I've recently made the swap from hosting this website on a Synology NAS to a Raspberry Pi running Yunohost.

The main reasons being: A) I wanted to do more self hosted stuff and messing around with Docker containers was absolutely doing my head in. B) The Synology NAS was making too much noise with regular disk access.

Yunohost has been mostly straightforward to set up and has so far (touches wood) been extremely reliable. The Raspberry Pi 5 has been fantastic and more than fast enough for running this website and everything else I've been asking it to do.

Kiki has of course continued to be fantastic.

I'm going to keep the Synology pages below for reference. They're still relevant and may be useful in the future as I may use it again for another project.

All We Imagine As Light

Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday March 29th, 2026

Nurse Prabha

Poster for the film All We Imagine As Light. Two young Indian women holding up a red rice cooking appliance for inspection, one looking over the shoulder of the other.

I almost get the feeling that this film is having a bit of a laugh with the traditional structure of film dramas. The stories of the three Mumbai women who we follow are Hollywood staples. The cook who's being evicted from her long-term home to make way for gentrifying property developers. The nurse who's fallen in love with a boy from the wrong family.

By the time we get to the teacher who meets an unconscious man who suffers from amnesia and gets mistaken for his wife, it's difficult not to imagine the director smiling at us as we get a magical realist take on While You Were Sleeping only kind of in reverse.

It's difficult to explain. The tone here is gentle and unhurried. The film isn't interested in resolutions or answers. Where just here to feel their lives for a little while.

What the film is interested in is Mumbai itself. I could write some cliche's about the hustle 'n' bustle of the big city but that wouldn't be right. Every scene is packed with detail, both visually and audibly. There's so much to drink in that it almost drowns you in the city itself.

But not much actually happens. There's always people going somewhere, waiting for something, talking to someone, but not much actually going on. Everything moves, all the time, and yet in the moment-to-moment, nothing changes.

I felt exhausted in the effort required to even exist in a place like this. The effort to stay afloat.

Later, when the scenery changes for the Indian coastal country side, the intensity remains. The sound of the country is as constant and intricate as that of the city. The colour palette shifts from cool blue to earth green and brown but it's still dense with detail.

But now there's space and time. Space for the characters to exist as themselves, time for them to be seen by the others for who they are. Suddenly, we're floating, drifting even.

The writer/director Payal Kapadia has crafted something truly captivating and distinct here and I'm looking forward to more of her work.

A young Indian Nurse sits behind a glass partition in a busy doctor's surgery. Behind her are cluttered desks and a colourful fish tank. She's talking to a young mother, just off camera, and making the 'snipping scissors' action with her fingers.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

A Man on the Inside

Tags: blog, tv, comedy, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Friday January 09th, 2026

The Good-ish place

A white haired, suave looking pensioner in a suit, leaning against a lamppost and adjusting his tie.

The problem with having a really great concept and then nailing the execution on your first try is how do you follow it up?

The first series of A Man on the Inside is such a perfect idea and so well executed that it's difficult how to see how the same trick could be pulled twice.

It's a problem that the show's creator, Michael Schur, has encountered before. Previous success, The Good Place, had one of the all time greatest sit-com first series, ending with a bang that made simply repeating the formula impossible.¹

And you can see the lessons learned from that shows evolution on display here, A Man on the Inside doesn't try to pull the same trick twice. For a start, Charles Nieuwendyk is actually good at his job now. He's grown and improved.

Now the 'inside' is a university campus that Charles must infiltrate by posing as a temporary lecturer. The contrast is obvious, going from old people nearing the end of their life to young people just starting there's. Which makes it curious that the show makes no use of that switch whatsoever. The students barely exist in this, instead it concerns itself mostly with the teaching staff whilst also pulling across half the cast from the last series as well.

It ends up having too many characters to keep track of to truly make any of them stick. There's too many stories that start and end neatly in the same episode. Everything rattles along a little too quickly for its own good.

The flip-side is that there's always something happening and nothing ever stands still. It never suffers from trying to replicate it's past success, it's too busy moving forward. Plus, having such a wide variety of characters means that there's always someone or somewhere to pull a joke from. This season is consistently, effortlessly funny.

It also features a genuinely great heist in its penultimate episode. It's no Relay or How to Blow Up a Pipeline but it actually feels believable.

It's let down a bit by the final episode which doesn't really make sense. But the ride to get there is a fun and entertaining jaunt. Just don't expect the same level of heart as the first series or anything like the depth of The Good Place.

An older woman with no shoes lays on a big wooden desk, gesturing with her arms. Behind her is a whiteboard with a mixture of philosophical points written on it and cartoon stick figures. A younger woman in a business suit has her hands clasping the desk and a look of despair.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

1. To be clear, the following series of The Good Place are fantastic as well.
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Arco

Tags: blog, film, animation, sci-fi, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday March 08th, 2026

Back to the Future's Future

Poster for the film Arco. A cartoon image of a young boy wearing a huge, billowing rainbow cape. A young, black haired girl is on his back, arms clasped around his chest to hold on.

There can't be many films involving time travel where the past the protagonists travel to is our future. Not just a few years either. The past Arco travels back to has robot shop workers, hover shopping trolleys and large, retractable domes covering every house and building from the massive storms and wildfires that periodically rage around the picturesque town he lands in.

The imagery of everyone blithely ignoring the massive electrical storm whilst sat in the comfort of their own garden is a very on-the-nose comment on our current attitude to the climate crisis. It's to the films credit that it lets the imagery do all the work, the story refuses to comment further.

That imagery is suffused with influences from Studio Ghibli. Wonderfully, it's not just skin deep, it shares the same fascination with nature, flight and the small details of peoples lives that Ghibli does. And whilst the quality of the animation can't match up, the colour palette is absolutely stunning. Every frame has a warmth and vibrancy to it that feels deeply cared for. Somebody spent a lot of time ensuring this film looked just right.

The future Arco travels from, by stealing his parent's rainbow flight/time machine cape, is a future where small communities live on platforms above the clouds. The time travel is used as a way to scavenge material to allow them to eke out an existence. The Tech is High, but the resources are slim.

Stranded in this new time, he meets and befriends Iris, a young girl living with her baby brother and robotic nurse maid, Mikki. The rest of the film is mostly concerned with depicting their developing friendship as they battle various adults in their attempt to get Arco home.

This narrow focus feels quite old fashioned for a kids film. There's not much in the way of side plots or narrative complications. It's a simple story, clearly told through the eyes of the kids involved. Background details, like the environmental catastrophe unfurling around them or that Iris' parents are only ever present via projection holograms, are never explained.

This seems perfectly aimed at pre-teen kids who'll love the depiction of childhood friendships and adult stupidity. But it was a little too simplistic for my taste, the story failing to raise the stakes enough to be thrilling, not original enough to surprise. That is until near the end of the film when the results of their decisions come to bear, managing to hit a lot harder than I was expecting. The message of the film is clear: actions have consequences. And they can't be remediated or rectified, you just have to live with them and do your best.

That's all any of us can do.

A scene from a cartoon. The floor is covered with colourful pillows, there are trees in the background and the sky is cloudy and blue. A young girl holds a garden hose as a jet of a rainbow swooshes past her, disturbing the leaves and the water from the nearby sprinklers.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Backrooms

Tags: blog, film, horror, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Monday September 28th, 2026

Giddily exciting

Poster for the film Backrooms. A young white woman wit brown hair is stood flat against a yellow wall, mouth agape. She's barely in the frame, with the wall taking up most of the image, giving the impression she is being squeezed into a tiny gap.

Working in retail for most of my adult life, I'm extremely familiar with the kind of empty, or useless space, that now gets referred to as 'liminal space'. Empty, featureless corridors that serve no use other than to connect two fire doors. An extra, unused store room or office space for a business that's moved into a building slightly too big for it's usage. Weird gaps above, below or beside the tacked on facade of the shop and the actual structural shell of the building it's in.

And as a life long player of video games, I'm also intimately familiar with 3D video game architecture. The kind of architecture that's designed to mimic or evoke real world spaces, but with the intention of providing a space to play in, rather than a space to live or work in. That disconnect of intention resulting in a kind of 'uncanny valley' effect, where everything looks kind of real, but also feels just slightly off.

Backrooms combines these two aesthetics superbly. Mostly set in a kind of hybrid empty retail/conference/hotel/warehouse space that hasn't been designed for any of those purposes, but evokes that form anyway. The link to video games made explicit via the way that furniture and furnishings 'glitch' through the architecture like a buggy first person game. The makers of backrooms lean into this sense of unease completely and wholeheartedly, basing everything around the feeling that something isn't quite right.

This extends to the lives of the characters. Both Chiwetel Ejiofor's Clarke (who finds the near infinite backroom) and Renate Reinsve's Mary (his therapist, who sets out to find him and bring him back) have lives that are holding patterns, going nowhere. They both look like one thing, but something isn't quite right. They're the space where a person should be, a gap in the shell of a life, missing the purpose that would fill their shape.

The result is not only a sense of profound dread, but also one of comfort and familiarity. Nostalgia, almost. As I say, I'm familiar with these spaces, or at least the concept of them. I'm familiar with these lives. Most of us have been in a dead end job, or without a job at all, lacking purpose or direction. The trap with these situations is how easy it is to stay in them. How comforting it is to sit still in our own entropy. How still and peaceful that empty space is.

This, along side We're All Going to the World's Fair and I Saw the TV Glow have created a genre of modern horror where the terror is as comforting and beguiling as it is horrifying.

Maybe this means that even the most existential dread we can conjure still feels strangely personal and comforting, compared to the impersonal, planet-burning reality we actually live in. Or maybe it's about the way that algorithms and marketing constantly try to personalise, tailor and individualise our experiences but never do so in a human way. The 'uncanny valley' gap between a person enthusiastically recommending their new favourite thing, and an algorithm constantly trying to sell you whatever slop it thinks will keep you on a platform for thirty seconds longer. The latter mimicking the former, creating a slick, grotesque simulacrum of culture.

Either way, Backrooms contains enough ambiguity to allow anyone to pour their own thoughts into the movie. It invites the viewer to stare at it. To look hard at the monsters we create, and not just sit passively in their view.

A young white woman, dresses in a casual yellow check shirt and jeans, and a middle aged black man, dressed in a smart suit, both sit at a desk in a bland furniture store. Both are intently reading, not paying attention to each other.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Bait

Tags: blog, tv, comedy, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Thursday July 02nd, 2026

Honeytrap an Ayatollah

Poster for the tv series Bait. A handsome young asian man, Riz Ahmed, wearing a black and white tuxedo, works a a much smaller version of himself like a marionette puppet, suspended from strings. The puppet version is wearing casual clothes and is floundering.

Riz Ahmed plays struggling actor Shah Latif who, thanks to a favour from a friend, gets a chance to audition to be Daniel Craig's replacement as James Bond. And, realising he has little to no chance of landing the role, leaks his involvement to the press, leading him into the centre of a media firestorm.

Crucial to the comedy working here is the tension between Riz the person, Riz the celebrity and Shah the character he's portraying. The script has him dancing around all three of them and refuses to settle. You never quite know where the truth lies so you're constantly wrong footed as it changes direction.

It comes from a long line of comedies featuring famous actors playing versions of not-quite-themselves. At it's worst it aggrandising and obvious. This is up there with the likes of The Trip.

Helping that light-footedness is the amount of experimentation that the six episode format allows the creators. Each episode shifts it focus to a different genre or influence. One episode is a Bollywood drama, another steals liberally from Tangerine and there's a Bourne/Bond episode that allows Rafe Spall to deliver a silent punch line for the ages. And it manages to do this without ever losing it's identity or forgetting what's it's trying to do.

The cast are universally excellent. Guz Khan uses his excellent comedy skills to mask just how good he is at pathos. Ritu Arya continues from her star making turn in Polite Society and Rafe Spall is, as ever, amazing. And if you ever thought you'd seen Patrick Stewart chewing the scenery, then this performance asks you to hold it's beer as he gives abusive, abrasive and angry voice to a severed pigs head.

And of course, Riz himself is fantastic. There are occasional flashes of just how good a Bond he would actually make. So good in fact that occasionally you wonder if this a double bluff audition for the actual part. Managing to show how good he'd be by showing how effortlessly skillful he can be bad at it. The Les Dawson approach.

