yes, indeed, as promised, Musou May is back this year, with a mix of rewrite and brand new reviews all throught the month! Also the planned works for the summer most likely won’t change much, i’ll make a post about those in more (any) detail later down the month.
Like i lamented in my review of Opus, this kind of satire about “eating the rich” has just about plateu’d itself into a modern clichè, despite the sentiment itself being more and more relevant, and Death Of A Unicorn just cements this further.
Even if it’s a killer creature feature mashed with The Menu (again, that or Knives Out), and there’s something to the concept, given the unicorn’s folklore.
The premise sees a lawyer bring along his estranged daughter to meet with the wealthy family he works for, but they accidentally hit something with the car.
That being an actual, factual unicorn, which is eventually discovered by the rich family that immediatly seizes it when they realize just their blood can do near miracolous things, and ignore the warnings of the daughter, who briefly but profondedly mind-linked with the unicorn cub…
It’s not that it doesn’t commit to its silly concept of “killer unicorns stalking-killing rich assholes”, it does so to the point its detrimental, mostly taking the idea too seriously while being stupid in a way that’s more exhauting and annoying than fun, the good cast can’t do much when these character are too fuckin stupid, it lacks some needed self-awareness, and it’s nowhere as fun as it sounds.
It also doesn’t take advantage of the absurd premise to make something creative with it, the effects are fairly good but don’t expect anything of inventive in terms of kills, for example, and while it’s under 2 hours, it feels longer, like they stretched a short movie or a comedy skit into feature lenght.
It’s at least a more coherent with itself than Opus, i will say that much, and it’s not awful, it’s just another middling entry in this already overdone, oversatured “eat the rich” style of satirical comedy.
Based off the cult webseries by Joel Guerra, ENA: Dream BBQ is basically a new adventure for ENA and his gaggle of absurdist weirdo acquaintaces, as you are tasked to “find the target boss”, whatever that means in a world where cubist gestalt MPD humans exists alongside penguin-vampires, sumi-e men in frogsuit, mannequins, 2D witches, genies, where the sky is filled with stuff like a hippoheaded-pyramid with tendrils, and just a constant cascade of surreal shit.
The series already felt like you threw LSD Dream Emulator, Cat Soup, added a dash of those old point n click educational games from Humungous Entertaiment (like Spy Fox or the Putt Putt games) and the Zelda CDI games, all thrown into a huge pot that’s also sentient and speaks in a faux gibberish language, so making an actual first person adventure/point n click explorative title was a given, and after years, it’s out… the first chapter 1 is, anyway, for free to everyone, though the other episodes will be paid, and if you want to support the project, there’s a “Supporter Edition” DLC that adds collectables and gives you access to various behind the scenes materials.
If you’re not familiar with the series, you’ll be right at home and intrigued to see the whys and whats of ENA’s new look and “purpose”, if you don’t, it’s gonna be honestly just as caught up as you could, as there’s plenty of new weird faces and things to interact, talk to, use, gander at, but gameplay is both surprisingly and expectedly fairly simple in terms of systems and controls (there’s also full gamepad support) for an explorative adventure game, with some simple platforming.
Honestly i strongly encourage getting the “support edition DLC” after, because damn, this first chapter is already top tier stuff, just incredible.
This year we won’t review crappy horror no-budget slockfests about killer rabbits, i’m quite fed up with killer easter bunnies and we can done those next year, anyway.
So we’re instead digging up a fairly obscure 2d spaceship shooter/side scrolling shoot ‘em up from the late 80s arcade resurgence, and as i guess it’s almost mandatory for forgotten games of this genre, its only home console port was on the PC Engine… in Japan, North America did get this released in arcades, localized as Rabbit Punch, but we Europeans never did in any shape, not until the recent Arcade Archives rerelease, in this case the Switch one (it’s also available on PS4).
The plot is fairly simple and starts off the “ol’ fashioned” (as in “putting cats in bags and throwing them in the river to drown” ye old fashioned) royal kidnapping by a mechanical army of space aliens that come down to the peaceful planet of Bunnyland, taking awat the rabbit themed king (he has a rabbit onesie), the princess and her sister (which are just Playboy bunny girls… to commit to the theme, yes), so it’s up to the rabbit shaped mecha unit to save the monarchy.
