[EXPRESSO] Nuremberg (2025) | Nazi Turnabout

A historical court drama about the behind the scenes of the Nuremberg trails, where the surving architects of the Nazi regime are put on trial for crimes against humanity for the Holocaust.

An army psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), is tasked with looking after the mental well being of Hermann Goering (Russell Crowe), Hitler’s second in command, alongside the other surviving Nazi hierarchs, while the Allies investigates and discuss why this trial should be even done in the first place.

Kelley, also hoping to write a book about the vents (and in turn maybe understand the psychological proceeding that led the Nazis to previously unseen amount of efficient evil), forms a bond with Goering…

While one might argue this comes at the right time, when we’re seeing history on the verge of repeating again (for the worse), one might say it’s a bit too little and that maybe, given the current geopolitical state, we should have skipped the trial, but this just isn’t that kind of film.

This is an old fashion history drama that’s fairly unpretentious and uninterested in being artsy or provocative, as it mostly wants to educate people while entertaining them, and basically exists as a vehicle for actors to try and get an Oscar out of it.

Not necessarily “bad bait” when it gives us a really outstanding performance by Crowe as the charimastic yet subtly manipulative Goering, as he and Kelley have this “Hannibal-Lecter-Graham” style relationship going on, though Malek’s performance (while not necessarily bad) just isn’t as good as Crowe’s, and oddly the sequences at the stand are kinda brief, despite the build up to them.

That said, it also goes by swimmingly, despite it’s 2 hours and 40 minutes runtime, so it’s good, even if old fashioned, but not necessarily lesser for it.

Final Verdict: Expresso

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.

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[EXPRESSO] Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man (2025) | Crusader: No Remorse

Sorry for this being later than planned, got sidetracked.

No limited theatherical screening for this one in my area, as with Del Toro’s Frankenstein. Bummer.

Master detective Benoit Blanc is back again for the third Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, called upon to investigate another impossible murder mystery, this time teaming up with a zealous young priest to solve the mysterious murder in the church of a sleepy small town, itself harboring a sordid past that’s about to be uncovered.

If Glass Onion was a huge piss take on not-Elon Musk and his ilk, Wake Up Dead Man goes to a more classic murder mystery scenario type, the religion themed ones, foregoing taking the piss of techbros for taking on the modern realities for the Church and its struggles with new realities, that often are rejected and taken in stride to be more regressive, to harbor hateful, homophobic, fascist-spirited circlejerks of zealots ready to fight the “holy war on the heathens”.

As in, we don’t eat the rich, we eat the bigots as well, makes sense.

This time around we aren’t dropped into the aftermath but we spent a good amount of time characterizing the young priest struggle against the local monsignor and depicting the various, utterly despicable-pitiable soon-to-be-suspects, as Daniel Craig’s character doesn’t show up until 40 minutes in. He’s slightly less fancy this time around, but still a great genre savvy quirky genius detective as ever.

It helps this sequel (though like Glass Onion this can be enjoyed on its own) stand out for itself, which is kinda needed since it’s the third Knives Out film, and in short it’s indeed more of the same, it is what we’ve come to expect from the series, but damn, it’s still quite good, funny and fairly witty stuff.

[EXPRESSO] The Thing With Feathers (2025) | Corvus Surplus

At first i thought this was the marketing trying to trojan horse this Benedict Cumberbatch movie as a horror film when in reality it was a thriller or something… and i almost wish it was the case.

Based on the short novella “Grief Is The Thing With Feathers” by Max Porter, this movie adaptation sees a recently widowed husband, left to raise his two kids after his wife suddendly passes away, and he has a breakdown, leading to him allucinating the giant crow-man from his drawings (he works as an illustrator for children books), which starts mocking his anguish but eventually become visible to his children too, and an oddly supportive force there to help the family move past their loss.

It’s like a benign take on Babadook, yet again, but the problem is that the film, despite good intentions and Cumberbatch trying his best, the characters and grief drama are so overdone, one note, and it being a horror does not help the concept, since it just goes for some cliched, cheap visuals and ill-fitting jumpscares, just a mesh of horror elements as token as the grief drama ones.

On one hand, i do like the scenes with the giant crowman, i do, even if just for visual entertaiment, since they do undermine any attempt at making the drama itself work, but on the other hand, the drama is undercooked anyway and it’s just too nice to work as a horror film either, so it feels stuck in between, not helped by the fact it’s also a bit of slog that goes exactly where you’d think it would, and just repeats itself over and over.

I don’t think this is a bad film, it means well, it tries but sadly it just doesn’t work either way you slice it.

