Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday December 09th, 2025
File under: Did nobody read the script?
Whilst this is based on 'true events' I can't judge the veracity of the story or the characters of the people it's portraying. I can only judge it as a film. And quite simply, this is one of the most misjudged films I've ever seen. Most of the film has the tone of a regular domestic drama, of a man making poor life choices and then learning to deal with the consequences.
But these are not poor choices, they are the work of a borderline psychopath. A serial, compulsive, inveterate liar who's selfishness wrecks the lives of just about every person who he comes in to contact with.
You can gloss over the traumatising effects of armed robbery in a film if you make it slapstick enough, and that's clearly the memo that Peter Dinklage got, as he plays his character superbly as a panto villain.
But you can't gloss over inveigling your way into a divorcees life by spying on her and then ingratiating yourself with her teenage daughters by lavishing them with gifts. Which you've stolen. These scenes are played first as a rom-com meet-cute and then as a heartwarming family drama. I watched the whole thing through gritted teeth, dumbstruck that nobody seemed to have realised that this constitutes sexual assault.
The film does show the character coming to terms with what he's done and the harm he's caused. But by failing to honestly portray the pathological behaviour needed to get to that point, that realisation comes across as self-serving and self-pitying.
Absolutely baffling how this got made.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday December 06th, 2025
He's a lumberjack and he's ok
This film is a curious mix of artifice and naturalism. On the one hand, the natural lighting of the American landscape is down to earth and gritty. But we're so used to unnatural lighting in films that it invites us to think about the production. The use of the 3:2 aspect ratio literally puts a frame around the screen, also reminding you of the artifice and craft involved.
The camera work switches modes depending on the moment, sometimes staying still for an entire scene, sometimes locking to the character and moving the world around them. It all works well and it's always engaging and effective. But sadly the story or characters didn't draw me in enough to land with me.
The film puts a lot of effort into portraying Joel Edgerton's logger as a decent and kind every-man and completely succeeds, but he's just not interesting. Every aspect of his personality is almost entirely sanded off until the only thing we can really say about him is that he's a hard worker and quietly spoken.
None of the other characters that he meets throughout his life pique much interest as most of the dialogue is theatrical and staged. Each character espousing their opinions at each other, none of it ever connecting with each other or with the viewer.
The worst aspect is the music which is just awful. Plinky-plonk pianos play wistfully, alluding to a tune, alluding to emotion, alluding to meaning but never actually generating any. It's the film soundtrack equivalent of a Coldplay or U2 record. A well crafted shell that sounds important but offers nothing.
Which is a slightly mean way to describe this film. The expanse of the landscape, the length of the time-frame and the philosophising of the script allude to a meaning that the plot and characters simply can't provide.
It's worth a watch for the beautifully shot American forests but nothing more.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, drama, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday December 04th, 2025
Joyful and Triumphant
A new film from Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker is always a highlight of the year.
Whilst their recent films have gradually expanded the narrative aspect, increasing the amount of plot and the runtime, this goes back to basics a little, re-focusing on what they do best.
Which is, quite simply, generate empathy.
We get to spend some time with a small family, moving back to Taipei and trying to make a life for themselves running a small noodle stand. There's nothing extraordinary in the plot to create drama or tension. It's all supplied by the characters and the never ending human ability to generate love and friction out of nothing.
Lord only knows how they manage to do this so effortlessly. It all seems so simple and easy. Like Shih-Ching Tsou just placed a camera and let everything play out. But if it were that simple, literally everyone would be doing it and these kind of films would be ten a penny. Only the incredible rarity of films as effective and moving as this indicates that it's a work of rare talent.
There is one revelation in the film which has already been done so dramatically by a UK soap opera that it's passed into British folklore. Which, admittedly, took me out of the scene and their lives for a moment.
But then at the end of the film, a look is exchanged. Lasting for a fleeting moment, barely more than a few frames, it reduced me to such a blubbering wreck that my mind and my heart are still with them and their beautiful, messy lives, days after the film finished.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, thriller, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday November 30th, 2025
Paul Thomas Anderson is an idiot.
Paul Thomas Anderson is an idiot. What the hell is he thinking? This film is two hours and forty two minutes long. It should be slow and languid, allowing the characters to slowly chew over the themes of the film with endless expositionary dialogue.
Instead, this film starts at rocket speed, the opening salvo is an entire two hour long movie edited into thirty minutes. Come along, keep up, chop-chop.
After that, it only slightly lessens the pace. The next two and a bit hours, effectively being one extended chase sequence, manages to pack in more ideas than most multi-series tv epics.