I can't comment on the point that is being made here about Asian and Muslim representation in the media, that's not for me to judge, but it does feel incredibly heartfelt. It doesn't come across as a generic, PR approved message. It's clear that Riz Ahmed has something to say and has wanted to say it for a long time.

The question of why use the vehicle of James Bond to say it is something that hangs over the whole show. Yes it works but it doesn't seem necessary. That is until the end when the metaphor is repeated. Only this time, because of the journey we've watched Shah go through, it all makes perfect sense.

There's no doubt that Riz Ahmed would make an absolutely magnificent Bond. But if he's capable of brilliant and inventive fare like this, it would be such a waste.

A club scene. It's darkly lit but everyone is wearing neon, glow in the dark clothes and jewellery. The two characters in the foreground are a young Asian man and woman, faces covered in lines of brightly glowing paint, having a conversation.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma

Tags: blog, film, horror, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Saturday October 03rd, 2026

I sent a message through the internet but it rejected

Poster for the film Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma. A snowy scene with pine trees in the background. A blonde, middle aged woman wearing a silk gown and a brunette younger woman wearing nothing but underwear stride towards the camera. Both are covered, head to foot, in buckets of blood.

“I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards.” Garth Merenghi

What kind of horror movie is Camp Miasma? It's extremely mercurial for most of it's run-time, never fully committing to one particular flavour of horror. Or at least making you aware of where it's going.

The very meta-ness of it's conceit (Hannah Einbinder's Writer-Director Kris is reviving the 'Camp Miasma' horror franchise and seeks out the original film's Final Girl, Gillian Anderson's Billy, for inspiration) evokes obvious comparisons to Wes Craven's New Nightmare, which the script very sniffily laughs out the room, practically scolding it's audience for thinking it's going to be that obvious.

So is it a straight slasher? It has brutal, over the top stabbings and swimming pools worth of blood. But doesn't take the time to really set the scene. They're schlocky, not shocking.

Is it a horror-comedy? It's certainly funny, but it doesn't use the tension of it's horror to build up the jokes. The jokes are weird, not gut-busting.

Is it a surrealist, tonal piece that builds uncertainty and unease? Kind of. But then you have a whole murder spree that's started by someone getting a pole shoved up them and then beaten against a tree until they explode. It's difficult to let it under your skin when the all the skin in the film is flying everywhere.

Is it a psychological horror following a descent into madness? Well Gillian Anderson is certainly vamping it up. But Hannah Einbinder is spending just a bit too long looking at her with her big goopy eyes and...there we go...

Gradually, the film builds and builds towards the kind of horror it actually wants to be: the horny kind. So horny. A single moment of subtext in the 'source' material, a moment of queer enlightenment, is re-worked only with the text front and centre, loud and proud.

That build up takes everything I've mentioned so far: the blood, the gore, the comedy, the weirdness, the intelligence and the sex and rolls it into an ever tightening climax that is one for the absolute ages. Einbinder deserves an oscar for that one scene alone. After which, the resultant release is just joyful.

This a film about seeing a sliver of yourself, tucked away, hidden in film, and then re-working it so you see your entire self, large as life. No subtext needed.

The same brunette from the poster, this time wearing glasses, a big winter coat and no blood. She's looking adoringly at something off camera. The background is an expressionistic snow scene with a pink tinge.

The same pink tinged snow scene but from a wider angle, the two women hug each other tightly. The background looks like a painting, the sunset over the mountains is pink and red and orange.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Cloud

Tags: blog, film, thriller, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Thursday February 12th, 2026

The Banality of Banality

Poster for the film Cloud. Someone with a cloth bag over their head, with two dark eyeholes, stands looking through a mottled glass door window.

The soundtrack to Cloud is the soundtrack to capitalism. The hum of a computer monitor, the drone of a motorway, the background growl of machines. It's constant and grinding and once you notice it, it becomes unsettling. Even scenes that take place in the woods have the endless swoosh of leafless trees as the wind slips off the lake onto shore.

That lifeless, listless, white noise perfectly encapsulates the emotional lives of both the main character, Ryosuke, an online reseller who buys from desperate sellers and sells at incredible mark-ups with incredulous descriptions, and the cast of characters around him. None of them have any real aspirations. Sure, they mostly want to make money, but for what purpose? None of them seem particularly clear on the matter.

At one point, Ryosuke and his girlfriend move into a large, lakeside house. He promptly moves his business in and turns the place into a warehouse. She spends her whole time wrestling with kitchen appliances. Neither talks about anything outside of making or spending money.

Eventually, Ryosuke's disinterest in ethics catches up with him as a loose cabal of former mentors, rivals and disgruntled customers attempt to settle their grudges with him. None of them seem to question the broken society that they're scrabbling around in. None of them think to take their anger out at the online platform owners who enable and richly profit from the misery they enable. Everyone's too busy fighting each other like rats in a sack to have anything approaching dreams or ambition.

For the most part, there's a grim fascination to be had from watching these dead eyed characters navigate their dead lives. The film has little sympathy for them and leaves it for the viewer to decide whether it's their environment that has dulled their souls, or if their lack of spark is why they've found such a dour existence.

Sadly, the ending gets increasingly preposterous and the plot stops making sense. Worse, and this may be due to my ignorance of Japanese culture, but I thought the film lost track of what it was trying to say. It ends on a moment of beauty but it's delivered with little more than a shrug.

What looks like a warehouse storage area, with a computer terminal and a man in a blue uniform lugging cardboard boxes. But part of the back wall is a series of huge sliding glass doors, through which we can see leafless trees in front of a lake.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Deadloch Series 2

Tags: blog, tv, comedy, drama, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Saturday April 11th, 2026

CSI: Outback

Poster for the second series of Deadloch. A red dirt road in the sun drenched Australian outback. On it is a brunette wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sat on a BMX. to the right of her is a tall blond wearing a blue, long sleeve shirt, dark trousers and sensible boots. Unsurprisingly she's wiping sweat off her brow. There's a sign for the Barra Creek Tavern and another sign warning about crocodiles

AAAaaand we're back. Well, not back. This series isn't actually set in the town of Deadloch as the gang get their show on the road. A road which ends up in the outback of Darwin, Barra Creek.

It's a pretty bold move, to throw out your main character, because as engaging as Dolcie and Eddie were, Deadloch was the star of the first series.

Sadly, Barra Creek, whilst being populated with a full cast of colourful characters, can't match up. It's not the perfectly drawn microcosm of society that the town of Deadloch was. The jokes mostly stay in the Australian outback, rather than reverberating out into the wider world. There's nothing as epic as the Man-Bus from the first series.

But that's pretty much where the negatives end. The show's creators, the two Kate's, have clearly learnt from the first series. This one is tighter, it gets going faster, flags less in the middle and lands some nasty punches at the end.

Is it still funny? Oh by Christ yes, relentlessly so. The Kate's can write. Every line of dialogue works because it comes from a place of knowing the characters and their situation.

This season really digs into the psychology of Dolcie and Eddie and puts their relationship under greater pressure and scrutiny. What it loses in social commentary, it makes up for with care for it's characters. The late revelation as to why Eddie is being so evasive is perfect, which is exactly why it's so howlingly funny. Pain is comedy and the Kate's know exactly where to stick the knife. And then to give it a damn good twist.

The ending loops back to the start of the first series and ends by answering the question as to what you do when all the cops really are bastards. I'm not sure where Dolcie and Eddie, or even Abbie and Leo, go from here. This could be the end or the start of something new. But what ever Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan come up with next is sure to be very dark and very, very funny.

A small, timid, mousey young woman wearing a blue, forensic investigation suit. She's yelling foul obscenities and insults at someone just off camera. Behind her is a small child, also in full forensic gear.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Doctor Jekyll

Tags: blog, film, horror, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Saturday April 18th, 2026

League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen

Poster for the film Doctor Jekyll. A spooky composite image, smoke surrounds a night large country house, a young man, an older woman in a slim business suit. At the top of it all is headshot of Eddie Izzard with one evil looking eye.

The better this film gets, the more frustrating it becomes.

It's mostly a surprisingly good script. The main character of Rob is well written and his background is well constructed. So when events start to enclose him, you feel trapped there with him. This sounds like script writing 101 and it is, but it's surprising how many horrors and thrillers fail this basic hurdle.

Eddie Izzard is always worth watching and this is no exception. She's clearly enjoying herself and the few minutes at the end where she really gets to let loose is worth watching the film for alone. It felt like early stand-up Izzard, that glorious mixture of free-floating surrealism delivered with razor sharp wit, and a reminder as to just how great she is on her own terms.

And if the film makers had attempted a tight, focused account of their deteriorating relationship and the games being played, then it has everything it needs to be genuinely great. Instead, the film has ambitions to be the next generation of Hammer Horror movies, rich in monsters, dripping in gothic style, drenched in histrionic orchestration.

None of which is built towards in the script. Dramatic moments seem inserted as a cheap way to build tension, rather than trusting in the story to do the work. The music sounds like it's ripped from a different film.

It's constantly pulling in two directions, neither complementing each other and falling flat. It's a missed opportunity.

Eddie Izzard sits at a table lighting a cig, her nails are ruby red and talon sharp. Behind her is a gothic fireplace. The tip of the cigarette glows bright green as she inhales.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

The End of Oak Street

Tags: blog, film, action, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Saturday October 10th, 2026

Just watch some Miami Vice

Poster for the film The End of Oak Street. It's just like that bit in Jurassic Park when they first see the Diplodocus, only the family are standing on the roof of a house and it's rubbish.

Writer/Director David Robert Mitchell previously made It Follows, which I absolutely loved. So I thought this might have a few interesting ideas beyond what the uninspiring trailer implied.

If I were to be kind to the film, I could argue that it's portrayal of suburban, middle-class America depicts a kind of lazy, isolated individualism that is utterly incapable of dealing with a local crisis that requires an organised, collective response.

That is putting it incredibly kindly. A more accurate description is that this is a film where a bunch of dumb, annoying idiots do dumb, annoying things for ninety minutes and then it ends. If you've ever watched a film and found yourself exclaiming "What are you doing?" as one of the characters does something obviously counter-productive then know that this is a film almost entirely composed of those moments.

One day I'm going to get a dinosaur movie where the dinosaurs aren't just dumb, relentless killing machines and the film has something interesting to say. Today is not that day.

A dark interior of a home with late seventies decor. On the left half of the picture a dark haired, middle aged woman is sitting cross legged. The right half of the picture is taken up by a very close head shot of a blond teenage girl looking at the other woman.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Golden Arm

Tags: blog, film, comedy, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Monday May 11th, 2026

Over the Top

Poster from the film Golden Arm. A collage painting, the centre of which is two women engaged in an arm wrestling match, one is hulking and butch, the other is slender and feminine. Around them are lots of characters in various outrageous poses and costumes that makes them look like wrestlers.

Where the hell did this come from? Nobody told me about this. A gender swapped version of an eighties Sylvester Stallone vehicle, mashed up with a wrestling movie and a rom-com. Hell yes! The Trailer tells you everything you need to know about the movie, if that piques your interest then go, go go! You'll love it.

Mary Holland, fresh off her film-stealing role in the best Christmas movie since The Muppets Christmas Carol, stars as Melanie, a struggling baker who's roped into a road-trip by her old trucker friend, Danny (played by Betsy Sodaro with all the gusto of Jack Black playing Nanny Ogg) who is secretly setting her up to take part in an arm wrestling championship.

There's nothing here you haven't seen hundreds of times before, in uncountable sports movies, but the freshness of the female led cast and the variety and vividness of their characters reminds you just why there have been so many movies using this template.

It’s just great fun.

The emphasis on the wrestling part of arm wrestling is a little stroke of genius. Every bout is a brief visual delight and a poppy joke. Rosie the Riveter as an arm wrestler? Of course! The names on the leaderboard are Bob’s Burger of the Day worthy.

The whole thing is a labour of love from everyone involved and is a delight from start to finish.

Two women engaged in an arm wrestling match, screaming at each other in effort. One is dressed like Marie Antoinette with a gold filagree dress with cuffs and wearing a big golden curled wig, the other is dressed like a baker in a crisp white shirt. In the background is a baying and cheering crowd.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Hacks

Tags: blog, tv, comedy, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Wednesday September 30th, 2026

All Gas and Gaiters

Poster for the tv show Hacks. A glamourous blonde, older woman walks next to a brunette in her late twenties, wearing a brown, tailored suit. They are walking through the water of a fountain, kicking up water and looking pleased with themselves. The lights of night time Las Vegas are in the background.

