Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday November 11th, 2025
Viva Macau
Colin Farrell plays Lord Doyle, a Baccarat player, mired in debt, trying to play himself out of a hole. Fala Chen plays Dao Ming, a hostess and loan shark who helps out addicted gamblers with their short term liquidity problem.
Set in Macau, the scenery and cinematography is stunning. The grandeur of the tackiness, the beauty of the monuments to gaucheness. This films captures the concept of greed better than anything I’ve seen. The gluttony, the hunger, to consume, to win, to ingest, constantly, infinitely, never satisfied, never sated, always chasing, always needing.
Volker Bertelmann's music is terrific. Playful and propulsive. It’s the sound of Satan getting behind you and giving you a shove in the back.
Unfortunately, the film pivots around the relationship between Doyle and Dao Ming. But her character is little more than a thumbnail, a sketch. Her story isn’t fleshed out or explained. So their relationship never makes sense, either financially or emotionally.
Consequently, when the revelation happens, it carries no weight.
If the film had been more of a double hander, focusing equally on Fala Chen and Farrell, it could have worked. But now I’m tilting into reviewing the film I’d wish I’d seen.
The film I actually watched is stunningly presented but missing a core.
One quick coda to this review: I'm really appreciating the extra mile that some film makers are going with their end credits. Both this and the recent Caught Stealing have added small amounts of well thought out animation to the credit reel at the end. Mix in a terrific choice of music and it ends the film on a little flourish. Given the turgid state of tv opening and closing credits, where every show has the exact same lazy formula, it's a little point of differentiation. A nice way to show that a little extra care was taken.
It feels like the end credits have been reclaimed after the Marvel era where they were just a thing that added gaps between the 'to be continued' sections.
Not only that, but in this case, somebody in the crew has clearly watched Medusa Deluxe (otherwise known as the film with the greatest end credit sequence ever1) and thought "We'll have some of that". Cracking stuff.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Seriously, watch Medusa Deluxe, the film is weird and wonderful and the end credits are incredible.
↩
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday November 01st, 2025
I know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards
At what point does a metaphor or allegory get so on-the-nose that is stops being a metaphor/allegory and simply becomes the thing that you are talking about? Sometimes, Bet feels like it's attempting to explore that question.
Set in an ultra-exclusive private school for the kids of the mega-mega-mega-rich, where status is entirely defined by money and the only way to gain (or lose) money is to gamble. The winners get to literally own the losers as their personal slaves and the very, very top ranked players form the school council, setting the rules and rigging the games in their favour.
It's not exactly subtle, is it?
Enter Yumiko, a compulsive gambler who's parents (also compulsive gamblers) were assassinated when she was a tiny child, who's on a secret mission to find out who was responsible and get revenge. She shakes up the whole school order by being really good at gambling and also weirdly unaffected by peer pressure and school norms.
The series is at it's best when it treats the school as the beginning and end of it's world building, highlighting the inherent weirdness of forcing a bunch of kids into close proximity, whether they like it or not. This has the side effect of making it feel like a kids tv show, but rather than try and hide that it leans right into it, flatly treating the absurd as normal whilst simultaneously treating the juvenile trials and tribulations as completely valid and worthy of drama.
It's view of the world is bleak as hell. Nobody escapes the story with the audiences full sympathy. Yumiko's gambling gradually tips into self-destruction before her lust for revenge tips into manic violence. Every other character is given an empathetic background but each steadfastly refuse any redemption that's offered to them by the plot. Only Ryan comes away without a stain on his character and that's mostly because he's too wet for anything to stick.
So it's a dog eat dog world with everyone trying to knife each other in the back (and the front, side and any other angle they can get) in order to claw their way up the ladder.
At times it's breathtakingly good as it hammer's you in the face with it's absurdist indictment of capitalism. And the next moment you question what on earth you're watching as high school drama aimed at pre-teens directly references BDSM.
Sadly, it falls at the final hurdle. The last two episodes take place after school term and outside school grounds. The central problem the story has is that in making every character absolutely awful, we don't really care about any of them. Consequently, the mystery of Yumiko's parents simply isn't engaging. It's fine as a macguffin that moves the plot forward, but fails completely when we're asked to invest in it.
