Tags: blog, film, horror, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday August 10th, 2025
Picking up where we left off
I've loved Danny Boyle since the start. Literally the start of Shallow Grave, when the sound of Leftfield hits you in the chest and the camera hurtles off down the streets of Edinburgh. What an introduction.
I loved him 1as his career exploded, taking him to Hollywood. I loved him as a couple of critical and commercial duds brought him back from Hollywood.
I loved him even more after his absolutely astonishing made-for-tv not-quite-movies.
So when I went to the cinema to see his ultra-low budget, niche-genre, horror film 28 Days Later it felt like there was something at stake, namely his career. It needed to prove to the wider world, people who weren't already on board the Danny Boyle fan train like I was, that he should be given money to keep on making astonishing films.
And that sense of risk was shot right through the film. It was a film that came out swinging, determined to land punch after punch, knowing this could be the last chance its creators got to be this…this much.
But post 2012 Olympics, I’ve found his work…not bad…worse…uninteresting.
-A tepid thriller - Yawn
-Apple Guy : The Movie - Pass
-Exciting young guys are now old and boring - Err, no thanks.
-Rich people : the TV show - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-What if : Not The Beatles -Absolutely Not
-The Sex PisFUCKOFF!
I haven’t watched anything of his since Trance. Some of it’s probably good but why would I bother when there’s so much more interesting stuff in the world? And what if it wasn’t good? Do I really want to watch as an artist I deeply love slides into mediocrity. No, I absolutely do not.
Boyle revisiting the world of 28…Later was not something I had any enthusiasm for, like a past-it band touring their seminal album on a re-union tour, why would I want to go back to that? Especially as the Zombie/Infected/Undead genre that 28 Days brought roaring back to life has now been thoroughly flogged to death again.
But that trailer though!
So again I go into a Danny Boyle zombie movie with a sense of trepidation, a worry that maybe this won’t work out, a sense that something is at stake. Because failure here means having to admit it’s over, that we’ve drifted too far apart. I’m risking a part of myself just by watching this movie.
Gloriously, this is Garland & Boyle pushing everything as far as they can, trying to be as fresh as possible in a very stale genre. Boyle, my Danny Boyle, is very much back.
Where to start? Firstly, whilst Garland & Boyle understand the genre, they also understand people. Almost all zombie movies and tv shows since 28 Days… have understood the former but not the latter. So here we get people who behave like people, not walking plot devices. 28 Years Later is largely free of the neo-liberal wet dreams of constant, violent individualism that pervades the Walking Dead shows.
Secondly, it’s a British movie. I mean the Brexit analogy is pretty much thrust upon it by default2 but the cutting in of old British movies, the use of actual historical archery techniques and of course, Rudyard Kipling, gives this a heft and feel that’s unique to the genre.
Visually, there’s been a lot of effort put in to just about everything. The movement of the actors playing the infected is particularly impressive. It’s not just some extras running/shuffling around going “aaarrrgghh”. Shaun of the Dead on FFWD, this is not. The motion of the infected is itself grotesque, disturbing and inhuman.
The most commented on camera technique is the use of a bank of iPhones to get a grungy, Matrix style “Arrow-Cam” effect, which is interesting and fun if not revolutionary. However, there’s a scene in a Happy Shopper that is visually stunning. It’s a situation that’s been done a thousand times before but I’ve never seen it shot like this. Shocking, grotesque and beautiful, it’s moments like this that make the film stand out from the pack.
If I have a criticism it’s that I can’t fully form an opinion on the film until I see its sequel(s). This is very much a Part 1 that ends on a To Be Continued… Which means that whilst you would be hoping that the film would wind itself so tight it explodes at the end, that doesn’t happen here. Instead, the film gently, but emotionally, tapers off into the denouement. Which, in a way, is highly atypical of the genre and another reason this film is a bit special. But it does mean that we’re going to have to wait to find out if the early promise resolves into something truly special.
It will be the first Danny Boyle film I’ve been excited about for a long, long time.
1. It’s worth pointing out that Danny Boyle usually works as a team with writer John Hodge (and later, others) and producer Andrew Macdonald. ↩
2. Mainland Britain almost entirely populated by rage-fuelled psychopaths that the rest of Europe want to stay well away from. This shit writes itself. ↩︎
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: tv, blog, sci-fi, thriller, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday May 20th, 2025
There's an episode of the tv series Spaced that features the greatest depiction of clubbing in cinema history. It's greatness is that it understood that a truly great night out isn't just about the club you go to. It's what you're running from, to get to where you end up. It spends most of the episode detailing the tensions and problems of the cast, the bit in the club is literally just a few minutes. But because of the time spent on the tensions and anxieties and problems and fears, you get the release of an epic night out.
Anyway...part way through the second series of Andor, fifteen episodes into a relentless narrative equivalent of a Shepard tone, there's a wedding party scene. And it goes OFF
And maybe Spaced doesn't have the best club scene anymore.
I don't think I can add much to the conversation regarding Andor's greatness, other than my slightly shonky Spaced comparisons. Pick an element: music, costumes, acting, script, anything at all, it's all superb. However, I do want to mention a couple of personal highlights.
Firstly, the brokeneness of the antagonists. Every single character working for the empire is a shell of a human being, living half a life. Too many movie and tv villains are hyper-competent, charismatic, sexy bastards. When the reality is these kind of people are deeply pathetic, emotionally limited turds.
Secondly, all of them are punsished for their loyalty and competence. Literally every single one of them is crushed by the weight of the system they are trying to uphold. If any of them had just clocked in, did the bare minimum and clocked out again they'd have been fine. But the one thing fascism absolutely demands is comformity. Stick your head up too high and it's going to get scythed off.
And lastly, if there's one point that Andor hammers home relentlessly, it's that fascism contains within it the seeds of it's own destruction. Fascism won't work, can never work, will never work because it will always create the conditions that will bring it down. The harder the Empire pushes, the more the people push back.
To go back to that G.K. Chesterton "quote"
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
Andor tells us that whilst that victory is long, painful and must be fought for, it is inevitable.
Tags: blog, film, action, comedy, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday September 01st, 2025
That's my gun! Give it back to me!
What if: John Wick but the assassins guild is just like every other service industry, with sub-contractors and middle-managers and they hire bored teenagers to fill out the shifts.
That's it, that's the pitch.
Chisato is a super-eager, absent-minded dork. Mahiro is a shut-in introvert with an eating disorder1. Like many teenagers they don’t listen to instructions, are incredibly easily distracted, permanently bored and staggeringly annoying. They both have a propensity to solve their frustrations with the modern world with extreme and excessive violence.