I need to be careful here as I’m going to make some sweeping generalisations about a genre that I’m not particularly knowledgeable: American sitcoms.

I mean, sure, I’ve watched quite a few. I’ve even loved a fair few as well: Frasier, Roseanne, The Good Place, M*A*S*H, Mork and Mindy.

But I’m not as knowledgeable about them in the same way that I am about UK sitcoms.

So, from my view from across the pond, there's a fundamental difference between the genres of British sitcoms and American sitcoms. And its the notion of being trapped.

A short, but admittedly slightly selective list of truly great British¹ sitcoms:

Black Adder - Trapped in the British class system
Red Dwarf - Trapped in deep space
Cabin Pressure - Trapped at work
Father Ted - Trapped on an island
Steptoe & Son - Trapped in an abusive relationship
Porridge - Trapped in prison
Bottom - Trapped in gross incompetence
Only Fools and Horses - Trapped in poverty
Fawlty Towers - Trapped in the British class system, work, an abusive relationship & gross incompetence

You get the picture.

This makes sense for the structure of the genre. The sitcom was for decades, up until the ubiquity of handheld digital cameras, effectively a half hour comedy play that had to take place mostly on the same set. Any story that happens on that set must explain why the protagonist doesn't just get up and walk out and why they’re back to square one the following week. And the more outlandish and humorous the story, the more bullet proof is the required reason for staying put.

Basil Fawlty has invested everything in Fawlty Towers, the idea of him walking away is as unthinkable as Edmund Blackadder just walking out of the trenches. It just can't happen. And so each episode starts in the same way all the others did, with the main character trapped and trying to escape.

Except that's not how US sitcoms work. They have the same reliance on set, on everything being the same at the start of each episode, but the characters aren't trapped and fighting to get out.

The cast of Cheers aren't trapped by alcoholism. Frasier isn't held at his radio show by blackmail or an inescapable mortgage.

I suppose we could argue that workplace and family sitcoms trap their characters. We can’t choose our family or bosses, we’re stuck with them as much as Richie is stuck with Eddie. But few of those American characters are fighting tooth and nail to escape from their predicaments.

OK there are a few: some of the cast of M*A*S*H are as desperate to escape as Edmund Blackadder. But the only American sitcom that I know of that tries to crush it’s characters in a pressure cooker for our amusement is The Good Place. The setting of which (trying to avoid spoilers here) is very telling as to how American’s view British sitcoms.

Maybe it's the subconscious effect that living on a small island, has on people. We Brits love our seaside holidays. It's a privilege to never be more than a few hours away from a beach from which we can look out on the vast, expansive ocean. But whilst doing so, you're always reminded that that is as far as you can go, without undertaking an activity that humans weren't fundamentally designed for.

And maybe Americans don't have that experience? Even when staring out to the ocean, they can always turn around and travel across vast, expansive, continent scale geographies. Maybe the notion of being trapped isn't something inherent to them in the same way it is for us Brits.

Maybe. Like I said, sweeping generalisations, not particularly knowledgeable.

So, what has this got to do with Hacks?

Well, the main characters of Hacks are also trapped. Not by their situation, but by themselves. Deborah Vance, an ageing stand-up comedian, coming to the twilight of a highly successful career. Only she doesn't realise that yet and certainly isn't ready for it. She needs a joke writer to help bounce ideas off and polish up quips for when she's cutting the ribbon on a new supermarket. But her agent, Jimmy, is struggling to find someone as nobody wants to work for an act that's so obviously a dead end.

What Jimmy does have on his books is Ava, a young, up and coming comedy writer who is on her way down and going nowhere after being canceled. She posted something stupid, got fired and (as she's not a rich, old, white guy) can't find any work. She's jobless, aimless and lost.

So Jimmy sends her to Deborah. Quelle surprise, they hate each other from the moment they meet, immediately having a blazing row in which Ava resigns and Deborah fires her.

Except that row is funny. Really funny. Funny enough to make Deborah realise that Ava is someone she can use even if she pisses her off. The key word of that last sentence is use. And where else is Ava going to find work? She needs a way to work, to hone her craft and rebuild her reputation.

And thus the trap is set.

Because whilst they both realise they need each other professionally, they actually need each other a whole lot more than either comprehend or will admit. And the moment either of them start to realise how much they depend on the other, one or both recoils, pushes away and then everything collapses again until they can begrudgingly reconcile.

The way the traps are constructed vary in quality. Some are little clunky, others are breathtaking. The final episode of Series 3 is one of the finest constructed cliff hangers ever seen in a sitcom. A series of scenes that winds everything so tight that the explosion is inevitable and still shocking.

And all of those traps are laid by Deborah and Ava themselves. Two people trying to come to terms with a relationship that neither of them asked for, but both need. There are articles to be written about the themes of legacy, mentorship and inter-generational friendships (none of which I'm going to write as I've already spent far too long waffling about sitcoms) as portrayed in Hacks. As in the best comedies, it's richly textured.

Most importantly though, this is funny, funny, funny. Every episode guarantees at least one belly laugh and regular chuckles. Especially as the show starts to get to grips with it's characters and how the actors are playing them. The way the later episodes utilise Hannah Einbinders ability to make goopy eyes at dazzling blondes² comes from the writers knowing their cast and using them to the fullest.

The fifth and final series lacks the bite of the previous four. The creators have, by this point gotten too fond of their created family. It still contains some of the best episodes of the entire run. However, at the end of the final episode the trap snaps shut again. Everything back as it was at the beginning. But is it even a trap if you are where you want to be?

The same two women from the poster walking side be side in a conference space. The younger woman is wearing a cream, sleeveless sweater over a cream blouse with a cream necktie. She looks a little like a very formal cricketer. She's looking at the older woman, amused. The older woman is wearing a dusty blue suit and big silver flower earrings. She does not look amused.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

1. Yes, Father Ted is Irish but it was made by a UK production company for a UK TV station, so it counts. Also, it was half written by someone who went on to become a vile transphobe so make sure you pirate it if you want to watch it.
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2. Foreshadowing for a later review.
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Hamnet

Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday April 26th, 2026

Grief as a muscle

Poster for the film Hamnet. A brunette woman in a dark red dress embraces a man in an old fashioned, light blue jacket. They are both looking down in sadness and are surrounded by lush green, English forestry.

The word I can't get out of my head after watching this film is muscular.

Jessie Buckley's Agnes holds the focus of the story like a rugby player cradling the ball, stiff-arming any attempt to divert the narrative towards her husband, powering through notions of artistic metaphor or allegory.

Agnus' story (and it is her story) is down to earth to the point where the dirt under finger nails is a mark of her character. She's practical and resourceful, always having a plan, always working towards a goal. Her husband is not the dreamer you might expect him to be, he's her counterpoint, not her opposite. But still, she's the driving force of the marriage.

Which is why it's so affecting when it goes wrong and there's nothing she can do to fix it. Watching somebody who's spent their entire life making things right and ensuring everything works out, suddenly left completely helpless by random chance is heartbreaking. The powerlessness of it is a full-bodied hit.

Even the way Buckley portrays grief feels strong. Her breakdown is shown not as a weakness but of a muscle being flexed. All that love and all that aching and nowhere to go, her sinews stretching with the strain of it, trying to crush the pain.

A lesser film would lose focus and dabble with the greatness of the play, of the artfulness of it. And indeed it nearly fumbles it when Will does the 'To Be, Or Not To Be' speech, seemingly put in just to remind viewers which play it's supposed to be inspiring. But thankfully the turnover back to Agnes is swift and decisive.

The final scenes involving the play are magnificent. Whilst it is about the transformative power of a well told story, the focus remains squarely on it's effect on Agnes. It's still her story and it drags you through that fourth wall completely and utterly.

A high camera shot looking down at an overgrown, lush green forest. A woman in a red dress and a man in a light blue outfit are standing some distance apart, stanced slightly awkwardly, looking at each other.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Ready or Not: Here I Come

Tags: blog, film, action, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Saturday May 23rd, 2026

Stop getting rich people wrong

Poster for the film Ready or Not: Here I Come. Two young blonde women, one wearing a wedding dress completely stained red with blood, the other wearing double denim. The first is holding a shotgun, the second a sword. Both are looking defiant.

Move along, nothing to see here. Do you remember the first film? Probably not, it wasn't particularly memorable. Not bad, just perfunctory. This is more of the same, almost literally.

The only reason I bothered with this sequel is because of the inclusion of Kathryn Newton, who I last saw lighting up the screen in Lisa Frankenstein. Here she knowingly smirks her way through the film, like she's telling a series of amazing one-liners that have all been cut in the edit.

The whole film feels like everyone's going through the motions and there's no point to any of it.

But that's not what I want to talk about. Because, annoyingly, this film gets rich people wrong. It's not the only culprit, the majority of films that have rich people as 'the enemy' make the same mistake. The basic problem is that they keep portraying the rich as mad, bad and dangerously psychotic.

But we know that's not who these people are. We've all read excerpts from the Epstein files. We've all seen snippets of their twitter feeds. We've all seen their speeches. And what is clear about the super rich is:

The don't care who knows.

They don't care if people find out they're paedophiles, or nazis, or rapists. They know the press, which they own, won't call them on it and they have more lawyers than god.

They are desperately unhappy.

Happy, contented people don't post obsessively, continuously, on twitter about trans people. Confident people who are comfortable in their own skin don't get endless plastic surgery and post pictures of how 'jacked' they are. Generous, charitable people do not relentlessly endorse far-right conspiracy theories. Name me a single billionaire that looks like they're having the time of their life...

They are tediously boring.

Not just bored, but boring. When was the last time you read or heard anything spouted by a billionaire that made you're heart sing or piqued your curiosity? They are incurious people who are incapable of querying themselves, let alone the world around them.

They're cowards who never take risks and only prey on the weak

They (almost literally) have all the money in the world to enact their rich-fuck fantasies but they are terrified of any actual harm or consequences. They have networks of people who pre-select their victims to be the poor and vulnerable. The ones who can't fight back. And if there is ever any dirty work to be done then they'll just pay people who'll pay people who'll pay other people to do it for them.

All of which makes Ready or Not's world of ultra-wealthy psychopaths incongruous to the actual point they're (half-arsedly) making.

In Ready or Not's world, the global elite are confident and self assured, willing to take risks, get their hands dirty, and seem to love being rich. Some of them even seem to be a bit of a laugh, in a kind of rich idiot kind of way. They're scum, but they're fun scum.

The actual global elite probably quite like this kind of depiction. It makes them look exciting and interesting instead of the kind of dull, Nazi Colin Robinson's that they actually are.

The only film I've seen recently that really nailed this has been Relay. Where the rich bastard behind everything is coaxed out of hiding just the once and all of the actual antagonists are his minions, held at arms length and taking all the risks.

And whilst it's absurd to hold these disparate films to the same standards, I do wish that all films would try to properly skewer these pieces of shit, instead of cartoonishly portraying them in a way that manages to flatter how disgusting they really are. Two young blonde women wearing gothic black dresses, faces covered in splatters of blood. One is lighting a cigarette, the other is blowing a bubblegum bubble and has a sword slung over her shoulder.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Hokum

Tags: blog, film, horror, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Monday September 14th, 2026

's alright

Poster for the film Hokum. A collage of pictures of people. The largest is of a white middle aged man in a dingy brown raincoat with his back to the camera. The image is flipped vertically so he appears twice in the poster, once upside down. There are also a lot of dimly lit headshots of other characters as well as a bright red love-heart keyring.

Hokum is the rarest of rare things, a horror movie I find merely 'ok'.

Horror movies are usually love or loathe for me. They either get under my skin and creep me out or, much more commonly, absolutely infuriate me and insult my intelligence.

Hokum does neither of these things. It's perfectly well constructed, the plot moves along at a decent pace, it know not to insult it's audience by treating them like idiots. The jump scares are a bit predictable, but work anyway, it's decently creepy. Adam Scott plays a complete arsehole but knows how to do it without making his character irredeemable.

But it all adds up and amounts to not very much. There's nothing here that get's under the skin. It never gets really nasty and never boils over. Tension builds but never explodes.

