12 Days Of Dino Dicember #32: Bikini Girls VS Dinosaurs (2014)

It was either this or Picha’s The Missing Link, this won out due to snags in the schedule, either way we’re gonna talk about banging and dinosaurs, not the two together because no thanks, not this year anyway, not feeling it.

Decided to review this one hoping for a modern throwback to old cavemen/dinosaurs movies like The Wild Women Of Wongo, heck, even the similarly titled but not actually related soft porn spoof/parody Bikini Girls On Dinosaur Planet, but this is not the case.

We’ve entered the “Polonia-sphere” equivalent of such ideas, as in it dresses itself in all the post-modern meta self-deprecating facade of disinterestinly using the Star Wars text crawl to vaguely explain but actually not the premise, just so we can cut to a very Turkish Star Wars levels of production sequence of the three protagonists fighting rebels, as in if Star Wars was made with some of the cheapest effects free video software from the early 2000s could afford and was basically an e-girls with Logitech flight controllers vs Sith streamers standoff of DIY cockpits.

All rendered with the computer graphics of a mid 90’s console game 3D cutscene, and that is being generous, since the Wing Commander series existed.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 30: Jurassic Prey (2015)

In case you ever wanted Dino Dicember to crossbred with Shark Month, here’s your goddamn unholy wish granted, because not even dinosaurs are immune to papermacie.

As luck (or lack there of) would have it, there is a Mark Polonia produced (and directed) dinosaur flick, once again brought into the world by Wild Eye Releasing.

I could have ignored this one, but i feel like i would be haunted somewhat if i didn’t cover it this year… and my appetite for punishment it unsatiable as ever, plus this one has an even worse metascore on IMDB than i expected, below the 2 out 10, what are we waiting for, LET’S GOOOOOOOO!

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 29: Jurassic Hunt (2021)

I don’t know what it is about dinosaur movies with “Hunt” in the title that makes them suck, but it seems like a recurring theme…… wait, not really, Triassic Hunt was one of the better ones spat out by The Asylum, and to honest this one actually reminds me a little more of Jurassic Attack/Rise Of The Dinosaurs, due the outdoors locations being at the forefront, the mercenary squad sent out with a mission and the cheapo-depo levels of production, being one of those Dazzler Entertaiment distributed titles that immediatly scream “we filmed this in a national park or something”.

the plots sees the cast of Shock Troopers (or more accurately, its Data East knock-off) fighting dinosaurs into a hunting area designed exactly to be a secretive location where the game is jurassic, while “megane Regina from Dino Crisis” tags along and can’t stop giving away that she isn’t there for the actual dino hunt and that she’s basically working undercover to document the whole thing.

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[EXPRESSO] Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom (2023) | Wrath Of Black Manta

I quite enjoyed the first Aquaman film, a phrase i’d never expect to write down ever, so yeah, why not a sequel, which thankfully ignores all the DCEU reboot kerfluffle.

No need to known any of that, just having watched the first film, and in this direction continuation we see Arthur Curry having trouble living his double life as a father taking care of his son on the surface, and having to deal with the taxing diplomatic duties of Aquaman, king of Atlantis.

While trying to fix his suit and continue his quest for revenge against Aquaman, David Kane (aka Black Manta) discovers an underwater set of ruins in Antarctica, finding a mystical trident and a material known as Orichalcum, which he uses to power his newfound stash of Atlantean technology also lying in the ruins…

This leads to climate change-based disasters, forcing Aquaman to secretly free its previously imprisoned half-brother Orm in order to find Black Manta and stop his plans…

James Wan it’s back on the director’s chair, and he does manage to expand on the worldbuilding, with many varied locations (including the titular lost kingdom), squeezing a lot of story, action scenes, while also making Black Manta more the proper villain than the “accidental” one it was in the first movie, though that’s kinda undermined by the revelations about the Black Trident.