If PTA wanted to make money, he'd split this up into one hours episodes, show every single story thread to it's conclusion and get Amazon/Netflix/HBO to pay umpty-million dollars per episode for five series at ten episodes a pop.
What an idiot.
Thankfully PTA's poor financial decision making has gifted us with an absolute banger of a movie.
After his radical activism past finally catches up with him, Bob (played by DiCaprio) is separated from his daughter, Willa (played by Chase Infiniti), and spends the rest of the film desperately trying to catch up with her. Fair play to Leo, he's taken on a role here where he's very much not the hero. Hell, he's not even the main character. Instead, much of the film is spent following him as the main story happens around him. Bob is persistent but does nothing to affect the plot.
Instead, the film is very clear on who and what is making things happen as a wildly antagonistic ecosystem of interests battle each other out. From the militarised police/immigration control to the left-wing, pro-community organisers to the wealthy elite that own the industries that employ the immigrants and benefit from both sides. It's tempting to say that we see this escalating battle play out through Bob's eyes but he's mostly oblivious to it, focusing entirely on keeping his own shit together and finding his daughter.
There's no question as to who the true hero's of the movie are: All the regular people who take the time to help Bob and Willa. Highly organised, highly motivated and fighting tooth and nail, risking everything to help out people they don't even know for no more reason than they're on the same side. Benicio Del Toro turns up in a minor cameo role and nearly steals the film. Without wishing to belabour the point, if PTA was after the money, there's a whole spin off series right there.
The breadth of the political vista on display here is breathtaking. It's a breakneck tour of the sharp end of the US immigration 'debate' and its consequences.
Another notable thing about this movie is its depiction of the police and the elites that control them. Make them too dangerous and they can become exciting and a little bit sexy. But lean too heavily into mockery and you can lessen their danger to ordinary people and the fear they can inspire. This film walks the line between the two perfectly.
Wonderfully, we get to see the things they love about themselves subtly used against them. They think they're cool, heroic and suave, better than the 'wetbacks' they're brutalising. But the reality is the very symbols of their power and masculinity are silly, preposterous and insecure. "Why is your shirt so tight?" should go down as one of the truly great pieces of movie dialogue.
And finally, I loved the way the character of Willa is treated. She's never victimised by the film, even though she's the only character who has had no say in the unfolding events. It's really quite something to see such a profound character arc in a character who has almost no agency.
Like I said at the start, Paul Thomas Anderson is a genius.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, comedy, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday November 29th, 2025
The trying is the point
First of all, let's get this out the way: it's a Spinal Tap movie. The jokes are amazing. Wallace & Gromit no longer have the best cheese related jokes.
But the biggest joy of the movie is in watching three old guys heal their friendship.
When we meet them at the start of this new film, they've been separated for a long time. Each has poured their energy into new obsessions. Nigel sells cheese and/or guitars, David writes muzak and Derek runs a glue museum. All of them are a little reluctant to get back together, fearing their past divisions are insurmountable.
But as soon as they start making music together, they begin to find some common ground, as well as some new arguments. An early cameo by Paul McCartney should be revoltingly cringe but the way they tentatively jam together is so earnest and collaborative that it becomes beautiful. They're not good, that's not the point. Four old guys, fumbling around, trying to find a musical relationship together doesn't make great art. But it's the trying that's the point.
A later cameo by Elton John is equally wonderful as by now, with a lot of practice and a full band behind them, they're much more together, much more in sync. A lesser film would have shown this progress as a montage but Spinal Tap II shows the arguments and pettiness and effort needed to improve. They're still not good, after all they're still Spinal Tap, but it's the trying that's the point.
The thing we learn through the film is that they can’t express their friendship or resolve their differences in words. Conversations that attempt to address the situation are clumsy and a failure. Nigel tries to write a song about it, the earnestness of it contrasting hilariously with it’s awfulness. Obviously, the moment they do try to resolve things with words, in true Spinal Tap fashion, it's howlingly funny.
But in playing together they find something that none of them can get elsewhere. The shared goal, the shared effort, the sharing in and of itself.
Not only is this a great sequel, but it adds a new dimension to the original. What we're left with is a pair of films about male friendship. About a bunch of mates who gradually come to realise that, whilst they can't explain why or how, they all need that friendship in their life and need to put the effort in to try to make it work.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, action, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday November 23rd, 2025
Clean up in aisle six
The janitor of a Japanese high school is actually a yakuza assassin sent there to look out for his boss’ daughter. When her dad is killed, she becomes a target, with every other assassin in the area converging on the school to capture her.