Continua a leggere “Rabio Lepus/Rabbit Punch (Arcade Archives) NSWITCHDDL [REVIEW] | Cho Usagi”
Cards on the table: i’ve never seen the Avatar animated series, always heard it pretty good, i know it had/has a big following, enough for a reviled live action film to exist, but i simply didn’t care too much because i didn’t grow up watching that, and i never felt like i needed to later, i mean, i spent my teens watching anime, why bother with a western cartoon (that wasn’t Samurai Jack) tackling asian inspired stories and themes, when i can read Naruto directly?
Can’t really say i learned much about the series through osmosis, as i’ve seen people discuss about it, and since i guess it didn’t grab much European markets, some of the games based off it did reach the PAL territories, but not when the series was wildly popular and discussed about, i feel, back then we also got the shitty Legend Of Korra game Platinum Games made, which i did play and review on PS3 but has long been delisted and never received a physical release.
So i’ve figured i’d grab this last one, as it was actually released in 2023 by Gamemill, got in a bundle with the infamous Rise Of Kong, because why not? Might as well stick my entire head into the garbo bin, to see what foul creatures are lying in wait below the surface.
And to my understanding, the games based around this beloved Nickelodeon show (and the spin-offs) are mostly crap or disappointing at best, and this i feel ain’t gonna be the exception.
This is to say i don’t know the story in any detail, but i know the gist… and i feel the people that developed the game did know less than me, and just skimmed some summaries online in order to write the story and dialogues..
Continua a leggere “Avatar The Last Airbender: Quest For Balance PS4 [REVIEW] | Sokoban Benders”
I’ve quite enjoyed Tetsuya Tsutsui mangas such as Reset, Noise, Duds Hunt… but i’ve never heard of “Prophecy”, that one sure eluded me.
So imagine my surprise when i saw this Italian live action film adaptation of his Prophecy manga announced months ago. Especially since they already made a Japanese live action film adaptation… back in 2015.
Sure the production studio, Brandon Box, notably also have been working on a Tiger Mask live action film (the anime was mad popular here back in the 80s)… but why this one specifically?
The plot involves a couple of young dudes trying to sell their stock market software, “Prophecy”, to a media mogul, but it fails spectacularly, forcing them to scrape by with odd jobs, until months later they find the mogul profitting over “Prophecy”. So they decide to moonlight as a modern, social media wise Robin Hood, the protagonist donning a mask made of newspaper and the alias “Paperboy”, becoming a viral sensation, things snowball, the police gets involved, yada yada.
It’s odd, because it’s not awful, acting is quite solid, i respect the attempt, the heart is in the right place, ….but it’s a tensionless thriller that comes off as weird step child of Mr. Robot and a crime caper comedy à-la Now You See Me (minus the magic), an action comedy thingie that touches upon modern problems like the rooted effect Internet has on our lives, social injustices like the UberEats style of “poverty jobs” forced upon people that were denied a better future… while also seeming stuck in the past on many pivotal plot elements like “hacking”, the characters are bidimensional cutouts, the script is kinda weak, full of unintentional anticlimaxes and just straight up forced plot developments.
Not bad, just kinda of a mess, but an okayish one.
Final Verdict: Americano
Groundhog Day it’s a movie that doesn’t need introduction, maybe even less a review.
You might know they did actually make a sequel to that beloved Bill Murray led film… in form of a VR only game, Groundhog Day: Like Father, Like Son…. most likely you’ve never heard of it before i just mentioned it now.
But we’re not reviewing that either.
For some variety we’re instead talking about the 2004 Italian (technically an Italian-Spanish production) remake of Groundhog Day, which i’m fairly sure no one that isn’t Italian has never heard in any shape or form, called “E’ Gia Ieri”, literally translation being “It’s Tomorrow Already” but it also goes by the international English title of “Stork Day”, which sounds iffy even it’s about as accurate and correct as it would/could realistically be for an alternate English title meant for foreign markets.
You most likely already guessed why that is the case, but let’s talk plot first.
Also, just saying it now, but yes, SPOILERS of a 32 years old movie that’s far from obscure are gonna happen.
