Pulling Out, The Early Dicember Academic Break and The January Void (not part of the Wizarding World)

So, i had a rewritten/revised/expanded review of the GITS Stand Alone Complex PSP game ready for the next weekly review (which would have dropped today) … but then i remembered there’s a new Ghost In The Shell anime in the work by Science Saru coming in 2026, so there’s an idea for a GITS retrospective, maybe not as comprehensive i’d wish, but we’ll see.

Hence that review will be “hoarded” and i will release two EXPRESSO reviews of the Metal Slug spin-offs most recent releases, upon which i had been sitting for some months because i couldn’t find the right timing. … this ain’t it, but you’ll get both, so rejoice.

You’ll also get the EXPRESSO review for The Gladiator 2, i had setbacks but i plan to see it ASAP.

On a more christmas-y note, due to academic woes and other IRL stuff i won’t disclose, i will be taking off the first 2 weeks of December, resume on the 15th with a review of some garbage trash movie, another full review a week later, then on the 25th until we’ll kick off this year’s 12 Days Of Dino Dicember, ending on January 6th, after which there won’t be any full review until February, due to similar issues.

I might search in my backlog and see if there’s some rewrites to be done as i would like to bring over here my full catalogue, but i don’t want to simply translate into english my ol’ crap, it’s boring for me as well. We’ll see.

The Spooktacular Eight #24: Mother Joan Of The Angels (1961)

Let’s conclude this year’s Spooktacular Eight by reviewing the 1960 Polish classic Mother Joan Of The Angels, also known as The Devil And The Nun.

Based on the real, documented case of demonic possession (or mass hysteria, let’s be real) that affected the nuns and took place in 1634 at a convent in Loudlun, France… well, indirectly, as it actually based on a novel of the same name by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz (which would later by adapted by Kent Russell for the infamous The Devils), itself loosely based on the aforementioned Loudlun possessions.

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[EXPRESSO] Megalopolis (2024) | Golden Experience Requiem

Megalopolis it’s Francis Ford Coppola doing a more modern take on Metropolis, basically, just with the city of the future being a New York-Imperial Rome hybrid, and the framing of “a fable by Francis Ford Coppola” setting the angle right… but that won’t really soften the blow.

The plot sees New Rome, a city split between tradition, embodied by the city mayor Cicero, and innovation, represented by Catalina, a genius architect willing to seek a new better way, with the crux of the conflict incarnated by Cicero’s daugher, Julia, whom falls in love with Catalina.

Aside from the opening really making you feel like you tuned into the movie 1 hour in (which is a costant all throughout, btw), and the implication of Adam Driver’s character having a time-stopping Stand power of sorts…the movie is a mess, it’s a long, sprawling, unwieldy mess of scattered plotlines (some never resolved by the end), trippy imagery, pretense of being profound when its all so utterly blunt it’s almost comical, and even when you do where the hell is going, it’s hard to care, with too many characters (though that would imply “characterization”), the starfilled cast having no chemistry, bad dialogues, and the direction that makes it all feel like they’re rehearsing for when they gonna actually shoot the scene… doesn’t help.

It’s not boring, at the very least, but it’s an hilarious damning moment when the best scene of a Francis Ford Coppola film is John Voight as an old gajillionaire shooting Shia Labeuf in the ass with a bow. Twice.

It’s a weird, messy, disjointed vision that becomes outright bizzarre with these Hollywood high production values and quality cinematography, so in a way, it’s a fascinating bad movie from a legendary director, the kind that don’t come around so often anymore.

The Spooktacular Eight #21: The Awful Doctor Orloff (1962)

Ah, good ol’ Jess Franco, the master of lesbian vampire action, the exploitation master from Spain that both film dozens of softcore trash but also worked with Christopher Lee as either a vampire or the old villian Fu Manchu, that deals in adaptations of Marquis De Sade but also completed the previously (and unfamously) unfinished Orson Welles version of Don Quixote.

I really can’t do him justice, but i did pick one of the films from before he really declined and put out some really atrocious stuff, like the final entries in the Fu Manchu series (the Castle Of Fu Manchu being the subject of a popular MST3K episode ), shit like Dracula VS Frankenstein, or even pseudosequels that cannibalizzed on Franco own’s Dr. Orloff series with reused stock footage to make in name only adaptations of Poe works, in particular his The Revenge in The House Of Usher, which is a mess and a half since it has 3 different cuts (often having different titles as well). 2 of which reuse even more footage from this 1962 Dr. Orloff film that started the series.