Which i don’t mind too much since it lets Wan infuse some horror elements in the mix, i’m always up for that, and the movie does manage to fit a lot in 2 hours while feeling just long enough.

Maybe it’s not better than the first, but it’s still a lot of fun, dumb fun, if you must, with a hearthy attitude about action fantasy superhero shenanigans that aims to give the viewers its all.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 27: Planet Raptor (2007)

Raptors: the second fiddle of the dinosaur orchestra.

(The third being the pterodactyls, btw)

Nothing beat the word “raptor” as a way to get your attention when scrolling through the channels in a boring saturday afternoon, or while searching trashy TV movies that just couldn’t come up with a weird or catchy title able to shoehorn a pun with “t-rex” or “dinosaur”, so “raptor [noun]” it is.

This also happens to be the “sequel” to another SyFy Channel mandated dino flick, Raptor Island, which we covered last year, so it’s no wonder it has alternative titles like Raptor Island 2: Planet Raptor, and shit like that, but it’s also unsurprising how sketchy are its claims of being a sequel to that other movie. It’s just part of the package to lie in this regard for this TV dino movies.

And it’s also “a sequel but not really” in the same way these usually are, with one or two actors from that previous one and it being shot in the same – kind of cheaper foreign country (this time the woods of Bulgaria take a rest so the Romanian ones can “swap in”), that’s all in terms of thing carried over, as the director is different (this time at the helm we have Gary Jones, of Mosquito, Spiders and some episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess fame) and the plots don’t really connect.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 25: Wolf Tracer’s Dinosaur Island (2004)

Yes, i did get to know this was ever a thing thanks to SaberSpark’s Youtube channel, i decided to eventually dig into the matter myself and do my own research, though it’s kinda hard not to step on each other’s feet, so to speak, when this one is connected to another infamous “target” for contents creators on Youtube, as in this is also by Colin Slater, better known for the christmas trashfire of Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe In Santa, featuring the meme gold of “Grandma speaking APYR”.

Because this is how internet legends are born, kids, though it helps when comparisons of your movie to Foodfight that make that mess look like a TRIGGER studio masterpiece.. ain’t wrong.

But does Promare have Mark Hamill in it? Didn’t think so.

Welcome to the super amateur hour, where shit that could barely pass as a college boy first draft for an animation in the late 90s is put out as an officially finished product, though both projects, Rapsittie Street Kids and today’s Dinosaur Island, both made by Colin Slater’s Wolftracer Studios, were considered lost media. despite Rapsittie Street Kids actually airing on tv. Even if just once.

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Open Letter to Dino-Santa

hello Santa, it’s me, again.

“Again” to a certain extent, i haven’t written a letter to Santa since decades, so i’ll be brief and quick, he has to bring coal to Darkseid each year, and i have this year’s 12 Days Of Dino Dicember starting tomorrow.

I have been a reasonable boy this year, so henceforth i ask the following petty and first world requests:

-a new, proper 2D run and gun Metal Slug videogame that isn’t a mobile gacha spin-off or remake tied to a mobile platform stuffed with microtransactions up to tank’s exhaust, i love turn based tactical strategy games and Metal Slug Tactics is looking mighty good, but it’s still not got even a vague release date and updates are still MIA, so yeah, the new SNK could actually employ a studio to develop a proper console/pc mainline Metal Slug game. It’s been a while, more than enough to create demand.

Otherwise, i would settle for an actual outside of arcades releases of Dolphin Blue.

-Please do not let the new One Piece anime remake/series redo by Wit Studio be using AI art to avoid paying people the meager anime industry salaries, i don’t care if Oda is fascinated, i just hope he grows out of it, alongside the rehabiliting of his colleagues and teachers that did not deserve such a thing, since we’re asking.

we can’t be perfect, but we can avoid falling for every cheap ass scam that goes around.

-Speaking of which, can we reroll this economic system to one where i can afford a house and can actually retire instead of dying on the job?