I'll probably watch the second series though. There's not much out there like it.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, drama, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday September 25th, 2025
Yes it really, really, really could 'appen
It's often forgotten, but you have to go through an awful lot of Shawshank before you get to the Redemption. It's A Wonderful Life is mostly a film about a man being driven to suicide.
Much of writer/director Andrea Arnold's Bird is similarly difficult to watch. More so as the lead character, Bailey, is a twelve year old girl. Watching her living in such poverty and squalor, lacking any real control over anything in her life is painful. It's heightened, at least for me, by the fact that this is filmed a stones throw1 from where I live. I know areas like this. I know kids like this.
Writer/director Andrea Arnold manages to make this coming of age tale watchable by crafting something that is supremely beautiful, where hope is everywhere when you look for it. Growing in the cracks in the broken pavement, scrawled on the walls of a piss-stained stairwell, in the scavenging eyes of an urban fox. Even, and I can't believe I'm going to write this, in the lyrics of a Verve record.
Hope is a gradual, building constant in this film. When everything gets too much and threatens to crush and overwhelm Bailey, the film breaks it's own narrative constraints in order to make the point that there's still hope. Still a way for things to be better, still a way to see beauty everywhere.
So when that hope builds to the point of a crashing wave, it hit's like a tidal wave of joy and grief and love.
Out of the movies of the past few years, only Aftersun has had an ending that hit's as hard as this. A masterpiece.
A bloody masterpiece.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Well, a short swim.
↩
Tags: film, blog, comedy, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday June 08th, 2025
Wanna see a bunch of Nazis get fucked up?
Of course you do, who wouldn't. Well boy have I got the film for you.
This is a portmanteau film featuring four, based on real-life stories (spoilers), all taking place over twenty fours hours in Oakland, 1987. And it is a blast.
The music is absolutely amazing, it is relentlessly funny, the gore is off the scale, every performance is absolutely nailed. There's a surprise guest cameo appearance from someone who abso-bloody-lutely understands the assignment.
It's a love letter to Oakland. To the eighties. To films. To kicking the shit out of Nazis. To teaching clowns how to juggle. To just having a good time.
An actual riot of a film.
Tags: blog, film, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday November 22nd, 2025
Why So Serious?
A free-spirited, fiercely independent black woman with a sexually promiscuous and lesbian past, with a wealthy husband in a loveless marriage in patriarchal 1950’s England. And when we first meet her at the start of the film she’s contemplating suicide.
That character description of Hedda Gabler, magnificently played by Tessa Thompson, gives you an inkling as to what you’re about to watch.
The film very, very quickly disabuses you of that notion. This is absolutely not that kind of film. And Hedda is not that character.
Movie villains tend to exist in one of three categories: The plotting Machiavellian, the agent of chaos who just wants to ‘watch the world burn’ or the opportunist for whom events spiral out of control.
As the film progresses over the course of a single party, held at their preposterous country mansion, Hedda somehow manages to be all three.
Her character is complicated and not at all straightforward, but still nasty, self destructive, unlikeable and utterly magnetic. A human wrecking ball you can't take your eyes off.
None of the other characters come out of this particularly well either. Only Thea comes away with any sympathy and she’s a complete drip.
The film does an excellent job of portraying the straight-laced, stiff upper lipped puritanism of the fifties and how it melts at first contact with the upper classes attitudes towards, well, literally anything that will get in the way of them getting what they want. This film’s opinion of rich people is as black as a hat and revels in giving them enough rope.
The pleasure in the film is in feeling the revulsion for their actions whilst also enjoying the electric tingle at the shock of it all.
The final shot of the film is one of the best super villain inception moments you’ll ever see. Nia da Costa’s previous work for Marvel implies this is entirely deliberate.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday August 31st, 2025
A sensitive depiction of a fraught subject
This predominantly three handed drama focuses exclusively on the tensions arising from the palliative care of someone in their final days of life. Set entirely within his flat (and the park bench immediately outside) where he’s hooked up to a cardiac monitor which provides the films beep-beep-beep soundtrack, the film tries to explore how the stress and grief affects different personalities and relationships.
