[EXPRESSO] Joker: Foliè A Deux (2024) | Pierrot Le Bore

Cards on the table: i didn’t like the first Joker, but it was influential, and more importantly, it made money, also i guess Todd Phillips was still bummed about people calling his (mostly) garbage comedies antiquated garbage, so Joker 2 it is.

Though i will admit that, on paper, the idea of a Joker sequel taking into account the reception of the first movie, as it basically became an unintentional big budget “incel manifesto”, deliberately not giving the audience what it wants, in order to do a character assassination of the Arthur/Joker persona.. it’s quite the interesting idea.

Problem is, it does so over a grueling 2 hours and 20 minutes of Todd Philipps exposing the thesis/message that should have been obvious in the first Joker, overexplaining it over and over, now wih musical numbers that are made to be loathed by musical fans and haters alike, so overabundant and pointless are these song inserts with lyrics either too vague or on the nose.

Just to make the whole thing feel even more of a punishment, not only for the people that saw the first movie as an endorsement of Joker’s actions, as Foliè Au Deux doesn’t have anything else of substance to add or say to compensate for what it purposefully sets out to deny… probably because it would have contrasted with the need to make people hate the film (and by extension the Joker persona) on purpose.

Which it does accomplish greatly.

I almost wanna like it for its unflinching committment to its unpopolar vision, but there’s still no amount of “post-irony” that changes the fact this is a boring overly long slog, too content to having “outplayed” its audience, too happy to wallow in its own smugness on having “made a point” to care about being entertaining.

The Spooktacular Eight #18: The Dunwich Horror (1970)

We cover surprisingly little Lovecraft content, so let’s rectify that a bit with one of the earliest film adaptation of a popular tale of Mr. Racist, The Dunwich Horror, arguably one of the most well known stories of his and hence one of the most adapted alongside The Color Out Of Space, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Herbert West- Reanimator, and obviously The Call Of Cthulu.

Speaking of official adaptation, at the very least, and even so this is just the second oldest film adaptation, as Roger Corman (whom also was an executive producer here) did a loose but credited adaptation in 1963’s The Haunted Palace, part of his Edgar Allan Poe series but in this case just borrowing the name from a poem later tied to Poe’s Fall Of The House Of Usher, in reality adapting The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward.

And loose adaptation of Lovecraft’ works was the name of the game at the time, which was when his work finally started gathering popularity and beginning his revival to a staple of horror and science fiction that is today.

So since this is the first properly marketed wide spread film adaptation, i’m willing to cut it some slack as the “first (proper) try” of adapting material that struggles to be adapted in audiovisual form, we’re already had the “cosmic horror is difficult to make on film” talk before (when talking of 2001’s Dagon by Brian Yuzna, if not mistaken), i’m not gonna repeat myself this time.

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The Spooktacular Eight #17: Anthrophophagus (1980)

Somehow, we live in a world where not only Joe “Aristide Massaccesi” D’Amato’s Anthrophophagus has been remade but also received a “sequel” (after his “spiritual sequel”, Absurd). How lucky are we?

Yep, indeed, the infamous gore flick that had George Eastman as an amphibious cannibal going around a deserted and isolated Greek island, in this occasion stumbling upon a pregnant women, his equivalent of a double combo fast food menù, but after all, it’s called Anthrophophagus, the latin term for “cannibal”… unless it’s the theatherical US release, called Savage Island.

Or the very cut down UK home video release as “The Grim Reaper”, which also contains a different score, using music from Kingdom Of The Spiders.

I’d recommend looking for the Severin Blu-Ray release of the film, as it has a lot of extras, it’s a 2K restoration that improves the video quality from previous releases notably, a previously unseen deleted scenes, if you can/want.

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Resident Evil: Death Island (2023) [REVIEW] | Code Vendetta X

Since it’s still summer-ish and we won’t have time for it this october, i feel it’s time for me to complete (until a new one comes out) my coverage of the Resident Evil CG films, after tackling the Netflix CG series and then doing a retrospective on the previous CG animated films.

From the title i’d assume its either based on Code Veronica or RE Revelations 2, but nope, there are echoes of that, but this is actually a direct sequel of the last, Resident Evil: Vendetta.

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[EXPRESSO] Speak No Evil (2024) | Discord The Demon Not

Sadly i was not able to see the 2022 Danish original before this one arrived in theathres, figures we don’t get that but the Blumhouse produced american remake , and with a trailer that basically gave everything away. So due to my circumstances, i will have to judge the movie on its own, assuming the original was most likely better. At least i paid less than 4 bucks for the ticket.

(seriously, we still doing these fucking American remakes of foreign horror films?)

The premise see a London dwelling American family vacationing in Italy bond with a british one (also with a kid that has problems), later accepting the british family invitation at their house for a weekend in the English countryside.

Things… are what they seem, trailer aside, you can tell there’s something weird with these people, with red flags more and more blatant, as the movie deliberately stretches credibility hard, of how stupid can these people get in spite of so many “heavy hints”.

All obviously to comment on how we bend ourselves to avoid conflict, about the overimportance given to manners over values. which is ironic because when the mask falls off and the british family goes full blown psycho, it makes like all the charade before kinda pointless, because it led exactly to what you’d expect, to something like The Strangers, but without having any twist, not doing anything clever with it, nor doing anything graphic at all, and overexplaining itself too many times.

There’s basically no scares because of these, but thanks to some strong performances, especially James McAvoy’s that basically salvages the whole thing, and a competent direction by James Watkins (The Lady In Black, Eden Lake),.it’s somehow just mediocre, if it didn’t have those it would crumble in complete subpar, untintentionally hilarious farce.