At the end there's an undercurrent of the Magdelane laundries, a genuine real life horror from Ireland's recent past that's far, far worse than anything in this film. It's a faint and brief connection, possibly I'm reaching too far, maybe there's some clearer signposting that I missed, but the rest of the plot does nothing to link to it. Either specifically or tonally so it adds nothing to the film.

A perfunctory, well made horror. Nothing more, nothing less.

A man and a woman stood behind the reception desk at an old fashioned, dingy, Irish hotel. The scene is dimly lit by a dull table lamp of to the side. She is wearing a shaggy, brown rabbit costume. He is wearing a dull, grey suit.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Last Swim

Tags: blog, film, drama, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Thursday September 10th, 2026

A Persian Hermione Grainger

Poster for the film Last Swim. 5 teenagers, 2 girls, 3 boys, mixed races, lying lazily on the ground. The photo is shot from above, looking down, we see the grass they're lying on, it's very sunny. They look happy and content, comfortable with how close they all are.

A day, a long day, in the life of Ziba, as she celebrates her exam results with her friends. Ziba wants the day to be perfect (and has planned it in meticulous detail) before the end of the day and...

The film sets the stakes out right from the start but then let's Ziba make the choice to put all that to one side to spend her day with her friends. She doesn't want to be pitied, the film doesn't want us to pity her. The outcome isn't important, the day is, the day has to be perfect.

And, in a way, it is. It's long and never-ending, in the way that teenage days and teenage years are. Like it's going to last forever, only realising much, much later that it was all over in a blink of an eye.

Ziba and her friends are enjoyable company. Incredibly smart, impossibly beautiful, ridiculously giddy. So enjoyable that the film is comfortable letting us enjoy the day with Ziba, the drama isn't the focus, the day is, the experience is.

Part of that experience is the soundtrack. Part urban, abstract pop, part dream-like Iranian-flecked score, it's a constant, lush presence throughout the film.

But you can only hold back the rest of your life so long, the inevitable has to crash in before the end of the day. Reality bites, childhood ends, A lusher depiction of a teenage summer you'll struggle to find.

The same five teenagers, this time sat up on the grass, all looking out towards the camera. It's dusk now.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Lesbian Space Princess

Tags: blog, film, animation, sci-fi, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Tuesday January 27th, 2026

Emo's in Space

A film poster done in the Star Wars style but as a cartoon. The characters, all women with a variety of hair colours, standing heroically in the centre of the page as a space ship zooms past.

OK, let's start with a controversial opinion/hill I will die on: Luke Skywalker is a bland, boring, uninteresting and unlikeable character who only works because the rest of the movie(s) is so spectacular. It's not until Rian Johnson turns up that he actually gets a personality.

Sadly, Lesbian Space Princess steals Luke's personality traits for it's main character, Saira, and then proceeds to do absolutely nothing with it.

She is terminally dull. She starts the film with no personality beyond 'Sad she's been dumped' and ends with no personality beyond 'Is OK to have been dumped'.

The main villains of the piece though, the Straight White Malians, actually are kind of fun. They look out for each other, role play through their feelings, try to build for a better future. They're arseholes, obviously, but they're still more rounded, lively characters than Saira. They even have a multiplayer Daytona cabinet.

I really don't think that the film was aiming for a message that being a straight white male is more interesting and fun than being a lesbian, but it accidentally implies it all the same.

Does the film get away with such a dour character by making the surrounding world vibrant and interesting? No. There's less plot and less comedy here than a ten minute episode of Pinky and the Brain. Everything is so incredibly slow and obvious. The jokes are good but when you can see all of them coming round the corner they lose their shine.

If you want an hour and a half of knockabout screwball animated comedy, just go watch The Day the Earth Blew Up, it's great.

You could edit this down to a decent half hour episode of a tv series, especially if it took it's cues from the other great tv show about lesbian princesses in space¹ instead of the film it's actually riffing off, what's it called? You know... the one about the space hairdresser and the cowboy… he’s got a tin foil pal and a pedal bin.

Spaceballs! That's the one. Just go watch Spaceballs again.

A cartoon depicting the interior of a rundown, grubby little space craft. Two women with brightly coloured hair and noodly legs are cuddling on the pilots chair.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

1. The actual hill I will die on is that She-Ra and the Princesses of power is one of the truly great modern tv sagas. If it was a re-booted He-Man, N.D.Stephenson would be lauded alongside Genndy Tartakovsky as one of animated tv's current heroes.
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The Mandalorian and Grogu

Tags: blog, film, sci-fi, action, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Tuesday June 23rd, 2026

Lone Wolf and Chub

Poster for the film The Mandalorian and Grogu. A painted head shot of the Mandalorian's metal helmet, we can see stars in the visor. The small, green baby alien is throwing a small blue biscuit out of the picture.The background is split between a starry sky and green jungle.

I’ve just watched a bunch of middle aged men play with their Kenner Star Wars toys for two hours.

I wouldn’t mind if I’d watched a bunch of five year old kids play with their toys for two hours, at least that way it would have gone a bit bat-shit crazy. Had that spark of unfettered imagination that all kids have that makes them see stuff from weird angles and then mash them together with other weird stuff.

Nothing of the sort here. No wit, no spark, nothing memorable. I’d forgotten the first half of the movie by the time I’d got to the second half.

The plot of the film is that thing A happens, then thing B, followed by C, then D, we go back to C for a bit before moving on to E and then and then and then and then after five hours I check my watch and only forty minutes have passed.

The worst crime of this film is that the film makers don't care about Grogu and Mando. During the course of this film we learn nothing about either of them. Nothing is revealed about their past or their future. We learn nothing about their characters or their personalities. Nobody gets to to grow, to learn, to have to face up to uncomfortable truths. There is not a single character arc in the whole film.

The Mandolorian is a guy in a metal suit who shoots people. Grogu is a green alien baby who eats grubs and moves things. That is literally it. You could swap them for absolutely any other similar character you can think of and it wouldn't make a jot of difference to this film.

The visual aesthetic is nostalgia for the XBox 360 era of murky, grey-brown sludge. Having not a single piece of flair in the whole film, it is quite possible the most visually uninteresting sci-fi film I’ve ever seen.

Ludwig Gorannsenn tries his best, re comprising his magnificent score from the tv show, giving everything to try to elevate the story. But he’s got nothing to work with. You can neither polish a turd, nor inject any joie de vivre into something this dull and base.

I can see die hard fans of the tv series getting some enjoyment out of this. It's basically a filler episode of the tv series dragged out past the two hour mark and for some that'll probably be enough. But why bother spending time watching this when you could just ask ChatGPT to describe it to you? It'll leave the same mark on your soul.

I came out of the film humming the theme tune and then saw an urban fox.

So not a total waste of an evening.

A nighttime picture of a fox in an urban environment. It's approaching a puddle, head down as if about to drink.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Mother Mary

Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Monday May 25th, 2026

Mary Magdalene, that'd be my first sin

Poster for the film Mother Mary. A black and red image of a woman wearing a halo headpiece. She's looking peacefully to one side.

All movies about pop stars are, in one form or another, about the gap between the fantasy of pop music and the mechanical reality it's built on. The interplay between the mask of the performer and the face behind it.

Todd Haynes' underappreciated masterpiece Velvet Goldmine is the absolute pinnacle of the genre and focuses on the idea of the Pop Star as an act of artistry itself, and the centring of that act between the person performing it and the audience who are moved by it.

Mother Mary explores similar territory whilst also taking inspiration from another masterpiece, Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a film about seeing and being seen.

Anne Hathaway's Mary has the ability to hold an audience under her spell but her identity has been at least partially constructed by the dresses and outfits designed by Sam, played by Michaela Coel. Sam is the person who Mary, out of desperation and needing a dress with which to relaunch her career, turns to after being estranged for a long time.

Mary knows that Sam has the ability to create a look for her that captures the way she sees her. And Sam adores Mary with an intensity that combines the infatuation of a first love with the devotion of a pop obsessive. Sam is both a fan and a crush, the two multiplying each other.

Or was anyway. The walls that Sam has constructed since are fierce and solid. The interplay and tension between the two as they try to negotiate the design of the new dress boils and tears at the two of them. Mary attempting to re-inspire Sam (and through her, her audience), Sam trying to remain in control and not get swept away and engulfed by the very idea of Mary.

The characterisation of Mary and Sam are superb. Anne Hathaway is indecisive and unsure of herself but when in a position where she can express herself artistically, utterly magnetic. At one point in the film the pair tell each other a ghost story: Sam's is functional and supremely evocative. Mary's is completely unhinged in a way that drags every part of your attention into the scene, to the point where nothing outside of it even exists.

And yet it's Michaela Coel that the film actually focuses on. She's helped by a script that actors would probably kill for, down to earth yet occasionally so vibrant it veers towards spoken word poetry, perfect for Coel's East London dry and fruity wit. Director David Lowery clearly loves photographing her as the camera lingers on her long enough to capture the intensity of her, the ferocity of her unblinking view, the absolute force of everything she sees and feels.

And it's through this emotion that we tumble through the film, spiralling into the vortex that is Mary's personality and persona. That emotion is as believable as it is powerful, dragging everything to an ending that maybe isn't a conclusion. As by this point reality has been broken down by art and longing to the point where both characters are lost in their own truths. Or possibly fictions.

This film brilliantly updates the philosophies of Velvet Goldmine to a social media age. With that era of pop, there's an air gap between creation and audience where the fantasy and emotion can be poured into. Here and now, fledgling pop artists are in contact with an audience immediately and intimately, fan feedback helping mould the shape and direction of their early career.

How that changes the relationship between artist and audience, especially once they diverge and fall out of love, is what this film explores. It does so with an empathy and sincerity that is completely breathtaking. It treats pop music and it's fans with the passion, imagination and seriousness that they deserve.

The comparisons with Velvet Goldmine and A Portrait of a Lady on Fire are not made lightly, this film stands alongside them. If you've ever been a pop music obsessive then this film is one of the true greats.

A woman is lying on her back, hands stretched above her head, back arched. A stream of thin fabric is pouring either out of or into her mouth. The whole image is shot in a black and red colour scheme.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Ne Zha

Tags: blog, film, animation, fantasy, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Tuesday February 17th, 2026

Nature vs Nurture vs a giant bloody Dragon

Poster for the film Ne Zha. A grey and blue Chinese dragon is bursting through the clouds, it's long snout aimed directly at a young man hanging in the air in front of it. He's holding a flame tipped spear and has a red ribbon billowing behind him.

A heavenly decree is made that the Chaos Pearl is split into two and born as living embodiments of it's two halves, the Spirit Pearl and the Demon Orb, with the Demon Orb having a curse on it such that it will be destroyed by lightening in three years time. But a devious mishap means that the Spirit Pearl half is stolen and the Demon Orb half is born to kind and decent noble parents. Which means they have to try to help their son live as good a life as possible, trying to nuture the good in him over his demonic nature, before fate ends his life in three years time.

The plot may be a bit clunky, leaning on prophecy to make sense, but the way it pushes it's characters to make difficult moral decisions is superb. The weight on each character from the decisions they've made and the decisions they are going to have to make feel heavy and important. This extends to the antagonists as well who are believably characterised and motivated.

Unfortunately, the way most of this is communicated is by huge chunks of exposition. Almost the entire plot is explained by one character standing around and explaining it to another character. It's tolerable at the start when it's used to set everything in motion, but when it's still being used deep into the ending of the film it gets a bit wearing.

It's a real shame as when it stops telling and starts showing, it shows real heart. The best, most important scene of the film being a silent game of hacky sack on the beach. We don't need to be told what's happening, we can see it.

The animation is a curious mixture. On the one hand the amount of money and colour that is thrown at the screen is incredible. For anyone who wants to show off a large, high-end TV, this is one hell of a way to do it. But there's an odd lack of artistry. All the characters have that Dreamworks face that makes it look like they've been workshopped to deter as few people as possible. The environments have a stunning level of fidelity but no distinct artistic direction. The animation is vibrant and constantly in dynamic motion but lacks the subtle touches of the best animators.

The result is a kind of blandness which is compensated by a level of commitment to spectacle that is frequently jaw dropping.

The Dreamworks similarities doesn't end there. The side and background characters are pulled directly from the Dreamworks/Disney school of 'comedy sidekicks'. But they lack any kind of warmth or invention, one villager only existing to provide a disappointingly homophobic running joke. Despite the freshness (at least to my western eyes) of it's Chinese mythology settings, the template seems very familiar.