Surprisingly, for the majority of its run time, the film focuses on their lives as awkward teenagers trying to navigate the world of part time jobs and flat shares. Their apathy and total disconnection from the bullshit jobs and meaningless managerial speak is hilarious, with the comedy coming equally from both the stupid situations they find themselves in and their complete inability to deal with it in anything like a mature manner.
The apathetic attitude is shared by the films general direction. Whole scenes are shot as if someone’s plonked the camera down and buggered off. The actors do their thing for five minutes and that’s a wrap. The editing is occasionally non-existent, Edgar Wright this is not.
The script bumbles around, mostly aimlessly, occasionally remembering that there was a plot around here somewhere that needs to be advanced.
Thankfully, the two main actors manage to consistently walk the fine line between teeth-gratingly annoying and adorably funny so it never loses you completely. Their friendship is believable and relatable. You spend the whole film invested in it and rooting for the two of them.
Eventually, the film realises that it needs an ending and so the two girls need to face down an entire Yakuza clan. At which point, from out of nowhere, suddenly erupts the best one-on-one fight scene I’ve watched in a decade. No frills, no fancy weapons, no special effects, barely even a set. Just two fighters absolutely tearing into each other. Like the rest of the film, the camera stays steady with minimal cutting, focused on the martial art moves and story telling. The result is a fight that feels believable and nasty, with real stakes, where you can see the skill, technique and ferocity involved.
It’s not quite as good as the lift fight in Merantau, but it’s not far off it either. It’s blistering.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Of the ‘Airplane’ kind.
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Tags: blog, film, comedy, action, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday October 27th, 2025
More Babies
The babies are back. This time their inability to manage their finances get’s them suspended from the assassins guild, forcing them to look for alternative forms of employment to pay their bills.
This instalment sticks largely sticks to the same formula as the first one but leans a little more into the comedy. The action scenes are more overtly comedic, a set piece brawl in a bank setting an early inventive tone. Later, a squabble between the pair whilst dressed as fur-suited mascots overspills into a full on fight scene. It’s uproariously funny.
The script writers have clearly realised how well the chemistry between the two teenage slackers works. And so, as antagonists, they get in two more teenage slackers.
The plot, such as it is, is that two wanna-be assassins find out that the only way to get into the assassins guild is if another pair ‘retire’. So they set their sites on Mahiro and Chisato. But they’re both as big a loveable pair of goofballs as the titular assassins, so we end up with double the levels of doofus bickering and teenage awkwardness.
Sadly, the final fight scene follows the same set up as the first film but can’t come close to the same level of intensity. By this point the film has run out of ideas, but the laughs to get us here make it more than worth the while.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, comedy, action, recommended, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday October 30th, 2025
Peachy Keen, Avril Lavigne
Going on holiday is a cliche of British sit-coms. Once the show has reached a peak of popularity, the time is ripe to cash in and make a movie. This almost always coincides with the show having run out of ideas. The solution: Take the cast abroad. All the characters you love but in a new, exotic, more expensive looking locale. It never works, it's always terrible.
So here's Baby Assassins 3, a series that struggled for ideas in it's second outing and oh look, they're going on holiday!
Except, Oh, the Baby Assassins crew have ideas. Big ones.
This time around, there's a much stronger focus on the action. The comedy is still there, producing laughs on a pretty consistent basis. Chisato and Mahiro are as adorable and goofy as ever. But it doesn't lounge around in their everyday attempts at adulting. Instead, these are the scenes that knits the action together.
And there's a concerted attempt to beef1 up the fight scenes. It's starts off quickly with an absolutely blistering early set piece. It then builds via a burgeoning cast and variety of locations. Well thought out characterisation creates a believably cruel and nasty antagonist, cranking the tension as we get closer to the end.
And when we get there it explodes. There's a sense of real, palpable danger at the heart of the ending. Built up by growing affection for the duo over three whole films, which is then juxtaposed and threatened by a genuinely vicious bastard, the stakes feel real. You care.
The fight choreography is loose and scrappy. But not in the 'Jason Bourne' way of quick editing to hide the fact that these are stunt men instead of highly trained martial artists. Here, the director and fight choreographer trust that their actors are skilled enough to properly go for each other and make it look good on the fly. You can feel the air woosh past you as rapid punches narrowly miss their mark. Ones that do land look like they hurt. It has one of the best depictions of severe concussion I've seen in this genre.
The result is thrilling, exciting, brutal and scary.
Next up, in a reversal of the British sit-com cliche, Baby Assassins Everyday! the tv series. I can't wait.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Spicy Miyazaki beef
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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, film, thriller, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday October 05th, 2025
Not as good as the Wikipedia page
It's a bit unfair to watch this straight after the magnificent Relay, but there you go. This is the story behind the biggest art theft in Irish history, spearheaded by Rose Dugdale, an English woman from an incredibly wealthy background, for the cause of the IRA.
The first mistake the film makes is by spending so much of it's runtime on the heist itself. Stealing stuff is the easy part, the boring part. Anyone can steal something, the trick is to get away with it. Relay doesn't even bother to show the theft, it's already happened before the film even starts.
The problem here is that the main characters don't seem to realise this and their getaway plan is staggeringly dumb, full of holes and badly implemented. It's difficult to empathise with them when they keep making schoolboy errors that we can see coming a mile off.
Which leads to the second mistake the film makes which is to focus on the art theft in the first place. A quick read through Rose Dugdale's Wikipedia entry is jaw dropping. She led a truly extraordinary life which the film shows snapshots of but never enough to show how committed she truly was. You could come away from this film with the idea that she was something of a dilettante, where as I think the the lack of commitment is from the film makers, not Rose.
The film has a lot of interesting ideas and tries to knit everything together in an attempt to create something that's more than the sum of it's parts. The way it uses the artworks themselves to explore aspects of Rose's characters is a good idea. Unfortunately it doesn't use the rest of the script to really dig deep and so everything is little more than a scratch on the surface.
Which is a shame as if anyone's life is interesting enough to make a movie of, it's Rose Dugdale. It's just a shame that this one doesn't do it justice.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday November 01st, 2025
I know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards
At what point does a metaphor or allegory get so on-the-nose that is stops being a metaphor/allegory and simply becomes the thing that you are talking about? Sometimes, Bet feels like it's attempting to explore that question.
Set in an ultra-exclusive private school for the kids of the mega-mega-mega-rich, where status is entirely defined by money and the only way to gain (or lose) money is to gamble. The winners get to literally own the losers as their personal slaves and the very, very top ranked players form the school council, setting the rules and rigging the games in their favour.