It’s certainly a success in this regard. It’s humane and empathetic with its handling of the characters and situations. Unfortunately, the three titular daughters are too broadly stereotypical to be truly believable as a family. Each one has a personality type and that’s who they are. There’s not enough plot, enough revelations or enough nuance to truly draw me in.
It’s a solid and emotional film and, considering the subject matter, that’s good enough. But I didn’t feel like it had enough to say about it.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday August 21st, 2025
Forget the music and live
How to discuss a biopic about an art that you know nothing about and a subject of which you know even less? I can’t speak of the veracity of the events, either their literal truth or their faithfulness to the character.
I have to take the film at face value and judge it on its ability to draw me into Maria Callas’ last week on earth. And its ability to make me empathise with her and the people around her.
In this regard, the film is a triumph. The sincerity of its admiration is deft, subtle and gentle. We see her at her best and her worst, the film judges her for neither. It barely explains either, although context is provided by frequent flashbacks, it’s never as simple as Incident A leads to Behaviour B.
But it does reveal a character trying to hold the world at a specific distance. Close enough that she can feel the warmth and adulation of it. But not so close that she has to deal with the messy, often hurtful jostling of it.
Nowhere is that more true than in her interactions with her butler and housekeeper. The relationship between the three is the beating heart of the movie. Watching them gently try to nudge the boundaries of their relationships in order to care for each other, always without acknowledging it. Ferrucio and Bruna by arranging events to see that she is looked after and supported, even (or especially) without her permission. Maria by pushing them away, reminding them of their place, in order to maintain control of her life. Even if her life is what it will cost her.
The overall effect is a deeply contemplative, emotional piece that never tips into melodrama. Beautiful, humanising and deeply sad.
Tags: blog, film, comedy, drama, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday August 13th, 2025
Did you watch University Challenge last night?
A love triangle where the a character has to choose between love and money is a fairly common staple. The best ones offer sharp commentary on society and relationships.
And they do not come any sharper than the first half of Materialists which focuses its laser-like gaze on dating and marriage within our capitalist financial system. I was not expecting just how brutal Celine Song’s assessments of modern relationships would be, laying out harsh realities clearly for the audience without ever slipping into lazy cynicism.
I was also not expecting it to be this funny. Having laid everything clear out in front of the audience, each character is then given enough rope with which to go one step too far and into absurdity. This contains the biggest belly laughs I’ve had from a film so far this year.
Things get a little less clear in the second half though as the films starts to focus on the romance, rather than the commentary. Song’s previous film, the masterpiece Past Lives presented two choices: neither the correct one, both of which would result in regrets, and it’s heartbreaking. It seems as though this is going to pull off the same trick, but as the film moves past the halfway point, it seems to make a decision as to which is the ‘right’ choice for Dakota Johnson’s character, but without fully convincing me.
The result is an ending that neither quite fits the form of a beautiful romance, or subverts it. After the cutting edge of the first half, the ending felt a little blunt. It’s still worth watching for that blistering opening salvo though and there’s enough ideas in here to make me eager for future work from Song.
Tags: blog, tv, animation, drama, recommended, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday November 08th, 2025
It's business as usual for privately-owned taxi driver Odokawa as he drives a variety of passengers around the city.
A misanthropic taxi driver gets in way over his head in a tangled web of mysteries and messy lives.
Each of the the passengers that Odokawa ferries around becomes another thread that spirals out, weaving around the other stories, eventually looping back round to arrive at Odakawa's taxi door.
The whole thing kicks off with a mystery about a missing teenager but then, Katamari-like, rolls ups stories of corrupt and incompetent cops; social media influencer vigilantes; wannabe comedians; a pop group and their controlling manager; competing gangsters; a thieving nurse; a mobile-game addicted teen; a debt ridden janitor; a caring but intrusive doctor; a catfishing extortion scheme and an otaku lottery winner.
