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, tv, comedy, action, essential, 2025
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday December 30th, 2025
So whatever it is that makes you unhappy...I'll wreck it for you.
Just how badly can you make something and yet it still somehow works? Most of Baby Assassins Everyday seems like an attempt to answer that question. Outside the duo themselves the acting is mostly terrible. Only mostly because occasionally it's awful. Sometimes you can see the pause before an actor remembers it's their line.
The plot doesn't make much sense. The script is clunky as hell. Entire scenes go absolutely nowhere and then are completely forgotten about. Multiple characters seem only to exist for the purpose of annoying the viewer. Multiple episodes go by without a single fight scene.
The first half of this series is only held together by the effortlessly charming duo of Mahiro and Chisato. The extra space afforded by a tv show allows the two to diverge and differentiate their personalities. We see just how awkward Mahiro finds human interaction, trying her best and failing. And we see Chisato fret and care over Mahiro even more, compensating for her friend's deadpan face by turning hers into a rubber ball of expressionism, bouncing from one emote to another.
But even that is barely enough, those first six episodes are a tough watch at times.
And then the second half of the series kicks in.
Episode 7 sees the pair visit Chisato's family and hooooo boy, what an episode. No action, not even any drama, just the two of them spending quality time with people they love and loving life. It's like somebody took the sweetest bits of Bob's Burgers and just rolled them up into a single episode. This also takes the time to highlight the nature of their friendship, something that's been left open to interpretation up to now. But here it walks us right up to the point of saying it explicitly and then stops just short. Just. The message is heard loud and clear all the same.
And then from there we get an increasingly dark storyline where the two are split up and have to deal with bullying office politics and company loyalties. The shonky production is still there but seeing the two pushed to their limits, to the point of their friendship beginning to break down, by a toxic work culture is heartbreaking.
Inevitably, it all has to end in violence. Mahiro's promise to kill everyone is delivered like a marriage proposal and I sobbed my heart out.
Because the team behind Baby Assassins know exactly what they've got. They've crafted the finest queer, neurodivergent, kung-fu depiction of teenage love in the 21st century by focusing entirely on the characters and shooting people in the head.
Would it be better if it was made by people who could write and edit and act? Maybe. But somehow, the awkwardness of it all perfectly fits their characters. The only time the show isn't stilted and awkward is when they're fighting goons or goofing around with each other. At which point it's the most wonderful thing in the world.
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: 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.
↩
Tags: blog, film, drama, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday December 04th, 2025
Joyful and Triumphant
A new film from Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker is always a highlight of the year.
Whilst their recent films have gradually expanded the narrative aspect, increasing the amount of plot and the runtime, this goes back to basics a little, re-focusing on what they do best.
Which is, quite simply, generate empathy.
We get to spend some time with a small family, moving back to Taipei and trying to make a life for themselves running a small noodle stand. There's nothing extraordinary in the plot to create drama or tension. It's all supplied by the characters and the never ending human ability to generate love and friction out of nothing.
Lord only knows how they manage to do this so effortlessly. It all seems so simple and easy. Like Shih-Ching Tsou just placed a camera and let everything play out. But if it were that simple, literally everyone would be doing it and these kind of films would be ten a penny. Only the incredible rarity of films as effective and moving as this indicates that it's a work of rare talent.
There is one revelation in the film which has already been done so dramatically by a UK soap opera that it's passed into British folklore. Which, admittedly, took me out of the scene and their lives for a moment.
But then at the end of the film, a look is exchanged. Lasting for a fleeting moment, barely more than a few frames, it reduced me to such a blubbering wreck that my mind and my heart are still with them and their beautiful, messy lives, days after the film finished.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, thriller, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday November 30th, 2025
Paul Thomas Anderson is an idiot.
Paul Thomas Anderson is an idiot. What the hell is he thinking? This film is two hours and forty two minutes long. It should be slow and languid, allowing the characters to slowly chew over the themes of the film with endless expositionary dialogue.