It's not exactly subtle, is it?
Enter Yumiko, a compulsive gambler who's parents (also compulsive gamblers) were assassinated when she was a tiny child, who's on a secret mission to find out who was responsible and get revenge. She shakes up the whole school order by being really good at gambling and also weirdly unaffected by peer pressure and school norms.
The series is at it's best when it treats the school as the beginning and end of it's world building, highlighting the inherent weirdness of forcing a bunch of kids into close proximity, whether they like it or not. This has the side effect of making it feel like a kids tv show, but rather than try and hide that it leans right into it, flatly treating the absurd as normal whilst simultaneously treating the juvenile trials and tribulations as completely valid and worthy of drama.
It's view of the world is bleak as hell. Nobody escapes the story with the audiences full sympathy. Yumiko's gambling gradually tips into self-destruction before her lust for revenge tips into manic violence. Every other character is given an empathetic background but each steadfastly refuse any redemption that's offered to them by the plot. Only Ryan comes away without a stain on his character and that's mostly because he's too wet for anything to stick.
So it's a dog eat dog world with everyone trying to knife each other in the back (and the front, side and any other angle they can get) in order to claw their way up the ladder.
At times it's breathtakingly good as it hammer's you in the face with it's absurdist indictment of capitalism. And the next moment you question what on earth you're watching as high school drama aimed at pre-teens directly references BDSM.
Sadly, it falls at the final hurdle. The last two episodes take place after school term and outside school grounds. The central problem the story has is that in making every character absolutely awful, we don't really care about any of them. Consequently, the mystery of Yumiko's parents simply isn't engaging. It's fine as a macguffin that moves the plot forward, but fails completely when we're asked to invest in it.
I'll probably watch the second series though. There's not much out there like it.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, drama, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday September 25th, 2025
Yes it really, really, really could 'appen
It's often forgotten, but you have to go through an awful lot of Shawshank before you get to the Redemption. It's A Wonderful Life is mostly a film about a man being driven to suicide.
Much of writer/director Andrea Arnold's Bird is similarly difficult to watch. More so as the lead character, Bailey, is a twelve year old girl. Watching her living in such poverty and squalor, lacking any real control over anything in her life is painful. It's heightened, at least for me, by the fact that this is filmed a stones throw1 from where I live. I know areas like this. I know kids like this.
Writer/director Andrea Arnold manages to make this coming of age tale watchable by crafting something that is supremely beautiful, where hope is everywhere when you look for it. Growing in the cracks in the broken pavement, scrawled on the walls of a piss-stained stairwell, in the scavenging eyes of an urban fox. Even, and I can't believe I'm going to write this, in the lyrics of a Verve record.
Hope is a gradual, building constant in this film. When everything gets too much and threatens to crush and overwhelm Bailey, the film breaks it's own narrative constraints in order to make the point that there's still hope. Still a way for things to be better, still a way to see beauty everywhere.
So when that hope builds to the point of a crashing wave, it hit's like a tidal wave of joy and grief and love.
Out of the movies of the past few years, only Aftersun has had an ending that hit's as hard as this. A masterpiece.
A bloody masterpiece.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Well, a short swim.
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Tags: blog, film, thriller, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday October 06th, 2025
Caught Napping
It's rare to see a film that manages to add up to so much less than the sum of it's parts. There's nothing here that, taken in isolation, can be criticised. Pick any element of the film: it's fine, good even.
But the actual film as a whole? It's a nothing burger. A standard sized bowl of regular, unflavoured porridge, made with skimmed milk. It made one hour and forty five minutes slide past. I doubt I'll remember any of it by next week.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, tv, animation, sci-fi, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday October 25th, 2025
Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan!
What am I doing here? Watching anime as a middle aged man is a deeply weird experience. When I was younger I was witness to the original UK anime/manga boom of the early nineties. Akira, Appleseed, Manga Mania. It was always weird but... It was a kind of weird that was curated towards a young western audience. It was a slice of Japanese culture carefully selected for the kind of teenagers who'd be receptive to it.
Now though? There's so much of it, so many different styles, so many different genres, such a wide audience. And, seemingly, for this audience it's all so normalised. When I was reading Gunsmith Cats as a teen I knew, right from the get-go, that this was something a little out there. That was what I wanted. But it seems like Attack on Titan is as standard to today's kids as Stranger Things.
Which, conversely, makes the act of watching this stuff when you're not completely immersed in this culture even more weird. I have no way of understanding it as part of a wider culture.
Is DanDaDan normal? Is this level of bizarreness de rigueur? Or does it stand out even amongst the, quite frankly, impenetrable field of anime weirdness?
I have no idea. And I have no idea how to critically evaluate it or, ~waves hand at the entire, diverse field of anime~ how to evaluate that. I once watched two episodes of Attack on Titan and they were the worst two episodes I've ever watched of anything, in my entire life.1 So I clearly don't know what I'm talking about.
But I do know that DanDaDan manages to capture teenage friendship and crushes in a way that's delightfully endearing. The whole show is deeply, deeply horny but in that oddly innocent, early teens way of having deeply intense longings and not having a clue what to do with them. And even though there are whole episodes where all the characters are fighting demons whilst stripped to their underwear, it never leers or objectifies.
The most intense, and most affecting, moments are when they're just trying to navigate the fact that they think they've been stood up during lunch, or their fingers touch whilst sat next to each other in the car. It's oddly sweet for a show where the main running plot-line is about trying to recover a characters genitals.
Sorry, yes, the plot. Two senior school nerds meet and argue about the merits of the occult vs UFO's. Momo was raised by her (absurdly hot, ridiculously cool, seemingly barely older then her) Grandmother who's a witch and dares Okarun, an introverted sci-fi junkie, to visit a haunted underpass to see a ghost. In return, he dares her to go to a notorious UFO sighting spot. Obviously, he gets possessed by the spirit of a demon-witch and loses his balls, she gets abducted by aliens.
That's episode one. It get's rapidly more grandios and unhinged from there.
It does do some of the stuff that turns me off of a lot of anime. Characters start shrieking at each other for no reason. In the rush to the next plot device, nothing ever gets completely resolved. And whilst it's attitude to gender and sex is mostly positive, series one is bookended by threats of sexual assault. The fact that these are kind of played for laughs makes it even more of an incongruous miss-step.
But somehow, it has a charm and vibe that's infectious. Two series in and I'm looking forward to a third.
