Tags: blog, film, horror, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday August 10th, 2025
Picking up where we left off
I've loved Danny Boyle since the start. Literally the start of Shallow Grave, when the sound of Leftfield hits you in the chest and the camera hurtles off down the streets of Edinburgh. What an introduction.
I loved him 1as his career exploded, taking him to Hollywood. I loved him as a couple of critical and commercial duds brought him back from Hollywood.
I loved him even more after his absolutely astonishing made-for-tv not-quite-movies.
So when I went to the cinema to see his ultra-low budget, niche-genre, horror film 28 Days Later it felt like there was something at stake, namely his career. It needed to prove to the wider world, people who weren't already on board the Danny Boyle fan train like I was, that he should be given money to keep on making astonishing films.
And that sense of risk was shot right through the film. It was a film that came out swinging, determined to land punch after punch, knowing this could be the last chance its creators got to be this…this much.
But post 2012 Olympics, I’ve found his work…not bad…worse…uninteresting.
-A tepid thriller - Yawn
-Apple Guy : The Movie - Pass
-Exciting young guys are now old and boring - Err, no thanks.
-Rich people : the TV show - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-What if : Not The Beatles -Absolutely Not
-The Sex PisFUCKOFF!
I haven’t watched anything of his since Trance. Some of it’s probably good but why would I bother when there’s so much more interesting stuff in the world? And what if it wasn’t good? Do I really want to watch as an artist I deeply love slides into mediocrity. No, I absolutely do not.
Boyle revisiting the world of 28…Later was not something I had any enthusiasm for, like a past-it band touring their seminal album on a re-union tour, why would I want to go back to that? Especially as the Zombie/Infected/Undead genre that 28 Days brought roaring back to life has now been thoroughly flogged to death again.
But that trailer though!
So again I go into a Danny Boyle zombie movie with a sense of trepidation, a worry that maybe this won’t work out, a sense that something is at stake. Because failure here means having to admit it’s over, that we’ve drifted too far apart. I’m risking a part of myself just by watching this movie.
Gloriously, this is Garland & Boyle pushing everything as far as they can, trying to be as fresh as possible in a very stale genre. Boyle, my Danny Boyle, is very much back.
Where to start? Firstly, whilst Garland & Boyle understand the genre, they also understand people. Almost all zombie movies and tv shows since 28 Days… have understood the former but not the latter. So here we get people who behave like people, not walking plot devices. 28 Years Later is largely free of the neo-liberal wet dreams of constant, violent individualism that pervades the Walking Dead shows.
Secondly, it’s a British movie. I mean the Brexit analogy is pretty much thrust upon it by default2 but the cutting in of old British movies, the use of actual historical archery techniques and of course, Rudyard Kipling, gives this a heft and feel that’s unique to the genre.
Visually, there’s been a lot of effort put in to just about everything. The movement of the actors playing the infected is particularly impressive. It’s not just some extras running/shuffling around going “aaarrrgghh”. Shaun of the Dead on FFWD, this is not. The motion of the infected is itself grotesque, disturbing and inhuman.
The most commented on camera technique is the use of a bank of iPhones to get a grungy, Matrix style “Arrow-Cam” effect, which is interesting and fun if not revolutionary. However, there’s a scene in a Happy Shopper that is visually stunning. It’s a situation that’s been done a thousand times before but I’ve never seen it shot like this. Shocking, grotesque and beautiful, it’s moments like this that make the film stand out from the pack.
If I have a criticism it’s that I can’t fully form an opinion on the film until I see its sequel(s). This is very much a Part 1 that ends on a To Be Continued… Which means that whilst you would be hoping that the film would wind itself so tight it explodes at the end, that doesn’t happen here. Instead, the film gently, but emotionally, tapers off into the denouement. Which, in a way, is highly atypical of the genre and another reason this film is a bit special. But it does mean that we’re going to have to wait to find out if the early promise resolves into something truly special.
It will be the first Danny Boyle film I’ve been excited about for a long, long time.
1. It’s worth pointing out that Danny Boyle usually works as a team with writer John Hodge (and later, others) and producer Andrew Macdonald. ↩
2. Mainland Britain almost entirely populated by rage-fuelled psychopaths that the rest of Europe want to stay well away from. This shit writes itself. ↩︎
Tags: 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: 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: tv, blog, comedy, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday August 02nd, 2025
In praise of mid-range TV
Great art should be challenging. Great art should challenge what is possible, should challenge what I am capable of comprehending.
But when I've got home after thirteen hours working two jobs, when I've only got a few hours to sit down and decompress, before I have to go to bed and get up ready to do it all again, I don't want to be challenged. I want to be entertained.
It's times like this that I miss the days before "prestige" tv, before multi-series story arcs and a cast of thousands. I miss being able to switch on an episode of Columbo or Quantum Leap or Star Trek TNG, know who all the characters are within the first few minutes, and then get a story with a start, a middle and an ending.
Poker Face gets this, it's not a challenging show. You don't even have to work out who the murderer is, it just shows you right off the bat. But what Poker Face also understands is that I'm not an idiot and I don't want to be condescended to.