This is entertaining enough and I suspect the sheer velocity of it's action scenes will enthral any kids that watch it. But the amount of exposition got in the way of the story for me. I understood everything but didn't feel enough of it.

I've heard good things about the sequel though, so we'll be giving that a try soon enough.

Looking down into a tropical lake. There's lots of lillys and colourful water flowers. Underneath the water are two giant, brightly coloured fish with huge, wing-like fins.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Ne Zha 2

Tags: blog, film, animation, fantasy, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Saturday February 21st, 2026

I'll have a 屁 please Bob

Poster for the film Ne Zha 2. A cartoon image mostly consisting of lots of Chinese dragons, all in a blue hue. In the centre of the image is a yellow streak of downwards lightening, into which is diving a young man in a red tunic holding a spear.

Blimey. I had a lot of issues with the first film but I'm pleased to say that this film fixes pretty much all of them whilst retaining what worked.

The amount of exposition has been toned down. There's still a fair bit of explaining to be done, especially at the start, but it's paced more evenly throughout the film and gives way to the action when it needs to.

The Dreamworks/Disney template is mostly discarded, aside from a few residual characters and comedy scenes, and instead leans heavily into the genre of fantasy epic. And it is, indeed, epic.

Within the first fifteen minutes it's already made the battle of Helm's Deep look like waiting for Godot, by the end it's eclipsed Avenger's Endgame by a comfortable margin. It's no exaggeration to say that I've never seen a film so heavy on scale or spectacle before. I described the first film as 'jaw dropping', which I now recognise as a somewhat premature exclamation as I have no idea what body part 'dropping' would accurately describe the sequel.

This would all be worthless if this were all fur coat and no knickers. If the story doesn't hold up then it's just boring flashing lights. Thankfully, the excellent plotting is kept from the first film. Yes it's all contrived fantasy nonsense¹ but it puts all the characters in difficult situations with difficult moral choices. Everybody behaves in ways that are believable, even if the magic and the physics aren't. And as a result when it comes to the important emotional scenes, they hit hard. One scene involving a curse and a death had me wincing in horror and sobbing in sympathy, both at the same time.

I'm not a huge fan this type of sweeping fantasy/historical action usually. I prefer films about characters, or ones with more intricate plots. But I'm happy to oblige when a film shows this much ambition and commitment.

There's probably a lot to be said about the importance of Ne Zha to Chinese cinema. With American soft power on the wane, and Chinese economic and cultural visibility on the rise, it's tempting to think of whether we're witnessing a shift in who's able to make the biggest blockbuster movies. I'm not remotely qualified to give my thoughts on that subject, but watching Ne Zha 2 definitely feels like a bar has been raised somewhere.

This is the most blockbusting of blockbusters I've ever seen.

A CGI image of a young boy, dressed in traditional Chinese trousers and waistcoat, all red. He's holding one foot above his head and is balancing on top of a green bamboo pole with the other. The background depicts rolling mountains, covered with green forests.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

1. I know Ne Zha is based on ancient Chinese mythology but to this westerners ears it doesn't make any logical sense. But then it doesn't have to, I'm not watching a fantasy film for it's water tight internal logic. It feels right and that's what works.
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Normal

Tags: blog, film, action, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Tuesday October 06th, 2026

Bang average

Poster for the film Normal. A collage of American police and assorted others, all aggressively pointing guns.

"Behind every great man is a great woman", and behind director Ben Wheatley is usually his wife and screen writer Amy Jump. Together, they made terrific films like A Field in England, Kill List, Sightseers, High Rise. Without her, he's made Meg 2: The Trench and Normal.

The real shame is that with a bit more time, care and talent spent on the script, this could have been a decent enough low budget action flick. Just before the halfway point it looks like it's building towards a coherent riff off Hot Fuzz, a dull but efficient cop squaring up against an entire town of busy-body locals with access to a military grade arsenal.

But it all sloppily unravels, threads drift off, ideas go to waste and nothing amounts to anything. The talents of Henry Winkler are thrown away for a single joke. Lena Headey's are poured away on far less than that. It's not bad, just mediocre.

If the OTT action promised by the trailer looks interesting then check out Nobody, which is a mess but escalates it's violence to much better comic effect. Avoid the appalling sequel.

And if you're hankering for a tight, lean, low-budget/high concept nineties style action-thriller then Black and Blue]is just *chef's kiss*.

The worst thing I can say about this film is that Wheatley and Jump have already satirised this kind of bullets-flying action film in the excellent Free Fire. So you end up spending most of Normal just wishing you were watching that film.

At one point, two characters end up in a shoot out, both finding cover behind the same car. It's almost literally this scene from Police Squad.

A scene from the tv show Police Squad. A man and a woman in a shoot out, both hiding behind cover and shooting at each other. They are about a metre apart.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Perfect Days

Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday January 04th, 2026

Next time is next time.

A Japanese man, with greying hair, wearing a bright blue work boiler suit, sits on a park bench surrounded by trees, he's staring wistfully upwards.

The first thing that Hirayama does when he steps out of his front door of a morning is look up. Every day, without fail.

He spends quite a lot of time looking upwards. Often, it's just a glance. Sometimes, like when he's is the park, surrounded by trees, he'll take the time to drink in the sky as he tilts his head back to drink his carton of milk.

He takes pictures of the leafs of the trees as the sunlight dapples through them.

What is he looking for, exactly? It's never explained.

It's a curious habit for someone who spends most of their time looking down to care for things. Hirayama works as a toilet cleaner, meticulously and methodically caring for the state of Tokyo's public toilets. And in his spare time he likes to find tiny saplings growing in inhospitable places and care for them in his small scale arboretum in his front room.

He seems happy and contented in his deliberately simple, small scale, human scale routines, all contrasted against the huge Tokyo sprawl and the colossal Skytree tower. And we're happy following those routines, following the satisfaction taken in a job well done. But why is a man who is clearly a dreamer and a thinker, whose natural instinct is to look up, looking down at toilet floors?

Why is a man who clearly cares for little things, not just for their intrinsic value, but for the value they bring to everyone around them, not caring for bigger things? Like whole people, loved ones or dear friends?

We get a hint of something in the background when his niece turns up unannounced. He doesn't break his routines though, he just lets her tag along and for a brief time he gets to care for her as well. It doesn't last for long before he gets his unaccompanied life back but not before we see something he may have lost. And may even be hiding from.

Before the film ends, he's given one more hint of a possibility of something more, something outside of his routines.

How does he feel about it?

We don't know. In an extraordinary scene we get to see all his emotions fully let go, but without an explanation as to what those emotions are.

This is a film that explains nothing. It asks so many questions but always expects you to come up with your own thoughts. This should be infuriating but the deep love it shows to its subjects, not just Hirayama but the entire world he inhabits, draws you in and captivates you.

If I were to list all the delightful small details in this film, this review would take as long as the film itself. And whatever conclusions you draw from them will be your own.

The same scene as the poster, but this time there's a dark haired, preteen girl sat next to him, also looking upwards.

Many thanks to vga256, the creator of the kiki software this blog runs on, for recommending this film to me.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Predator: Badlands

Tags: blog, film, action, sci-fi, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday January 11th, 2026

This one has legs

Poster for the sci-fi film Predator:Badlands. A profile shot of the heads of a metal-masked warrior and a blonde, short haired young woman. Everything is red-lit.

Oh what an absolute blast!

The plot is simple, the script is tight. There's a protagonist, there's an antagonist and that's it. No extra bells and whistles, no side plots or machinations and everything contains only what it needs to.

The action scenes are terrific. They start off merely ok, but get better and better as the film goes on. Whereas most action movies try to make everything look cool and amazing, P:B instead leans into it's weirdness. The focus is on action that is clever, inventive and funny. There's one fight scene that has Jackie Chan levels of wit and that's not a comparison I make lightly. It's goofy as hell and has fun with it.

Did I say there's 'a' (singular) protagonist, with no extra bells and whistles? That was a bit of a lie. Whilst, Dek's journey is clearly laid out, no such clear explanation is given for Thia. The film very intentionally hides the fact that she's actually the main plot driver of the film and that her character arc is just as important as Dek. The two dovetail together beautifully.

It's a nice little detail for those who want something to mentally chew on in their big, silly, dumb action movies.

But whilst P:B is certainly big and silly, it isn't dumb. It treats it's audience with respect and treats it's subjects with care. The number of great Predator movies stood at One before Dan Trachtenberg came along and now after Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers he's on a personal hat-trick.

Best popcorn action movie for years.

Front on head shot of an unmasked alien warrior with four fangs around it's mouth. Hanging on to his back, looking over his shoulder is a young, blonde woman.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Primal Series 3

Tags: blog, tv, animation, fantasy, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Friday April 17th, 2026

RRROOOOOAAAAAAARRRRR!!!!

Poster for the tv show Primal. A caveman riding a Tyrannosaurus Rex whilst it leaps at a crowd of people holding spears. They're both peppered with arrows to the point where they look like pin cushions and are very angry about it.

ROAR ROAAAAARRRR ROOOOOOR AAAHHHH GAAAAHH ROOOR RAAAAH ROOOOR ROOAAAARRRR RAAAAAAWWWWWRRRRRR!!!! A naked zombie caveman stares in bemusement at a fly the size of a house. ROOOAAARR ROAR RO-RO-ROOAAAAARRRR! A black maned lion pounces on a zombie caveman, grinding his head into the floor with a single paw BABABA GAAAAHHH RRAAARRRR A tiny baby human rides on the back of a baby t-rex, both look very pleased with themselves. Another baby t-rex looks very jealous. GRRRRR RRAAAAAHHH A zombie caveman looks bemused at a a very angry looking t-rex. A woman is stood between them trying to calm the dinosaur down by pushing it back by the nose. RRAAAAHHHH YAAAAAAA!! A small child with bushy black hair, wearing a tribal sarong, double-punches the air in gleeful victory. Two tribes-people and two baby T-Rex's look warily off screen. BZZZZZ MMMMM BZZZZZ MMMMM A zombie caveman looks bemused at a green grass hopper flying over a lush green meadow. RRAAAAAHHHH BWAH GAAAAAHHHH In a dark cavern, an colossal, old monster warthog shuffles towards a pit, the mouth of which is stained with blood. Four smaller, red warthogs bray at it. GWUH? BWUH HHHHRRRR GAAAAH A zombie caveman stands with a stunned, goofy expression. Behind him, a T-Rex looms menacingly, whilst two baby T-Rex's look at the caveman in joy. RRRAAAAHHHH ROOOOAAAAAARRRR A crowd of goblin like creatures with only giant mouths for a face. All have their jaws wide open, salivating and showing their huge, spear-like teeth. MMMMM GAAAH MMMNNN An african looking tribes-woman, holding a spear, placates and soothes a giant T-Rex by placing her palm on it's snout. It looks at peace. GRRR RRAAAHHH GRRR A man with ginger hair, blue body paint and a red kilt holds a broadsword whilst stood on top of a winged dinosaur that has a saddle on it's back. GWWAAAAHHHHH!! A zombie caveman and a giant T-Rex burst out from underneath a pile of monkeys, sending them flying into the air in all directions. RRRUUUUUURRRR GAAAHHH RAAAHHHH A trio of cute, baby monster-monkeys launch themselves at the screen in an attack. GRRRRRRR A fireside scene. A woman and two baby T-rex are asleep and cuddled up against the flank of a giant T-Rex, which is wide awake and looking menacingly right at the viewer. RAAAAHH, AAAHHHH ROOOAAARR! A long limbed, black, werewolf like thing with blood red eyes hurls itself out of the screen.

The werewolf is almost on top of the viewer now and about to attack. MMMMMMMMM A black haired tribeswoman cuddles two baby T-rex, all of them look happy and content. RAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!! A gif of a cartoon, zombified caveman and a T-Rex having an argument by roaring at each other.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Project Hail Mary

Tags: blog, film, recommended, sci-fi, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Wednesday May 20th, 2026

Lessons learned from Rocky...

Poster for the movie Project Hail Mary. A man in a red space suit struggles to stand on the top of a round space ship that is hurtling through multi-coloured lights

A space ship sets sail from a dying earth, with a small crew, in search of ways to save humanity from the gradual plague that is enveloping it.

