[EXPRESSO] Oppenheimer (2023) | Quantum Step

Not seen in IMAX because i couldn’t buy even a single goddamn seat, but i’m sure Christopher Nolan will forgive me, specifically.

Jesting aside, his latest film, the long awaited historical biopic about the inventor of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer, is finally in theathers here as well, and what do you know, it’s pretty good, as most would expect…. if you actually know what the film is about, you’d think it wouldn’t be that hard since the title is literally “Oppenheimer”, but that won’t stop people pontificating on subjects that this movie was never gonna realistically touch, like the atrocities behind Los Alamos’ birth.

I mean, this is about Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, which obviously encompasses more than his mortal life, but he is an unvoidable central figure in this chapter of history, and this biopic it’s as far as it can from a flattering portrait of the man, as it should be, given the heavy themes at play and the many struggles for power and political dominance that surround him and other scientists tasked by the military during WW II, Oppenheimer’s personal life, his rise to fame and political oppression during McChartyism due to his left-leaning tendencies…

It’s typical Nolan as it goes for the kind of non-linear narrative the director revels in, starting with a senate hearing, then digressing back and forth from Oppenheimer being put in a shame trial, and various events of his life during and after the conceptualization, creation and usage of the bomb (shown in frightinly realistic terms), all eventually coming together with precision, and constantly engaging, regardless if it’s engineering fission, waiting for the bomb’s test countdown, or following the compelling court drama sequences, which it’s already quite impressive for a movie sporting the behemoth runtime of 3 hours.

Final Verdict: Expresso

[EXPRESSO] Zombie 100: Bucket List Of The Dead (2023) | Cross-Z Shark! Are you ready?

Given the success of the live action adaptation of Haro Aso’s Alice In Borderland manga, it’s no wonder Netflix also ordered a live action movie based on one of his other works, the zombie comedy Zombie 100: Bucket List Of The Dead, also adapted into an anime TV series that started airing this July.

The premise sees Akira, a young man working for a japanese “black company” , bullied by his boss, working non stop like a robot, sleeping in the office… until a good ol’ fashioned zombi apocalypse happens. So finally free, he jots down a list of 100 things he wants to do before death (or “undeath”) catches up with him, eventually finds his best friend and encounters other survivors….

Yeah, this is a fun and – almost – novel twist to the over-explored (both for drama and comedy) zombie apocalypse mold, the spin here is quite fun and light-hearted, making for a slice of life episodic narrative that…would have simply worked better as a series instead of a 2 hour movie feeling like episodes of a TV series stapled together, making me wonder if this was the compromise to avoid having both adaptations cannibalizing each other.

Thought this live action film is far more “sanitized” compared to the manga, i guess to make it feel akin to the Netflix Alice In Borderland adaptation that mostly eskwed fanservice or sexual content (though gore is abundant and far from hidden), but honestly it feel longer that it needs and characters are likeable enough but fairly stock.

Though it also features a mutant zombie shark that’s already better than the entire film “Zombie Shark”, fought in sentai style because the lead actor played Ryuga Banjo in Kamen Rider Build.

So, overall, it’s decent enough, very cute, for what it is.

[EXPRESSO] Spider Man: Across The Spiderverse (2023) | Peter Parter

This review it’s only a formality, but yes, indeed, i had high expectations of this new Spider Man animated movie after Into The Spiderverse was a surprise smash hit, an unexpected excellent opus from an animation studio mostly known for Hotel Transylvania and The Angry Birds movie.

We never saw it coming, but it happened and while it had the side effect of making the live-action Marvel offerings kinda redundant and pointless, i would have been happy even if there wasn’t a sequel, despite being no reason to stop there, i mean, we got the new origin story/introduction of Miles Morales as one of the many Spider Man personas, the studio was gonna follow that up regardless.

This sequel to Into The Spiderverse also follows in the recent resurgence of “two parters” (giving even more proof that time is a flat circle, at least in terms of entertaiment media), and in this “part 1” we see Miles (and Gwen) venture deeper into the multiverse of various Spider personas from many dimensions/universes, meeting a new team of “Spidersonas” known as Spider Society, led by Miguel O’Hara (aka Spider Man 2099), but instead of collaborating they end up clashing in regards of how to deal with the villain at hand.

And honestly it meets the high expectations set by the previous movie, delivering a lot of inspired visuals, variety of animation styles and stylization, new charming and likable characters, plus the story dwelves deeper into the multiverse aspect, Miles’ role in this, so even if it ends on a cliffhanger for “part 2”, it’s not just 2 hours and 1/2 of setup, it’s already very very good as expected, and again it manages to make you really care even if you weren’t already much invested in Spiderman his many comic book incarnations/iterations.