Where to Watch
1. I only watched the second one because I couldn't believe that anything could possible be that bad. It was.
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Tags: blog, film, action, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday September 07th, 2025
And a re-al hero...
Edith Meanie is pulled back to do one last job after her ex-boyfriend messes with the mob.
It’s not an original set up but the execution is superb. Your immersion in the film rests entirely on the shoulders of Samara Weaving and Karl Glusman, their relationship being the thing that the entire film revolves around. And they pull it off superbly. John is an entirely believable fuck up who, infuriatingly, takes the wrong choice in every single moment, but never-the-less is also believably endearing. And Meanie is an entirely believable smart-but-not-educated ex-con trying to go straight who can’t ignore her affections and sense of duty.
The film builds it’s plots, characters and sub-plots convincingly and entertainingly, as it crescendoes to the big heist and final car chase and then…
…kind of just fizzles out.
That final car chase, the escape from the scene of the crime, is a bit limp. It’s not bad but the chase at the start of the film is a lot better. It’s just very underwhelming considering the excitement the film built up in the lead up to it.
Worse still, the film decides to throw in some crime drama plot twists that suddenly gets really, really dark. Pitch black in fact. But the film hasn’t earned that tonal shift because it’s put all its effort into a big car chase inside a casino and jokes about running someone over in a Tesla. It just happens out of nowhere, without the character work to make it believable.
So in the end we end up with a film that neither works as a car chase action movie nor as a complex crime drama of loyalty and betrayal. The two things end up tripping each other up.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: film, blog, comedy, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday June 08th, 2025
Wanna see a bunch of Nazis get fucked up?
Of course you do, who wouldn't. Well boy have I got the film for you.
This is a portmanteau film featuring four, based on real-life stories (spoilers), all taking place over twenty fours hours in Oakland, 1987. And it is a blast.
The music is absolutely amazing, it is relentlessly funny, the gore is off the scale, every performance is absolutely nailed. There's a surprise guest cameo appearance from someone who abso-bloody-lutely understands the assignment.
It's a love letter to Oakland. To the eighties. To films. To kicking the shit out of Nazis. To teaching clowns how to juggle. To just having a good time.
An actual riot of a film.
Tags: blog, film, animation, fantasy, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday August 28th, 2025
Alrighty Meow
Young girl Karin is abandoned by her dad at a temple where she makes the acquaintance of a ghost cat called Anzu.
The most obvious point of reference for this film is Studio Ghibli. This film borrows heavily from My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away1 with the obvious limitation that it hasn’t got anything like the budget of those films.
But it turns that into a virtue, this is a low budget film about low budget people. The characters are…well they’re…let’s just say: highly flawed.
Karin is a con-artist, always trying to manipulate people for her own gain, or just to be spiteful. She’s very much her Father’s daughter. Anzu is a gambler who wastes the money he does earn and cheats on the bets he makes. He also goes to the toilet where ever he pleases, because he’s a cat.
For the supporting cast there’s: two doofus boys who are dumb-struck by the new, pretty girl; a gullible temple attendant; a depressed god; a tunnelling frog; assorted sad-sack demons; a bunch of boring forest spirits who just hang around and play cards; and a run-down, Japanese town that’s sweltering, borderline melting, in the summer heat.
Everything feels real and personal. It matters because you recognise these people and their lives. Even the depressed gods. It feels like a British kitchen sink drama, with all of its money problems and annoying scrotes. It is exquisitely well observed and extremely funny as a result.
Its depiction of spirituality felt close to revolutionary. Here, spiritual enlightenment isn’t wisdom, or calm or devotion. It’s the willingness to get the crap kicked out of you in a fight you can’t win because your neighbour needs to be stood up for. To have this stated so boldly, so eloquently, is very timely for the world right now.
This film is a minor key masterpiece that deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as any Ghibli film you care to mention. A heartfelt, joyful, beautiful triumph.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Oh, and Trainspotting. It literally pilfers a scene directly from Trainspotting.
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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: Sunday August 31st, 2025
A sensitive depiction of a fraught subject
This predominantly three handed drama focuses exclusively on the tensions arising from the palliative care of someone in their final days of life. Set entirely within his flat (and the park bench immediately outside) where he’s hooked up to a cardiac monitor which provides the films beep-beep-beep soundtrack, the film tries to explore how the stress and grief affects different personalities and relationships.
It’s certainly a success in this regard. It’s humane and empathetic with its handling of the characters and situations. Unfortunately, the three titular daughters are too broadly stereotypical to be truly believable as a family. Each one has a personality type and that’s who they are. There’s not enough plot, enough revelations or enough nuance to truly draw me in.
It’s a solid and emotional film and, considering the subject matter, that’s good enough. But I didn’t feel like it had enough to say about it.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, comedy, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday September 20th, 2025
Aunt, A u n t
This film: It doesn’t know what it wants to say, doesn’t say much of it, and even that it doesn’t say with it’s whole chest. This should be terrible and I can imagine some people bouncing off this completely.
But I still recommend it because it has a sense of freedom. Like everyone has a bunch of ideas that sound interesting so have a go at making them work. See what’ll happen.
Take for instance Margaret Qualley’s lead character, Honey O’Donahue, who is simultaneously both the hardboiled gumshoe and the femme fatale. Does it work? Absolutely! She’s magnificent, ably abetted by a Barbarella paced series of costume changes, every single one of which is just *chef’s kiss*.
But also only kind of. The plot kind of burbles along, things happen which criss-cross the paths of the ensemble cast, but nothing drives it. So even though she’s magnificent, she doesn’t get to do much of significance.
Every character has that kind of twist to it. What if we took that character from film noir but played it like this instead. The whole cast is great, but special mention goes to Charlie Day who plays the archetypal sexist, incompetent police detective who makes the P.I.’s life difficult. Except he only hits on her because he knows she get’s a kick out of knocking him back; knows full damn well she’s better at the job than he is so keeps giving her leads; and is only a pain in the ass when he really needs to be sure that something’s going to stick.
It’s fun. It’s funny.
The whole thing wraps up in less than ninety minutes and doesn’t amount to much. I really wanted more from it. But, having said that, I would love to watch another ninety minutes of these characters.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, family, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Friday August 29th, 2025
Also cute and fluffy!
How to discuss a remake of the Lilo & Stitch? I’m a big believer in the idea that remakes, reimaginings etc should be judged on their own terms. Ignore the past, that still exists, it’s still yours to own, focus on the new and judge it by today’s standards.
The problem here is that I just can’t do that. Lilo & Stitch is indelibly a part of my movie watching life and I can’t watch this new version with fresh eyes.