Instead, this film starts at rocket speed, the opening salvo is an entire two hour long movie edited into thirty minutes. Come along, keep up, chop-chop.
After that, it only slightly lessens the pace. The next two and a bit hours, effectively being one extended chase sequence, manages to pack in more ideas than most multi-series tv epics.
If PTA wanted to make money, he'd split this up into one hours episodes, show every single story thread to it's conclusion and get Amazon/Netflix/HBO to pay umpty-million dollars per episode for five series at ten episodes a pop.
What an idiot.
Thankfully PTA's poor financial decision making has gifted us with an absolute banger of a movie.
After his radical activism past finally catches up with him, Bob (played by DiCaprio) is separated from his daughter, Willa (played by Chase Infiniti), and spends the rest of the film desperately trying to catch up with her. Fair play to Leo, he's taken on a role here where he's very much not the hero. Hell, he's not even the main character. Instead, much of the film is spent following him as the main story happens around him. Bob is persistent but does nothing to affect the plot.
Instead, the film is very clear on who and what is making things happen as a wildly antagonistic ecosystem of interests battle each other out. From the militarised police/immigration control to the left-wing, pro-community organisers to the wealthy elite that own the industries that employ the immigrants and benefit from both sides. It's tempting to say that we see this escalating battle play out through Bob's eyes but he's mostly oblivious to it, focusing entirely on keeping his own shit together and finding his daughter.
There's no question as to who the true hero's of the movie are: All the regular people who take the time to help Bob and Willa. Highly organised, highly motivated and fighting tooth and nail, risking everything to help out people they don't even know for no more reason than they're on the same side. Benicio Del Toro turns up in a minor cameo role and nearly steals the film. Without wishing to belabour the point, if PTA was after the money, there's a whole spin off series right there.
The breadth of the political vista on display here is breathtaking. It's a breakneck tour of the sharp end of the US immigration 'debate' and its consequences.
Another notable thing about this movie is its depiction of the police and the elites that control them. Make them too dangerous and they can become exciting and a little bit sexy. But lean too heavily into mockery and you can lessen their danger to ordinary people and the fear they can inspire. This film walks the line between the two perfectly.
Wonderfully, we get to see the things they love about themselves subtly used against them. They think they're cool, heroic and suave, better than the 'wetbacks' they're brutalising. But the reality is the very symbols of their power and masculinity are silly, preposterous and insecure. "Why is your shirt so tight?" should go down as one of the truly great pieces of movie dialogue.
And finally, I loved the way the character of Willa is treated. She's never victimised by the film, even though she's the only character who has had no say in the unfolding events. It's really quite something to see such a profound character arc in a character who has almost no agency.
Like I said at the start, Paul Thomas Anderson is a genius.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, thriller, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday October 04th, 2025
Credit or Debit?
Riz Ahmed plays a middle man who works on behalf of whistle blowers and the corporations they've stolen from to ensure that they both get what they want out of a deal.
To do this he uses a relay service for deaf people, typing messages into an old-fashioned computer modem that is then read out by a call centre operative. Nobody hears him speak and the service is untraceable.
So in every tense conversation, every high stakes negotiation, the 'Jason Bourne' character is played by a random call centre person who is literally phoning it in. One staggeringly tense, life or death scene is finished off with a jaunty "Thank you for using the tri-state relay sevice, have a wonderful evening".
This deadpan approach to tension building is carried over to much of the rest of the film. Outside of the occasional (and decent) needle-drop the soundtrack is barely noticeable. The cinematography is restrained and un-showy, not a single trace of camera shake. The acting is similarly pared down, Riz Ahmed has about two lines of dialogue in the entire first third of the film.
This is a film that lets the plot and the characters drive the tension. And boy is this film tense. It starts at a level of 'gripping the arms of the sofa', rapidly escalates to 'fitness tracker heart-rate warning' before gradually climaxing to 'choking claustrophobia'.
