[EXPRESSO] 28 Years Later (2025) | Mighty Morphin Jimmy Rangers

Almost 20 years of absence, this seminal zombie series is back in cinemas with 28 Years Later, actually the first of a new trilogy that brings back Danny Boyle in the directing chair and Alex Garland as screenwriter …. and indeed it immediatly feels like a continuation of 28 Days Later and what most feel 28 Weeks Later should have been, as it expands upon this perpetually quarantined UK, where the “rage virus” started spreading and turning people in feral fast running zombies.

This time we focus on a community that lives in a secluded island, but has the tradition of sending teens in a coming of age hunting trip inland (through a tiny strip of land that disappears with high tides), and its the turn of Spike, a 12yo boy reluctant and worried about his mother’s ailing health, for this rite of passage, with the help of his father, showing him “the ropes”.

This experience brings him new wonders and horrors, forcing him to confront his fears and eventually take drastic measures, exploring the zombie ridden inland territories and confront everevolving strains of Infected, maybe in the hope he can find answers and a cure for his mother’s illness and dementia….

It does expand upon the world, the zombies ecosystem, it does deliver on the gore and brutality all around, there are some good characters, but it has some questionable choices, like the second act development that feels a bit strange and almost random, but it leads to some great scenes and the movie it is quite good that i’m willing to overlook that (alongside a slightly redundant feeling due to the genre being milked dry in the last 2 decades of zombie media) and even a Power Ranger-esque final scene with dudes dressed like Tiger from Ninja Terminator.

[EXPRESSO] Superman (2025) | Acape Anew

The long awaited Superman reboot by James Gunn (Tromeo And Juliet, Slither, Guardians Of The Galaxy) is here, after the whole reboot thing done with The Flash movie, so WB can cleanse their hands of previous promises and concept it didn’t want to committ to anymore (when it didn’t flush entire finished movies down the drain).

And indeed it’s a James Gunn superhero film, i mean that in a flattering way because it was the right choice to just point at him and say “fix our shit”, he knows how to do them good and this ain’t no exception. Plus i feel fans of the “Man of steel” have been clamoring for something different from Snyder edginess, and this definitely does change things for the sillier, which it’s a good thing because it acknowledges superhero films can be proper silly without having to be ashamed of some specific silly parts of the source material, which it embraces (Superman’s dog, Krypto, is actually a major side character, and yes he has the lil ‘cape on) but without being lazy about it.

It’s a reboot that also understands it doesn’t have to restabilish the whole mythos by redoing the same things as previous Superman films, people know the character, and the script demonstrates Gunn does too, so it cuts some vestigial superhero film traditions of old for the better, by demonstrating instead of telling or expositioning to death, the plot (itself plucking a lot of characters and plot beats from well known iconic iterations and classic storylines) centering on the public perception of Superman after he’s already established as a hero, despite also ignoring pressing geopolitical matters in order to do the right thing, and Lex Luthor’s efforts to undermine his actions and antagonize the whole world against him.

Good, fun stuff!

[EXPRESSO] Milarepa (2025) | Sardinia Saint

A very loose retelling of the life of Milarepa, an important figure in Tibetan Buddhism, this 2025 Italian production takes many liberties, not just genderbending Milarepa, but mostly taking place in a post apocalyptic world where humanity regressed to live in mudhuts.

The gist remains the same, as Mila lives a good life, then her father dies, her uncles decide to treat them like slaves. Mila’s eventually racks up enough money to have Mila be taught black magic and avenge them.

She succeeds, but the destruction and guilt grow to a point where Mila decides to set off in a journey to cleanse her karma….

The first issue is that the whole post apocalyptic angle doesn’t really work, it just looks medieval, and the movie it’s just too grounded/realistic to let the fantasy elements take any proper hold, to suspend disbelief and “buy” stuff like no one noticing Mila being obviously a girl.

Plus characterization is spotty, with some really stupid ass characters, and some inconsistent acting that sticks out against the decent work done by a cast sporting recognizable Hollywood actors like Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Angela Molina and Franco Nero.

Doesn’t help that the editing often makes things confusing to follow (when the script already doesn’t, that is), and the second part (the “redemption-philosophical-meditative phase”) is kinda hilarious, almost feeling like a parody… while also clearly done in earnest.

I feel kinda bad because the worldbuilding clearly needed a budget that never was, and it almost feels like it’s going for a feminist message… but that too is pretty superficial and half-baked, as pretty much everything here.

It’s a mess, it’s not good, i do respect the honest effort and ambition, the heart is in the right place, it truly is…. but it’s still a huge mess.

Earth Defense Force 6 PS4 [REVIEW] | All You Need Is Kill

As with what is now tradition, after a reboot follows a direct sequel, so Earth Defense Force 6 picks up some years after you killed God (or an alien God), with the global population reduced to a 10 % of what it was, but hey, you won, and reconstruction begun, as it always does.

