Tags: tv, blog, sci-fi, thriller, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday May 20th, 2025
There's an episode of the tv series Spaced that features the greatest depiction of clubbing in cinema history. It's greatness is that it understood that a truly great night out isn't just about the club you go to. It's what you're running from, to get to where you end up. It spends most of the episode detailing the tensions and problems of the cast, the bit in the club is literally just a few minutes. But because of the time spent on the tensions and anxieties and problems and fears, you get the release of an epic night out.
Anyway...part way through the second series of Andor, fifteen episodes into a relentless narrative equivalent of a Shepard tone, there's a wedding party scene. And it goes OFF
And maybe Spaced doesn't have the best club scene anymore.
I don't think I can add much to the conversation regarding Andor's greatness, other than my slightly shonky Spaced comparisons. Pick an element: music, costumes, acting, script, anything at all, it's all superb. However, I do want to mention a couple of personal highlights.
Firstly, the brokeneness of the antagonists. Every single character working for the empire is a shell of a human being, living half a life. Too many movie and tv villains are hyper-competent, charismatic, sexy bastards. When the reality is these kind of people are deeply pathetic, emotionally limited turds.
Secondly, all of them are punsished for their loyalty and competence. Literally every single one of them is crushed by the weight of the system they are trying to uphold. If any of them had just clocked in, did the bare minimum and clocked out again they'd have been fine. But the one thing fascism absolutely demands is comformity. Stick your head up too high and it's going to get scythed off.
And lastly, if there's one point that Andor hammers home relentlessly, it's that fascism contains within it the seeds of it's own destruction. Fascism won't work, can never work, will never work because it will always create the conditions that will bring it down. The harder the Empire pushes, the more the people push back.
To go back to that G.K. Chesterton "quote"
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
Andor tells us that whilst that victory is long, painful and must be fought for, it is inevitable.
Tags: blog, film, animation, fantasy, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday August 28th, 2025
Alrighty Meow
Young girl Karin is abandoned by her dad at a temple where she makes the acquaintance of a ghost cat called Anzu.
The most obvious point of reference for this film is Studio Ghibli. This film borrows heavily from My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away1 with the obvious limitation that it hasn’t got anything like the budget of those films.
But it turns that into a virtue, this is a low budget film about low budget people. The characters are…well they’re…let’s just say: highly flawed.
Karin is a con-artist, always trying to manipulate people for her own gain, or just to be spiteful. She’s very much her Father’s daughter. Anzu is a gambler who wastes the money he does earn and cheats on the bets he makes. He also goes to the toilet where ever he pleases, because he’s a cat.
For the supporting cast there’s: two doofus boys who are dumb-struck by the new, pretty girl; a gullible temple attendant; a depressed god; a tunnelling frog; assorted sad-sack demons; a bunch of boring forest spirits who just hang around and play cards; and a run-down, Japanese town that’s sweltering, borderline melting, in the summer heat.
Everything feels real and personal. It matters because you recognise these people and their lives. Even the depressed gods. It feels like a British kitchen sink drama, with all of its money problems and annoying scrotes. It is exquisitely well observed and extremely funny as a result.
Its depiction of spirituality felt close to revolutionary. Here, spiritual enlightenment isn’t wisdom, or calm or devotion. It’s the willingness to get the crap kicked out of you in a fight you can’t win because your neighbour needs to be stood up for. To have this stated so boldly, so eloquently, is very timely for the world right now.
This film is a minor key masterpiece that deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as any Ghibli film you care to mention. A heartfelt, joyful, beautiful triumph.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Oh, and Trainspotting. It literally pilfers a scene directly from Trainspotting.
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Tags: blog, film, 2025, horror, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday August 14th, 2025
For everything I long to do
Halfway through this movie, there’s a scene that the entire film is built around. Everything before it is working towards this scene. Everything after happens as a consequence. Its premise is a sequence of artistic expression and communal joy so spectacular that it tears a hole in reality. And the thing is, the film barely explains this to you, you get to experience it.
It is spectacular one of the greatest pieces of pure cinema I’ve seen in a long time. A spine tingling, eye-popping, aural overload of the senses. An absolute bravura piece of film making.
The scale of ambition here is breathtaking. Take the sieged-by-vampires horror genre, set it in the prohibition era deep south, have the main characters deeply morally flawed, deal with the racial problems of the time bluntly and with nuance and, and throw in some of the best musical song-and-dance numbers for years.
None of this should work but the scale of the ambition is eclipsed by the scale of the talent and, quite frankly, the swagger of the film makers. Because there’s barely a single element of this movie that is anything below astonishing. I defy anyone to not, at some point in this movie, fall completely in love with the costumes.
Hell, at one point, even the aspect ratios made me gasp.
If I have one criticism and, sadly, I do, it’s that the film has too many endings. They’re all good ones, and it’s clear that Ryan Coogler had a lot to say and wanted to get it all out. But they end up getting in the way of each other, so none of them end up landing as hard as they should.
It’s the only part of the movie where the ambition is too much. Still I would rather watch a film that tries to do too much rather than one that plays it safe. And there is nothing safe about Sinners, it’s electric.
Tags: blog, film, thriller, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday April 06th, 2024
Lean, mean and electrifying
A violent homophobic assault leaves Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) traumatised. Only for a chance encounter that reveals that his attacker, Preston (George MacKay), is a closeted gay and leads him to plot his revenge.
Clocking in at just a smidge over ninety minutes, this electric little thriller doesn’t waste a single second of its run time. The tension starts to crackle within the first few minutes and refuses to abate until the credits roll.