Like director David Mackenzie's previous film, Hell or High Water, Relay draws from the real-world effects of late-stage capitalism to bury it's characters in impossible choices. There's no 'good guys', just people trying not to drown. There are antagonists, but the real villains are out of site, everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Untouchable but inescapable. As the 'heist' begins to fall apart in the latter stages of the film, there's a growing realisation that there's no way to not lose this game. Even if you win, it'll cost you your soul. A single answer phone message breaks your heart and you know the game is rigged every single way.
This film stands along side the previously mentioned Hell or High Water and the more recent How to Blow Up a Pipeline at the absolute pinnacle of the modern heist movie genre.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, 2025, horror, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday August 14th, 2025
For everything I long to do
Halfway through this movie, there’s a scene that the entire film is built around. Everything before it is working towards this scene. Everything after happens as a consequence. Its premise is a sequence of artistic expression and communal joy so spectacular that it tears a hole in reality. And the thing is, the film barely explains this to you, you get to experience it.
It is spectacular one of the greatest pieces of pure cinema I’ve seen in a long time. A spine tingling, eye-popping, aural overload of the senses. An absolute bravura piece of film making.
The scale of ambition here is breathtaking. Take the sieged-by-vampires horror genre, set it in the prohibition era deep south, have the main characters deeply morally flawed, deal with the racial problems of the time bluntly and with nuance and, and throw in some of the best musical song-and-dance numbers for years.
None of this should work but the scale of the ambition is eclipsed by the scale of the talent and, quite frankly, the swagger of the film makers. Because there’s barely a single element of this movie that is anything below astonishing. I defy anyone to not, at some point in this movie, fall completely in love with the costumes.
Hell, at one point, even the aspect ratios made me gasp.
If I have one criticism and, sadly, I do, it’s that the film has too many endings. They’re all good ones, and it’s clear that Ryan Coogler had a lot to say and wanted to get it all out. But they end up getting in the way of each other, so none of them end up landing as hard as they should.
It’s the only part of the movie where the ambition is too much. Still I would rather watch a film that tries to do too much rather than one that plays it safe. And there is nothing safe about Sinners, it’s electric.
Tags: blog, film, comedy, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday November 29th, 2025
The trying is the point
First of all, let's get this out the way: it's a Spinal Tap movie. The jokes are amazing. Wallace & Gromit no longer have the best cheese related jokes.
But the biggest joy of the movie is in watching three old guys heal their friendship.
When we meet them at the start of this new film, they've been separated for a long time. Each has poured their energy into new obsessions. Nigel sells cheese and/or guitars, David writes muzak and Derek runs a glue museum. All of them are a little reluctant to get back together, fearing their past divisions are insurmountable.
But as soon as they start making music together, they begin to find some common ground, as well as some new arguments. An early cameo by Paul McCartney should be revoltingly cringe but the way they tentatively jam together is so earnest and collaborative that it becomes beautiful. They're not good, that's not the point. Four old guys, fumbling around, trying to find a musical relationship together doesn't make great art. But it's the trying that's the point.
A later cameo by Elton John is equally wonderful as by now, with a lot of practice and a full band behind them, they're much more together, much more in sync. A lesser film would have shown this progress as a montage but Spinal Tap II shows the arguments and pettiness and effort needed to improve. They're still not good, after all they're still Spinal Tap, but it's the trying that's the point.
The thing we learn through the film is that they can’t express their friendship or resolve their differences in words. Conversations that attempt to address the situation are clumsy and a failure. Nigel tries to write a song about it, the earnestness of it contrasting hilariously with it’s awfulness. Obviously, the moment they do try to resolve things with words, in true Spinal Tap fashion, it's howlingly funny.
But in playing together they find something that none of them can get elsewhere. The shared goal, the shared effort, the sharing in and of itself.
Not only is this a great sequel, but it adds a new dimension to the original. What we're left with is a pair of films about male friendship. About a bunch of mates who gradually come to realise that, whilst they can't explain why or how, they all need that friendship in their life and need to put the effort in to try to make it work.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, 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 ↩
Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday January 04th, 2026
Next time is next time.
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.
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
Tags: blog, film, action, sci-fi, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday January 11th, 2026
This one has legs
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.
