[EXPRESSO] Homunculus (2021) | A Man In Your Head

Did you know they made a live-action adaptation of Hideo Yamamoto’s beloved cult manga … no, not Ichi The Killer, Homunculus, directed by Ju-On/The Grudge creator Takashi Shimizu, and it just released internationally at the end of april as a Netflix esclusive?

I didn’t, had to find out via good ol’ FreddyInSpace via twitter, and he himself didn’t notice earlier, because this is indeed one of the downsides of the “content machine” streaming service model.

Homunculus is about Susumu Nakoshi, an amnesiac and emotionally stunted clochard who decides to be the guinea pig for the rich medical student Manabu Ito, interested in experimenting to see if drilling the skull of a man could awaken otherwise unaccessible or dormant senses, as well as recoving memories or activate esp powers.

The experiment goes well, too well, as Susumu is now able to see – while covering his right eye – the titular homonculi, possibly physical manifestations of the human mind’s most intimate and recondite desires, traumas and symbolic projections of selves (a man split in two halves walking side by side, a sand girl, etc).

While it retains most elements from manga and for the first half it’s fairly faithful adaptation, halfway through it strays further and further, as things take a twist for the mundane, squandering the potential given by the source material on generic drama, making for less interesting characters and events. Even the borrowed odd visuals feel underwhelming or underused.

It’s not a bad movie or a complete failure, but it’s a really disappointing adaptation (especially because this could actually have worked in a live-action context), and worse, even taken on its own it’s just a movie unable to do or properly develop pretty much anything of substance in its 2 hours run, leading to a fittingly unsatisfactory ending.

Kaw (2007) [REVIEW] | Mennonite Paradise

YES, another one i was cojoled into watching and reviewing quickly because Amazon Prime Video reminded me they we’re gonna take it off their service in 5 hours. And since i’m still semi-quarantined at home, might as well watch it and review it.

This time it’s about killer birds, crows instead of general “birds”, because clichès.

And like a good chunk of these movie i’ve been “coerced” into reviewing by Amazon Prime Video removing, this is another TV movie for Sci-Fi Channel/SYFY, and it’s somewhat fitting that most of these movies about killer birds were made for TV, since the apocryphal The Birds II: Land’s End in 1994, a movie so good the director Rick Rosenthal (the original Halloween II, Bad Boys, American Dreamer, Halloween Resurrection) asked to be credited as Alan Smithee instead, was also a TV movie.

The title also echoes the “famous” snake creature feature “Sss”, you lure people into watching your movie better with this simplistic attitudine, so KAW is it. I love that in the italian release they added a subtitle with the intent to specify the ravens are not just your common, bargain basement ravens…. but if i were to translate it to english it would literally read “Attack Of The Common Ravens”.

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Fire Serpent (2007) [REVIEW] | … Of Known Origin

Another one for the ever increasing pile of movies i saved for later on Amazon Prime Video and ended up watching & reviewing before they get taken off or gated off another subscription service.

And yes, it’s a TV movie for Sci-Fi Channel, from before they just rebranded themselves as “SYFY”, but yeah, we’re going back yet again to the neverending well of trash, always flowing, always bursting and ripe for the picking by the cynical, the bored, and the masochist. And people like me, i guess.

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EX-ARM anime (2021) [REVIEW] | Make the bad guys cry like….

I knew of Ex-Arm before the series was announced, as in i red the first volume of the manga, and thought that was.. alright.

Then in early november 2020 i discovered there was an anime planned for it, and apparently it was supposed to launch earlier, but got delayed a couple of times, post-poned until its January 2021 release on Crunchyroll, as one of their “Crunchyroll Originals” exclusive projects.

I heard about it on Twitter, alongside many baffled comments on why the hell is a live-action director with no experience in anime directing a 3D CG anime and also tasking a production company that also has no experience in anime… and i immediatly knew i would just “have” to review it, to witness the monstrum and write a report about what could be found in its wretched bowels.

Get confortable, as this autopsy-review will examine all the guts and decomposed organs, and there’s a LOT of those to rifle through with this one!

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Cells At Work – BLACK (2021) [REVIEW] | Defective Form

I planned to review this TV adaptation of the Cell At Work spin-off series Black Code, as i heard the second season was delayed to summer 2021…. but clearly i was wrong, as both the oddly short second season of the main series AND the spin-off series started airing back to back in early January… so that threw me a curveball, as i was planning to revisit the first season of Cells At Work before the second one hit, but still, i’m reviewing this in detail, i’ll get to the main series eventually.

Regardless, it’s even better, since using anime to guilt-trip people into having a more healthy lifestyle is a proper “thing”, and it’s beautiful.

I loved the first season, it was absurd but also a very fun way to combine the old french edutaiment series “Once Upon A Life…Time” (or Micro Patrol, if you lived in an European country in the 90s you mostly likely have seen or heard of it at some point, it’s quite famous even in Italy) into a shonen manga format, so your body is basically a city-temple where every cell exists for a purpose, be it carrying packages of oxygen to the lungs, keeping track of information, and each episode it faces a new treat, usually viruses that are quite stabbable by the white blood cells, as they lunge with knives at the bacteria like a fuckin Hellsing villain. Gotta love how the violence is basically pardoned by the educational facts about cells, how the body deals with extraneous material, etc.

