Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday May 25th, 2026
Mary Magdalene, that'd be my first sin
All movies about pop stars are, in one form or another, about the gap between the fantasy of pop music and the mechanical reality it's built on. The interplay between the mask of the performer and the face behind it.
Todd Haynes' underappreciated masterpiece Velvet Goldmine is the absolute pinnacle of the genre and focuses on the idea of the Pop Star as an act of artistry itself, and the centring of that act between the person performing it and the audience who are moved by it.
Mother Mary explores similar territory whilst also taking inspiration from another masterpiece, Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a film about seeing and being seen.
Anne Hathaway's Mary has the ability to hold an audience under her spell but her identity has been at least partially constructed by the dresses and outfits designed by Sam, played by Michaela Coel. Sam is the person who Mary, out of desperation and needing a dress with which to relaunch her career, turns to after being estranged for a long time.
Mary knows that Sam has the ability to create a look for her that captures the way she sees her. And Sam adores Mary with an intensity that combines the infatuation of a first love with the devotion of a pop obsessive. Sam is both a fan and a crush, the two multiplying each other.
Or was anyway. The walls that Sam has constructed since are fierce and solid. The interplay and tension between the two as they try to negotiate the design of the new dress boils and tears at the two of them. Mary attempting to re-inspire Sam (and through her, her audience), Sam trying to remain in control and not get swept away and engulfed by the very idea of Mary.
The characterisation of Mary and Sam are superb. Anne Hathaway is indecisive and unsure of herself but when in a position where she can express herself artistically, utterly magnetic. At one point in the film the pair tell each other a ghost story: Sam's is functional and supremely evocative. Mary's is completely unhinged in a way that drags every part of your attention into the scene, to the point where nothing outside of it even exists.
And yet it's Michaela Coel that the film actually focuses on. She's helped by a script that actors would probably kill for, down to earth yet occasionally so vibrant it veers towards spoken word poetry, perfect for Coel's East London dry and fruity wit. Director David Lowery clearly loves photographing her as the camera lingers on her long enough to capture the intensity of her, the ferocity of her unblinking view, the absolute force of everything she sees and feels.
And it's through this emotion that we tumble through the film, spiralling into the vortex that is Mary's personality and persona. That emotion is as believable as it is powerful, dragging everything to an ending that maybe isn't a conclusion. As by this point reality has been broken down by art and longing to the point where both characters are lost in their own truths. Or possibly fictions.
This film brilliantly updates the philosophies of Velvet Goldmine to a social media age. With that era of pop, there's an air gap between creation and audience where the fantasy and emotion can be poured into. Here and now, fledgling pop artists are in contact with an audience immediately and intimately, fan feedback helping mould the shape and direction of their early career.
How that changes the relationship between artist and audience, especially once they diverge and fall out of love, is what this film explores. It does so with an empathy and sincerity that is completely breathtaking. It treats pop music and it's fans with the passion, imagination and seriousness that they deserve.
The comparisons with Velvet Goldmine and A Portrait of a Lady on Fire are not made lightly, this film stands alongside them. If you've ever been a pop music obsessive then this film is one of the true greats.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, action, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday May 23rd, 2026
Stop getting rich people wrong
Move along, nothing to see here. Do you remember the first film? Probably not, it wasn't particularly memorable. Not bad, just perfunctory. This is more of the same, almost literally.
The only reason I bothered with this sequel is because of the inclusion of Kathryn Newton, who I last saw lighting up the screen in Lisa Frankenstein. Here she knowingly smirks her way through the film, like she's telling a series of amazing one-liners that have all been cut in the edit.
The whole film feels like everyone's going through the motions and there's no point to any of it.
But that's not what I want to talk about. Because, annoyingly, this film gets rich people wrong. It's not the only culprit, the majority of films that have rich people as 'the enemy' make the same mistake. The basic problem is that they keep portraying the rich as mad, bad and dangerously psychotic.
But we know that's not who these people are. We've all read excerpts from the Epstein files. We've all seen snippets of their twitter feeds. We've all seen their speeches. And what is clear about the super rich is:
The don't care who knows.
They don't care if people find out they're paedophiles, or nazis, or rapists. They know the press, which they own, won't call them on it and they have more lawyers than god.
They are desperately unhappy.
Happy, contented people don't post obsessively, continuously, on twitter about trans people. Confident people who are comfortable in their own skin don't get endless plastic surgery and post pictures of how 'jacked' they are. Generous, charitable people do not relentlessly endorse far-right conspiracy theories. Name me a single billionaire that looks like they're having the time of their life...
