[EXPRESSO] The Whole Truth (2021) | Meet The Granps

Dipping into the Netflix waters these weeks more than planned since i’m not really interested in many theathrical releases until House Of Gucci (i can survive without seeing or reviewing Clifford The Big Red Dog live-action film, i feel you can as well).

So let’s talk about the Netflix esclusive Thai horror thriller The Whole Truth, about siblings that find a mysterious hole in their grandparents’ house (where they temporarily reside as their mother is in a coma after nearly dying in a car crash), leading to terrifying events and them discovering creepy secrets about their family.

The circumstances around the events might led you to believe this is going into The Visit territory, but it’s not like that at all, this isn’t one of those that play the supernatural angle only to have a twist undo-negate it either. It’s just a fairly typical supernatural asian horror movie, quite average, i’d say.

It’s not bad but it’s also not that involving, the movie tries to have some flair to it but the plot and the horror elements never move past being cliches, the subplots ain’t bad (arguably the granpa’s revenge subplot is kinda more interesting than most of the “ghost shit”) but it takes a lot for most of them to factor in to the main one, and to be honest the movie kinda feels stretched to 2 hours.

The decent acting and the execution make it so that you wanna stick around to the end, so there’s that, and a decently satisfying payoff, even it’s kinda oddly paced and “delayed”, but it plays well enough with the idea of truth, ending on a somewhat fittingly “positive” note.

Overall, The Whole Truth (gimmicky international-localized name aside) is alright, nothing special, really, but it’s worth seeing once at the very least.

[EXPRESSO] Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City (2021) | Herbal Bundle

Finally time to review this one, the first reboot movie for the Resident Evil film series, distancing itself from the previous films by Paul W. Anderson in order to make a more faithful adaptation.

Helmed by 47 Meters Down director Johannes Roberts, Resident Evil Welcome To Raccoon City basically provides an abridged retelling combining the plot of Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 into a single one. Not completely random as both games’ plot take place in Raccon City, where in 1998 the farmaceutical megacorporation Umbrella Corporation had basically withdraw from operating, leaving the city to wither.

After an epidemic turns people and animals into undead monsters, a squad of local police officers is sent to investigate the Spencer Mansion in the nearby mountain area, while other survivors rally to survive the horrors left by Umbrella.

There are various changes and differences, often kinda necessary due to the merging of the two plots, which leads to the movie feeling rushed, as i feared. Aside from some hamfisted (but still cute) references, the movie actually captures pretty well the horror B-movie spirit of the games, and actually wants to be a horror film.

And it succeds, the atmosphere is nice and creepy, there’s a lot of practical effects, the characters are mostly quite accurate, and most of the elements from the games are used with sense in-context.

It’s not perfect, the cast is decent but there is some questionable acting and the “plot mix” it’s a source of other issues, but overall it’s actually quite solid and enjoyable.

Shame because this is arguably the better, more faithful RE live action adaptation… but it’s shaping up to be a box office bomb, not surprising since it was released in late November, and the “Thanksgiving holiday weekend” window makes sense only for Americans.

Presenting 12 Days Of Dino December

**Of course i had to go with this oldie, how couldn’t i?**

Maybe you were looking forward to another month full of dinosaur themed movies reviews, maybe you were dreading the ideas, so laboring under both hypotheses i’d figure to make a compromise (as it’s the essence of diplomacy and the cornerstone of love), so this year we’re not having Dino Dicember Part Deux, but we’ll go the more canonical route, and have 12 reviews for each of the “12 Days Of Christmas”, starting on December 25th up to January 6 (included).

Submitted for your approval, the coming “12 Days Of Dino Dicember”.

[EXPRESSO] Red Notice (2021) | Buddy Thief Routine

So, the “Dwayne Johnson” genre of Hollywood films got a new entry, and in order to engineer it being even more palatable, cast also Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot in it.

What does the bald muscle god among men do here? He works as a FBI agent that reluctantly has to team up with an art thief (Ryan Reynolds) in order to catch an even worse and infamous criminal, a jewel thief (Gal Gadot), after a legendary egyptian treasure. The usual caper shenanigans ensue, done in the modern half self-aware style with a flavor of the National Treasure variety.

Yes, if this sounds as generic and carefully stuffed with big budget and popular actors to ensure people would go see it… it’s that, but it only had a limited theatherical release in theathers as Netflix distributing rights from Universal, so they can spin data they don’t share to make marketing posts on Twitter on how much it was viewed… without actually telling us HOW much it was viewed.

Make no mistake, this is conceptually as safe and milquetoast as you can get from Hollywood in terms of action comedy, it’s processed meat, so ridden with cliches and ferociosly mediocre it’s kinda hard to even get engaged in the “plot” or even squeezemuch entertaiment out of it, as you know exactly how all is gonna go down, made worse by a bloated runtime and franchise pretensions.

I mean, it’s about what i expected from the director of Skyscraper (also with Dwayne Johnson), Rawson Marshall Thunder, and by and large most movies “The Rock” is in, though he has been in far worse and far better ones, this is just your average summer popcorn flick, heck, arguably even more “fire and forget” than usual.

It sure is some content, just kinda there.

[EXPRESSO] The Hand Of God (2021) | Neapolitan Piece

The new movie from acclaimed italian director Paolo Sorrentino (Il Divo, This Must Be The Place, The Great Beauty, Youth, The Young Pope, The New Pope), available worlwide on Netflix this 15^th of December, but also having a limited theathrical release from the 24^th of November, definitely here in Italy, likely somewhere else, check your local cinemas to be sure.

