L’Isola Degli Uomini Pesce (The Island Of The Fishmen) (1979) [REVIEW] | Dr. Moreau From The Deep

I guess fate does exist, because i randomly picked up at a local flea market a DVD copy of “L’Isola Degli Uomini Pesce” (translating to “The Island Of The Fishmen”, literally) for less than 3 bucks, figured i’d review that for a lark, only to find out this movie is actually known among fans of B-movies as “Screamers”, in its edited and reworked version handled by Roger Corman that cuts some footage, inserts a new opening and adds extra gore.

While also using false advertising in marketing with text claimining it’s about “people turned inside out”. This is an utter lie, because it also implies this is a horror film…. yes but it’s also a fantasy adventure flick that also pinches ideas from Island Of Dr. Moreau (and also reminding one of the Corman’s Humanoids From The Deep, for example) and uses horror cliches like a mad scientist creating a humanoid hybrid race of people, but it also has heavy adventure movie elements like the natives and the sunken civilizations and stuff.

So if you have memories on seeing this as “Screamers” on TV or VHS, sorry, we’re talking about the original, untouched italian version of “The Island Of The Fishmen”.

Also, i promise there are no One Piece jokes here, tempting as they were to make.

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[EXPRESSO] Knights Of The Zodiac (2023) | Saint Seiya Evolution

It feels like its the late 2000s again with a production like this, as if Dragon Ball Evolution never released, or it did but nobody learn shit from it, just by gazing upon this brand new live action adaptation of the popular manga/anime series Knights Of The Zodiac, better known as Saint Seiya.

IF you knew this was coming at all, in the US the series never really “took off”, and even in countries like Italy where it still has a lot of nostalgic value for older generations, it has been barely marketed at all and released as 3 days special event thingie, kinda telling.

Honestly, i was never much into Saint Seiya, but just from the trailer i recognized the whiff of another Dragon Ball Evolution. Though this one is SLIGHTLY better.

Just because the effects and visuals are a bit better, and the fights could be worse.

But it’s still a terrible, lousy adaptation that’s so 2000s and it’s a total crapfest anyway, as it checks ALL the negative boxes.

Wildly miscast actors that either half-ass it or are just pure pine, a script trying to squeeze a saga worth of info into a 2 hours runtime, a narration with no focus continuously jumping from scene to scene without context, that is when the stereotypes (there are no actual characters in this movie) aren’t vomiting torrents of exposition.

Even worse, it’s also a BORING mess, and it’s that kind of adaptation that it invents his own plot, one that has barely anything to do with the series’ premise, and – for good measure – it’s stupid, boring, threadbare and utterly tiresome on its own, managing not only to disappoint long time fans, but also alienate general audiences.

Not that it stops this movie sequel baiting into the void.

[EXPRESSO] Elemental (2023) | Avatar reference here

I’ll be honest: since the teaser trailer i had very low expectations for Elemental, and frankly the marketing didn’t make it any better, as it either led you to believe that this is Zootropolis again, but with the themes of racial prejudice and coexistence made even more ouvert by just making the elements people. And it’s also a simplistic. gimmicky variation on Romeo and Juliet.

And while there is some truth to those assumptions…. to be honest, this is far from the worse or insipid we’ve seen from Pixar lately.

For example, it’s mostly a story about first generation immigrants (Korean immigrants, as it’s a personal story for the director himself), a couple of “fire people” moving to Element City, and her daughter, Ember, divided between inheriting the store of her parents, who worked themselves to the bone, and following her passion and potential career, with the disruptive force igniting all this being a water guy, Dave, a safety inspector whom accidentally enters the shop, finds and reports the many safety violations, but then wants to help Ember avoid the city shutting down the store, and eventually they fall in love as they get to know each other.

It’s fun, quite pleasing, the romance it’s not original but it’s cute enough, Elemental it’s a decent film overall, but it’s also indicative of the troubled state of Pixar, as they exhaust their formula to the point the criticisms stopped being hyperboles and became truths, the whole concept is overly simple to the point it hurts its own worldbuilding and almost completely undermines its own themes, the premise is Zootropolis but the racism allegory makes even less sense in context, and while the character are fun and the animation is impressive as expected… we have seen this done better countless times before.

King Of Snake (2020) [REVIEW] #snakesofjunetoo

Not be confused with “King Of Snakes”, an old Taiwanese kaiju film mostly known for being edited into one of many’s Godfrey Ho cut-n-paste jobs, Thunder Of The Gigantic Serpent, which opted to insert new actionxploitation footage with western actors into that 1984’s monster film, instead of having them doing the usual “colored pijamas ninjas” shit.

We’re gonna cover that one later this month for #snakesofjunetoo, fear not, i’m always up for reviewing some IFD Films joints, but today we’re looking at something far more recent, a 2020 chinese disaster-monster movie set during the Republic Of China period, when railways were being costructed and the following ecological destruction caused by it (especially deforestation) being the reason for lots of poisonous snakes to assault a train, killing and injuring many.

To cure the survivors of the snake venom and the many that also were attacked in his own home village of Yong’an, the local snake catcher Mu Sheng has to form a small party to venture in search of the “snake flower” cure…

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[EXPRESSO] Kirby Tilt N Tumble GBC | Gyro Kirby

Yep, Nintendo remembered it has the NSO console applications on the Switch, so a new dripfeed, which includes Kirby Tilt N Tumble, a Kirby game that might as well be new to European gamers, as its original GBC release was never brought in PAL territories (probably for the same stupid reasons we never got Drill Dozer or Wario Ware Twisted, BUT Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation, we did got that), it was never released on any Virtual Console iterations, most likely as it one requires gyroscopic controls… and the Wii U VC did have only GBA titles.