Anatar (2022) [REVIEW] | Howard The Fuck

No, this isn’t a typo. And it’s not that kind of pun.

And yes, this poster is 100 % legit.

Since it’s my birthday, let’s review a movie i’ve been meaning to cover here for a while.

This is an actual italian parody/spoof of Avatar, that released in italian theathers, for actual money, with the intent of launching a new brand of “cinepattone” (aka a type of italian extremely low brow dumb comedies that once infested theathers every year around christmas), the “spaghetti-fi”, in the words of Anatar’s producer Salvatore Scarico, whom also literally and openly calls this an Avatar’s mockbuster film.

So much for clarity.

Reeling back my jaw from the freezing pavement after realizing this isn’t a troll style marketing campaign for another, real movie…. i must also point out this was never really properly advertised anywhere (or almost anywhere) and i stumbled upon its existence last year while browsing upcoming early dicember cinema releases here.

While this also gives me whiffs of Creators: The Past (a huge italian scifi epic that flopped back into the obscurity from whence it came)… you know, at least they marketed it at popular Italian anime/manga/videogames cons that year, Lucca Comics & Games. They tried proper. And at least that movie had William Shatner.

Here they were so spineless that at the last second (literally, 2 days before the intended 1^st December release, hence 2 weeks before Avatar: The Way Of Water opened in theathers here) they chickened out – ha ha – and rescheduled the release between January and February 2023.

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[EXPRESSO] 65 (2023) | Adam Driver VS Space Dinosaurs

It’s Adam “Kylo” Driver versus dinosaurs in a prehistoric Earth for one of the worse movie titles i’ve seen in a while, even ignoring how it undermines completely the marketing push of being “the sci fi movie where Adam Driver crashlands into a primal planet that has dinosaurs”, and it’s not the kind of movie that can afford the lackluster exposure it has got before release.

Seriously, it’s not surprising to see some countries like Italy adding subtitles like “Escape From Earth”, because it begs for anything to help described what it’s about, since its way too simple to even get across the title “65” implying dinosaurs because of the extinction event that happened on our planet 65 million years ago. Some seriously boneheaded marketing choices here.

Not that we have a masterpiece whose wings were Icarus’d too soon, but one wonders if Sony wanted this to fail, or why, since i can assure you there’s an audience for big budget dinosaur films, especially sci-fi ones, even more after years of no budget offerings and disappointing JW sequels.

Plot it’s pretty straighforward, about a pilot of a spaceship that’s forced to crashland on an alien planet…. which happens to be Earth, in its primeval, dinosaur dwelling days, so he and the only other survivor of the crash, a little girl, have to locate an emergency pod to leave the planet before they get eaten by the wildlife, or worse, as a storm of massive meteorites it’s coming down..

Dinosaurs look pretty good, there are some effective jumpscares, there’s a solid atmosphere of danger, and the good performances help sell what are somewhat generic characters (equipped with fairly stock motivations and tragic backstories) and a predictable, yet satisfying plot, all packaged in a fairly succint 90 minutes runtime.

Pretty decent overall.

Attack On Titan: Wings Of Freedom PS4 [REVIEW] | Nape Snape The Giants

As the Final Season of the Attack On Titan anime is somehow still going on (i’m not even talking about the many parts it has been split into), might as well revisit the videogames good ol’ Omega Force did, under the technically distinct (the best kind of distinct) title of “AOT” (yep, for legal reasons they couldn’t localize it as “Attack On Titan”, same issue as the My Hero Academia games, i think), starting with the first one, AOT: Wings Of Freedom, and then the direct sequel, AOT 2, in its complete form that also include the Final Battle expansion.

I would have loved to also cover the 3DS game, Shingeki No Kyoujin: Humanity In Chains, which is actually the first videogame based on Attack On Titan, but the localized english release has been pulled from the 3DS eShop years ago, i didn’t buy it before, so i’ll have to skip it as to get around these issues will take too much effort and – mostly – too much time, which is scarce at the moment.

I also want to cover AOT 2 in it’s complete form, will do that when they will release the second part of the part 3 of season 4 (if i got it right) somewhere in late 2023.

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Babylon’s Fall PS4 [REVIEW-FUNERAL] | Enuma Eloss

After previously touching upon the demo, and especially when the inevitable news of the sunset period before the servers would be shot down, i knew i had get Babylon’s fall, for cheap (which wasn’t an issue), actually play and finish before lights were out.