Oddly enough, it reminds me a lot of the Michael Caine/Laurence Olivier film Clue 1. But where that film’s plot twists and role plays were the result of devious plotting, here it’s down to the shifting sands of the emotional state of the characters.
Perspectives change and turn as the characters learn and grow, leading to a sense that you can never quite put your finger on what, exactly, is happening and where it’s going to go.
Absolutely top draw stuff. Film of the year.
1. They are not similar films, this is just how my brain works sometimes) ↩
Tags: film, blog, comedy, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday April 09th, 2024
Turns out that "Borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered '80s" is great, actually
Lisa is a misunderstood, lonely teenager. Her dad doesn't understand her, her cheerleading step-sister doesn't understand her and mental health nurse step mum positively hates her. She spends her free time in a decrepit grave yard talking to the gravestone of a dead poet, whose zombified body she inadvertently resurrects.
Cue journey of self discovery as she tries to hide, fix and date her hot zombie poet boyfriend. The problem being that what Lisa discovers about herself is that she's an absolute dick.
And this is what makes this film an absolute riot. Whilst Lisa is always entirely relatable (all of us were a this self obsessed at one point in our teenage years), watching her gradually embrace her new found self confidence to the point of serial murderer is glorious.
A Diablo Cody script being sharp, warm, funny and insightful is hardly a surprise. But Zelda Williams 80's-to-the-Max aesthetic really is. It's not nostalgic as she doesn't remember the eighties. Instead, she leans into the idea that this is an eighties teen comedy made by someone who's never experienced the actual eighties and instead has pieced together what it was like from pop-culture. It's familiar but new and I loved it.
One of the films of the year for me, an absolute belter.
Tags: blog, film, thriller, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday April 28th, 2024
Most disturbing hair piece since Anton Chigurh
Oh, this is absolutely blistering. A tale of love, lust, domestic violence, revenge, steroid abuse and family legacies.
There’s a whole load of things going on here with the film knowing exactly where the lines are between comedy, horror, erotica, tension and thrills, and knows exactly how to dance around them. The level of control the director, Rose Glass, has over both the story and the audience is magnificent. By the end of the film you feel like your emotions and expectations are being played with like a cat teasing a mouse. And. It. Is. Great.
There’s Cronenberg-ian body horror, toxic masculinity satire, some genuine shocks, a little slapstick comedy, an ever escalating, ratcheting tension, terrific cinematography and Ed Harris’ hair.
Something this versatile shouldn’t be this focused or this good. But it is and it’s an absolute blast.
Tags: blog, tv, comedy, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday April 15th, 2024
Peak Minty
Whisper it: I think this is the funniest thing on iPlayer.
Diane Morgan has taken the essence of the 80's British sitcom, it's idiotic main characters, it's absurdly contrived plots, it's mixture of utter banality and occasional surrealism. She's jettisoned all of the set-up, all of the fluff and filler, anything that isn't generating a laugh every few seconds. And she's ended up with a fifteen minute show that's a rocket fuelled gem.
She's improved upon her influences in just about every way. Let's start with the main character, Mandy.
Each episode see's Mandy Carter trying her hand at a new job, usually at the behest of her exasperated Job Seeker's officer. And each episode it goes disastrously wrong. But not because Mandy's stupid or clumsy. It's usually because she's just bored (something we can all relate to at work) or distracted. Sometimes it's because she's actually hyper-competent and ends up taking things too far.
Because Morgan clearly loves Mandy. Mandy isn't an object of scorn or ridicule. We laugh at her, yes, but it's always with affection. Mandy is, in a very bizarre way, somebody to be admired.
Then there's the celebrity cameos. A combination of Morgan's eye for casting and the fact that each episode is so brief means that there's an avalanche of celebrities of all stripes prepared to give up a day (probably significantly less) for filming, all looking like they're having the time of their lives.
And each one is a surprise. Either because the cameo is deliciously played against type (Sonia-from-Eastenders channeling her inner Don Logan from Sexy Beast is an absolute treat) or because the setup is so misdirected and obfuscated that the punchline is glorious.
And finally there's the surrealism. The sheer pace of the jokes and inventiveness leaves no place for something as boring as reality. If it's funny: it's in. So even though the form of the jokes feel familiar, the way each joke jackknifes the plot further away from mundanity makes everything a surprise.
Just glorious, an absolute gem.
Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking...
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, tv, animation, sci-fi, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday April 25th, 2024
Stranger, Wilder Things
A standard way to start a review like this would be to give an overview of the main characters and the start of the story. But the characters who find themselves crash landed on an alien planet aren’t really the protagonists and it’s not their story.
The star here is the planet itself and the ecosystem that exists on it. The story is one of billions of years of evolution and adaptation. The ecology here is wild and fantastical. Some things are seen in the context of a co-dependant ecosystem. Others are presented completely devoid of context or explanation, with no clue as to whether it’s a once-in-a-millennia moment or an every day occurrence. The planets complete indifference to the characters who are journeying through it is both terrifying and awe inspiring.
Terrifyingly, the only thing on the planet that really pays attention to them sees them as a resource to be exploited. 1
That’s not to say that there’s nothing to the character’s stories. Whilst the beauty of the alien world is incredible, it’s the beating hearts of the humans that drive us through it and allow us to experience it alongside them. Whilst the animation is the showstopper, it’s the warmth of the story that’ll get you to binge watch it in a few evenings.
Unique and essential viewing.
1. Whilst the humans only want to survive and get off the planet, the only alien that is interested in them is driven by traditional human motivations of exploitation and greed ↩