The use of anthropomorphic animals as characters serves two functions. Firstly, with such a huge cast, it allows every character to be distinctive and immediately memorable. It's easy to remember the cast of pop group Mystery Kiss as they're all cats. You can't get any of them mixed up with Miho as she's an alpaca.
Secondly, and conversely, it highlights the deeply human nature of the characters and their stories. The animation style strips each character back to only the qualities needed to tell us who they are. Each character gets their own back story, their own motivations and their own vulnerabilities. There are no purely good guys here, but then even the worst characters here are relatable. You end up rooting for them when they have a chance at redemption or realisation.
The biggest mystery is Odakawa himself. He's obviously highly intelligent, an early scene where he masterfully diverts his prying doctor's conversation onto the subject of Bruce Springsteen is comedy gold, but he only shows that guile in brief spurts. Other times he struggles to get to grips with what's unfolding around him. He's no mastermind, which means that when the web he's helped to spin begins to tighten, the way it shakes out is believably messy, but also beautifully poetic.
There are some criticisms. There's a Tarantino-esque propensity for characters to monologue their backstory, or recite a wikipedia article that introduces a plot element. This is not helped by the perfunctory-at-best translated subtitles. And the subtitles are at their worst for the character of Yano, a character who raps every line. They technically work but they're unbelievably clunky and clash badly with the original audio. Every scene he's in is almost painful to watch.
But overall this is a genuine one-of-a-kind tv show. A magnificent blend of empathy and intricacy, noir and kitchen sink.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: tv, blog, comedy, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday August 02nd, 2025
In praise of mid-range TV
Great art should be challenging. Great art should challenge what is possible, should challenge what I am capable of comprehending.
But when I've got home after thirteen hours working two jobs, when I've only got a few hours to sit down and decompress, before I have to go to bed and get up ready to do it all again, I don't want to be challenged. I want to be entertained.
It's times like this that I miss the days before "prestige" tv, before multi-series story arcs and a cast of thousands. I miss being able to switch on an episode of Columbo or Quantum Leap or Star Trek TNG, know who all the characters are within the first few minutes, and then get a story with a start, a middle and an ending.
Poker Face gets this, it's not a challenging show. You don't even have to work out who the murderer is, it just shows you right off the bat. But what Poker Face also understands is that I'm not an idiot and I don't want to be condescended to.
Poker Face is smart. It just puts those smarts into producing a solid, witty, delightful story into every forty five minute episode.
It does have some concessions to modern tv mores. The first and last few episodes of each series act as story bookends, setting up and paying off Charlie Cales' dealing with the Mob and the FBI. But it's not where it's at it's best. It's at it's best in the middle episodes of the series which most closely hew to the syndicated shows like Columbo and Murder, She Wrote that it's so clearly enamoured with. Episodes 5 to 9 of Series 2 in particular is an astonishing run, every one a belter. The John Cho & Melanie Lynskey helmed "The Sleazy Georgian" is the standout. Fun, funny, smart and deeply empathetic. The kind of storytelling that makes you feel connected to the world and the people around you. That makes you feel good about going to bed and getting ready to start the day anew.
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday January 23rd, 2025
Loneliness and Longing
Daniel Craig is in magnificent form as an older man falling for a much younger, much less secure in his sexuality, guy. It’s impossible to imagine anyone else pulling this role off. Craig’s elegance and magnetism lends perfect credibility to their affair. But his comic timing and generous spirit makes his character soft, vulnerable and immensely likeable.
The plot of the film is slight, but the wonder is in the skill of the film making. The camera is patient. The music doesn’t fit the era but encapsulates the mood. There’s a love scene that’s quite unlike anything I’ve seen before. Craig’s willingness to please, and delight in doing so is joyful.
Over two hours watching Daniel Craig tragically yearning and striving for a deeper human connection, a deeper love, may seem a bit much for a film that doesn’t really add up to much. But I found this to be a deeply lonely and tragic tale that held my emotions the whole way through.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: film, blog, comedy, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday May 31st, 2025
Outdated plot, contemporary and beautiful people
I've not seen the 1993 film that this is a remake of. It's somehow passed me by despite being a big fan of Ang Lee. So I don't know how much has changed from the original. But good lord this film feels weird at times.