You play as one of the elite soldiers from Team Storm that succeded in saving the planet years before, sent to a base that needs manpower as while the aliens retreated after… well, the “Hell Comes To Frogtown” ones were left abandoned on Earth, so they kinda still kick around in pure desperation, and you’re sent to deal with these poor bastards after a speech from EDF bootleg (and surprisingly nice) version of Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket, during the tutorial mission that continues the more attention given to presentation that started with EDF 5.

Then some old teleporting devices start teleporting monsters on Earth again, the monsters start laying down eggs to up their numbers, so it feels like you’re stuck on a loop of exterminating the hordes to avoid the enemies gaining more ground, and it feels like this stalemate is gonna keep going… until the biblical accurate alien mothership comes back, transports and un-transports another mothership kind of vehicle, then drops an entirely new kind of alien foes, very 50s/60s scifi style android enemies that launch their grabby knifed claws from afar.

So shit was already a desperate fight for a ruins filled Earth, NOW it’s basically a desperate struggle to fuck with a 0% chance of winning against super alien Hitler with a box of green army men as actual troops…. until you fight the biblically accurate ring shaped mothership again, fuck up something… and then you’re literally in an early mission of EDF 5.

That’s true, because after this – as the game itself puts it – “The Earth Defense Force 6 begins now”.

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Dragon Quest Heroes II PS4 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

You could use many adjectives to describe Omega Force output from the PS2 onward, but definitely not “ambitious”, as Koei first and then Tecmo Koei keep them just as the “Dynasty Warriors” guys, a stigma that just got worse over time, even when they don’t make a Warriors title.

Can’t say its unwarranted either as there are dozens upon dozens of Warriors titles, all iterating from a formula now decades old, to the point there are entire sub-series alongside the well milked mainline Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors franchises.

But Dragon Quest Heroes II is the rare exception, as we will see.

Regardless, its not too surprising this exists, as the first DQ Heroes did well, was received quite well (especially for a musou title), so of course Koei put immediately Omega Force back to work on a sequel, which dropped the ridilicously long subtitle of the first one, and came out the following year, thought we had to wait until 2017 for a western release.

A sequel in DQ or FF fashion, in the sense it’s not a direct story sequel, this isn’t even the same world as the first Dragon Quest Heroes.

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[EXPRESSO] Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning (2025) | MISSION ALL OVER!(?)

Dropping the “Part 2” from the title, Mission Impossible Final Reckoning is still the direction continuation of the previous film, Dead Reckoning (with a recap of that films events further making clear it was planned as a two parter), that had Ethan Hunt and his team having to go rogue in order to escape the grasp of an IA program (dubbed “The Entity”) that accidentally gained sentience and spread itself all over the globe’s networks, bringing the national networks into chaos, fanning the flames of war, etc.

After the agent working for the Entity, Gabriel, manages to retrieve the “counter program”, Hunt and his team are forced into a desperate gambit to try and retrieve the Entity’s source code (still lost in a sunken submarine near Russian waters), retrieve the counter program from Gabriel, and outsmart the Entity, before it hacks every major nations’ nuclear arsenal and sink the globe into full on nuclear holocaust….

Honestly, i’m kinda impressive how the formula still works wonders, keeping that specific concoction of high octane action, death-defying chases, occasional comedy and espionage extravaganza, straddling the lines between realistic and improbable action movie magic.

And of course, the reminder that Tom Cruise biggest superpower is not his defying the Reaper, but his ability to run on film.

It ain’t trying to revolutionize the genre, at all, but the plot does actually manage to resonate perfectly with today’ fears, without desperately trying to be modern, “hip”, and the execution is pretty damn good, making for a fun and sentimental sendoff of the series altogether, there’s actually a real sense of finality to it, as it ties or brings back events and characters from the older films, gives some closure, and honestly would be the perfect place to end it, or have Hunt/Cruise pass the baton.

Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe And The Blight Below PS4 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

RPGs aren’t really my bag anymore, not because i dislike them, but because they’re way too much time consuming for me nowadays, they simply are, and while i make some exceptions.. i usually don’t bother because i know i will most likely lose interest or be forced to play something else that i can finish in far less time so i can write a review for it and have it out in a reasonable timeframe.

Dragon Quest doesn’t need presentation nowadays, as is THE quintessential Japanese RPG series since its heyday, arguably even more than Final Fantasy in the land of Nippon, but since i’m not familiar with it, i won’t be making any presentation, even more so since this title is clearly catered to hack n slash fanatics that might or might not have played at least a Dragon Quest game, meaning it’s a gateway title for musou fans or general audiences that have some understanding of the series only through pure gaming osmosis but not had any chance or big interest for the series itself.

Which leads us to the plot being a spin-off affair with an original story that does the “multiversional tango”, as it custom to most of these Warriors crossover games overall, in order to have an ensemble cast of heroes from the various mainline games enter the fray alongside original protagonist characters and a fairly generic common threath for everyone to band together against the baddie responsable, in hope this can also sent the various heroes to their home world/dimension.