Good lord this is bad. The first half of the film is interminable. Actors playing character-less characters monologue their way through scene after tedious scene. A decent script writer would have blitzed through this in ten minutes before getting straight to the action. Sadly, this does not have a decent writer so it takes almost an hour.
But once the action starts it picks up, right? God no. Each assassin turns up, does their bit and is despatched.
There’s no sense of geography, no sense of place, no sense of escalation or threat.
The fight scenes are terrible. Stunt men throw endless haymakers at each other, throwing in the occasional kick, filling up their allotted time before we can move onto to the next bunch of fist-fodder.
The music is some of the worst I’ve ever heard in a film. It’s the same off-the-shelf dramatic music used in cheap-shit reality game-shows, pasted over each scene without care or thought. By the end of the film it had given me a headache.
The single glint of light in the whole film is the first appearance of the Baby Assassins. It’s easy to see why they gave them their own film as, in the staggeringly brief time they’re on screen, they completely sideline the main story.
If you’re a Baby Assassins completist: watch this but skip every scene they’re not in (almost the entire film, basically), you’ll miss nothing.
For everyone else: avoid, avoid, avoid.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday November 22nd, 2025
Why So Serious?
A free-spirited, fiercely independent black woman with a sexually promiscuous and lesbian past, with a wealthy husband in a loveless marriage in patriarchal 1950’s England. And when we first meet her at the start of the film she’s contemplating suicide.
That character description of Hedda Gabler, magnificently played by Tessa Thompson, gives you an inkling as to what you’re about to watch.
The film very, very quickly disabuses you of that notion. This is absolutely not that kind of film. And Hedda is not that character.
Movie villains tend to exist in one of three categories: The plotting Machiavellian, the agent of chaos who just wants to ‘watch the world burn’ or the opportunist for whom events spiral out of control.
As the film progresses over the course of a single party, held at their preposterous country mansion, Hedda somehow manages to be all three.
Her character is complicated and not at all straightforward, but still nasty, self destructive, unlikeable and utterly magnetic. A human wrecking ball you can't take your eyes off.
None of the other characters come out of this particularly well either. Only Thea comes away with any sympathy and she’s a complete drip.
The film does an excellent job of portraying the straight-laced, stiff upper lipped puritanism of the fifties and how it melts at first contact with the upper classes attitudes towards, well, literally anything that will get in the way of them getting what they want. This film’s opinion of rich people is as black as a hat and revels in giving them enough rope.
The pleasure in the film is in feeling the revulsion for their actions whilst also enjoying the electric tingle at the shock of it all.
The final shot of the film is one of the best super villain inception moments you’ll ever see. Nia da Costa’s previous work for Marvel implies this is entirely deliberate.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday November 11th, 2025
Viva Macau
Colin Farrell plays Lord Doyle, a Baccarat player, mired in debt, trying to play himself out of a hole. Fala Chen plays Dao Ming, a hostess and loan shark who helps out addicted gamblers with their short term liquidity problem.
Set in Macau, the scenery and cinematography is stunning. The grandeur of the tackiness, the beauty of the monuments to gaucheness. This films captures the concept of greed better than anything I’ve seen. The gluttony, the hunger, to consume, to win, to ingest, constantly, infinitely, never satisfied, never sated, always chasing, always needing.
Volker Bertelmann's music is terrific. Playful and propulsive. It’s the sound of Satan getting behind you and giving you a shove in the back.
Unfortunately, the film pivots around the relationship between Doyle and Dao Ming. But her character is little more than a thumbnail, a sketch. Her story isn’t fleshed out or explained. So their relationship never makes sense, either financially or emotionally.
Consequently, when the revelation happens, it carries no weight.
If the film had been more of a double hander, focusing equally on Fala Chen and Farrell, it could have worked. But now I’m tilting into reviewing the film I’d wish I’d seen.
The film I actually watched is stunningly presented but missing a core.
One quick coda to this review: I'm really appreciating the extra mile that some film makers are going with their end credits. Both this and the recent Caught Stealing have added small amounts of well thought out animation to the credit reel at the end. Mix in a terrific choice of music and it ends the film on a little flourish. Given the turgid state of tv opening and closing credits, where every show has the exact same lazy formula, it's a little point of differentiation. A nice way to show that a little extra care was taken.
It feels like the end credits have been reclaimed after the Marvel era where they were just a thing that added gaps between the 'to be continued' sections.
Not only that, but in this case, somebody in the crew has clearly watched Medusa Deluxe (otherwise known as the film with the greatest end credit sequence ever1) and thought "We'll have some of that". Cracking stuff.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Seriously, watch Medusa Deluxe, the film is weird and wonderful and the end credits are incredible.