So, one of the highest pieces of praise I can say about this new version is that where they have made changes they’ve done so thoughtfully and with care.
The most obvious is the previous films biggest flaw: Jumba’s change of heart. It never made sense and always looked like the result of a rushed script. This absolutely fixes that problem and makes the film work for the modern age, where the powerful and exploitative are so firmly entrenched in their destructive path.
In fact Jumba and Pleakly are something of a triumph. There odd couple dynamic actually working a lot better as two out of sorts humans than it did in the original. Pleakly’s completely unreserved enthusiasm for life on earth is one of the highlights of the entire film, Billy Magnussen’s elastic face work overtime to wring every last drop out each joke.
The other biggest script change is focusing the story a lot more on Nani. Here, the switch to live action helps to focus on the drama of the family as whole. Nani is given her own story, with her own wants and needs, and has a bit more agency in this version. This works particularly well in the scenes with both Lilo and Nani. Both Maia Kealoha and Sydney Agudong are superb in their roles and their relationship is completely believable.
The downside is that the new realism highlights the original stories weaknesses. The tension between the family and their social worker was fine for an animation told from the point of view of Lilo. But when the film makes us feel like we’re looking at a real family with real issues of grief being worked through, having a simplistic plot about a social worker breaking the family up doesn’t fit anymore.1
There’s also a distinct flatness with the cinematography and music as well. Whereas the original had the most superbly painted backgrounds and landscapes, here we just get drone shots of Hawaii looking like any other tourist resort. It looks like a great place to stay but the original looked magical. And whilst Elvis is used much like he was last time, the film doesn’t hang its hat on it. Now it’s just some music for some of the scenes, rather than a good chunk of the films identity. It lacks flair, which isn’t something you should be saying about Elvis.
But, crucially, it still works. Like an OK cover of a truly great song, the story of Lilo & Stitch is, much like Stitch himself, bullet proof. This cover is very funny, pulls at the heart strings and is a good time from start to finish. Youngster going into the story for the first time will absolutely love it.
But if you have a choice for which one to show them first, stick with the original.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Part of me wishes they'd leant into it. Ditched the crowd pleasing stuff about aliens with guns and instead made a kitchen sink drama with a magical realist Stitch. Basically, what I'm asking for is for Shane Meadows to adapt Skizz.
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Tags: blog, film, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday August 21st, 2025
Forget the music and live
How to discuss a biopic about an art that you know nothing about and a subject of which you know even less? I can’t speak of the veracity of the events, either their literal truth or their faithfulness to the character.
I have to take the film at face value and judge it on its ability to draw me into Maria Callas’ last week on earth. And its ability to make me empathise with her and the people around her.
In this regard, the film is a triumph. The sincerity of its admiration is deft, subtle and gentle. We see her at her best and her worst, the film judges her for neither. It barely explains either, although context is provided by frequent flashbacks, it’s never as simple as Incident A leads to Behaviour B.
But it does reveal a character trying to hold the world at a specific distance. Close enough that she can feel the warmth and adulation of it. But not so close that she has to deal with the messy, often hurtful jostling of it.
Nowhere is that more true than in her interactions with her butler and housekeeper. The relationship between the three is the beating heart of the movie. Watching them gently try to nudge the boundaries of their relationships in order to care for each other, always without acknowledging it. Ferrucio and Bruna by arranging events to see that she is looked after and supported, even (or especially) without her permission. Maria by pushing them away, reminding them of their place, in order to maintain control of her life. Even if her life is what it will cost her.
The overall effect is a deeply contemplative, emotional piece that never tips into melodrama. Beautiful, humanising and deeply sad.
Tags: blog, film, comedy, drama, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday August 13th, 2025
Did you watch University Challenge last night?
A love triangle where the a character has to choose between love and money is a fairly common staple. The best ones offer sharp commentary on society and relationships.
And they do not come any sharper than the first half of Materialists which focuses its laser-like gaze on dating and marriage within our capitalist financial system. I was not expecting just how brutal Celine Song’s assessments of modern relationships would be, laying out harsh realities clearly for the audience without ever slipping into lazy cynicism.
I was also not expecting it to be this funny. Having laid everything clear out in front of the audience, each character is then given enough rope with which to go one step too far and into absurdity. This contains the biggest belly laughs I’ve had from a film so far this year.
Things get a little less clear in the second half though as the films starts to focus on the romance, rather than the commentary. Song’s previous film, the masterpiece Past Lives presented two choices: neither the correct one, both of which would result in regrets, and it’s heartbreaking. It seems as though this is going to pull off the same trick, but as the film moves past the halfway point, it seems to make a decision as to which is the ‘right’ choice for Dakota Johnson’s character, but without fully convincing me.
The result is an ending that neither quite fits the form of a beautiful romance, or subverts it. After the cutting edge of the first half, the ending felt a little blunt. It’s still worth watching for that blistering opening salvo though and there’s enough ideas in here to make me eager for future work from Song.
Tags: blog, film, action, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday September 11th, 2025
And figured this out and no one gets hurt
The first film is a pretty ropey film with some decently violent fight scenes that really explodes at the end into an orgy of Looney Tunes scale ultra violence. John Wick re-written by Rick Mayall and Adrian Edmondson. The surprise of the sheer scale and glee of that final fight glossed over how threadbare the rest of the film was.
The second film is pretty much exactly the same except it’s on holiday and the final fight is rubbish. Everything is sign posted, nothing is a surprise. No wit, no style, no panache.
Celebrity guest cameos:
- RZA’s does his watered down Ghost Dog impression. He’s decent again.
- Sharon Stone doesn’t so much chew the scenery as rip it to pieces with her bare teeth. Sadly, the script is dull and lifeless and she’s wasted.
- Christopher Lloyd turns up. He doesn’t do anything, at all, but he does turn up.
- The dog gets the best laughs of the film but is only in it for a minute.
On the plus side, it’s only 90 minutes long, doesn’t outstay its welcome and clips along at such a brisk pace that it’s never boring. But I kind of feel like that’s the bare minimum for an action movie. It’s like praising a pop song for having a catchy tune. Yes, that’s the point. You’ve done the absolute bare minimum that’s expected of you, now what?
In Nobody 2’s case: absolutely nothing.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
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, 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, family, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday August 26th, 2025
A Bear of Very Considerable Heart
The title pretty much describes everything you need to know about this film. It’s Paddington and all the characters you’ve grown to love over the last two Paddington films, but on holiday in the jungle.
