[EXPRESSO] Anaconda (2025) | Thunder Of The Gigantic Tropic Serpent

Yes, the Anaconda serie is back…kinda.

You might have heard of this reboot being in the works for a while, and it being as a quasi-January release here definitely did not feed any hype, not that there was any in the first place, gotta admit.

In case you didn’t, Sony decided to reboot the Anaconda franchise as a Tropic Thunder sort of dealio, not a bad idea in itself even though it already felt kinda masturbatory and “lazy” since Jack Black was already in Tropic Thunder.

This film sees some friends that meet up together and decide to actually follow up on their childhood dream of being proper directors, instead of being relegated to menial cinema-adjacent jobs like making video wedding invitations or playing tertiary one-line characters on TV shows, when one of them propose the project of rebooting Anaconda, one of their favorites.

This means not only writing the script, getting some funding, but also going to the Amazon river and hire a snake expert so they can “shoot the shit” there. But things gets messier when they find themselves involved with smugglers and actually stalked by a giant anaconda…

To be honest, this is noticeably better than i would expect it to be, it’s actually quite ok.

It would be better if it was able to be more original instead of doing again Tropic Thunder via Be Kind Rewind and if it was a bit less of a compromise between a more edgy and satirical take on meta-cinema and being also “safe for kids”, to say nothing about how it is fairly safe in the “self-poking humour” department.

But i will admit it has some surprises and it’s actually funnier than i expected, it’s decent and knows it’s for the best to keep runtime on the short side.

[EXPRESSO] Send Help (2026) | Triangle of Sodness

Sam Raimi is back to cinemas with Send Help, which tells the tale of Linda Liddle.

Linda works as strategist for her company, and has been promised a vice-president role by the late CEO and father of the current one, Bradley, but she is shunned and humiliated by him when it becomes known he will put his incompetent friend, Donovan, in charge.

He still decides to invite her to a corporate flight as a gesture before axing her, but fate has is that the plane crashes, and only Linda and Bradley survive it, finding themselves stranded on a deserted island. Linda isn’t too fazed, as she also knewn a lot of survivalist tactics and skills (enough to try her hand at competing in a survival reality show), as even back in the office she was the actual employee holding the company together with their ability to actually get shit done, much to the disgust of the nepo baby that is Bradley.

The two end up having to work together, and put together their mutual hatred in order to survive and eventually get rescued…. or not.

While the plot it’s basically a mixture of familiar beats you’ve seen before, mostly Cast Away and stuff like Triangle Of Sadness, but mashed together very well, tackling the overdone “eat the rich” angle of late (alongside the obvious themes of workplace toxicity and corporate misoginy) but with a clever and funny script, many twists and some terrific performances by Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien.

It’s also so very a Raimi movie, full of his sensibilities, which include a lot of projectile vomiting, ropes of blood shooting everywhere (to name the tamer ones), and his comedic horror sensibilites are full on display and recognizable as ever, great to have him back in full form.

Recommended!

12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 54: Jurassic Island (2022)

If you are gonna make a low budget dinosaur film, i can’t nor will stop you.

Obviously, how else i’m gonna keep doing this rubric otherwise?

Still, consider this a courtesy more than a request: please call it anything else than “Jurassic Island”. There are simply way too many films titled as such.

I understand wanting to keep the “Jurassic” in as it helps shows up in searches (and fooling someone into renting this, believing it’s one of the big budget Jurassic Park/World films), just fucking choose another noun.

Plus it is makes it sound like it’s a kids film… which is very rarely the case.

Might as well ask since it’s not like i have much to say about the plot.

So much i would be tempted to just outright skip it.

I mean, what do you think the plot for a movie called “Jurassic Island” is?

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 53: Primitive War (2025)

I wasn’t aware of Primitive War until a friend recommended looking up the trailer some time ago, and indeed it looked promising and actually kinda cool, like an actual effort and not just the usual low budget dinosaur drivel that we get nowadays.

I mean, if going for the Vietnam route worked for King Kong, it can work for a dinosaur film as well, why not? It’s at least something to shake up the formula.

And it also released earlier this year, so i didn’t have to dust this off from the crypt or something.

in 1968, during the Vietnam war, a Green Beret platoon goes missing during an operation, so a search & rescue team, named Vulture Squad, is tasked with a recon mission to locate the missing platoon, only for them to be attacked by dinosaurs.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 50: Dinosaur World (2020)

I have been doing this long enough that i could tell this is a Chinese production just by the runtime alone, as it barely 80 minutes, like most of the stuff you can find on Chinese streaming platforms like YOKOU, or their equivalent channel on Youtube.

