was expecting. The message of the film is clear: actions have consequences. And they can't be remediated or rectified, you just have to live with them and do your best.
That's all any of us can do.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, horror, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday March 04th, 2026
Tracksuit mafia.
I ended the review of 28 Years Later by stating just how much I was looking forward to the next Danny Boyle Movie. Well that wait goes on for a bit longer as he's roped in Nia DaCosta to direct this sequel. And what an astute choice that's proven to be.
DaCosta's portrayal of how the gang of Jimmys operate, how it's run and controlled, is sharply observed. As is the violence they meet out on their travels. And the reason the latter is so horrible is because of the former. There's an inevitability to everything that happens that gives you no way to break out of the fiction. The more the violence spirals out of control, the realer it feels. This film is nasty. Whilst my previous complaints about zombie films showing the breakdown of society still stand, if you are going to do this at least lean into it with all your weight.
As the previous film gradually changed it's focus from wide angle scene setting to close up drama, this film continues that zoom-in to the point of claustrophobia. There's no ambition to the gang we're following beyond survival and violence. Neither they or the film are even interested in the zombies any more.
Their counter-point in the film is the return of Ralph Feinnes' Dr Kelson. He has no care for the world outside his temple, but he is interested in the Alpha of the zombies. Interested to the point of caring. It’s a meditative, almost philosophical contrast to the Jimmys that doesn’t really go anywhere although it’s a fairly safe bet that it will get resolved in the final part of the trilogy.
Sadly, the film lacks much of the visual flair and invention of Boyle's entries in the series. I would have liked it if the film was a bit more unhinged in it's aesthetics. Only at the end, in an uproariously funny meeting of very different characters, does the film flex some serious cinematic chutzpah. But even then it feels safe in a way that Boyle at his best doesn’t.
But that doesn't detract from how effective the drama is. This is one of the more intimate zombie films I’ve seen and is all the better for it. Perfectly geared to wind up for what is hopefully a big finale.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, thriller, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday March 01st, 2026
Butter the MacGuffin
This review will container mild spoilers. If you want a review without spoilers then: watch this, it's great.
I've been wrestling with this review for a week now as I'd much rather talk about films without giving away anything that would spoil the plot. But it's not possible to talk about what makes this film great without talking about what the film lacks: This is an espionage story without a MacGuffin. At least I mean that there possibly is one, there are regular teases and hints as to what might be driving everything. There are flash backs and a terrific framing device1 but nothing definitive or conclusive. Even the main characters themselves don't seem entirely certain why it's all happening.
But then, they don't need to know. They know what's at stake: money, lives, power, principles, family and that's enough to give them something to fight for. And it's enough for us to understand why everything is playing out and to feel the rising heat from the stakes in play.
Oh yes, the heat. If The Balconnettes sizzled, this positively sears as we slowly crank up the temperature in 70's Brazil. The period detail is gorgeous, the cigarettes endless, the fashion far too much and worn sparingly and there's a sense that if you ran your finger over any surface you'd pick up a sheen of sweat. There's a sense of time and place that is almost physically palpable.
And then there's the music, oh the music. I could drown in this film's soundtrack. It makes a very strong argument that popular music absolutely peaked in Brazil in the nineteen seventies and never returned to those glories. I don't necessarily agree with that argument but it's impossible to come away from this film without thinking that the makers do have a point.
And so how does that leave the viewer, dangling a central mystery in front of us without ever resolving it? It's a very deliberate choice being made here, so what are the film makers trying to say?
I'm honestly not sure. My feeling is that this way the viewer can insert their own reasons. People who lived through, or were affected by the right-wing, military dictatorship of the time can put their own experiences into the film. Or maybe they don't need reasons either. The tenor of the film is such that these scenarios of corruption and subterfuge were completely normalised.
This isn't a spy thriller, It's a kitchen sink drama. Which is terrifying.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. The reveal of which is a magnificent, ice-cold glass of water thrown right in your face.