Continua a leggere “E’ Gia Ieri AKA Storks Day (2004) [REVIEW] | Groundhog Days”
I have been waiting for this one a LOT, i made no mistery of it, and why should i?
Robert Eggers doing a remake/new version of horror silent classic Nosferatu, i shouldn’t even need to add more than that. And i won’t.
But yes, it might sound strange to younger horror fans, it’s a new version of an early unauthorized Dracula adaptation that was considered lost for decades, only to resurface and become a silent horror film classic on its own, so i guess there’s little point discussing the plot too much, it’s literally Dracula.
I mean, there’s no denying around that, but Eggers version actually manages the near impossible, as it captures the original film dreamlike quality while also giving it a new spin to the material (while also featuring most of the classic scenes of Dracula adaptations), going for a psychosexual horror thriller that on the surface might remind some of Coppola’s Dracula adaptation, while there’s no baroque romanticism, over the top hairdos or extra fancy costumes.
This count Orlok is a fuckin disgusting, feral beast with a sexual appetite stronger than death, an obsessive lust that never betrays any empathy behind the desire itself of this cursed cadaver and whoever is unfortunate enought to be in its path to obtain it.
I mean, it sounds like an obvious perfect match of a movie to (re)do for a renowed director that specializes in bleak gothic horror thrillers, and i’m just gonna cut the shit, Nosferatu lives up to the high expectations it reasonably fostered since it was announced, in pretty much every regard, and yes, the amazing cast features yet again William Dafoe (and a great Nicholas Hoult) after The Lighthouse.
Intense, repulsive and beautifully bleak, an amazing film and a great remake as well.
Highly recommended.
Final Verdict: Java
Disclaimer: i haven’t really followed/properly engaged with the Lords Of The Rings IP basically since… the original film trilogy.
But yes, when WB puts out in theathers an animated feature lenght Lords Of The Rings movie directed by Kenji Kamiyama (GITS: Stand Alone Complex, Eden Of The East, Napping Princess, GITS Stand Alone Complex 2045, Blade Runner: Black Lotus) in anime style, my interest is EXTREMELY piqued.
Taking place 183 years before the original film trilogy, the story concerns the destiny of the Helm House, as Helm Hammerhand suffers from internal strife and is then attacked by the wild tribes in the region, united by a vengeful man named Wulf, that leads them to war, with the Helm princess Hera at the forefront, eventually forced to hole themselves in the fortress of Hornburg, that would become known as Helm’s Deep.
It’s a weird combination because there’s a lot of might and barely any magic or fantasy stuff in this LOTR animated film, the animation by Sola Entertaiment (a not so random but still weird choice) it’s honestly kinda lackluster, as they have 2D animation overlayed on CGI backgrounds that opt for some kind of high fidelity “realism”, when it’s not just cheap 3D CG, or 3D CG passing as 2D animation, with a very inconsistent quality and the feeling this was kinda rushed.
The characters being so and so and the story having to retrofit and connect with later LOTR events don’t help, but i will say direction is quite solid, even with the animation issues and uneven quality it does deliver on the spectactle and pomp, it’s still enganging and very entertaining that its long runtime doesn’t bog it down.
A decent movie, even if it’s a weird yet familiar attempt to mine the LOTR IP to the bone.
Time to close off this year’s 12 Days Of Dino Dicember with a family/children dinosaur movie, one ailing from mainland China and also fairly recent, as in released originally in 2022 as “Wo shi ba wang long”(which i assume translates to “The Tyrannosaurus Rex”, as can be seen in its original Chinese theathrical poster) but localized/released online with the “I Am T-Rex” title.
It’s also a CG animated film, because we already had plenty of no budget puppet dinosaurs, some high quality (and some low ass quality) dinosaur stop motion animation, caveman boning of the implied kind, cannibal movies sold as dinosaur flicks, pseudodocumentaries, dinosaur comedies with yellowface or comedy bits that aged like the reptiles themselves, so for the sake of variety, let’s move away from all that shizzle.
Continua a leggere “12 Days Of Dino Dicember #48: I Am T-Rex (2022)”
Wise Cafe (International) 