But let’s pretend we do not yet know of this, and let’s talk plot.

Which is not quite original, as it’s an amalgamation of Frankenstein and french classic Eyes Without A Face (especially the latter), as the titular Dr. Orloff attracts young women to his castle so he can harvest her skin with the help of a disfigured, blind assistant/henchman named Morpho (a Mighty Monarch approved name indeed).

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[EXPRESSO] The Zone Of Interest (2023) | Heil Honey I’m Home

Jonathan Glazer’s film about the Holocaust won the Oscar for best screenplay, that much is true, but given El Conde received a similar nomination at last year’s Venice Film Festival, i wasn’t really sold on the movie because of that, but regardless i finally managed to catch a screening.

And this honestly surpassed my expectations.

Loosely based on the novel of the same name by Martin Amis (itself based partially on real events), The Zone Of Interest is about the life of Auschwitz SS commander Rudolf Hoss and his family, as they live in a home in the titular “zone of interest” that places them meters away from the concentration camp itself, so close that you can see prisoners go in and out the camp to do chores, and hear the many atrocities committed there.

The plot focuses on the Hoss family life and the drama that Rudolf having to move to another outpost causes them, while they fully believe the Nazi creed through and through, all to further enunciate the abhorrent reality of the concentration camps and the Nazi war machine while we never even move outside of their house, let alone enter Auschwitz.

And this slice of life apporeach it’s indeed perfect to fully expose the “banality of evil” at the heart of it, it’s a glacial remind there’s no need to shock people when its far worse to remind us the Holocaust wasn’t run by a small gaggle of evil demon warlords alone, but was also accepted by regular people, and reminded that it was also run by capitalism as everything else, with architects calmly discussing with Rudolf Hoss the plans of how to costruct the more efficient, cost-saving method of massacre, while his wife idly chats over tea with her friends in another room.

Noteworthy indeed.

Cyclops (2008) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

The cyclops is one of the more unrepresented monsters, sure, it’s usually thrown in there if it there’s an adventure in ye old Greece of myth and monsters, alongside the usual suspects, in both videogames and movies, now that i think about it.

Then again, it’s ultimately just a variation of the giant archetype, but even so, the cyclops really hasn’t had much representation even in the monster movie genre and its many iterations even on overlyspecific types of killer animals.

Sure, there’s Dr Cyclops, but that’s just the stupid title given to basically the forerunner of the “shrinking people” trend of the ’40-50s, not that Bert I. Gordon’s The Cyclops from 1957 is any better, as they basically had the same guy of his War Of The Colossal Beast as the “cyclops”, quotiations marks because the monster’s face (or the actor’s make up/mask) is supposed to be melted off on due to radiation shit, so he has basically a “flesh bang” and only eye still visible, here’s your “cyclops”, looks like he fell face first into a barrel of radioactive cheese but didn’t get signed up by Troma for a series, so he slums into his own film alongside a disgraced Lon Chaney Jr.

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[EXPRESSO] The Three Musketeers Part II: Milady (2023) | Into The Dumasverse

More Muskeeters of the non-Mickey Mouse variety with part 2 of the new French big budget film adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ enduring classic, which i mistakenly assumed was a two parter and called it that in the review of the first film…. and yet it still IS a two parter, and it, with this second film focusing on the figure of Milady De Winters and covering basically all the way up to the novel’s finale.

Makes sense, and that much is true, but the script changes some things around and we have it basically ending on a cliffhanger ending… but apparently not for a “Three Muskeeters Part 3”, though many forget this is the first of a series of books about D’Artagnan and fellas, and apparently there are some spin-offs in the works, so yep, most likely this is the set-up for a “Dumas-verse”.

That said, this “part 2” is a good continuation, the energy and intensity to the fight scenes of the first part is still there, Eva Green as Milady gets a good bout as the anti-heroine Milady, and there’s quite the fun to be had still, but sadly it feels kinda rushed, even more than the first part, as some character that were set up to be important barely have a sub-plot or do anything of relevance to do, and i won’t deny at times i felt, if not lost, a bit hurried along the many characters, conspirancies, plans and such, to the point you can follow it but barely.