If that sounds like the plot of Interstellar then it’s not a surprise. Film makers Miller and Lord take liberal inspiration from the Nolan movie, but what makes this movie interesting is how it interprets the genre differently and ends up with something that feels fresh and modern.

The most obvious difference is clear from the trailer: An alien. Nolan's movie is about actual physics, so: no aliens. PHM's relationship to physics is a little woollier. It's aware of the concept but doesn't consider it to be bound by them, so: aliens.

Which is where the movie gradually morphs into a buddy movie. The film invests a huge part of it's runtime depicting the blossoming friendship between Ryan Gosling's Grace and his newfound alien partner, Rocky. It's highly unusual to see a film to not only show, but to focus so heavily on the subject of friendship.

Yes both Grace and Rocky are lonely, yes they have the same goal, yes they need each other to complete their mission, yes they both help each other and return the favours, but that's not why they become friends. It's not why they're so believable.

It's because they like each other.

Most of the film's appeal is simply Grace and Rocky goofing around, completely enamoured with each other, and loving the company. Lord and Miller lean into the concept of positive masculinity with their whole heart, to the point where it becomes the buddiest of buddy movies ever made.

To give the film a more interesting narrative structure, there's a series of flash backs that lead up to Grace being catapulted out of Earth's orbit. Both the literal and the metaphorical down-to-earthness of it all contrasting beautifully with the apocalyptic level of what's at stake, as well as the outrageous visuals of the space scenes.

This is one of the rare instances of a film where the main motivation of the CGI artists was to produce something beautiful. Every scene is lit in a way that is visually arresting, seemingly aware that the long runtime needs the eye to be delighted at every moment. As a result, even when not much is happening, the whole film zips along.

This has the feeling of a film that delights on first viewing and is destined to become a fondly loved classic in years to come.

Amaze, Amaze, Amaze!

A photo, taken from the point of view of someone standing on a space ship. Part of the ship loom at the sides of the shot and we can see an astronaut standing on the ship in the distance. Everything is coloured in a greenish hue that is being given off by the giant, green and orange, gas planet which completely dominates the view.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Queens of the Dead

Tags: blog, film, comedy, horror, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Saturday January 17th, 2026

When there's no room left in hell, there's an app for that

Poster for the film. A bejeweled hand bursts out of the ground, wearing bling rings and jewel encrusted nails. The background is colourful sequins disco lights.

The party goers at a queer night club have to work together to defend themselves in the middle of a zombie outbreak. Drag queens, butch lesbians and everyone in between fighting the apocalypse.

The early word of mouth of this was pretty poor but I'm glad to say I had a pretty good time with this. Mostly because it "fixed" a couple of issues I often have with the zombie movie genre.

Problem One: People arguing with each other to create drama. Usually, this is just poor script writing. The characters are tense and scared, how do we show that? Just have them yell at each other for no reason. But when those characters are drag queens, it's a delight. "You don't look a day over 50... pounds over a weight". It just works.

Problem Two: Society goes to shit instantly as everyone selfishly fights everyone else for precious resources. This one never sits right with me. Watch any real life large scale disaster and you'll see communities mostly coming together to help each other. Humans are social, empathetic creatures designed to work best in small groups. This idea that as soon as the shit hits the fan, people turn on each other is usually nonsense.

Here, whilst everyone bickers and argues (see point one) there's never any question that the group are sticking up for each other. It may be a team of individuals but they're definitely a team.

And what individuals they are. The cast are uniformly excellent, with clearly defined and memorable characters. Margaret Cho in particular is fantastic, having a truly fantastic entrance and an equally dramatic exit.

Sadly, the main draw of the film for me, Katy O'Brian, is massively under-utilised. Despite being at the centre of the story she doesn't actually get to do anything.

Worse, the cinematography lets everyone down quite badly, everything looks flat and dull. I can't remember ever watching a film where there's such a contrast between the glamorous costumes and the unstylish way in which they are shot. I know this is a super-low budget film, but The Paragon has no budget and still looks far better than this.

Thankfully, the soundtrack manages to just about hold everything together. There are dirty, electro pop bangers dropping all over the place. Even when the script is de-flating, there's a tune to keep everything pumped up.

Ultimately this is far too thin a piece to truly recommend but it's still a fun entry into the low-budget zombie horror comedy genre.

3 male or non-binary people standing on a stage. Dressed as very, very camp emergency workers: a plumber, a construction worker and a fire fighter.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Redux Redux

Tags: blog, film, action, thriller, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Tuesday April 28th, 2026

Oh boy!

Poster for the film Redux, Redux. A nighttime scene. A man is tied to a chair, lying on the ground, completely aflame. A slim, blonde woman is standing over him looking down at him coldly.

If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat.
They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.

Terry Pratchett

The opening shot is of Irene in the middle of murdering someone. The next scene is also of her murdering someone. The third scene arrives without even pausing for breath and yet again, she's murdering someone.

That's how the film tells us she's a good person. She's killing instinctively, quickly, with purpose.

Irene is hopping through dimensions in what initially was a quest to find a universe where her daughter is alive. But on finding her murdered in every single one, enacts revenge on the man, the same man, who did it. She no longer seems to hold out hope of, well, of hope, and instead goes straight to the murdering part. Like an episode of Quantum Leap where the solution every single week is to murder a paedophile.

This film differs from other multi-verse movies by pointing out that an infinite number of universes also means an infinite number of universes imperceptibly different from our own. It has a Groundhog Day like focus on grinding repetition, only here it's about a serial killer trying to avoid dealing with their grief.

It's brutally efficient at showing the effect that numbing, relentless repetition has on a person. The violence, the shooting, the stabbing, the bludgeoning, the murder, isn't the problem. It's the obsessive yearning for something that can never be, refusing to confront the actual pain that you are going to have to live with.

It's not really in the same league as Hamnet for it's empathetic portrayal of grief. For one thing the dialogue, although a lot of fun, has almost zero subtlety, the characters just plain tell you what they're thinking at every moment. The script is written for efficiency, not artfulness. But it hits incredibly hard in a few moments, that efficiency catching you off guard with it's swiftness and it's eagerness to cut right to the chase.

The soundtrack is also brutally efficient. An electro boomer that matches the soundtrack of Sirat for chest-thudding, analogue bass wobble.

A treat of a film that I'd recommend to literally anyone. A petrol station at night. Where a car would be is instead a kind of steam punk metal coffin, with pipes and exhausts all over it. Steam is enveloping it and a tall, slim blonde woman is climbing out of it.

A petrol station at night. Where a car would be is instead a kind of steam punk metal coffin, with pipes and exhausts all over it. Steam is enveloping it and a tall, slim blonde woman is climbing out of it.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Rental Family

Tags: blog, film, drama, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday January 25th, 2026

Failing and succeeding at the same time.

Poster for the film Rental Family. 5 people sat in a line on a Japanese train. Behind them, through the window, are sakura trees and a Tokyo skyscrapers. They are a handsome man, a very old man, a chubby, white American man in the middle, a young girl with pigtails and an extremely handsome young woman. All, apart from the American, are Japanese.

The endlessly watchable Brendan Fraser stars as Philip, a struggling actor in Tokyo who falls into a job playing fictional parts in peoples real lives. And finds a lot more than he expects when asked to play the role of a father to a young girl applying for an elite school.

This is a film all about a friction. The friction between how we try to help the people around us and the lies we tell to them and ourselves in order to do so. Can a good deed ever be meaningful and lasting if it's built on a lie?

But the friction between dualities is everywhere you look in this film. It's both a Hollywood film set in Japan and a Japanese film starring an American. It's a crowd pleasing mainstream film with a clear theme and an art house film that leaves much to interpretation.

The problem is, that whilst the film clearly wants to explore that friction, it doesn't seem to know quite how to resolve it. It's an interesting area but the moment Philip lies to Mia, the young girl at the heart of the film, my brain noped out at the obvious ethical red line that's been stepped over.

Instead the film is at it's best in the final half hour. When everything starts going wrong and it shatters into a kaleidoscope of stories, each one following a different character, that's when the film suddenly bursts into life. Free from the awkward balancing act of the first part of the film it's able to let each story shine and finally get under the skin of the characters.

Maybe that's the message of the film, that you can only be yourself when your free from the lies. But it's not convincing and the resolution doesn't manage to square anything off.

A special mention has to go to the cinematography which is simple, basic even, but has an incredible eye for a good shot. It's interested in it's subjects and in turn you can't help but be drawn in. Keep an eye out for the range of fabulous sweaters worn throughout the film, the camera crew certainly did. And one scene involving the old man and a much older tree is just stunning, a genuine show stopper of a moment.

It's an odd film to recommend because I feel that, on it's own terms, it fails at what it's trying to do. But it succeeds at everything around it so spectacularly that everyone will get something meaningful from it.

A young Japanese woman sat on the left hand side of a sofa. A middle aged, white American man sat on the right. She's wearing a grey wedding dress, he's wearing a cream wedding suit and both are smiling at each other awkwardly.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Sirat

Tags: blog, film, thriller, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Monday April 06th, 2026

Is this what the end of the world feels like?

Poster for the movie Sirat. Two buses, one yellow, the other more of a off-road truck in gun metal grey, parked in the desert. In front of them are a group of weary travelers sitting in camp chairs. Next to them are speakers the size of an average person.

Sirat is a movie that doesn't give a toss about your feelings. Doesn't care for your sense of closure or your need for justice. Doesn't care about your sense of aesthetics or beauty or empathy. It's actively hostile to you taking anything of value from the film and seemingly ambivalent if you even watch it past a certain point. It's technique for building tension is to simply hit you out of nowhere with an iron bar. It hurts and it works.

The desert of Morocco in which it's filmed is as imposing and hostile as the films attitude. Monolithic, brutal and utterly unconcerned with the triviality of human life.

The music matches it right from the start. Slow moving, bass driven techno wobbles the very dust and vibrates through everything but the rock. As one character points out, "You don't listen to it, you dance to it".

It's tempting to say that there's not a film like this, but there is one. The debt this owes to William Friedkin's masterpiece Sorcerer is so great that if Friedkin was still alive he'd send the bailiffs round. It shares the same sense of nihilism. It also has the same sense of timing where the moment where you just want to beg the characters to turn back and give up is the exact same moment that they've gone too far to do so.

If you are going to watch this then you're just going to have to suffer like everyone else.

Stunning.

Wide shot of a vertiginous Moroccan mountain face. In the distance we can see two chunky buses, followed by a forlorn mini-van, are slowly edging along a narrow track impossibly etched into the side of the mountain.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Small Prophets

Tags: blog, tv, fantasy, comedy, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday February 15th, 2026

As the actress said to the alchemist

Poster for the tv show Small Prophets. A tall white man with a long white beard stands in an overgrown English garden, holding two very large jars. Golden motes of light are pouring out of the tops of the jars into the air.

British pagan folklore rarely gets to feature prominently in British media, at least outside of the Arthurian knights and their derivatives. It sometimes finds a home in horror (like the films of Ben Wheatley or the pages of 2000AD) where the low budget, grimey nature and askew weirdness work well together.

Which means MacKenzie Crook is working, figuratively and literally, in a field of his own, making tv that is steeped in old English folklore. Sitcom the Detectorists was set in the ghosts and echoes of British peasant history. Family comedy/drama Worzel Gummidge positively dives into the ancient magic and superstitions of the British countryside. And now Crook is back with Small Prophets, set in English suburbia which, as anyone who's paid time and attention in such places will have noticed, has never quite managed to remove itself from the ancient pagan culture that birthed it.

Pierce Quigley, finally and deservedly getting a leading role, plays Michael Sleep, a man who's partner disappeared seven years ago and has effectively put his life on pause ever since. Waiting for her to come home, unable to grieve, unwilling to give up hope. Lauren Patel is Kacey, his younger work colleague who forms a bond with him over their shared dislike of their DIY store boss, played by Mackenzie Crook.

On the instructions of Michael's dad (Michael Palin at his jovial best) the pair set out to grow Homunculi in a garden shed, for the purpose of divinating the whereabouts of Michaels missing love.

The way the two of them form a friendship is beautifully drawn. His grief and her thwarted dreams are dealt with in two completely different ways, which it turns out is exactly what the other needs.