Once again, all those characters are intensely likeable. And once again, even (especially) the villains are thoroughly enjoyable, played with camp and freedom, getting their comeuppance in a suitably joyful manner.
It’s not just the characters that are lifted straight from the first two films. The cinematography has a great eye for a good shot, but also tells its story coherently, even (especially) when the slapstick starts to snowball.
The meticulous plotting is back. Just about everything is either a set up or a pay-off, it all clicks together satisfyingly, like a really good Lego set.
The laughs are evenly paced throughout the film and it’s never, ever boring, not for a minute. And it’s pro-immigration message couldn’t be more welcome and well received than right now.
What it doesn’t quite bring from the first two films is that little bit of magic they both had, that extra special sparkle. To a certain extent it doesn’t need to. The warm afterglow from Paddington 2 is so great that it envelopes this entire film like a big bear hug. You want to love this film, maybe a bit more than it deserves.
So whilst this is fun and enjoyable enough on its own terms, it only feels like an encore to Paddington 2. But who doesn’t want that?
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, comedy, sci-fi, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday September 21st, 2025
I am a Hyper Dimensional Being
Dutch seeks to learn the secrets of Psyonic power, in order to seek out the perpetrator of a hit and run that left him partially crippled.
This is almost-zero budget fantasy/sci-fi movie is a lot of fun. Especially if you enjoy dialogue like "We are seekers, from another plain of existance", delivered earnestly. The whole thing is just the right amount of silly whilst still having a message of reconciliation that hits just the right spot. There's also a nice little commentary of the corruption of power and absolute power as well.
Everybody involved in this understood the assignment. Especially Florence Noble, who plays her character exactly like the thespians who play guest characters in early Red Dwarf. Dead straight, let the audience enjoy the absurdity for themselves.
Add a 'recommended star' to the top there if you love eighties synthwave. The soundtrack is an absolute banger.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: tv, blog, comedy, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday August 02nd, 2025
In praise of mid-range TV
Great art should be challenging. Great art should challenge what is possible, should challenge what I am capable of comprehending.
But when I've got home after thirteen hours working two jobs, when I've only got a few hours to sit down and decompress, before I have to go to bed and get up ready to do it all again, I don't want to be challenged. I want to be entertained.
It's times like this that I miss the days before "prestige" tv, before multi-series story arcs and a cast of thousands. I miss being able to switch on an episode of Columbo or Quantum Leap or Star Trek TNG, know who all the characters are within the first few minutes, and then get a story with a start, a middle and an ending.
Poker Face gets this, it's not a challenging show. You don't even have to work out who the murderer is, it just shows you right off the bat. But what Poker Face also understands is that I'm not an idiot and I don't want to be condescended to.
Poker Face is smart. It just puts those smarts into producing a solid, witty, delightful story into every forty five minute episode.
It does have some concessions to modern tv mores. The first and last few episodes of each series act as story bookends, setting up and paying off Charlie Cales' dealing with the Mob and the FBI. But it's not where it's at it's best. It's at it's best in the middle episodes of the series which most closely hew to the syndicated shows like Columbo and Murder, She Wrote that it's so clearly enamoured with. Episodes 5 to 9 of Series 2 in particular is an astonishing run, every one a belter. The John Cho & Melanie Lynskey helmed "The Sleazy Georgian" is the standout. Fun, funny, smart and deeply empathetic. The kind of storytelling that makes you feel connected to the world and the people around you. That makes you feel good about going to bed and getting ready to start the day anew.
Tags: blog, film, action, sci-fi, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Friday August 22nd, 2025
Lessons Learned from Predator I to Predator III
Lesson One. Tell the story through the action. Don’t have your characters sit around explaining the plot and backstory to each other, that’s just wasting time that would be better spent with something blowing up, which is what we came for. P:KoK1 absolutely rattles along. The total amount of time it spends where someone isn’t being punched, stabbed, shot, blown up or at least threatened with one of those probably amounts to less than five minutes across the entire film. It does not hang about. And yet it still manages to pack in four stories that each have a beginning, a middle and an end. Because the action is the story, not the thing that breaks it up.
Lesson Two. Have the characters do stuff because of who they are. Don’t have your characters do stuff just because that’s the only way for the next big set piece to happen. It just makes them look stupid and we’ll stop believing in them. P:KoK sets its characters up by telling us who they are and what’s important to them. And then everything that they do is because of those two things. They have to suffer the consequences of their decisions, both for good and for bad. There’s nothing complicated here, but it all works.
Lesson Three. Don’t explain everything, we don’t care. Big Alien Wants Big Fight, that’s it. Everything else is background detail and should remain there, in the background. If us scifi nerds want to delve deeper into this stuff2 then we’ll do it anyway. For god sake don’t slow the pace down by explaining stuff. Best case scenario: you ruin the mystery. Worst case scenario: you ruin the film. P:KoK has loads of interesting design stuff that it resolutely, point-blank refuses to slow down for. Blink and oh-no you’ve already missed it, too late there’s another explosion, guess you’re going to have to re-watch the film with your finger over the frame-skip button. There’s more interesting stuff happening in the background here than there is in the combined John Wick films and they last about five weeks.
In summary, this steps over the staggeringly low bar set by modern action films with ease. It’s not as great as Prey but it’s a lot of fun and keeps the anticipation up for Predator: Badlands.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Yes, that’s what I’m calling it. ↩
2. And yes, yes we really do ↩
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday January 23rd, 2025
Loneliness and Longing
Daniel Craig is in magnificent form as an older man falling for a much younger, much less secure in his sexuality, guy. It’s impossible to imagine anyone else pulling this role off. Craig’s elegance and magnetism lends perfect credibility to their affair. But his comic timing and generous spirit makes his character soft, vulnerable and immensely likeable.
The plot of the film is slight, but the wonder is in the skill of the film making. The camera is patient. The music doesn’t fit the era but encapsulates the mood. There’s a love scene that’s quite unlike anything I’ve seen before. Craig’s willingness to please, and delight in doing so is joyful.
Over two hours watching Daniel Craig tragically yearning and striving for a deeper human connection, a deeper love, may seem a bit much for a film that doesn’t really add up to much. But I found this to be a deeply lonely and tragic tale that held my emotions the whole way through.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, thriller, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday October 04th, 2025
Credit or Debit?
Riz Ahmed plays a middle man who works on behalf of whistle blowers and the corporations they've stolen from to ensure that they both get what they want out of a deal.
To do this he uses a relay service for deaf people, typing messages into an old-fashioned computer modem that is then read out by a call centre operative. Nobody hears him speak and the service is untraceable.