The plot is characterised by the kind of high-concept, situation lead set-up common to rom-coms of the eighties and nineties. But the direction takes a little bit of a back seat, allowing the actors the time and space to make their characters entirely believable, despite the patently absurd (and staggeringly predictable) situations the plot places them in.
And it works. That time and space is where the comedy lives. There are plenty of proper belly laughs that come from nothing more than a sideways glance or muted 'harrumph'. Youn Yuh-jung's grandmother managed to steal almost every scene without even moving her face. Understated, character-led comedy is exactly my kind of thing and this film has it in spades.
If I have a criticism of the film, it's the cinematography. It's very basic and lacks flair. It's arguably not a problem for a rom-com, except... art plays a big part in this film. Both Bowen Yang and Han Gi-Chan play artists whose work is genuinely beautiful and yet the film seems almost completely un-interested in exploring that. Which is an issue when that art plays a part of one characters plot-changing and emotional decision. The moment works, the characters make it work, but it would have been so much more powerful if you saw in the art what that character saw. But the film doesn't give you that opportunity.
But I loved this film. It's relentlessly funny. And I believed in the characters even if I didn't believe in the plot. Beautiful.
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday April 04th, 2024
Less than the sum of it’s magnificent parts
I won’t describe the plot here, this is more of a tonal piece, a meditation on loss, longing and what might have been.
There really isn’t any part of this film that I can criticise. Everything from the music, cinematography, script and acting are superb. Jamie Bell and Claire Foy in particular are both pitch perfect.
And yet it didn’t add up to anything for me. I kept thinking of other films that dealt with similar themes and felt this came up short in comparison. Aftersun dealt with loss and grief far better. And Skeletons was better at evoking that feeling of warmth that comes from dwelling on a nostalgic past.
The best thing I can say about this film is that it felt incredibly personal. Like the writer/director Andrew Haigh (who made the superb Lean on Pete) made exactly the film he wanted to make. Which is enough of a recommendation I think.
But sadly, it didn’t speak to me at all.
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday April 09th, 2024
A very able Caine
I won’t do many puns, I promise.
I’ve not read the book, been to the play or watched the ’50s version of this so I can’t speak to how successful an adaptation this is. Nor how well it compares to them. This is a cracking good time in its own right though. The script cracks along with no flab, and has enough meat on it to allow the actors to really get their teeth into it.
Everybody does a great job looking like they’re only just managing to keep their emotions in check. None more so than Monica Raymund, whose repeatedly overruled Prosecutor looks like she’s going to literally explode, whilst barely moving a muscle.
This is a lot of fun while it lasts, but the twist didn’t really land for me and I don’t think it’ll leave a lasting impression.
Tags: blog, film, drama, musical, 2024
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday May 28th, 2024
Paul Mescal is wonderful but he’s not an American.
A modern interpretation of the opera by Georges Bizet, this knows what it’s not interested in. It’s not interested in the story, it’s barely interested in the characters. It is however, very interested in the music and the dance. It focuses on tone and feeling, instead of nuts’n’bolts story telling.
The choreography is superb, always down to earth, never showy. It feels like the characters are expressing themselves through the dance, rather than the script. I felt emotionally connected to the dance in a way that I don’t when watching most Hollywood dance routines.
It helps that Nicholas Britell is on his best form, producing a score that is simply gorgeous.
Unfortunately, the film isn’t quite daring enough to overcome the slightness of the story. When the music fades and the dancing stops, the story loses momentum and the fire in the heart cools.
But when they are dancing, it burns very bright indeed.
Tags: blog, film, drama, documentary, 2024, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday April 08th, 2024
Ava DuVernay in magnificent form adapting a work of non-fiction.
Based on the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson, Ava DuVernay has taken a highly imaginative and passion fuelled approach to its adaptation. Instead of a straight forward documentary we have a story built around Wilkerson’s process for writing the book. The books central arguments explained through conversations with people, both in her personal life and academics she meets through her research.