They are tediously boring.
Not just bored, but boring. When was the last time you read or heard anything spouted by a billionaire that made you're heart sing or piqued your curiosity? They are incurious people who are incapable of querying themselves, let alone the world around them.
They're cowards who never take risks and only prey on the weak
They (almost literally) have all the money in the world to enact their rich-fuck fantasies but they are terrified of any actual harm or consequences. They have networks of people who pre-select their victims to be the poor and vulnerable. The ones who can't fight back. And if there is ever any dirty work to be done then they'll just pay people who'll pay people who'll pay other people to do it for them.
All of which makes Ready or Not's world of ultra-wealthy psychopaths incongruous to the actual point they're (half-arsedly) making.
In Ready or Not's world, the global elite are confident and self assured, willing to take risks, get their hands dirty, and seem to love being rich. Some of them even seem to be a bit of a laugh, in a kind of rich idiot kind of way. They're scum, but they're fun scum.
The actual global elite probably quite like this kind of depiction. It makes them look exciting and interesting instead of the kind of dull, Nazi Colin Robinson's that they actually are.
The only film I've seen recently that really nailed this has been Relay. Where the rich bastard behind everything is coaxed out of hiding just the once and all of the actual antagonists are his minions, held at arms length and taking all the risks.
And whilst it's absurd to hold these disparate films to the same standards, I do wish that all films would try to properly skewer these pieces of shit, instead of cartoonishly portraying them in a way that manages to flatter how disgusting they really are.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, recommended, sci-fi, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday May 20th, 2026
Lessons learned from Rocky...
A space ship sets sail from a dying earth, with a small crew, in search of ways to save humanity from the gradual plague that is enveloping it.
If that sounds like the plot of Interstellar then it’s not a surprise. Film makers Miller and Lord take liberal inspiration from the Nolan movie, but what makes this movie interesting is how it interprets the genre differently and ends up with something that feels fresh and modern.
The most obvious difference is clear from the trailer: An alien. Nolan's movie is about actual physics, so: no aliens. PHM's relationship to physics is a little woollier. It's aware of the concept but doesn't consider it to be bound by them, so: aliens.
Which is where the movie gradually morphs into a buddy movie. The film invests a huge part of it's runtime depicting the blossoming friendship between Ryan Gosling's Grace and his newfound alien partner, Rocky. It's highly unusual to see a film to not only show, but to focus so heavily on the subject of friendship.
Yes both Grace and Rocky are lonely, yes they have the same goal, yes they need each other to complete their mission, yes they both help each other and return the favours, but that's not why they become friends. It's not why they're so believable.
It's because they like each other.
Most of the film's appeal is simply Grace and Rocky goofing around, completely enamoured with each other, and loving the company. Lord and Miller lean into the concept of positive masculinity with their whole heart, to the point where it becomes the buddiest of buddy movies ever made.
To give the film a more interesting narrative structure, there's a series of flash backs that lead up to Grace being catapulted out of Earth's orbit. Both the literal and the metaphorical down-to-earthness of it all contrasting beautifully with the apocalyptic level of what's at stake, as well as the outrageous visuals of the space scenes.
This is one of the rare instances of a film where the main motivation of the CGI artists was to produce something beautiful. Every scene is lit in a way that is visually arresting, seemingly aware that the long runtime needs the eye to be delighted at every moment. As a result, even when not much is happening, the whole film zips along.
This has the feeling of a film that delights on first viewing and is destined to become a fondly loved classic in years to come.
Amaze, Amaze, Amaze!
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, comedy, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday May 11th, 2026
Over the Top
Where the hell did this come from? Nobody told me about this. A gender swapped version of an eighties Sylvester Stallone vehicle, mashed up with a wrestling movie and a rom-com. Hell yes! The Trailer tells you everything you need to know about the movie, if that piques your interest then go, go go! You'll love it.
Mary Holland, fresh off her film-stealing role in the best Christmas movie since The Muppets Christmas Carol, stars as Melanie, a struggling baker who's roped into a road-trip by her old trucker friend, Danny (played by Betsy Sodaro with all the gusto of Jack Black playing Nanny Ogg) who is secretly setting her up to take part in an arm wrestling championship.
