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, tv, comedy, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Friday January 09th, 2026
The Good-ish place
The problem with having a really great concept and then nailing the execution on your first try is how do you follow it up?
The first series of A Man on the Inside is such a perfect idea and so well executed that it's difficult how to see how the same trick could be pulled twice.
It's a problem that the show's creator, Michael Schur, has encountered before. Previous success, The Good Place, had one of the all time greatest sit-com first series, ending with a bang that made simply repeating the formula impossible.1
And you can see the lessons learned from that shows evolution on display here, A Man on the Inside doesn't try to pull the same trick twice. For a start, Charles Nieuwendyk is actually good at his job now. He's grown and improved.
Now the 'inside' is a university campus that Charles must infiltrate by posing as a temporary lecturer. The contrast is obvious, going from old people nearing the end of their life to young people just starting there's. Which makes it curious that the show makes no use of that switch whatsoever. The students barely exist in this, instead it concerns itself mostly with the teaching staff whilst also pulling across half the cast from the last series as well.
It ends up having too many characters to keep track of to truly make any of them stick. There's too many stories that start and end neatly in the same episode. Everything rattles along a little too quickly for its own good.
The flip-side is that there's always something happening and nothing ever stands still. It never suffers from trying to replicate it's past success, it's too busy moving forward. Plus, having such a wide variety of characters means that there's always someone or somewhere to pull a joke from. This season is consistently, effortlessly funny.
It also features a genuinely great heist in its penultimate episode. It's no Relay or How to Blow Up a Pipeline but it actually feels believable.
It's let down a bit by the final episode which doesn't really make sense. But the ride to get there is a fun and entertaining jaunt. Just don't expect the same level of heart as the first series or anything like the depth of The Good Place.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. To be clear, the following series of The Good Place are fantastic as well.
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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, tv, comedy, action, essential, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday December 30th, 2025
So whatever it is that makes you unhappy...I'll wreck it for you.
Just how badly can you make something and yet it still somehow works? Most of Baby Assassins Everyday seems like an attempt to answer that question. Outside the duo themselves the acting is mostly terrible. Only mostly because occasionally it's awful. Sometimes you can see the pause before an actor remembers it's their line.
The plot doesn't make much sense. The script is clunky as hell. Entire scenes go absolutely nowhere and then are completely forgotten about. Multiple characters seem only to exist for the purpose of annoying the viewer. Multiple episodes go by without a single fight scene.
The first half of this series is only held together by the effortlessly charming duo of Mahiro and Chisato. The extra space afforded by a tv show allows the two to diverge and differentiate their personalities. We see just how awkward Mahiro finds human interaction, trying her best and failing. And we see Chisato fret and care over Mahiro even more, compensating for her friend's deadpan face by turning hers into a rubber ball of expressionism, bouncing from one emote to another.
But even that is barely enough, those first six episodes are a tough watch at times.
And then the second half of the series kicks in.
Episode 7 sees the pair visit Chisato's family and hooooo boy, what an episode. No action, not even any drama, just the two of them spending quality time with people they love and loving life. It's like somebody took the sweetest bits of Bob's Burgers and just rolled them up into a single episode. This also takes the time to highlight the nature of their friendship, something that's been left open to interpretation up to now. But here it walks us right up to the point of saying it explicitly and then stops just short. Just. The message is heard loud and clear all the same.
And then from there we get an increasingly dark storyline where the two are split up and have to deal with bullying office politics and company loyalties. The shonky production is still there but seeing the two pushed to their limits, to the point of their friendship beginning to break down, by a toxic work culture is heartbreaking.
Inevitably, it all has to end in violence. Mahiro's promise to kill everyone is delivered like a marriage proposal and I sobbed my heart out.
Because the team behind Baby Assassins know exactly what they've got. They've crafted the finest queer, neurodivergent, kung-fu depiction of teenage love in the 21st century by focusing entirely on the characters and shooting people in the head.
Would it be better if it was made by people who could write and edit and act? Maybe. But somehow, the awkwardness of it all perfectly fits their characters. The only time the show isn't stilted and awkward is when they're fighting goons or goofing around with each other. At which point it's the most wonderful thing in the world.