Then, peppered throughout this narrative, are dramatisations of events from some of the key research texts she uses to pull together her thesis.
The decision DuVernay is making here is to replace the logic and facts that books can densely pack in with the emotive force that films can provide. Scenes from America’s history of slavery are woven together with scene’s from Nazi Germany, and later India, that don’t so much argue that they’re from the same connective tissue but make you feel this truth.
We’ve all lost count of the number of dramatisations of Nazi Germany that we’ve seen on screen. But rarely do these scenes drip with so much disdain and disgust as they do in DuVernay’s work here. The brief scenes on a slave ship are nightmare fuel. If DuVernay ever decides to turn her hand to making horror movies we are all in trouble.
If I can nit-pick slightly, out of all the areas that the film deals with, India is the one I’m least familiar with and it’s also the area the film spends the least time with. I wanted to learn more. And I also wanted to learn more about why this system exists, who benefits from it and why it persists.
But then I suppose I can go and read the book for that.
Ultimately this is a profoundly moving, human and even hopeful film. Masterful stuff.
Tags: blog, film, animation, drama, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday April 01st, 2024
A lonely dog builds a robot to be his best friend
A beautiful movie that never goes where you expect it to. The animation is clean, un-showy and yet packed with detail and imagination. The story matches it precisely, characters are clearly defined, their motivations always explained plainly through the story.
And yet, it has no easy answers to the questions it poses. I was left with an ache in my heart, unsure just how happy the ending I’d just witnessed really was.
Funny, poignant and wonderful.
Tags: blog, film, comedy, drama, 2024, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Friday April 05th, 2024
Marissa Tomei is a tugboat captain
I’d much rather a film shoot for greatness and not achieve it, have eyes bigger than it’s belly. I’d rather watch something that reaches for the stars and falls short than something that has no interest in the stars at all.
Having said that, if you are going to do something slight and charming, do it like She Came to Me.
Peter Dinklage plays an opera composer suffering from writers block and whose marriage to Anne Hathaway may be on the rocks. A one afternoon stand with tugboat captain Marisa Tomei unlocks his creative process and gives everyone a lot more than he bargained for.
Everything about this film oozes effortless charm, humour and wit. I laughed the whole way through and enjoyed my time with the characters to the point I cared about them a lot. Even if the plot is light and more than a little contrived.
And Marisa Tomei is a tugboat captain. Wonderful.
Tags: blog, film, comedy, drama, 2024, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday May 30th, 2024
Randall Park and Sherry Cola on top, top form
Just how unsympathetic can you make a movies main character? There’s been some great movies centred around truly awful people and the usual way to make the audience enjoy their journey is either by making the character charismatic or by making their situation interesting. The danger there, though, is that it’s possible to make the characters personality flaws likeable, excusable, or even desirable.
Justin H.Min’s ‘Ben’ is deeply unlikeable. The film is careful not to have him do anything thats irredeemably bad but neither is he interesting or charismatic. He’s rather tedious and boring (although admittedly an incredibly gorgeous) person. In fact, the most interesting thing about him is that he’s best friends with Sherry Cola’s ‘Alice’, who absolutely is interesting and charismatic. And if she see’s something in him, well there must be something there.
Except that Alice is also a bit of a shitty person and the thing they see in each other is their own flaws reflected back at them. A fact that means they feel comfortable in each other’s company and can feel seen whilst not being judged.
This is a really funny film where the jokes land often enough to keep you engaged but never overwhelm the drama. There’s a few proper belly laughs in there as well.
There’s a lot of dialogue around internalised racism that feels very personal and insightful, and even manages to mine it for comic potential. I felt like the creators really had something to say about Asian representation in media and they managed to do that in a way that was thought provoking without giving easy answers.
No Easy Answers extends to Ben’s character arc. There’s no lessons learned at the end, no redemption or setting things right. But there is an acknowledgement that things have to change. Maybe he will and maybe he won’t. But the fact that he might feels warm and hopeful.