Well, i was half right, this is a Chinese-American production by a company called Flame Node (which just has this and something called “Clutch Shot” listed on IMDB) with mostly chinese or cino-american actors in the cast, and is also streaming on Amazon Prime Video (alongside other platforms) in some territories, and it has beloved social media comedian Steven He (aka the “EMOTIONAL DAMAGE” guy), whom also did star in a tokusatsu parody series called GINORMO, apparently.

Immediatly though i had a familiar feeling with the opening scene seeing people fight off dinosaurs with blaster rifles in sci-fi corridors… like didn’t Jurassic Games did the same maze as an activity mid way through the film?

The answer is yes, and immediatly after the title splash screen, it becomes obvious that this IS another copy of Jurassic Games, just this time done with the framing of “Dinosaur World” being a VR videogame coming off of its alpha stage and putting up a 5 million prize for partecipants to the closed beta, who will be picked randomly.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Avatar: Fire And Ash (2025) | Cigarette Butts

Here we are again.

Somehow “disappointed”.

Sound silly, i know, the second one was admittedly a bit better than i expected and had some surprises in there… this one having a new Nav’i tribe of brutal savages (just short of being cannibals) isn’t enough to stave off boredom, but then again plot comes third or fourth more than usual this time around, taking a backset for just repeating almost verbatim the same plot beats of Way Of The Water, with some extra piles of new stuff that conveniently happens just because the script needs to -once again – free from capture these dumbass characters.

It’s pointless to be angry about an Avatar movie being another pile of shallow, utter nonsense, but this time around is even more boring dull nonsense that goes for a 3 hours equivalent of jiggling keys to infants, and it has framerate issues, which i don’t remember being a thing when i watched Way Of The Water in theathers just 3 years ago.

Maybe i got lucky back then, but regardless of how it looks that way, it’s distracting since it often fluctuates from looking like a big budget cutscene of a videogame, looking like we’re a HD camera feed from the set, looking actually cinematic, and so on.

It’s just insanely distracting and the added motion smoothing almost gave me a headache, and mind you, this was for a 2D screening.

I was reminded of something actually borderline unwatchable, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, but the sentiment is there, as i wonder why Cameron keeps making tech demo movies for proven tech (or telling a worthwhile plot with this astounding technological prowess), or he just doesn’t go make videogames instead.

Not that anything of this matters, as people will go see this on droves anyway.

Platformation Time Again #5: Yooka Laylee PS4

HISTORY

I’ve played Banjo Kazooie to completition. Twice.

Both on the N64 and the XBLA release pre-Rare Replay.

I’m prefacing this because i definitely fit the profile, i am the target demographic for retro plaftormers like Yooka Laylee, as i love the original Banjo Kazooie, like its sequel and even enjoyed that oversprawling excess that is Donkey Kong 64, and i love 3D collecthathon platformers from the early days of PS and Nintendo 64, especially if made by Rareware/Rare.

Heck, i love them so much i made this rubric. Twice.

When it was announced on Kickstarter, i was excited at the idea of a spiritual sequel to Banjo Kazooie, made by a team of ex-Rare employees, and they also got Grant Kirkhope back for the soundtrack. But i didn’t back it because the idea of Kickstarter and crowdfunding was still new to me, so i just waited for the game to come out.

Which eventually did, to mixed reception.

In hindsight, Yooka Laylee does deserve a spotlight and a place in the history of platforming games, but not for the reasons Playtonic might have liked.

To give some of the younger readers context, back then we were excited because Kickstarter projects would swoop in and serve a specific “niche” of games the big companies simply didn’t made anymore, as in they were chasing the more modern gaming trends of their time.

One of these “underserved niches” was definitely collecthaton platformer in the style of the late 90s and of the 3D kind, as 2D style retro platformer were already starting to get made for the audience that craved them, and aside from Nintendo franchises, 3D platformers as a whole were old hat, left behind by most of the industry as it hurled ever more into F2P monetization and “services”.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Donkey Kong Bananza NSWITCH2 | Potassium Primus

Holy banana Batman, this is some primo 3D platformers with some bonkers mesh of a Red Faction style terrain-enviroment destructibility, an 3D DK platformer (with some stylings taken from both Mario Odyssey and Bowser Fury) that plays with the open world idea without being one for the sake of it, and often feels like the recent Zelda mainline games, with climbing, falling down and how it handles challenge rooms/levels.