It there ever was a movie that could have used half a hour of extra runtime, this is one, because it could have actually benefitted from it in a noticeable way, and made this second part as good as the first one instead of decent if messy.

[EXPRESSO] The Iron Claw (2023) | Dynasty Warriors

Wrestling films are nothing new, but sure as hell i’m more curious when we have A24 distribute a wrestling film, but aside from that initial marketing hook, there’s actually a fascinating tale here that i feel isn’t famous or overly familiar to most outside of the wrestling community, because i have a very passing interest in the thing and i didn’t know the story of this wrestling family at all.

The Iron Claw tells the story of the Von Eirich family, with the father Fritz gathering notoriety in Texas and adjacent wrestling leagues (his signature move being the titular “Iron Claw” head grab) in the early 80s, and him basically founding a wrestling dynasty, as he trains all his sons to be wrestlers themselves, subjecting them to a strict training all together, so one day the belt of world wrestling champion will fall in the hand of the family, and also to make them stronger, tougher, in the hope they don’t get hit by the so called “curse” that struck all the previous Von Eirich family members.

While it focuses mostly on the oldest surviving son, Kevin (Zac Efron), the movie tells of the family ascension through the ranks of the violently competitive business of professional wrestling, the behind the scenes side of the sport in its pre-corporate era, its victories and the human toll that the father’s quest for his wrestling dynasty demands, due to his constant pushing for supremacy at all costs that he allegedly did to avoid the very same tragedies that ultimately befall his children.

The cast (including a truly transformed Zac Efron) is nothing short of stellar, the performances amazing, and the emotional punch delivered by the emphasis on tragedy doesn’t preclude some positive light shining and breaking through the toxic deadlock of their “fate”.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #35: Walking With Dinosaurs 3D (2013)

Figured we would eventually feature a dinosaur documentary film into Dino Dicember somewhat…. not yet, because we’re not talking about the BBC’s prolific and historically signifcant series of dinosaur documentaries, we’re talking about the movie based on those.

Which doesn’t mean much since i didn’t grow up seeing that BBC miniseries, quite odd given i was interested in dinosaurs as a boy, and you can bet by me making a recurring yearly rubric about the dinos, i still am.

Though doing some research on the BBC series made me wonder why the fuck was the point of making a movie when the series’ main appeal, one that would influence later prehistoric life documentaries, the idea of making a traditional nature documentary but using advanced state of the art CG to recreat the extinct creatures that once romped n stomped on planet Earth.

Exactly the kind of concept that really doesn’t need to have a plot attached, but i guess because any IP of some success has to have a movie, even just to remind people that the series still exist.

And to make some movie tie-in videogames, because dino moolah.

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[EXPRESSO] Napoleon (2023) | House Of Bonaparte

A new, modern Ridley Scott movie with very split reception, must be a day of the week.

I’ll be frank, i did enjoy House Of Gucci, but i would be lying if i was posivitely surprised by Ridley Scott’s take on a Napoleone Bonaparte historical biopic.

It’s not outright bad, but there’s definitely something wrong when the script manages to almost fumble Joaquin Phoenix playing Napoleon, the performance is great as expect, the problem is that Napoleon is written like a ruffian, pillage-happy tyrant lacking any finesse or complexity, making it harder to believe him as the tactical war mastermind he was, not helped by some scenes that i don’t believe were meant to be funny, but are.

Which is not a small issue for the protagonist of a historical biopic, one that here clearly depicted to be pathetic and petty above anything else, like the usual stock comical depiction of Napoleon… which doesn’t gel with everything else we’re told and shown, so comes off as transparently biased and confusing portrayal of the character that fails to be interesting or in-depth.

As expected it’s a fairly lenghty affair that depicts Napoleon from his early rise to power as a young army officer for France to his crowning as Emperor, until his exile and death, all with a focus on his relationship with Empress Josephine.

Even ignoring the many, deliberate and sometimes really obvious for everyone historical innacuracies. (which i personally don’t care much about)… it just feels lacking, bloated and sometimes kinda random as we skip from event, with years going by and no one looking any older, or with very few of the battles getting any extended focus as the campal magniloquent massacres you expect, but nothing to really write home about for this tier of epics.

Sadly disappointing.