Works for me.

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Monster Armageddon/2025 Armageddon (2022) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

I’ve lamented the downright lethargic, nearly comatose state and distinct disinterest, so nested and in a rot The Asylum is with their output in this last period, i’ve done that before.

It’s clear whatever “magic” they summoned with Sharknado didn’t last long, and now just rest on their laurels, so to speak, as even the usual aficionados of trash got disinterested in the same way the company itself seems to be with whatever they cram out, they keep doing their thing but just because it’s what they have always done, and will keep doing until there’s not any money left off mockbustering.

I remember from a class in genre cinema i once took that – broadly speaking – a genre has reached a stage of severe stagnation when it starts becoming metatextual, to speak of itself more than anything else, as it can obstensibly find nothing else to iterate on, so it “turns on itself”.

And while it no longer hold completely true, as we’re now in a post-meta phase, if you will, there’s still a valid argument in there, because films like Monster Armageddon (released as 2025 Armageddon in trying to fool more people) validate the implied drying up of the “creative well”, and are a testament to this decade of post-irony, meta overdosing incestinal multiverse crossovers, of finding out there’s no bottom of the barrel, no real lowest of the low that can’t be “improved” upon.

I remember buying the DVD for this one for 5 bucks, sight unseen, on Amazon back in 2023, i knew it was an Asylum joint, and the cover art was nice, featuring a lots of monsters and creatures.

As with Monster Island (their mockbuster response to 2019’s Godzilla II: King Of The Monsters), the cover art is way better than the movie itself, but this time around it isn’t a complete lie like it was with that movie… as in it’s not technically a lie.

It’s worse… or is it?

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[EXPRESSO] The Electric State (2025) | Mr. Peanut, Break Down This Wall

VERY loosely based on Simon Stålenhag’s 2018 retro-sci-fi illustrated book of the same name and directed by the Russo brothers, The Electric State is set in an alternate 1990s where robots, gaining sentience after decades, rise up and engage a full on war, ultimately won by the humans using headgear controlled remote drone soldiers. After the war, the headgear/vr sets are sold commercially to pacify the masses, while the surviving robots are sent to a giant desert prison colony.

We follow a juvenile delinquent, Jessie (Millie Bobby Brown), whom lost her family in a car accident years ago and is now a foster kid, as one night she gets visited by a robot of Kid Cosmo, her beloved brother’s favourite childhood cartoon, which claims to actually be him, leading the two in a roadtrip-escape adventure…..

One that plays it super-straight, all in an attempt to get us invested into this world… hard to when there’s simply no charm, with the movie actively refusing to embrace its inherent sillyness AND doubling down on being “gritty”, which backfires on a nuclear scale.

There’s a palpable attempt at telling a Spielberg style tale, but there’s no soul or substance to it, just a Ready Player One masturbatory penchant for pop culture regurgitation (that makes NO SENSE in context, to boot), well known actors half-assing their admittely bad characters, and a plot being a senseless, meaningless hodgepotche that makes even less sense as it goes on, never committed to anything besides vague, overly basic metaphors, or Funko Pops-friendly character designs.

Those that aren’t already well known brand figureheads like fuckin Mr. Peanut (what is this, Food Fight?).

It’s not even boring, but it’s quite bad, stupid, mostly just so confounding you had to wonder “Why?”, especially when it had a 320 million dollars budget.

Avenzers: Italian Super Heroes (2023) [REVIEW] | Spaghetti-Fi: Endgame (ft. Anatar from the Anatar series)

Remember the bright minds behind the italian duck parody of Avatar, Anatar, one so stupid and cowardly it couldn’t even release before or close to the second Avatar movie it wanted to leech off?

No? Well, i did a review of Anatar, go read that. It’s definitely quite the something.

Today we’re talking shit. Super hero shit.

In one way, i can at least understand the idea of Anatar: it’s a mockbuster of a franchise that made gajillions and had a new movie coming out back then.

Tale as old as cinema itself.

This one is even more dead on arrival, it is when you do an Avengers parody, an Avengers Endgame parody after what feels like a decade since movie released, with Marvel still pumping them out to a public that notably was reasonably confused to see the sagas go on after something called “ENDGAME”, and reasonably tired of them trying to redo the same magic but cheaper, faster, taking for granted you just had to press the “redo button” to actually duplicate the success.

But it just fits, it’s that outdated, decades late to the party, or unaware that the building you rammed a tank through even had a party in it, that attitude defining most of the lowest fuckin italian media trash.

And like Anatar, Avenzers was outdated (moldy, even) the second it came out, and i still believe it actually releasing in theather is a psy-op of sorts, just gaslighting people into believing that it did receive a theathrical release, despite very few evidence to be found online, aside from an european theather chain, UCI Cinemas, advertising as it did with Anatar, and a report of it raking the miserable box office of 1.200 euros.

Which is so fuckin pathetic it ain’t even funny, just plain sad.

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