Parasite Dolls (2003) [REVIEW] | Bubblegum Boomers

Wanted to get around to this for years, as i distinctly remember its cover displaying in the anime section of pretty much any video stores here in “Da Boot” back in the 2000s, and also being pretty featured or sold online. The power of anime cyberpunk and early CG.

Curiously, i’m not really familiar with the series this being a spin-off for, Bubblegum Crisis, which may sound sacrilegious to many, but i never saw as it was distributed on VHS at the time here too, but it was never pushed as much as others, at least as far i remember, i was a more casual anime fan back then and i would have been busy catching localized broadcasts of Dragon Ball, Hokuto No Ken/Fist Of The North Star and -especially – Ranma ½ anyway.

Parasite Dolls does feel immediatly like a product of the late 90s early 2000s, as in it’s not a feature film per sè, not a compilation film of 3-4 episodes, but an anthology/mini series of 3 stories set after the events of the original Bubblegum Crisis OAV series.

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Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2 (2024) [REVIEW] | Farewell To The Flush

I was gonna delay this review… but i really don’t wanna have to put this one on The Spooktacular Eight (never gonna happen) this year or having to deal with it in 2025, so might as well catch up to the “Twisted Childhood Universe” and see how the story continues.

And i do genuinely mean “continues” because the first one didn’t so much ended as simply stopped, so half-assed was even in sequel-baiting itself, i guess because there was no more money to make it 90 minutes long, those mask really ate into the budget, or maybe not.

So yeah, in a stupid way there was even more reason to continue a story they didn’t finish telling properly (as if they didn’t planned like this, but whatever), so Blood and Honey 2 – i’m gonna use this short-hand from now – continues the merry tale that someone had make into a slasher, with Christopher Robin surviving and coming back to civilization to tell everyone of what happened…. with the expected and logical result of anyone – aside from some of its close friends and family – believing that he has gone cuckoo and maybe even murdered those girls himself.

Regardless, the incident is eventually dubbed as the “Hundred Acre Massacre” and they even make an horror film adaptation out of it, ruining Christopher Robin’s medical career and reputation even worse, basically making him a reject, a “pooh pariah” if you will.

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Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey (2023) [REVIEW] | Public Domain Expansion

I knew of this one, and that i eventually will have to feature it here, and i guess the moment arrived for me to actually see the damn thing when they – almost to my surprise – localized it for Halloween 2023, and put it as an Amazon Prime Video streaming exclusive.

Which does remind one of the state of the service itself, but whatever, it’s basically free, not beholden to another paid subscription within Prime Video, they bothered to even dub it, let’s not post-pone the inevitable any further.

“Inevitable” since this movie’s only reason for existing is the original Winnie The Pooh’s book falling into public domain in the US in January 2022.

So let’s be honest, sooner or later someone was simply gonna do this movie, i mean, the public domain slide is why we have so many unrelated Amytiville movies, for example.

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[EXPRESSO] Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) | Like Deets, Like That

I was a bit wary, given the current fever for having legacy sequels of every conceivable IP (fuck, even Twister got one), but i was pleasantly surprised with a sequel that (mostly) is Burton in peak form and demonstrates these kind of follow-ups can actually be done quite well.

The plot sees the Deets family return to their old home in the city of Winter River, after Lydia, while recording an episode of her supernatural TV talk show, sees the ghost of Betelgeuse in the audience (that caused trouble for them 36 years ago) and to hold the funeral for her father, Charles.

Lydia brings along her estranged daughter, Astrid, whom stumbles upon the diorama in the attic and eventually evokes Betelgeuse, also in need of help as he’s now being chased by his psycho undead ex-wife, Delores (Monica Bellucci)….

And here actually lies the biggest issue in the film, it’ s as if they feared there were never gonna make Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, so they crammed one or two or three too many subplots in there without elating the runtime, meaning some feel (and are) a bit undercooked, like the entire one about Betelgeuse’s ex-undead wife feels like it should receive more screentime, but doesn’t.

Despite the slightly messy plot, it’s actually pretty fun, the style is immaculate Burton (still using excellent practical effects and stopmotion animation, too), they even go a bit wilder with the graphic jokes since they now can, the tone and humour perfectly match the original and are still strong, even if more retrò, more quaint than actually edgy by now (which was kind to be expected, to be blunt), and the cast it’s great, for both returning and new characters, especially Keaton that seems to have never left the set of the 1988 film.

[EXPRESSO] MaxXxine (2024) | La Sexorcisto, Volume 3

The last chapter of the X trilogy by Ti West, Maxxxine, has finally hit theathers.

FIY, i didn’t see Pearl (the prequel to X before going into Maxxxine, as it sadly never came out in theathers here (just direct to video), i had it on my “to watch list”, but i got sidetracked and stuff.

This is to say that you can go directly to see this after X, as it follows up the survivor girl, Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), now in the 1980s, with her wanting to break away from pornographic films (after a lot of success in the field) and break into the regular cinema biz, managing to finally get a part in a horror movie sequel, The Puritan II, during the height of the “Satanic Panic” scare, as a serial killer named “The Night Stalker” keeps murdering young women in the Hollywood hills…

Ti West once again does an excellent job of balancing out the period piece vibes (sleazy as expected and desired), the direct horror references and tributes, the cultural background of the making movie biz at the time, all without forgetting to deliver likeable characters, excellent gore effects and graphic content (including a Cannibal Ferox pre-cannibalism treatment, let’s just put it that way), a familiar but still enganging slasher storyline, with an excellent cast that also includes Elizabeth Debicki as the “Puritan II” movie director and Kevin Bacon as a sleazy ass private investigator.

It knows exactly how to please fans of the genre, how to play the retro card, and does so without ever feeling patronizing, it just knows exactly what it wants and does it with gusto, with convinction, with genuine love and passion for the subject matter, yet avoiding it being overly referential (or downright masturbatory) for its own sake.

Quite good.