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Tags: blog, tv, animation, drama, recommended, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday November 08th, 2025
It's business as usual for privately-owned taxi driver Odokawa as he drives a variety of passengers around the city.
A misanthropic taxi driver gets in way over his head in a tangled web of mysteries and messy lives.
Each of the the passengers that Odokawa ferries around becomes another thread that spirals out, weaving around the other stories, eventually looping back round to arrive at Odakawa's taxi door.
The whole thing kicks off with a mystery about a missing teenager but then, Katamari-like, rolls ups stories of corrupt and incompetent cops; social media influencer vigilantes; wannabe comedians; a pop group and their controlling manager; competing gangsters; a thieving nurse; a mobile-game addicted teen; a debt ridden janitor; a caring but intrusive doctor; a catfishing extortion scheme and an otaku lottery winner.
The use of anthropomorphic animals as characters serves two functions. Firstly, with such a huge cast, it allows every character to be distinctive and immediately memorable. It's easy to remember the cast of pop group Mystery Kiss as they're all cats. You can't get any of them mixed up with Miho as she's an alpaca.
Secondly, and conversely, it highlights the deeply human nature of the characters and their stories. The animation style strips each character back to only the qualities needed to tell us who they are. Each character gets their own back story, their own motivations and their own vulnerabilities. There are no purely good guys here, but then even the worst characters here are relatable. You end up rooting for them when they have a chance at redemption or realisation.
The biggest mystery is Odakawa himself. He's obviously highly intelligent, an early scene where he masterfully diverts his prying doctor's conversation onto the subject of Bruce Springsteen is comedy gold, but he only shows that guile in brief spurts. Other times he struggles to get to grips with what's unfolding around him. He's no mastermind, which means that when the web he's helped to spin begins to tighten, the way it shakes out is believably messy, but also beautifully poetic.
There are some criticisms. There's a Tarantino-esque propensity for characters to monologue their backstory, or recite a wikipedia article that introduces a plot element. This is not helped by the perfunctory-at-best translated subtitles. And the subtitles are at their worst for the character of Yano, a character who raps every line. They technically work but they're unbelievably clunky and clash badly with the original audio. Every scene he's in is almost painful to watch.
But overall this is a genuine one-of-a-kind tv show. A magnificent blend of empathy and intricacy, noir and kitchen sink.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, horror, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday November 02nd, 2025
The little guy, squeaky voice
After enjoying Bet's direct and in-your-face approach to addressing social issues, here's another example of simply telling your audience how you feel about something.
Focusing on the lives of the patrons of a small queer bar, who find themselves in the midst of an alien invasion of sorts as the local population of cis, straight men find themselves taken over by a parasite that turns them into violent zombies who eat gay and trans people. The film almost literally tells you that Jordan Peterson is a glossy turd turning men into raging neanderthals. Garth Marenghi, eat your heart out.
Lets start with the positives. The lighting technicians absolutely understood the assignment. Despite the lack of budget1 the interior shots always look interesting and arresting. The film has it's own neon-noir style which I loved. It hides the basic set design and really makes the parasite/blood effects pop. The ooze and gloop is really slick and slithery.
And the cast are interesting and their interactions believable. They make the broader social themes relatable on a personal level. There's wit and zing here.
Sadly, it all falls apart with the plot structure. It just doesn't understand how a zombie horror movie should work. It introduces the parasitic element near the start, then spends most of the movie on the casts social life. A character is murdered early on and, seemingly an eternity later, somebody idly wonders where they've been. By the time the film handbrake turns into the zombie-killing section, I'd stopped caring about it and the film didn't put the effort into explaining the sudden shift into (mild) violence and gore.
Which brings me to the 'action' sequences which are just terrible. Managing to be both basic and unclear, nothing has any weight, sense of drama or threat. Bad, bad, bad.
And there's an attempt to add a meta-narrative through the use of found footage and genre aware characters that falls completely flat. To make this kind of thing work you have to really commit to it. But here it's so half hearted and inconsequential that when it does happen it's jarring to the point I was questioning why I was even watching this.
It brings me no pleasure to dunk on such a small budget indie film. Nobody makes this kind of movie without really caring about what they do and that much is clearly evident here. But sadly I though this was really poor.
Weirdly, this kind of genre movie is usually a case of weird and whacky effects and plot elements holding your interest even though it lacks a decent script or acting. But this is almost the reverse. I'd actually be interested if the film makers dropped all the 'genre' elements and just made a straight up kitchen-sink drama.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. I actually think this may have had a lower budget than The Paragon. Is it possible to have a budget less than zero?
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