And how you basically have plenty of antrophormic Amazon delivery people taking drinks from the vending machines that are inside of you. Lucky bastards?

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Gappa The Triphibian Monsters (1967) [REVIEW] | ♫ It’s The True Mystery of The Universe ♫

Yes, with a “G”.

One of the minor, less known giant monster, and the only kaiju eiga ever made by Nikkatsu (which almost went bankrupt after releasing it), also known under the mystifing title “Monster From Another Planet” in the US, and directed by Hiroshi Noguchi, better known for the Cat Girls Gambler yakuza series and the Ginza Mighty Guy/Ginza Whirlwind series.

Oddly, the plot is virtually identical to the one seen in Gorgo (hi again), with a grouple of people (in this case a group of reporters and scientists instead of a salvage crew) capturing and bringing a monster from its island (here a place called Obelisk Island) to “civilization” in order to become a media attraction. But this also angers the natives of the island and – more importantly – the parents of the infant Gappa monster, who head to Japan and cause huge havoc in their wake.

If japanese monster movies taught me anything, it’s to never steal children, especially those of literal giant monsters. Just don’t. Or stop.

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Garuda (2004) [REVIEW] | Harvey Birdmon

Sometimes it’s hard to forget that neither Japan or the United States have an exclusivity on making giant monster movies, even if often we still end up in the vague “asian sphere of influence” one way or another. This one as well, but it’s from Thailand, not a country you immediately associate with giant monsters, but it doesn’t matter, and director/producer/writer Monthon Arayangkoon tapped from thai folklore for the monster, the titular Garuda, originated from Hindu mithology as a legendary bird-like creature aligned with the element of wind, serving as a steed to the god Vishnu, and depicted as either a giant bird with half-open wings or an humanoid with bird features.

He’s usually depicted as a protector figure, always ready to fight the serpent enemies (which means the naga), but in this case he’s depicted as a bloody rampaging monster, but i guess being trapped into the concrete under Bangkok for thousand of years will make anyone snap into a rampage.

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Varan The Giant Monster/ Varan The Unbelievable (1958) [REVIEW] | Kaiju In The Middle

***Sorry, i wasn’t able to find a copy that didn’t have the hardsubbed american title.***

Godzilla is, has been and probably will be in secula secularum the greatest legacy of Toho and its empire of weird monsters. But of course, if the Big G sits at the top of “kaiju mountain”, and other monsters from their own movies have become inscindible part of the Godzilla series, some of them don’t dine at the court at all, and just get called back as jesters for the big monster mashes.

Varan is sadly one of them, and it’s a bit sad when they decide a frigging giant shrimph like Ebirah was worth doing new effects when Godzilla Final Wars came around, instead of just re-using old footage from Destroy All Monsters, like they did for Varan’s (among others) cameo, just happy to be there and cheer from the sidelines, even when Minilla is frigging more useful. Poor Varan.

But of course he did debut in its own movie, Varan The Giant Monster, and yes i’m talking about the original version, not the americanized one that does go under the title of Varan The Unbelievable, and alters the plot to include the american army… because America, that’s the reason. Sighs

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Frankenstein VS Baragon / Frankenstein Conquers The World (1965) [REVIEW] | Atom Heart Monster

Strange as it may sound, you really can’t talk about King Kong and Godzilla beating each other up without talking about the Frankenstein’s monster, but we already talked about the backstory of the original “Monkey VS Nuclear Dinosaur” kaiju flick in its review, so let’s just say that this movie is actually Toho bringing back the partially scrapped idea of having Kong fight a monster created by Frankenstein for King Kong VS Godzilla, which would itself spawn a follow up a year later, with War Of The Gargantuas. And of course, tasking yet again Ishiro Honda to direct it.

Also, this one introduces a monster that would eventually cross into the Godzilla franchise, Baragon, not be confused with another, completely different but – for pure coincidence – very similar looking (at a glance) monster from the Gamera franchise, Barugon, with a “u”. A minor monster, brought back just for the giant monster brawls installments of the Godzilla series (where pretty much every frigging Toho kaiju was invited for a quick cameo), but here the main antagonist to the “Frankenstein” monster, as the original japanese title makes it abudantly clear.

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Big Man Japan (2007) [REVIEW] | Now it’s history I see

If you have been searching for an original, fresh take on the kaiju movie, you simply cannot overlook a movie like Big Man Japan, directed, written and starring Hitoshi Matsumoto, a popular japanese comedian, here at it first full lenght feature, followed by Symbol, Saya Zamurai and R100.

Sure, in the movie there are giant monsters attacking Japan, there is an Ultraman style humanoid giant that fights them to protect the country and its citizens, but this isn’t a merry tale of people in rubber suits smacking the shit out of each other, getting set on fire by fireworks and hosed down by stage assistants.

This is actually the story of Masaru Daisato. Like his ancenstors before him, he can grow into a giant over 30 meters tall when shocked by electricity, and he uses this power to defend Japan from the giant monsters that routinely attack it…. in a completely unremarkable way, to be very polite about it.

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