So in every tense conversation, every high stakes negotiation, the 'Jason Bourne' character is played by a random call centre person who is literally phoning it in. One staggeringly tense, life or death scene is finished off with a jaunty "Thank you for using the tri-state relay sevice, have a wonderful evening".
This deadpan approach to tension building is carried over to much of the rest of the film. Outside of the occasional (and decent) needle-drop the soundtrack is barely noticeable. The cinematography is restrained and un-showy, not a single trace of camera shake. The acting is similarly pared down, Riz Ahmed has about two lines of dialogue in the entire first third of the film.
This is a film that lets the plot and the characters drive the tension. And boy is this film tense. It starts at a level of 'gripping the arms of the sofa', rapidly escalates to 'fitness tracker heart-rate warning' before gradually climaxing to 'choking claustrophobia'.
Like director David Mackenzie's previous film, Hell or High Water, Relay draws from the real-world effects of late-stage capitalism to bury it's characters in impossible choices. There's no 'good guys', just people trying not to drown. There are antagonists, but the real villains are out of site, everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Untouchable but inescapable. As the 'heist' begins to fall apart in the latter stages of the film, there's a growing realisation that there's no way to not lose this game. Even if you win, it'll cost you your soul. A single answer phone message breaks your heart and you know the game is rigged every single way.
This film stands along side the previously mentioned Hell or High Water and the more recent How to Blow Up a Pipeline at the absolute pinnacle of the modern heist movie genre.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, 2025, horror, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday August 14th, 2025
For everything I long to do
Halfway through this movie, there’s a scene that the entire film is built around. Everything before it is working towards this scene. Everything after happens as a consequence. Its premise is a sequence of artistic expression and communal joy so spectacular that it tears a hole in reality. And the thing is, the film barely explains this to you, you get to experience it.
It is spectacular one of the greatest pieces of pure cinema I’ve seen in a long time. A spine tingling, eye-popping, aural overload of the senses. An absolute bravura piece of film making.
The scale of ambition here is breathtaking. Take the sieged-by-vampires horror genre, set it in the prohibition era deep south, have the main characters deeply morally flawed, deal with the racial problems of the time bluntly and with nuance and, and throw in some of the best musical song-and-dance numbers for years.
None of this should work but the scale of the ambition is eclipsed by the scale of the talent and, quite frankly, the swagger of the film makers. Because there’s barely a single element of this movie that is anything below astonishing. I defy anyone to not, at some point in this movie, fall completely in love with the costumes.
Hell, at one point, even the aspect ratios made me gasp.
If I have one criticism and, sadly, I do, it’s that the film has too many endings. They’re all good ones, and it’s clear that Ryan Coogler had a lot to say and wanted to get it all out. But they end up getting in the way of each other, so none of them end up landing as hard as they should.
It’s the only part of the movie where the ambition is too much. Still I would rather watch a film that tries to do too much rather than one that plays it safe. And there is nothing safe about Sinners, it’s electric.
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 August 24th, 2025
Under supervised
There’s a much discussed scene near the start of this movie where Lois Lane stages an impromptu interview with Superman. She asks him difficult questions about his recent actions stopping a war, questions that unsettle and fluster him because he can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t take his actions at face value; that he’s saving lives. It’s an interesting scene as it reveals so much about his character, about how he sees the world through a simple premise, that as long as he’s motivated by virtue, his actions will be (and will be perceived as) virtuous.
The problem with this scene is that, bluntly, Lois Lane is an arsehole. She rattles Superman because she takes on the classic centrist, view-from-nowhere voice that ‘respectable’ newspaper writers habitually use. The one where “some people might say…” is used to speak utter bullshit but not be held responsible for saying it. Where the whims of an aggressive, multi-billion dollar, military-industrial state and a people’s right to exist are points of view that carry equal weight. Where facts and opinion are the same thing.
Superman even tries to call her on out on her bullshit, referring to her quoting warmongers in good faith as silly and dishonest, but lacks the ability to articulate just how offensive this shit is. She even admits that she’s trading on her ignorance to make her point but seems to consider that to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Later, Lois does some actual journalism and finds there is staggeringly obvious corruption involved in the war that makes her questioning of Superman seem embarrassingly naive. Maybe if she had taken the time to learn the first fucking thing regarding the subject she was ‘just asking questions’ about, her and the Daily Globe could have the exposed the corruption and lies and, if not stopped the invasion, helped Superman with the public relations battle.
It may seem a minor point but it really rankled me. It sets the tone for the rest of the film, which wants to acknowledge the precarious political situation we find ourselves in, but has none of the intelligence, articulation, curiosity or courage to have anything to say about it.
On the positive side, Krypto lights up the screen in every scene he’s in. Hawkgirl’s screech is a delight, Green Lantern’s haircut is a violation of my human rights. Crucially, we get a really good depiction of Superman. His sincerity and good faith shine constantly and is completely believable throughout the entire film.
Sadly, it’s the only believable thing in the film. Unlikeable, paper thin characters stumble their way through a series of black-hole sized plot-holes, all while weightless special effects whirl around with no relationship to physical reality or basic story telling.
A boring waste.
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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Tags: blog, film, comedy, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday September 06th, 2025
The Beaver is still nice
There are lot’s of ways to pay homage to the original when remaking a beloved franchise. One way is to stuff your new version with knowing nods and winks. Make the gap between the originals and the new one part of the fabric of the new story.
Another is to hide those details in the background. Little easter eggs for eagle eyed fans to catch. Allow the new thing to be its own thing whilst letting those fans know they’re being acknowledged.
This new version of The Naked Gun does both of those things, with enthusiasm. However, the primary way it show’s it’s respect to the original is that it whole heartedly commits to being a Naked Gun film.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then Zucker, Abrahams & Zucker understood that the soul of a comedy film was density. Pack the jokes in faster than the viewer can keep up. If you don’t find that joke funny, wait a few seconds and they’ll be another one. And throw in every type of joke you can think of: slapstick, puns, visual gags, fourth wall breaks, crudity, satire, surrealism or a combination of some/all of them. Bury the viewer under an avalanche of jokes to the point where they can barely breath for laughing.
This new Naked Gun from Schaffer, Gregor & Mand understands that completely. The jokes start almost immediately, the only time the film goes more than a few seconds without one is the opening minute. After that, the finger is held down firmly on the trigger and a rat-a-tat-tat of jokes spews forth, not stopping until the copyright notices at the end of the credits.