Poker Face is smart. It just puts those smarts into producing a solid, witty, delightful story into every forty five minute episode.
It does have some concessions to modern tv mores. The first and last few episodes of each series act as story bookends, setting up and paying off Charlie Cales' dealing with the Mob and the FBI. But it's not where it's at it's best. It's at it's best in the middle episodes of the series which most closely hew to the syndicated shows like Columbo and Murder, She Wrote that it's so clearly enamoured with. Episodes 5 to 9 of Series 2 in particular is an astonishing run, every one a belter. The John Cho & Melanie Lynskey helmed "The Sleazy Georgian" is the standout. Fun, funny, smart and deeply empathetic. The kind of storytelling that makes you feel connected to the world and the people around you. That makes you feel good about going to bed and getting ready to start the day anew.
Tags: 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.
Tags: blog, film, documentary, 2024, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday May 07th, 2024
#MentalHealth
A fly on the wall documentary chronicling the run up to Ronnie trying to win his seventh World Title in 2022. But the documentary is not overly interested in his sporting achievements, instead it’s far more focused on Ronnie’s often public battles with his mental health. To which Ronnie quips:
all of a sudden it’s cool…I was twenty years ahead of the game, mate.
Ronnie is extraordinarily open and engaging about his problems and methods of coping with them. And the fact that he’s such an engaging and frank personality makes this film endlessly fascinating.
And yet for all that is open and honest about what is talked about, what’s not said left me with more questions than answers. Whilst some of Ronnie’s celebrity friends are free to talk about everything he’s been through, and his father’s prison sentence is discussed with great sensitivity, no mention is made of his past partners. And I didn’t know he had kids until they turned up in footage at the end of the film. His sister appears in family photos but is never even mentioned.
Ronnie talks at great length about his relationship between snooker and his mental health, but there are contradictions that never get questioned. He claims he would rather play well and lose than play badly and win. And yet he seems to hate losing and the documentary never digs in to that dichotomy.
None of this is a criticism, it’s admiral that there are certain areas of his life that he wants to keep private. And just letting him get everything off his chest, unguarded without needing to be defensive is incredibly revealing.
But it does mean that the closer I got to understanding what drives Ronnie O’Sullivan on, the further away I got from understanding him as a complete person. The more answers I got about how he copes with the pressures of his life, the more questions I had about why he did so.
Given Ronnie’s extraordinary life, career, talent and personality, it felt perfectly apt. One of the best sporting documentaries I’ve seen.
For further reading, I’d also recommend this fantastic article at Little White Lies Mental health and masculinity at the movies. There’s a few ‘spoilers’ (as much as you can spoil a documentary) but it's a far deeper discussion of the subject matter than I can manage.
Tags: blog, film, comedy, 2024, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday April 18th, 2024
Elmer Fudd: The Movie
What do you do when you desperately want to make a classic era Warner Brothers cartoon but haven’t got the budget for all that expensive animation? Well, if you’re Mike Cheslik the answer is to get a bunch of guys to don animal costumes and then make a black and white silent film.
It wears its influences on its sleeve, taking inspiration from Looney Tunes, Chaplin and more recent fare from Pixar and Aardman. And tries to do all that on a clearly minuscule budget. Crucially, it absolutely succeeds.
It’s slapstick and sight gags are consistently funny. It’s endlessly imaginative, throwing new ideas at the screen every few minutes, each more outrageous than the last.
Which, sadly, proves to be the films flaw. It’s too long, too stuffed with ideas to hold your interest over an hour and three quarters. Classic Looney Tunes worked because they stuffed all their ideas into a short, violent burst of mayhem. Pixar sustain interest through emotional investment. Aardman have amazing animation and an ability to pack in jokes at an absurd rate.
Hundreds of Beavers doesn’t quite match up to any of those and I was ready for the film to end a good twenty minutes before it actually did.
Still, it seems churlish to moan at a film for trying to give you too much. This is exactly the movie the film makers wanted to make and I really can’t applaud them enough for doing so.
Tags: blog, film, action, 2024, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Friday April 12th, 2024
Monkey Nuts
I don’t think I’ve read a single preview or review to this film that hasn’t mentioned The Raid. So let’s say this right from the start: this isn’t The Raid. It’s not as exciting and the fight scenes aren’t in the same league.
Having got that out the way, this is really impressive, imaginative stuff from Dev Patel.
It’s rare that action movies are overtly, consciously political. But Monkey Man is that rare beast. The story starts as a simple revenge story, but as Dev’s protagonist gradually and literally works his way up the Indian class/caste system he’s contextualised as a warrior for an entire underclass. This could end up being glib or trite, but the film commits to its politics as whole heartedly as it does to the violence. With its whole chest.
The use of music is absolutely superb, the soundtrack is practically a character in the movie. Its inventive, involving and, in one absolutely extraordinary fight scene, completely overwhelming.
So it’s not The Raid, it’s something very different and very much its own thing. More of this please.
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, 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, 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.