Other times i’ve put out these “funerary reviews” slightly before a game kicked the bucket, just in case, as both a courtesy and a way to let people that might be interested in the game itself, for whatever reason, so they could – potentially – try it or play it, i mean, Jump Force can still be played as second hand copies are still around.

But Babylon’s Fall didn’t even deserve that, so we’re talking about it the very same days its servers will close forever, 28^th of February 2023, not even 1 year after the game launched on the 3^rd of March 2022, couldn’t even held out for 3 days more, in such a hurry to kill to it Square Enix were.

Then again, that in itself it’s nothing special, the company does this to countless mobile free to play spinoffs of it’s own series, it’s like clockwork for many people to learn through these “end of service announcement” that many mobile games based on franchises owned by Squeenix…. even existed.

But it’s Babylon’s Fall we’re talking about, a game that indeed will live on infamy as a golden grease stain on Platinum Games’ record, when they had the bright idea to work alongside the company that once every 2 year lamented every non-japanese big franchise they owned and handled sold “below expectations”, the company of FF VII NFTs, that also later sold all its western-centric studios and properties for a pittance, all to drown more cash into the latest internet money scam.

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Escape Dead Island X360 [REVIEW] #deadislandretrospective

Since Dead Island 2 was just starting his first cycle of development and so there won’t be anything to show anytime soon, Deep Silver figured it was better to keep milking the franchise to keep it relevant in the public eye, so they launched a MOBA style spin-off with Dead Island Epidemic on Steam and a console & PC stealth oriented spin-off, Escape Dead Island.

Since Dead Island Epidemic never left open beta and by 2015 was discountined, i’m not that surprised that people even forgot it ever existed (i learn it was ever a thing only years later by doing some research), but you might have some recollection of Escape Dead Island, developed by Fatshark (Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, Hamilton’s Great Adventure, Warhammer: Vermintide 1 and Vermintide 2) and released for PS3, X-Box 360 and PC.

Playing the X-Box 360 in this case, though i understand the console versions are nigh identical.

Set as a sorta prequel-side story to the original game, Escape Dead Island wants to explain the origins of the first epidemic that kicked off into full zombie pandemic, and puts you in the shoes of Cliff Calo, a rich kid that wants to be noticed by daddy-o by going with two of his friends on the isle of Narapela and doing a report on the origin of the epidemic that spread from the island of Banoi, while also exposing the truth about the big pharma corpo Geopharm.

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Stonehenge Apocalypse (2010) [REVIEW] | Castiel, M.D.

There’s a free bingo slot in the schedule, so you know what it means: randomly picking of a B-movie from my watchlist on Amazon Prime Video, discarding the ones that are not available at the moment or require another paid subscription on top of the Prime one, despite being included before.

I’m SO not paying 10 to 30 bucks so i can watch Ghoulies II.

So instead we are going with the everabundant disaster movie choice, there are enough of these made for TV ones to craft a new artificial landmass, in case need be, and this time we’re doing Stonehenge Apocalypse, from our other recurring peddler of low budget TV movies about disasters, monsters and cheesy B-movie stuff all around, Cinetel Films.

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[EXPRESSO] Knock At The Cabin (2023) | Bautista Of The Apocalypse

Shyamalan is back to it after the aging beach shenanigans of Old, to tell the tale of a couple and their adopted daughter that, while going on holiday in a remote cabin in the woods, are visited by four mysterious, cultish individuals that invade their home, and then tell them they have been chosen and that the fate of humanity depends on them choosing a member of their own family to sacrifice in order to avoid the Apocalypse….

Quite the out-there premise, it’s a Shyamalan film alright, one that’s actually kinda difficult to discuss in any proper detail to avoid giving away hints of any kind about the “twist” could be, so i won’t be doing that (hence no talk about the ending, as you could assume by what i just wrote), but i will say that it’s quite intense and you never properly get to rule out definitely that these strange “home invaders” are saying, as you find yourself secondguessing what seemed like definitive proof, despite their odd behaviour and explained motives seeming truthful, so you end symphatizing with the antagonists as well with the couple and their child.

It starts out strong too, and it manages to keep the suspense all the way through, thanks to the excellent performances by the peculiarly assumbled cast of stars and the characters that make the movie stay consistent, the narrative gripping and help in make you overlook how heavy handedly are some themes approached (and some of the flashbacks feeling a bit like filler), making it all quite effective and honestly some of the best work M. Night Shyamalan has put out in recent years.

It’s perfect? No, but honestly it’s quite good and if you’ve ever liked one of the director’s movies, you’d be missing out by skipping this one.