There's nothing here you haven't seen hundreds of times before, in uncountable sports movies, but the freshness of the female led cast and the variety and vividness of their characters reminds you just why there have been so many movies using this template.
It’s just great fun.
The emphasis on the wrestling part of arm wrestling is a little stroke of genius. Every bout is a brief visual delight and a poppy joke. Rosie the Riveter as an arm wrestler? Of course! The names on the leaderboard are Bob’s Burger of the Day worthy.
The whole thing is a labour of love from everyone involved and is a delight from start to finish.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, action, thriller, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday April 28th, 2026
Oh boy!
If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.Terry Pratchett The opening shot is of Irene in the middle of murdering someone. The next scene is also of her murdering someone. The third scene arrives without even pausing for breath and yet again, she's murdering someone. That's how the film tells us she's a good person. She's killing instinctively, quickly, with purpose. Irene is hopping through dimensions in what initially was a quest to find a universe where her daughter is alive. But on finding her murdered in every single one, enacts revenge on the man, the same man, who did it. She no longer seems to hold out hope of, well, of hope, and instead goes straight to the murdering part. Like an episode of Quantum Leap where the solution every single week is to murder a paedophile. This film differs from other multi-verse movies by pointing out that an infinite number of universes also means an infinite number of universes imperceptibly different from our own. It has a Groundhog Day like focus on grinding repetition, only here it's about a serial killer trying to avoid dealing with their grief. It's brutally efficient at showing the effect that numbing, relentless repetition has on a person. The violence, the shooting, the stabbing, the bludgeoning, the murder, isn't the problem. It's the obsessive yearning for something that can never be, refusing to confront the actual pain that you are going to have to live with. It's not really in the same league as Hamnet for it's empathetic portrayal of grief. For one thing the dialogue, although a lot of fun, has almost zero subtlety, the characters just plain tell you what they're thinking at every moment. The script is written for efficiency, not artfulness. But it hits incredibly hard in a few moments, that efficiency catching you off guard with it's swiftness and it's eagerness to cut right to the chase. The soundtrack is also brutally efficient. An electro boomer that matches the soundtrack of Sirat for chest-thudding, analogue bass wobble. A treat of a film that I'd recommend to literally anyone.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday April 26th, 2026
Grief as a muscle
The word I can't get out of my head after watching this film is muscular.
Jessie Buckley's Agnes holds the focus of the story like a rugby player cradling the ball, stiff-arming any attempt to divert the narrative towards her husband, powering through notions of artistic metaphor or allegory.
Agnus' story (and it is her story) is down to earth to the point where the dirt under finger nails is a mark of her character. She's practical and resourceful, always having a plan, always working towards a goal. Her husband is not the dreamer you might expect him to be, he's her counterpoint, not her opposite. But still, she's the driving force of the marriage.
Which is why it's so affecting when it goes wrong and there's nothing she can do to fix it. Watching somebody who's spent their entire life making things right and ensuring everything works out, suddenly left completely helpless by random chance is heartbreaking. The powerlessness of it is a full-bodied hit.
Even the way Buckley portrays grief feels strong. Her breakdown is shown not as a weakness but of a muscle being flexed. All that love and all that aching and nowhere to go, her sinews stretching with the strain of it, trying to crush the pain.
A lesser film would lose focus and dabble with the greatness of the play, of the artfulness of it. And indeed it nearly fumbles it when Will does the 'To Be, Or Not To Be' speech, seemingly put in just to remind viewers which play it's supposed to be inspiring. But thankfully the turnover back to Agnes is swift and decisive.
The final scenes involving the play are magnificent. Whilst it is about the transformative power of a well told story, the focus remains squarely on it's effect on Agnes. It's still her story and it drags you through that fourth wall completely and utterly.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, horror, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday April 18th, 2026
League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen
The better this film gets, the more frustrating it becomes.
It's mostly a surprisingly good script. The main character of Rob is well written and his background is well constructed. So when events start to enclose him, you feel trapped there with him. This sounds like script writing 101 and it is, but it's surprising how many horrors and thrillers fail this basic hurdle.
Eddie Izzard is always worth watching and this is no exception. She's clearly enjoying herself and the few minutes at the end where she really gets to let loose is worth watching the film for alone. It felt like early stand-up Izzard, that glorious mixture of free-floating surrealism delivered with razor sharp wit, and a reminder as to just how great she is on her own terms.