Tags: blog, tv, comedy, drama, 2024
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday May 08th, 2024
Totally Completely Thomasin McKenzie
This show starts with Vivian, her life a mess, contemplating suicide, finding out her grandad has died. The man who raised her from a small child when her parents died in a car accident spilts his estate equally between her and her two elder brothers. John gets his massage recliner chair. Hendrix gets his golf clubs. Vivian gets his huge cliff edge mansion.
Except it’s a set up. It turns out that the huge, vertiginous cliff face on which the house is perched is a hot spot for suicide attempts. Her grandfather’s calling was attempting to dissuade those attempting to jump. And, by passing that calling onto his granddaughter, hopes that she might save herself by saving others.
The undoubted highlight of this series is the family dynamic between the three siblings. Watching each of them bicker and argue, all of them failing to come to terms with their grief and decades of feuding is both funny and heartbreaking. This is one of the most believable onscreen families I’ve seen.
A large part of that is down to Thomasin McKenzie who is approaching Toby Jones’ levels of watchability. Like Jones she has an absolute charisma that is constantly engaging. And yet also seems so completely normal and down to earth. She has an ability to make me believe in any story she’s telling.
My only criticism1 is that there’s two story elements fighting for space in the script: the one about trying to save people from committing suicide and the one about the family coming to terms with grief. And whilst both feed into one another, it’s the family narrative that gets most of the attention. And whilst that’s arguably justified, it’s absolutely wonderful after all, it feels a little unbalanced. Lives are at stake here and yet it gets less screen time than Hendrix’s marriage.
It’s not helped by the fact that Amy, the first suicide attempt that Vivian prevents, is one of the least well drawn characters in the show.
Still, despite the fact that it never quite manages to live up its central premise, there’s enough good stuff here for me to heartily recommend it.
1. Well, apart from the music which is either slightly too kooky for it’s own good or has needle drops that sound like they were chosen and edited by the same people who work on Home and Away. ↩︎
Tags: blog, film, drama, 2024, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday April 03rd, 2024
Something of a magic trick, this one.
An entirely fictional story, based on the life of artist Audrey Amiss, played here by the ever brilliant Monica Dolan. Kelly Macdonald (also brilliant) plays her psychiatric nurse who ends up being brow beaten/suckered into taking Audrey across country to enter her work into an exhibition.
It’s a fantastically well done odd-couple, road trip movie that hits all the right comedy and pathos beats that you expect of this kind of story. And does so with aplomb and some degree of gusto.
Except that’s a sleight of hand. Because the story building in the background is one of an extraordinarily talented artist whose life was ruined by poor mental health and societies attitudes towards it.
The uplifting, feel good film promised by the trailer is absolutely delivered. And yet I finished the film profoundly upset, even angry at the great injustice done to Audrey. Hell, even a little bit of guilt… I wouldn’t be watching a film about her life if she’d received the recognition she deserved in her lifetime.
Is she being defined more by her battles with her mental health than her talents as an artist? The film shows enough of her wonderful art to balance the story and allows you to feel your own conclusions.
Tags: blog, film, comedy, drama, 2024
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday April 14th, 2024
Julian Dennison elevates a very slight affair.
I find it difficult to offer much analysis on this as I found it to be quite lightweight in a lot of ways.
The subject matter kind of implies that this should be hard hitting, a moving account of New Zealand society’s endemic racism to Maori people. And whilst this is portrayed, it’s mostly as background and context for Josh’s (played by Julian Dennison) coming-of-age story. It never goes as deep or as in depth as you want it to.
On the positive side, focusing almost completely on Josh means that you get to see how this affects him as a person, which is what the film is more interested in. It helps that Julian gets a chance to show that Hunt for the Wilderpeople wasn’t a fluke. He’s absolutely pitch perfect in every scene. Only overacting in the moments where he’s supposed to be overacting as his character fumbles his way to becoming a thespian. The rest of the cast are on fine form as well.
It also features the first time that I, in my ignorance, have seen the Haka performed in a context that wasn’t sporting or ceremonial. It is absolutely electric and the highlight of the entire film. A spine-tingling scene that’ll stay with me for a long time.