In fact, the entire cast of characters are superbly written and acted, each of them being represented as whole human beings with loves and flaws. Only Clive, Michael's neighbour, is portrayed as a complete arse. Never has bedroom decor been employed as such a devastating indictment on someone's character.

Having worked in retail management, I can attest that Crook's depiction of store manager Gordon is eerily accurate. That awkward juxtaposition between being in a position of authority and having almost no actual power is mined for comedy gold. Hopefully I wasn't quite such a dick about it but it was an enjoyably uncomfortable watch to see my profession portrayed so deftly.

Where it really starts to shine is with the introduction of the Homunculi themselves. They are weird, creepy, magisterial and etherial. Nothing like what you would expect and never fully explained, their presence asks profound moral questions. Is it right to grow them, to keep them, to use them? The characters are so wrapped up in their own problems that these questions are barely asked, let alone answered, so there's a deep sense of moral doubt that hangs over the show. A darkness and sadness that maybe the characters are digging themselves into a much deeper hole and an act of self preservation in the final episode could have some dark consequences in the next series. A series I am very eagerly awaiting.

Brilliantly funny, profoundly melancholic and unlike anything else being made right now. A wonder.

An older man with a long white beard and a young woman with dark hair walking along a path. Both are wearing dark blue coveralls, branded with the name of a DIY retailer.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Stop! That! Train!

Tags: blog, film, comedy, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday September 06th, 2026

All! The! Exclamations!

A poster for the film Stop That Train. RuPaul, wearing a black pant-suit, with a hand on her hip. A bullet train is snaked around her, with the cast of the movie poking out the windows, each with a wacky expression on their face.

The makers of Airplane! famously bought the rights to Zero Hour! and then simply remade it, adding in jokes whilst doing so.

Stop! That! Train! has a similar relationship to Airplane! It's almost a re-make, but with added drag queens.

And whilst I've lamented the lack of similar films, using Airplane! as a base does rob it of one of it's underpinnings. Namely, the gap between the absurdity of the jokes and the seriousness of the plot. Here, nothing is serious, no Leslie Nielson playing it straight, refusing to acknowledge what's happening.

Neither does this film have the required tempo of jokes. There's not the necessary rat-a-tat-tat of jokes being fired out to keep you laughing constantly.

But that's where the negativity ends. The jokes may not be frequent enough but they are really good jokes. One repeated wordplay refrain is as good as 'Surely you can't be serious?' and fans of nineties R'n'B groups will be howling at one part.

And one thing Airplane! didn't have was musical numbers, which is the point where Stop!That!Train! does manage to cram in the jokes faster than you can get them.

This is a fun little piece of nonsense that kept me thoroughly entertained for ninety minutes.

Three glamorous 'train stewardesses', dressed in white sequins and pearls, with Red hats and red fans, singing and dancing for the passengers, who look taken aback.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Ted Lasso Series 4

Tags: blog, tv, comedy, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Monday October 12th, 2026

Missed a sitter

Poster for the tv show Ted Lasso. Head and shoulders shot of a middle aged man and a younger woman, against a blue sky background. Both are wearing blue tracksuits. He's wearing a white sun visor, her pony tail is blowing across his face and it looks like an elaborate moustache.

The thing that endeared me to Ted Lasso, right from the very first episode, was the way it treated the show's female characters. Here was a show about an incredibly male dominated world that had women in important, key roles, who all had their own personalities, drives, motivations and stories. They weren't just there to supply plots to the male characters. It showed that the writers had put care and thought into the structure of the show.

Over the course of the three series, it gradually started to care a little bit too much about it's characters, too often tipping into sentimentality. By the end, it felt like it had run it's course as it had nowhere else to go. It picked the right time to bow out.

So the news that the fourth series was to focus on the vastly different world of women's football was interesting. The writers ability to write for female characters combined with the fresh start of a new team in a new league promised a lot.

The problem is, the show can't let go of it's old characters and plot lines. Rebecca's relationship with a flying bus driver is given significant screen time. Keely and Roy's will-they-won't-they-of-course-they-bloody-will situationship just won't stop. Coach Beard's mid-life crisis continues.

How are all these character's stories integrated into the plot of the nascent Lady Greyhounds team? They're not. At all.

The stories of the football team and it's players have to compete for screen time with a bunch of plot lines that have got nothing to do with them. In previous series, all the disparate stories all revolve around the team, one way or another. Everything felt connected. Here, the football seems superfluous to most of what's happening. The team itself is given very short shrift.

Worse still, the show doesn't adapt to the very different reality of women's football. The men's Premier League is a world of staggering riches where every one has expensive cars and even more expensive suits. Lower league women's football is full of part-timers who have to have second jobs in order to be able to afford to play football. The show does acknowledge this, it depicts members of the team working as a Deliveroo driver, struggling with childcare, trying to balance playing and university, but does absolutely nothing with it.

In one episode, the millionaire owner of the Richmond football club, Rebecca, wrestles with the implication that she might not be a feminist because she gave the head coach's job to a man. But the fact that one player is sleeping in their car because she isn't paid enough by the millionaire owner of the football team that she plays for, an owner who at one point get's on a private jet just to go to a game, simply isn't commented upon. The tonal disconnect is astounding.

When it does focus on Ted and the football, it's brilliant. The whole team is interesting, packed with likable characters with interesting stories. The midfield twins of Siobhan and Niamh absolutely light the place up when given the chance. Alice and Gemma's relationship has real grit to it. And goalkeeper 'Boots' is just the right type of psycho.

Episode Eight features possibly the highlight of all four series so far. Ted having to deal with a character, and possibly a team, in crisis, and showing compassion, empathy and understanding. It's possibly the finest example of 'management' I've seen on screen and is deeply moving. It highlights just how good a manager Ted is, as well as showing the bonds within the team. Their fragility and strengths.

The problem is that it has to share screen time with an interminable Keely & Roy remake of Clockwise (a side plot that not only has nothing to do with the women's team, but doesn't even have anything to do with Richmond) and an appallingly half-arsed spy drama involving Higgins (which eventually involves a plot twist in episode nine that everyone watching would have seen coming in episode three).

The end result is that the story of the football team isn't given enough time to be fully fleshed out. When Alice's story completes, it's rushed and doesn't feel earned. The football itself feels like a sideshow.

The writer's of Ted Lasso know what they're doing. They're trying to keep the fans of the show happy by keeping the tone and plots familiar, whilst gender swapping the players of the football team. But the truth is that a show that once distinguished itself with the strength of it's female characters, simply doesn't give a shit about women's football or it's players.

Women's football deserves so much more respect than this.

Head and shoulders shot of two young women, both looking into the camera. The one on the left has long, ginger hair. The one on the right has her hair completely covered by a baseball cap. Both have their hands raised to their faces in a look of shock.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

The Balconettes

Tags: blog, film, horror, essential, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday February 01st, 2026

Portrait of a Bin on Fire

Celine Sciamma can make a decent claim to be the greatest living film maker. The only other film makers whose work I anticipate as eagerly are Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou. Look back through Celine's back catalogue and it's wall to wall classics. Not just the ones she directs herself but the one's she writes and hands off to other people as well.

Here she co-writes alongside the star of A Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Noemie Merlant, who also directs and stars. Quite frankly I'm not sure who's showing off more.

Set in heat wave stricken Marseilles, three very different friends meet a good looking neighbour and party with him. It all goes horrifyingly wrong.

The Balconettes returns to themes of A Portrait... but whereas that film kept a very firm lid on it's anger, only letting it escape in a long pressurised scream at the very end, this film comes out howling and swinging from the very first shot.

That first shot being an extraordinary, sweeping, one-take crane shot of an entire Marseilles neighbourhood that settles onto a super tight close up of one of the greatest murders ever committed to screen.

After that it goes a little off the rails. A lot off the rails. It pin wheels around between erotic thriller, body horror, feminist revenge, heist job, intimate friendship drama and slapstick comedy. It is ridiculous and knowingly so. It plays with it's ridiculousness, plays with the absurdities of life that put the characters into such ridiculous situations and is absolutely furious about it.

It never lets that fury overwhelm anything though, just uses it as fuel for whatever direction the film is heading in at that particular moment.

It's a difficult film to assess critically because it never settles on one particular genre long enough to be judged along side other similar films. But who cares about assessing a film critically when you're having this much fun, like being on a psychological, philosophical, fairground waltzer. There's nothing else quite like this and that is arguably its greatest strength.

So yet another belter from Celine Sciamma gets tossed on her pile of outright classics. A pile that's beginning to rival the likes of Powell & Pressburger for both depth and breadth.

Three young women dragging a wheelie bin down a hot summer street in Marseille. The lead woman is wearing a matching purple outfit with a skeleton on it and red glitter mascara the makes it look like her eyes are bleeding. The other two are wearing floaty summer clothes. Watching them go past are an evidently amused young boy with a football and a non-plussed man who looks a bit like a zombie.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Tags: blog, film, horror, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Wednesday March 04th, 2026

Tracksuit mafia.

Poster for the film 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. A bald, topless man, covered in red liquid screams to the sky, arms outstretched. Around him is a ring of fire, outside of which are pillars constructed from human skulls.

I ended the review of 28 Years Later by stating just how much I was looking forward to the next Danny Boyle Movie. Well that wait goes on for a bit longer as he's roped in Nia DaCosta to direct this sequel. And what an astute choice that's proven to be.

DaCosta's portrayal of how the gang of Jimmys operate, how it's run and controlled, is sharply observed. As is the violence they meet out on their travels. And the reason the latter is so horrible is because of the former. There's an inevitability to everything that happens that gives you no way to break out of the fiction. The more the violence spirals out of control, the realer it feels. This film is nasty. Whilst my previous complaints about zombie films showing the breakdown of society still stand, if you are going to do this at least lean into it with all your weight.

As the previous film gradually changed it's focus from wide angle scene setting to close up drama, this film continues that zoom-in to the point of claustrophobia. There's no ambition to the gang we're following beyond survival and violence. Neither they or the film are even interested in the zombies any more.

Their counter-point in the film is the return of Ralph Feinnes' Dr Kelson. He has no care for the world outside his temple, but he is interested in the Alpha of the zombies. Interested to the point of caring. It’s a meditative, almost philosophical contrast to the Jimmys that doesn’t really go anywhere although it’s a fairly safe bet that it will get resolved in the final part of the trilogy.

Sadly, the film lacks much of the visual flair and invention of Boyle's entries in the series. I would have liked it if the film was a bit more unhinged in it's aesthetics. Only at the end, in an uproariously funny meeting of very different characters, does the film flex some serious cinematic chutzpah. But even then it feels safe in a way that Boyle at his best doesn’t.

But that doesn't detract from how effective the drama is. This is one of the more intimate zombie films I’ve seen and is all the better for it. Perfectly geared to wind up for what is hopefully a big finale.

A field in England, in summer. Two men sit on the grass talking to each other. The one on the left is wearing a dark velour tracksuit and bunches of gold neck chains. He has long blonde hair. The one on the right is bald, painted red and looks tired. In the background are spires made of human skulls.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

The Furious

Tags: blog, film, action, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday July 26th, 2026

I HEARD YOU!

Poster for the film, The Furious. Five south asian men, all looking very aggressive, leaping at each other ready to punch. They're covered in a lot of blood.

The first thing we have to talk about when discussing The Furious is the dialogue. Martial Arts movies have a long and interesting history when it comes to dialogue, language dubbing and subtitles. So infamous is the culture of weird martial art flick dialogue it even seeps into other genres, such as the Police Academy documentary series.

But even by that colourful standard, The Furious stands out.

The film is set 'Somewhere in South East Asia', but never named specifically. Some of the film uses a variety of local languages, which are subtitled, even when the actors use English idioms. Which is an uncanny, jolting reminder that you're reading subtitles.

But ninety percent of the dialogue is in English. And not the kind of over-dubbed English where the actor's lips bare no relation to the words that are coming out of them, the actors are actually speaking English. Just with weirdly precise American accents.

That's right, the actors are acting in English and then the studio have dubbed over them to remove their accents.

This is both the most oddly effective and bizarrely jarring technique I've seen in a non-English language film. No, your brain isn't dealing with the disconnect between mouth and sound. But on the other hand, I know what Joe Taslim sounds like and it's not that.