And if the film makers had attempted a tight, focused account of their deteriorating relationship and the games being played, then it has everything it needs to be genuinely great. Instead, the film has ambitions to be the next generation of Hammer Horror movies, rich in monsters, dripping in gothic style, drenched in histrionic orchestration.
None of which is built towards in the script. Dramatic moments seem inserted as a cheap way to build tension, rather than trusting in the story to do the work. The music sounds like it's ripped from a different film.
It's constantly pulling in two directions, neither complementing each other and falling flat. It's a missed opportunity.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, thriller, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday April 06th, 2026
Is this what the end of the world feels like?
Sirat is a movie that doesn't give a toss about your feelings. Doesn't care for your sense of closure or your need for justice. Doesn't care about your sense of aesthetics or beauty or empathy. It's actively hostile to you taking anything of value from the film and seemingly ambivalent if you even watch it past a certain point. It's technique for building tension is to simply hit you out of nowhere with an iron bar. It hurts and it works.
The desert of Morocco in which it's filmed is as imposing and hostile as the films attitude. Monolithic, brutal and utterly unconcerned with the triviality of human life.
The music matches it right from the start. Slow moving, bass driven techno wobbles the very dust and vibrates through everything but the rock. As one character points out, "You don't listen to it, you dance to it".
It's tempting to say that there's not a film like this, but there is one. The debt this owes to William Friedkin's masterpiece Sorcerer is so great that if Friedkin was still alive he'd send the bailiffs round. It shares the same sense of nihilism. It also has the same sense of timing where the moment where you just want to beg the characters to turn back and give up is the exact same moment that they've gone too far to do so.
If you are going to watch this then you're just going to have to suffer like everyone else.
Stunning.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday April 05th, 2026
The purpose of a system is what it does
The most remarkable thing this film has to say about it's chosen subject of homelessness, is absolutely nothing. It goes out of it's way to not make a point. There's no moralising, no melodrama, no finger pointing and no blaming.
There's not even any antagonists. Literally everyone that Mike meets throughout the film tries to help him in one way or another. It's nobody's fault when Mike fails and fails again.
Mike is an uneducated young man who's not smart enough to compensate for his lack of schooling. He's living rough and trying to scrape by in any way he can. He's carefully played by Frank Dillane who avoids any obvious errors in his performance and portrays his character as a whole person. Mike may not be smart, but he is engaged with his life and the world around him.
But how can he succeed when every piece of help offered, whether by the state, by businesses or friends is transitory or transactional? And dependent on him having something to offer and never making a mistake?
The answer of course is that he can't. By showing restraint in it's story telling, the only thing the film leaves you with is a void. A void where the housing should be, where support should be, where care should be.
Mike fills that void with drink, drugs and chaos. I filled it with anger at a system that spends more money on police and prisons and reparations and rehab than it ever would on just giving Mike enough money to feed and house himself. Anger at a system that's designed to create homeless, broken people.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday March 29th, 2026
Nurse Prabha
I almost get the feeling that this film is having a bit of a laugh with the traditional structure of film dramas. The stories of the three Mumbai women who we follow are Hollywood staples. The cook who's being evicted from her long-term home to make way for gentrifying property developers. The nurse who's fallen in love with a boy from the wrong family.
By the time we get to the teacher who meets an unconscious man who suffers from amnesia and gets mistaken for his wife, it's difficult not to imagine the director smiling at us as we get a magical realist take on While You Were Sleeping only kind of in reverse.
It's difficult to explain. The tone here is gentle and unhurried. The film isn't interested in resolutions or answers. Where just here to feel their lives for a little while.
What the film is interested in is Mumbai itself. I could write some cliche's about the hustle 'n' bustle of the big city but that wouldn't be right. Every scene is packed with detail, both visually and audibly. There's so much to drink in that it almost drowns you in the city itself.
But not much actually happens. There's always people going somewhere, waiting for something, talking to someone, but not much actually going on. Everything moves, all the time, and yet in the moment-to-moment, nothing changes.
I felt exhausted in the effort required to even exist in a place like this. The effort to stay afloat.
Later, when the scenery changes for the Indian coastal country side, the intensity remains. The sound of the country is as constant and intricate as that of the city. The colour palette shifts from cool blue to earth green and brown but it's still dense with detail.
But now there's space and time. Space for the characters to exist as themselves, time for them to be seen by the others for who they are. Suddenly, we're floating, drifting even.
The writer/director Payal Kapadia has crafted something truly captivating and distinct here and I'm looking forward to more of her work.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
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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