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Tags: blog, film, animation, fantasy, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday February 21st, 2026
I'll have a 屁 please Bob
Blimey. I had a lot of issues with the first film but I'm pleased to say that this film fixes pretty much all of them whilst retaining what worked.
The amount of exposition has been toned down. There's still a fair bit of explaining to be done, especially at the start, but it's paced more evenly throughout the film and gives way to the action when it needs to.
The Dreamworks/Disney template is mostly discarded, aside from a few residual characters and comedy scenes, and instead leans heavily into the genre of fantasy epic. And it is, indeed, epic.
Within the first fifteen minutes it's already made the battle of Helm's Deep look like waiting for Godot, by the end it's eclipsed Avenger's Endgame by a comfortable margin. It's no exaggeration to say that I've never seen a film so heavy on scale or spectacle before. I described the first film as 'jaw dropping', which I now recognise as a somewhat premature exclamation as I have no idea what body part 'dropping' would accurately describe the sequel.
This would all be worthless if this were all fur coat and no knickers. If the story doesn't hold up then it's just boring flashing lights. Thankfully, the excellent plotting is kept from the first film. Yes it's all contrived fantasy nonsense1 but it puts all the characters in difficult situations with difficult moral choices. Everybody behaves in ways that are believable, even if the magic and the physics aren't. And as a result when it comes to the important emotional scenes, they hit hard. One scene involving a curse and a death had me wincing in horror and sobbing in sympathy, both at the same time.
I'm not a huge fan this type of sweeping fantasy/historical action usually. I prefer films about characters, or ones with more intricate plots. But I'm happy to oblige when a film shows this much ambition and commitment.
There's probably a lot to be said about the importance of Ne Zha to Chinese cinema. With American soft power on the wane, and Chinese economic and cultural visibility on the rise, it's tempting to think of whether we're witnessing a shift in who's able to make the biggest blockbuster movies. I'm not remotely qualified to give my thoughts on that subject, but watching Ne Zha 2 definitely feels like a bar has been raised somewhere.
This is the most blockbusting of blockbusters I've ever seen.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. I know Ne Zha is based on ancient Chinese mythology but to this westerners ears it doesn't make any logical sense. But then it doesn't have to, I'm not watching a fantasy film for it's water tight internal logic. It feels right and that's what works.
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Tags: blog, film, animation, fantasy, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday February 17th, 2026
Nature vs Nurture vs a giant bloody Dragon
A heavenly decree is made that the Chaos Pearl is split into two and born as living embodiments of it's two halves, the Spirit Pearl and the Demon Orb, with the Demon Orb having a curse on it such that it will be destroyed by lightening in three years time. But a devious mishap means that the Spirit Pearl half is stolen and the Demon Orb half is born to kind and decent noble parents. Which means they have to try to help their son live as good a life as possible, trying to nuture the good in him over his demonic nature, before fate ends his life in three years time.
The plot may be a bit clunky, leaning on prophecy to make sense, but the way it pushes it's characters to make difficult moral decisions is superb. The weight on each character from the decisions they've made and the decisions they are going to have to make feel heavy and important. This extends to the antagonists as well who are believably characterised and motivated.
Unfortunately, the way most of this is communicated is by huge chunks of exposition. Almost the entire plot is explained by one character standing around and explaining it to another character. It's tolerable at the start when it's used to set everything in motion, but when it's still being used deep into the ending of the film it gets a bit wearing.
It's a real shame as when it stops telling and starts showing, it shows real heart. The best, most important scene of the film being a silent game of hacky sack on the beach. We don't need to be told what's happening, we can see it.
The animation is a curious mixture. On the one hand the amount of money and colour that is thrown at the screen is incredible. For anyone who wants to show off a large, high-end TV, this is one hell of a way to do it. But there's an odd lack of artistry. All the characters have that Dreamworks face that makes it look like they've been workshopped to deter as few people as possible. The environments have a stunning level of fidelity but no distinct artistic direction. The animation is vibrant and constantly in dynamic motion but lacks the subtle touches of the best animators.