So, the idea is that Kirby Tilt N Tumble it’s an action puzzle game where you control Kirby in its ball form, collecting stars, entering holes, smashing against pinball-style bumpers, etc, all with gyroscopic controls, meaning it’s like one of those analogic marble games where you tilted the wooden table/plank to direct a silver ball into a goal.

I’m so old i’ve actual memories of playing that.

Plus you can make Kirby jump by shaking/jolting the console…. which is where you can tell this worked fine when played on a Game Boy, less so with the Switch in handheld mode, as you might need time to work out how to make Kirby jump and actually control it mid-air.

This might have been mitigated with an optional “Tate mode”, if the game didn’t use A and B to activate some contraptions and the game menus.

BUT it can be played in docked mode with a Pro Controller (and non-Nintendo branded equivalents), i guess), which helps remedy this otherwise kinda unfixable, unexpected issue, because the game itself it’s quite fun, gimmicky but with a well executed, fun gimmick at its core, and with plenty of fun minigames, showing the kind of quality you’d expect from Hal Laboratory.

Dagon (2001) [REVIEW] | Shadow Over Galicia

Dagon, my sweet Dagon, oh what foul stench thou emits,

enough to make one sad at how it all went once again amiss,

cursed indeed by another Elder God these adaptations seem

of Lovecraft’s hate for fish supreme.

For the record, i don’t hate or begrudge Stuart Gordon’s work overall and his obvious love for the source material, i mean, the Reanimator series was also spun from a H.P. Lovecraft story and that managed to work, though it became its own thing, i am more than “ok” with that.

I mean, for fuck’s sake if that story in particular needed to be scrubbed – in adaptations – of the obniouxsly blatant racism, you’ll need to clean the Lovecraft out of Lovecraft “sometimes”.

But i also can’t deny there are reasons why fans of Lovecraft are beyond sick of the many adaptations that defy the thousand monkeys & thousand typewriters logic, and that somehow no one over decades has managed to adapt any of his stories (in films, strictly speaking) with success without fuckin things up, as in, completely destroy any attempt at atmosphere, deviate so much from the original story to the point it might as well be adapting another Lovecraft tale, AND making crap movies that are bad regardless of what author’s name they borrow.

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[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.

Pinocchi-O-Rama # 5: The Adventures Of Pinocchio AKA Un Burattino Di Nome Pinocchio (1972)

Don’t let the deceptive and common international title that’s often attached to many Pinocchio films, or the fact it came out in 1972, the same year as the popular italian TV miniseries of the same name (later edited as a compilation film) by acclaimed director Luigi Comencini.

This is actually a different adaptation, originally titled “Un Burattino Chiamato Pinocchio” ( lit. “ A Puppet Called Pinocchio”), that’s also the more recognized work of italian animator-director Giuliano Cenci, whom at the time was hailed as the “italian Walt Disney”, and he almost was if the distributors didn’t fuck him over, with a fuckin mess of indipendent regional releases that basically doomed financially the film.

It was so badly handled that at a time, in Florence, it was seen playing in a red-lights cinema called Arlecchino, which of course wasn’t where families went for a movie time with the kids.

To say nothing of how the movie managed to reach Egypt as an unauthorized bootleg they pilfered from the Italian Embassy. XD

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Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce PS3 [REVIEW]| #musoumay

As most Warriors fans know, once a main numbered entry in the Dynasty or Samurai series is released, Koei and Omega Force don’t follow up them up with another numbered either, no siree, but basically squeeze the foundations and assets of the newly made entry for many spin-offs, alongside the expected Xtreme Legends and Empires versions.

And Dynasty Warriors 6 was no exception (thought the poor reception had a lot less derivative titles spun from it, not even a proper XL expansion), so back in 2009 they made another one, Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce (Multi Raid in its japanese release) to also ride on the “online co op” frenzy the industry was pushing wish during the PS3/360 era…. on the PSP, initially.

Then HD ports on consoles that touched up the graphics, added full in game voice acting for battles and non-battle events. Though worry not, most of the cutscenes are outright recycled from DW 6, with just a slightly different hue overlaid to disguise the fact it’s stock footage.

The story is basically the same as always, there’s really not much to discuss, aside that this time magic, mystical beasts and the such plays a lot more into it, leading to some alternate or new events alongside the classic confrontations like Chi Bi, Wu Zhang Plain, Xia Pi, etc.

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12 Hours Into The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom

I expected many things, but i wasn’t quite ready to get the sequel to Breath Of The Wild and see that the development team actually “pulled a Nuts & Bolts”, but actually do it in a way that doesn’t leave disappoiment and bewildered fans.

Mostly because Tears Of The Kingdom doesn’t completely goes away with almost everything from the previous movies (and its open worlds/spaces have actual shit to do in it, instead of meaningless wandering for few collectables in oversized dromes), retaining pretty much the same basic gameplay seen in Breath Of The Wild, from attacking, the stamina management for climbing, running, flying, item collecting, having to deal with freezing cold or scorching hot enviroments, Sacraries acting as both mini-dungeons and fast-travel locations where to collect orbs in order to power up life or stamina, tower that need to be actived to scan the area you’re in, etc.

And of course the weapons are made of biscuit crumbs, which is both worse and better, as now there’s is a real, honest-to-god story justification for Hyrule’s metal weapons having becoming corroded (which is fuckin hilarious in a way)… BUT at least now you can find more resistent variant of the weapons, the last strike that would seen the weapon break always deals a critical hit damage, and one of the new abilities is also there to help, as it lets you combine weapons with items to strenghten them or create weird ass weaponry.

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