Liam Neeson isn’t quite as good as Leslie Nielson, he’s ever so slightly more expressive, slightly less reserved. But he’s still magnificent and I can’t think of anyone who could play the role better.
Pamela Anderson is surprisingly un-sultry in her role as the femme fatale. And surprisingly magnificent when allowed to take the lead with the comedy. Unfortunately she’s under used in this aspect but her one solo scene, a jazz club performance, is magnificent and a highlight of the film.
Occasionally, the film tries to update the humour to fit with modern times with mixed results. The jokes about police brutality struggle a bit. Police Squad works as a satire of film noir, not so much the realities of policing. One segment involving dash/body cams is the films only dud section.
It’s so refreshing to have Frank Drebin and this particular brand of humour back. I’ve not seen a film with this many jokes in it for a very, very long time. And whilst it never quite manages to hit the heights of quality and quantity of it’s predecessors, this still manages to be one of the very best out and out comedies of recent years.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, action, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday August 10th, 2025
I put more effort into this review than was put into the making of this film
Terrible.
1 Star simply because it passes the Bechdel test like it's not even a thing.
Tags: blog, film, thriller, action, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday September 06th, 2025
Young Blades (Go For It)
It’s been ten years since John Maclean last turned the Western genre on its head.
Slow West subverted expectations by having a very traditional setting that gradually unspools in very untraditional storytelling. This time he’s flipping it around. The story itself is roughly what you would expect. A story of thievery, criminal gangs, backstabbing and revenge. It’s very well done and has a slightly non-linear structure that works exceptionally well, getting into the drama without delay. Tension right from the off.
It’s the setting that tilts everything into a weird, off-kilter zone where everything’s familiar and yet unsettlingly
It’s still the Wild, Wild West, but now it’s the west highlands of Scotland. There’s plenty of quick-draw showdowns, twitchy hands, itching to draw weapons, but the weapons are swords. The main character is a samurai.
There’s also plenty of shots of the crisp, clear, sun drenched landscapes. But instead of feeling the parched heat, you get cut through by a frigid, Scottish spring breeze.
And the cinematography is pure Western. Wide, glorious, sweeping landscapes mixed with tight, tense close-ups of tight, tense faces. Usually covered in dirt, stubble and wrinkles.
All the actors turn in terrific performances. Tim Roth is superb as the gang leader, managing to be convincing as a brutal, ruthless killer, whilst still engendering sympathy for having to put up with and deal with the gangs stupidity and greed. I’ve always thought (probably terribly unfairly) that Jack Lowden comes across as an unlikeable tosser, so he’s perfectly cast as the most unlikeable tosser in a gang of complete scum.
However, the absolute star of the film is the composer, Jed Kursal, who turns in a moody, dramatic spaghetti western of a score. It’s rich and muscular and flows over every scene, adding colour to everything.
I’m a little torn. On the one hand, this is so good that I wish Maclean would speed up his output from one film per decade. Whilst on the other hand, if it’s going to be as good as this, it’ll be well worth the wait.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, horror, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday September 13th, 2025
Well Weapon
Sometimes I think I just have to accept a film isn't made for me. The premise of Weapons, revealed in the trailer and, admirably, laid out within the first few minutes of the film, is that one night, at the exact same time, seventeen children from the same class at school get out of their beds and run away, never to be seen again. Only one boy from the class is left.
The implications are obvious: as inconceivable as those events are, it's equally inconceivable that the classes teacher, Justine, doesn't know something about it. Her class is the only thing connecting all those kids.
And so, in the absence of literally anything in the way of explanation or closure, the parents start to lash out, at the school and at Justine. It's an excellent premise: what happens to a town when an inexplicable tragedy occurs? How do they cope with that? It's a perfect theme for horror stories to explore.
Sadly for me, the film isn't interested in exploring those ramifications at all. It does just enough to make a juicy set up, full of tension, and then instead starts to focus on what actually happened that night.
It does a pretty good job of that. It utilises a structure that keeps switching the character that we're following. Building tension to breaking point with one character before switching to another. Releasing the tension a little before building it right back up again and repeating the process.
The sense of dread is palpable, the jump scares are well done and used sparingly, the violence is shocking and gruesome. Everything works really well...until it doesn't.
After a few time-line switches, we start to receive diminishing returns. As the characters get more and more peripheral, it starts to get frustrating. Instead of advancing the plot we're now following characters who matter less and less to the story. One character could be cut completely and it wouldn't make any difference.
When we eventually do snap back to the core characters it's run out of steam and worse, stops making sense. It turns out that what happened that night isn't all that interesting.
Or at least to me. See, I wanted to watch the film that the opening implied we were going to get. I wanted to watch a film about a small town tearing itself apart with grief and suspicion. I wanted to watch a horror with subtext, that gets under your skin and questions your relationships with your community.
What I actually watched was a reasonably well done, gruesome horror story about magic and scary kids1. It wasn't for me.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. VERY MINOR SPOILER: If you find kids scary that is. I, for the record, do not. Which meant that the ending was howlingly funny. My wife and I disagreed with the intentionality of this. She thought it was supposed to be funny, I thought it was inadvertent. It's certainly memorable, I'll give it that.
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Tags: film, blog, comedy, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday May 31st, 2025
Outdated plot, contemporary and beautiful people
I've not seen the 1993 film that this is a remake of. It's somehow passed me by despite being a big fan of Ang Lee. So I don't know how much has changed from the original. But good lord this film feels weird at times.
The plot is characterised by the kind of high-concept, situation lead set-up common to rom-coms of the eighties and nineties. But the direction takes a little bit of a back seat, allowing the actors the time and space to make their characters entirely believable, despite the patently absurd (and staggeringly predictable) situations the plot places them in.
And it works. That time and space is where the comedy lives. There are plenty of proper belly laughs that come from nothing more than a sideways glance or muted 'harrumph'. Youn Yuh-jung's grandmother managed to steal almost every scene without even moving her face. Understated, character-led comedy is exactly my kind of thing and this film has it in spades.
If I have a criticism of the film, it's the cinematography. It's very basic and lacks flair. It's arguably not a problem for a rom-com, except... art plays a big part in this film. Both Bowen Yang and Han Gi-Chan play artists whose work is genuinely beautiful and yet the film seems almost completely un-interested in exploring that. Which is an issue when that art plays a part of one characters plot-changing and emotional decision. The moment works, the characters make it work, but it would have been so much more powerful if you saw in the art what that character saw. But the film doesn't give you that opportunity.
But I loved this film. It's relentlessly funny. And I believed in the characters even if I didn't believe in the plot. Beautiful.