The result is a kind of blandness which is compensated by a level of commitment to spectacle that is frequently jaw dropping.
The Dreamworks similarities doesn't end there. The side and background characters are pulled directly from the Dreamworks/Disney school of 'comedy sidekicks'. But they lack any kind of warmth or invention, one villager only existing to provide a disappointingly homophobic running joke. Despite the freshness (at least to my western eyes) of it's Chinese mythology settings, the template seems very familiar.
This is entertaining enough and I suspect the sheer velocity of it's action scenes will enthral any kids that watch it. But the amount of exposition got in the way of the story for me. I understood everything but didn't feel enough of it.
I've heard good things about the sequel though, so we'll be giving that a try soon enough.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, thriller, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday February 12th, 2026
The Banality of Banality
The soundtrack to Cloud is the soundtrack to capitalism. The hum of a computer monitor, the drone of a motorway, the background growl of machines. It's constant and grinding and once you notice it, it becomes unsettling. Even scenes that take place in the woods have the endless swoosh of leafless trees as the wind slips off the lake onto shore.
That lifeless, listless, white noise perfectly encapsulates the emotional lives of both the main character, Ryosuke, an online reseller who buys from desperate sellers and sells at incredible mark-ups with incredulous descriptions, and the cast of characters around him. None of them have any real aspirations. Sure, they mostly want to make money, but for what purpose? None of them seem particularly clear on the matter.
At one point, Ryosuke and his girlfriend move into a large, lakeside house. He promptly moves his business in and turns the place into a warehouse. She spends her whole time wrestling with kitchen appliances. Neither talks about anything outside of making or spending money.
Eventually, Ryosuke's disinterest in ethics catches up with him as a loose cabal of former mentors, rivals and disgruntled customers attempt to settle their grudges with him. None of them seem to question the broken society that they're scrabbling around in. None of them think to take their anger out at the online platform owners who enable and richly profit from the misery they enable. Everyone's too busy fighting each other like rats in a sack to have anything approaching dreams or ambition.
For the most part, there's a grim fascination to be had from watching these dead eyed characters navigate their dead lives. The film has little sympathy for them and leaves it for the viewer to decide whether it's their environment that has dulled their souls, or if their lack of spark is why they've found such a dour existence.
Sadly, the ending gets increasingly preposterous and the plot stops making sense. Worse, and this may be due to my ignorance of Japanese culture, but I thought the film lost track of what it was trying to say. It ends on a moment of beauty but it's delivered with little more than a shrug.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, animation, comedy, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday February 07th, 2026
Genocide in Busytown
The first Zootopia delighted by not only being funny and witty but having a story that you thought was going to be about one thing, and then pulls a fantastic bait and switch into something else. What looked like a fairly simple story of triumphing over sexism turns into a surprisingly deft exploration of systemic racism.
Zootopia 2 has no such narrative flair, sadly. But it's subject matter is arguably even darker, dealing with a genocide fuelled by a billionaire property developer. It manages to walk a careful line between making the subject palatable for youngsters whilst still making it's point very clear.
Where it falls down is that the world is not as clearly drawn or explored as it was in the first film. In trying to expand the boundaries (almost literally) it rattles through it's locations and inhabitants with out really getting to know them. It's something the first film excelled at so it's sorely missed here. Gary De'Snake, the character whose quest to find his homeland is the driving force of the story, is barely given a personality. We understand his purpose but never actually feel it.
And ultimately the resolution seemed a little glib. The idea that if people knew the truth behind an injustice they'd think differently about it seems like a liberal wet dream at the moment. I'm not going to criticise a kids film for trying to deal with a weighty subject, but the disconnect between the films ending and what's happening in the world right now means the ending doesn't really stick.
On the plus side, the pairing of Judy and Nick is given ample time to develop and their relationship never stops sparkling. They have a genuine connection and their tribulations are the one part of the story that feels consequential. That plus the sheer volume and quality of sight gags (some of the visual jokes are Wallace and Gromit levels of genius) propels the whole thing along at an entertaining pace.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
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!