The Hand Of God it’s a drama set in 1980s Naples (the director’s hometown), about a young boy called Fabio, but more often “Fabietto”, that gets the chance to achieve one of the biggest dreams of a young soccer fan: meeting Diego Armando Maradona, that just happens to pass by Naples.

But this is soon followed by a tragic event that will change his life forever, and Fabio’s turmoil to cope with life ensemble of contradictions, disappointments, joy, all with a biographical bent, as it encompasses events from Sorrentino’s upbringing in Naples, his fascination with cinema that would eventually develop and be nurtured, etc.

It’s no secret that Sorrentino’s style it’s basically a “best hit” of the acclaimed italian directors of old, especially Fellini, he himself made no mystery of it, like, at all, but i reject the idea of him being just a mediocre copycat. There’s something to be said about his desire to emulate Fellini in its own peculiar way (and the deliberate display of reveling in his own stylistical bend), and kinda continue his legacy, despite the absurdity, impossibility and self-awareness at the futility of such a quest.

This movie it’s no different, a modern neorealism tale of real life, cinema and family, that display an incredible grasp on both comedy, drama, and cinema (regardless of your opinion on Sorrentino’s style, he’s definitely no slouch), and also serves as a powerful period piece as well.

Noteworthy stuff.

Resident Evil Vendetta (2017) [REVIEW] | Remote Zombies

As Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City was released in theathers earlier this week (in most countries), let’s take a look at the final Resident Evil CG animated film, Vendetta, which is also technically the last of the “CG trilogy”, as in all three movies have Leon Kennedy as the main character and are set in the same universe of the Resident Evil games, to contrast with the live action film series (as previously said).

The biggest change – but not the most noticeable – is the animation, with this film produced by Marza Animation Planet instead of Digital Frontier, the studio behind all previous Resident Evil CG movies and even the short film Biohazard 4D Executer that we started this little retrospective with.

The name might not say much, but it’s actually a studio that started by providing CGI cutscenes for the Sonic The Hedgehog games, and eventually for both anime TV series and even full lenght features, working alongside japanese animation titans like Toei for the 2012 3D CG Space Captain Harlock movies, even Lupin III The First, and more recently being one of the production companies for the new Sonic The Hedgehog movies, in a kinda poetic turn of events.

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Resident Evil Damnation (2012) [REVIEW] | Slavic Struggle

4 years after Degeneration, Capcom followed it up with Damnation (i would wager they didn’t plan the titles beforehand, at all), made mostly to promote Resident Evil 6, released in Japan roughly 3 weeks before, as it acts as a prequel to that game’s storyline.

So yeah, it’s not really a sequel to Degeneration as there are no returning characters from that movie aside from Leon S. Kennedy and Hunnigan, and the events from that film don’t really ever get brought up or serve any purpose to the story of Damnation.

They just don’t.

Which i understand from a functional standpoint, you don’t wanna have people lost if they didn’t watch Degeneration, that movies was released 4 years prior and these CG movies didn’t exactly make people and fans drool over them en masse. But you could have tried to make some fuckin connections happen and try to build an overarching plot of sorts, if nothing else to artificially make the various plots seem more important and better due to the interconnection.

In hindsight it’s not a problem, so let’s talk about the plot of Resident Evil Damnation.

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Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008) [REVIEW] | Airport Outbreak

While not the first CG Resident Evil movie ever (that “honor” goes to the previously feautured “Biohazard 4D Executer”), Degeneration is arguably the first proper full lenght animated feature based on the Capcom series, intended as an opposite entity to the live action movie series, as those followed the plots of the game very, very loosely, but Degeneration clearly sets itself within the universe of the games, set sometimes after Resident Evil 4 and before Resident Evil 5.

Why it is this film (and the following sequels) kinda ignored, you may ask.

The answer i feel it’s pretty much as obvious as kinda inevitable, and can be really summed up with “motion capture based 3D CG animation”, which has never been too popular among either hardcore or casual fans of the franchise, or self-proclaimed “animation lovers” for that matter.

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Biohazard: 4D Executer (2000) [REVIEW] | Parasite Evil

While we wait for the new Resident Evil film reboot, i’d figure we’d take a look at the other forgotten Resident Evil film series, the CG animated one that basically most people don’t remember, know or care to do any of that.

But before tackling the movies you’ve might actually vaguely heard about, we need to go deeper and unearth the first actual 3D animated Resident Evil movie, 4D Executer, so unknown and so “important” it never got the Resident Evil title, so it still uses the japanese title for the series.

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Ninja Phantom Heroes USA AKA Ninja Empire (1987) [REVIEW] | To Survive Ninja, You Gotta Become Ninja

OK, ok, this is really the last one for this november!

Where will the magic of carthwheeling ninjas takes us today? Under which fake names will we have to see Godfrey Ho and crew credited? IDF Film and Arts or Filmark International?

But nowhere else that inside a prison labor camp…at least the new footage does, alongside crediting Bruce Lambert as director and Duncean Bauer as writer (who are you trying to kid, Godfrey Ho?).

Also, yes, this under their “Filmark International” company name, and it happens to also be one of theirs non-Richard Harrison ninja films, instead having Danny Raisenbeck (as usual billed as Joff Houston), and being the (uncredited) film debut of Sophia Crawford, later famous for her stuntwork on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Power Rangers and Kung Fu – The Legend Continues.

You can also find this on Youtube, also uploaded by “The Wu Tang Collection”, their copy having the “Ninja, Phantom Heroes USA” title and japanese subs. A classic, as we learned.

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