Also, a new Gundam Musou would be very welcome.

That will do.

Regards.

[EXPRESSO] Diabolik 3: Diabolik, Chi Sei? (2023) | Flashback Finale

Teased at the end of Ginko Attacks!, the new and final movie of the Manetti Bros. Diabolik trilogy recently hit theathers here, titled “Diabolik- Chi Sei?” (Diabolik, Who Are You?).

Given how i loathed Ginko Attacks, i watched the new film mostly for completition’s sake… and this one it’s a little better, but it has its own set of issues.

The plot sees a new criminal gang arise in Clarville, proving to be even more ruthless than Diabolik itself, much to the dismay of officer Ginko, whom loses one of his most trusted men to the gang, and is later held hostage… alongside a captive Diabolik. So its up to Ginko’s love interest, Countess Altea, to seek help from Diabolik’s partner in life & crime, Eva Kant, in order to save them.

Sounds decent but the idea it’s undermined by how quickly this new gang can capture Diabolik, the supposed master of crime, how once again most of the work is up to Eva Kant more than Diabolik itself, even worse this time around, as Diabolik’s main contribution is chatting with Ginko and telling him his origin story. In the third fuckin movie of the trilogy, mind you.

The origin story itself it’s more interesting than the actual plot of the movie, which feels thin, so why not at this point spend a third of the movie on that to reach a 2 hours runtime. The kinda anticlimactic actual resolution of the whole gang subplot doesn’t help either.

Like the other two modern Diabolik movies, this one too perfectly captures the style and mood of the comics, but it kinda forgots you maybe should adapt the decades old stories for modern audiences, or actually try to improve them for the big screen.

This one it’s mediocre and not much else.

[Resident Evil Live Action Film Retrospective] #7: Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City (2021)

When the first trailer for this reboot of the Resident Evil film series was revealed, the reception was kinda split, and i guess it was in part because over time people learned to enjoy the crappy Paul W.S . Anderson films for what they were, liked their brand of cinematic cheese and overall embraced their “so bad they’re charming” nature.

And i do agree that there’s something comforting, especially in retrospective, about them, for all the flaws and plots that had barely anything to do with the ones in the Resident Evil videogames themselves, they did manage to faithfully recapture the B-movie feel of the games (itself borrowed from many zombie B-movies) in their own way, while hindsight confirm they were products of their time indeed, in this case from an era where film adaptations of videogames had a bad reputation about them, quite different from today’s perception, with an Uncharted movie released and a Gran Turismo film that at the time of writing is just a month away from hitting theathers.

Times have indeed changed, so it’s not that much of a surprise to see Capcom (itself a different company from the confused and “appeal to the west” driven mess of back when the Milla Jovovich led film series was still going) opt for a reboot film instead of trying to follow up from a film that indeed was called Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and indeed served as closure. Kinda.

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[Resident Evil Live Action Film Retrospective] 4#: Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

By now it was official and expected to get a new Resident Evil film sequel every 3 years, and in like clockwork in 2010 arrived Resident Evil: Afterlife, the fourth one, which also brought back to directing Paul W.S. Anderson, whom passed around the director duties after the first one, but was always writing the scripts, and as we will see, he would stick around for the rest of the film series as director & writer of his wife fanfic adventures in this Resident Evil canon.

And since we passed the third entry already, i guess they felt necessary to also go the 3D route, as the entire movie was shot this way, for obvious gimmicky (and lucrative) reasons, with the obvious parts meant for 3D as easy to notice in 2D as usual.

We immediatly continue from where Extinction left off, with multiple Alice clones attacking the Tokyo Umbrella hideout as promised, wielding kunai, double uzi, double katanas, and their psionic power, so yeah, Anderson it’s so obviosly and strongly back at the wheel, for better or worse, and it’s definitely not in the mood for hotdogging, so we jump straight into the bombastic action at the beginning, we’ll do the exposition and new and returning characters later.

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