The plot sees DK going on a island where they’re mining a new kind of banana-gem, encountering an odd talking rock, that (in a reverse Jojolion twist) turns out to be a very young Pauline, whom DK then travels with – Wreck It Ralph style – by exploring the many layes of an abyss leading to the planet core, where a special vein of “Banandium” is located, apparently able to grant any wish, which is why the greedy Void Kong and his underlings are also after it and want Pauline for unknown reasons..

Gameplay it’s a mesh of lot of things from DK games, Mario, other Nintendo games, and a lot more, but done in a way that is original, fresh, and unique, managing to feel and play new even when old time fans might see some crazy ideas as “remixes” of old DK staples (especially from the Country series), it looks great, runs mostly well, and it’s a treasure trove of stuff to find, all fun and constantly rewarding, it’s a massive world full of secrets to find, that is also constantly fun simply indulging how you can break almost everything in a level, even more with the weird “Bananza” transformations that go from “DK SSJ4” to weird hybrids.

I will have a proper review for it down the line, let’s just say this is a Switch 2 MUST HAVE.

[EXPRESSO] Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025) | Site R

5 years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, dinosaurs didn’t quite adapt too well, with the surviving ones now living in remote off-limits islands with equatorial style climates.

A pharma company tasks a mercenary unit to visit one of these remote “dinosaur islands” in order to retrieve blood samples from 3 apex dinosaurs and helping further a medical research on preventing heart diseases… pity is that the island was also one of the lab sites for the original Jurassic Park where they tested hybrid dinos.

It’s kinda telling that they can’t-wont let of the Jurassic World name even when doing such an obvious “soft reboot” that mentions some things from previous Jurassic films but otherwise it’s a pretty straightforward self-contained story that aims to “go back to the basics”, “return to form”….. but actually pulls that off in pretty much regard, managing to get a good sense of adventure, of actual peril going on, alongside solid characters.

Having an actual renowed director and bringing back the screenwriter of Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park II helps too.

There’s nothing new that hasn’t been done before in basically any dinosaur media, but its familiar without feeling dull, and i do like some of the hybrid mutant dinos inhabiting the island.

It’s more than a notable improvement over the enjoyable but basically big budget Asylum affairs that were the previous JW films, undeniable…. but just “not being Jurassic Prey” doesn’t necessarily make Jurassic World Rebirth “good”, even if now for dino film is either this or way too homegrown shit films with a budget of 30 bucks and a ham sandwich.

I did quite like it personally, but it is kinda a curated “best of” that doesn’t adds anything new to the formula, maybe due to overabundant reverence to the source material.

[EXPRESSO] Queer (2024) | Bum Fancy

FIY, i did skip Challengers because i was kinda not feeling to see another romance movie by Guadagnino, especially one that’s also a sports drama about tennis (i wasn’t too fond of Bones And All either), but i heard of the troubled distribution Queer had, leading to just release in theathers here a few days ago, and i was curious.

Based on William Burroughs’ novel of the same name, Queer is set in 1950s Mexico City , where the protagonist, Williams Lee, a nearly middle aged gay man, lives his expat with occasionally mingling with the few people in the American community living there, having tryst with other men, until one day he meets this young new student, Eugene, whom just arrived in town, giving him hope he can finally have a real, intimate connection with someone, not just on a physical level…

as you might have assumed, it’s a virtually plotless affair, as it more a sequence of accidents and events started by Lee that “drags” Eugene into sex, drinking like a sponge, with the third act basically having the movie go jungle adventure in search of ayahuasca (because of its rumored “telepathy powers”, not to talk to Yakub), have a romantic body horror sequence then straight up propose its own junkie version of “those” notorious 2001: A Space Odissey scenes.

While i wish it ended a bit earlier than it did, to be honest i was captivated, there are indeed some performances of a lifetime here, it’s as excessive as all Guadagnino’ movies are (see also the deliberately anachronistic musical choice and swinging sense of “realism”), you expect them to be, you want them to be, and this one admittely did grab me a lot more, not great, but indeed good.

Worth a watch, at the very least.