The sound mix makes it even odder, as it's mixed more akin to an animated movie, with the dialogue 'on top' of everything else, as opposed to traditional ADR where it's mixed 'in' to make it sound more natural. Which actually ends up being a positive as it means you get to here every line of dialogue as clear as a bell, despite the cacophony that's often happening at the same time. This is the anti-Nolan of film dialogue.

Oh, but some characters seem to be dubbed from their native language into English and the moments I spotted that I think my brain leaked out my ears at the incongruity of it all.

And I haven't even mentioned that the main character is deaf and mute. Which in the context of the rest of the film just comes across like a cost saving measure.

But how much difference does this make to the quality of the film and your enjoyment of it? Absolutely nothing, obviously. This is a martial arts action film and the only question worth asking is Does It Kick Arse?

Yes. It really kicks arse.

The endless fight scenes are inventive, funny, athletic and skilful. It's not at the quality of The Raid, it veers too much towards the flashy and overly complicated for my personal taste.¹ But they're consistently entertaining and keep your interest going until the plot stops and we get a gang-busters five person, three way fight at the end, introducing Yayan 'no guns' Ruhian, Joey Iwanaga, who I last saw being great in Baby Assassins 2 and Brian Le jumping around like an angry frog.

There's some really great editing in this fight, with several very long sequences that are actually lots of intense, short sequences almost imperceptibly stitched together. There's also some very subtle cgi used to have multiple fights happening in camera at the same time.

Normally, the way to have this level of chaos on screen in martial arts films is to keep the choreography simple, with basic timing. Easy to repeat across multiple takes, rough enough that it'll look good when not performed perfectly and with enough breathing room between moves that you can get it right in one or two takes. You can't do Jackie Chan amounts of re-shoots if you have more than a handful of people in shot.

But the final fight here manages a staggering amount of chaos on screen whilst maintaining pace and technique. The downside being that it's difficult to marvel at the choreography when there's so much happening at the same time.

Pretty much the only time I gasped at the techniques on screen were when Joey Iwanaga moved so quickly the camera couldn't keep up. Blimey, he is rapid.

Still, taken as a whole, this is a blast and anyone wanting a proper, all out martial arts action film is going to be delighted.

Four South East Asian men face off against each other, ready to fight, two on one side, two on the other.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

1. For my taste, the great modern fight scene is the lift fight in Merentau. Simple, great technique and tells a story.
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The Secret Agent

Tags: blog, film, thriller, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday March 01st, 2026

Butter the MacGuffin

Poster for the film The Secret Agent. A Handsome Brazilian man stands in a yellow telephone kiosk. He has a well trimmed beard, a crisp white, short sleeved shirt and is looking cautiously to the side. The background is wall plastered with faded ripped poster of mugshots.

This review will container mild spoilers. If you want a review without spoilers then: watch this, it's great.

I've been wrestling with this review for a week now as I'd much rather talk about films without giving away anything that would spoil the plot. But it's not possible to talk about what makes this film great without talking about what the film lacks: This is an espionage story without a MacGuffin. At least I mean that there possibly is one, there are regular teases and hints as to what might be driving everything. There are flash backs and a terrific framing device¹ but nothing definitive or conclusive. Even the main characters themselves don't seem entirely certain why it's all happening.

But then, they don't need to know. They know what's at stake: money, lives, power, principles, family and that's enough to give them something to fight for. And it's enough for us to understand why everything is playing out and to feel the rising heat from the stakes in play.

Oh yes, the heat. If The Balconnettes sizzled, this positively sears as we slowly crank up the temperature in 70's Brazil. The period detail is gorgeous, the cigarettes endless, the fashion far too much and worn sparingly and there's a sense that if you ran your finger over any surface you'd pick up a sheen of sweat. There's a sense of time and place that is almost physically palpable.

And then there's the music, oh the music. I could drown in this film's soundtrack. It makes a very strong argument that popular music absolutely peaked in Brazil in the nineteen seventies and never returned to those glories. I don't necessarily agree with that argument but it's impossible to come away from this film without thinking that the makers do have a point.

And so how does that leave the viewer, dangling a central mystery in front of us without ever resolving it? It's a very deliberate choice being made here, so what are the film makers trying to say?

I'm honestly not sure. My feeling is that this way the viewer can insert their own reasons. People who lived through, or were affected by the right-wing, military dictatorship of the time can put their own experiences into the film. Or maybe they don't need reasons either. The tenor of the film is such that these scenarios of corruption and subterfuge were completely normalised.

This isn't a spy thriller, It's a kitchen sink drama. Which is terrifying.

A skinny man with a greying goatee stands in a yellow phone kiosk in 70's Brazilian plaza. He's looking shiftily behind him.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

1. The reveal of which is a magnificent, ice-cold glass of water thrown right in your face.
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The Summer Book

Tags: blog, film, drama, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Wednesday March 11th, 2026

Bookended

Poster for the film The Summer Book. A young girl, 10-ish years old, in a green sweater closes her eyes and rests her head on her Grandmother shoulder. Her grandmother has white hair and is played by Glenn Close. The background setting is a wooden cabin on a bright summers day.

This film starts with one of the most beautiful opening shots I've ever seen. A stunning view of the ocean lapping at rocks in the frozen winter, breathing in, breathing out. It's so extraordinary that it took a while for my brain to fully understand what was happening, all whilst marvelling at the majesty of it.

It's way of reminding us that everything has to pass. That the summer we're about to witness is brief and finite.

An adaptation of Tove Jansson's book, this is the story of three generations of a family retreating to their small holiday island, to spend time with each other and grieve the loss of the young girls mother.

Glenn Close's depiction of the grandmother is as majestic as that opening shot. Utterly commanding your attention, emphatically drawing you in to her point of view. Unfortunately, the interactions between the other characters are really flatly directed. There's none of the deftness seen in Left-Handed Girl, I didn't believe in any of their relationships. The moments between the girl and her father feel particularly stagey.

Sadly, this means that I struggled to connect with the experiences that were being shared between them. And failed to be moved by the poetry of their wisdom. I feel incredibly cold hearted saying it, given how admired the source material is, but I just wasn't moved by it at all.

What I was left with was a very basic story, all be it with some beautiful photography.

However, the ending manages to surpass the beginning. An absolutely breathtaking solo scene for Glenn Close, a culmination that makes the film as a whole worth viewing.

Glenn Close, with her white hair in pigtails and wearing a white and blue pinstriped nightshirt, stands outside a wooden house looking very tired.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Urchin

Tags: blog, film, drama, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday April 05th, 2026

The purpose of a system is what it does

Poster for the film Urchin. A blurred photo of a man dancing at dusk around a fire.

The most remarkable thing this film has to say about it's chosen subject of homelessness, is absolutely nothing. It goes out of it's way to not make a point. There's no moralising, no melodrama, no finger pointing and no blaming.

There's not even any antagonists. Literally everyone that Mike meets throughout the film tries to help him in one way or another. It's nobody's fault when Mike fails and fails again.

Mike is an uneducated young man who's not smart enough to compensate for his lack of schooling. He's living rough and trying to scrape by in any way he can. He's carefully played by Frank Dillane who avoids any obvious errors in his performance and portrays his character as a whole person. Mike may not be smart, but he is engaged with his life and the world around him.

But how can he succeed when every piece of help offered, whether by the state, by businesses or friends is transitory or transactional? And dependent on him having something to offer and never making a mistake?

The answer of course is that he can't. By showing restraint in it's story telling, the only thing the film leaves you with is a void. A void where the housing should be, where support should be, where care should be.

Mike fills that void with drink, drugs and chaos. I filled it with anger at a system that spends more money on police and prisons and reparations and rehab than it ever would on just giving Mike enough money to feed and house himself. Anger at a system that's designed to create homeless, broken people.

A neon drenched karaoke scene. Two young women flank a young man, all sat on a sofa singing into microphones.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

Wake Up Dead Man

Tags: blog, film, thriller, comedy, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Wednesday January 07th, 2026

I mean, say what you like about the tenets of New Apostolic Reformationism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

Poster for the film Wake Up Dead Man. The camera is looking up from the bottom of a grave. Around the edge of the grave, looking down are the eclectic cast of the film. In the background we can see the looming spire of a church.

Three films in to the Knives Out series and I'm beginning to understand how Rian Johnson sees the murder mystery genre. He views these films not in terms of genre but in terms of form, like a limerick or haiku. He's not interested in making the perfect who-dunnit. He's interested in what he can say, using the form of a who-dunnit.

Glass Onion was a spiky and sharp skewering of tech-bro oligarchs. Wickedly funny but relatively simple in its pointedness.

Here he uses the congregation of a small town American church as a microcosm of right-wing Christianity in America. Using division and an in-group/out-group mentality to gain control and power in an ever dwindling congregation. None of which is very subtle but it is smartly done. As is the murder mystery itself, which contains enough twists, red herrings, subterfuges and revelations to work as a solid entry into the genre.

Where it stands out though is through Josh O'Connors depiction of Father Jud Duplenticy, the initial suspect in the case who must fight to clear his name. And that fight will cause him a crisis of faith.

And where it really stands out is how that crisis is depicted. Usually, films depicting doubt amongst the believers has them questioning their beliefs in their religion, their god or their church. But Father Jud's troubles are depicted more as a crisis of character. It's a crisis in his faith in himself, of whether he can truly be the person who he's trying to be.

What good will this fight do for him, if winning it means losing his sense of self?

There's a moment part way through the film, where the tension is mounting, Father Jed is being backed further into a corner and the mystery is deepening. When suddenly a character of no consequence to the film ignores the conventions of the murder mystery genre and simply asks for help on a completely unrelated and deeply personal matter. It's a breathtaking moment as we realise that this is the whole point of the film right there. We recognise the pivotal moment that's just happened, but will Father Jud?

The moments after this tell us everything about how he will handle the fight ahead.

Rian's point here, deeply made and deeply felt, is that religion isn't about Creed and doctrine. It's about Culture and the people that make and practice it. If we lose sight of that, we lose everything. If we remember it and care about people above all else, we can fight anything.

And to top it all off, this film is funny. It gets more slapstick mileage out of dead bodies than any film since Weekend at Bernie's. And there's a Big Lebowski joke that is one for the ages.

Daniel Craig in profile with straggly blond hair and a dapper sable suit. He's standing in a church with golden light shining on him.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

As an addendum to this review, may I heartily recommend this four part Reith Lecture from Kwame Anthony Appiah which has stayed with me since listening to it nine years ago and helped me appreciate this movie a little more.

Zootopia 2

Tags: blog, film, animation, comedy, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Saturday February 07th, 2026

Genocide in Busytown

Poster for the film Zootopia 2. A cartoon rabbit and fox taking a selfie, the rabbit looks overjoyed, the fox looks uncomfortable.

The first Zootopia delighted by not only being funny and witty but having a story that you thought was going to be about one thing, and then pulls a fantastic bait and switch into something else. What looked like a fairly simple story of triumphing over sexism turns into a surprisingly deft exploration of systemic racism.

Zootopia 2 has no such narrative flair, sadly. But it's subject matter is arguably even darker, dealing with a genocide fuelled by a billionaire property developer. It manages to walk a careful line between making the subject palatable for youngsters whilst still making it's point very clear.

Where it falls down is that the world is not as clearly drawn or explored as it was in the first film. In trying to expand the boundaries (almost literally) it rattles through it's locations and inhabitants with out really getting to know them. It's something the first film excelled at so it's sorely missed here. Gary De'Snake, the character whose quest to find his homeland is the driving force of the story, is barely given a personality. We understand his purpose but never actually feel it.

And ultimately the resolution seemed a little glib. The idea that if people knew the truth behind an injustice they'd think differently about it seems like a liberal wet dream at the moment. I'm not going to criticise a kids film for trying to deal with a weighty subject, but the disconnect between the films ending and what's happening in the world right now means the ending doesn't really stick.

On the plus side, the pairing of Judy and Nick is given ample time to develop and their relationship never stops sparkling. They have a genuine connection and their tribulations are the one part of the story that feels consequential. That plus the sheer volume and quality of sight gags (some of the visual jokes are Wallace and Gromit levels of genius) propels the whole thing along at an entertaining pace.

A run down jetty in a swamp. On the jetty are a cartoon fox, holding a dead fish, a rabbit and a beaver. They're all looking at a huge Walrus who has just emerged from the water. He's dressed like a plumber in denim dungarees and holding a plunger.