[EXPRESSO] Lupin The IIIrd The Movie: The Immortal Bloodline (2025) | Mystery Of Monkey

So, i did decide to just go see this new Lupin The 3^rd film for funsies, i mean, i sure do love me some Lupin (and it’s a freakin institution here in Italy, so it’s already screening here), and is directed by Takeshi Koike, of Redline fame, i am in.

Problem is, i haven’t really kept up with Lupin many anime iterations, i’m more of a casual enjoyer, and this is meant as the conclusion of Koike’s “Lupin the IIIrd” subseries, maybe a send off for the character of Lupin itself, as it also takes story elements from the very first Lupin The 3^rd movie, The Mistery Of Mamo.

Not that you needed this digest as the movie does a handy recap, which also makes it obvious this isn’t a random Lupin movie at all, but for what concerns this film, is about Lupin & the gang being lured into an uncharted island by someone that knows them very well, and forced to face not only the island venomous mists, but an apparently immortal being known as “Muom”….

I don’t know if this will actually be the last Lupin III film ever, doubt it, but it’s the first one in 30 frigging years made in traditional animation, and it sure as hell looks great, even with the occasional 3D CG bits for the monsters, it’s very stilish, the action is great, but it’s also lacking on plot and character development, despite the very strong start the pacing also suffers as soon as the story does, so it ends up being “almost good” but nothing feels properly developed, more focused on being stylish old school pulp action (more serious in tone than “classic Lupin”), which it is still fun, but the film does ultimately suffer from it.

Decent, but kinda disappointing.

[EXPRESSO] The Running Man (2025) | Twitch Rage

In this era of remakes and reboot, this is one that makes some sense, especially since the older film adaptation of the Stephen King novel (originally published under the “ Richard Bachman” pseudonym) was a fun 80s slice of “Golden Age Schwarzenegger” beefcake action, more heady than the actor usual fare, but not much so, as its revels in being the very kind of thing its supposedly satirizes, with by the plot’s premise of a far future dystopia where a fascist state pacifies the masses via a reality tv bloodsport, The Running Man.

Here indesiderables and anyone that doesn’t obey is labeled a criminal and terrorist, pitted against a gaggle of chasing units, with the task of surviving as long as they can, while there is a “snitches get riches” for civilians reporting – or killing yo’ ass, with a billion dollars prize money for “runner” surviving against all odds and hunting units sent after them, all live on national television.

This version has the protagonist being an enraged father that has been blacklisted from most workplaces for trying to have justice and unionization, signing up for the Running Man show so he can rack up money needed to cure his daughter, and maybe even give his family a better life outside the slums.

It’s a more faithful adaptation of the story, and honestly it’s just a far better film, actually timely in this moment where the dystopian sci-fi futures are pretty much undistinguishable from reality, flying cars aside, with what were once charicatures being plausible, while still delivering lots of bombastic blockbuster action, stylish use of “oldies” for the soundtrack and embodiying the current – and apt- sentiment of “fuck you all, let it burn”, with an ending that might feel like a cop out but isn’t necessarily such.

[EXPRESSO] Frankenstein (2025) | At Stein’s Gate

Sadly no theathers in my area or close did limited screenings of Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, so i had to wait and watch in when it dropped some days ago on Netflix, like most people will,

Which is fine and all, but you know…

That said, i think it’s kinda funny to see how it compares against odd choice of Luc Besson doing a very romance heavy version of Dracula…when he didn’t get distracted, almost accidentally did a Dracula Dead And Loving It kinda spoof of sorts, and remembered he left the subplot with Christopher Waltz as Van Helsing waiting for a call back to be resolved.

Both films do indulge in the nature of their literary sources as gothic sacred beasts, but Del Toro’s version stands on the opposite of the spectrum, and unlike its recent take on Pinocchio, his retelling of Frankenstein it surprisingly simple from a conceptual standpoint, being a fairly faithful retelling of the story as written by Mary Shelley, even with the narration starting out at the end at the North Pole and then Victor Frankenstein telling his story and the Creature’s to the captain of the icebreaker ship that rescued him, then having the Creature tell his side of the tale.

Even at is most “unoriginal”, it is Del Toro doing one of the gothic magnus opuses, so it’s exactly what you’d expected from him, and i mean that in a purely flattening fashion, i really do, he obviously loves and treats Frankenstein with such respect i understand why not try a subversive take on it, despite how many times the story has been done in film, as it’s not pedantic in recreating verbatim the book, and strays enough to avoid it feeling like stale regurgitation, kinda needed given the sizable runtime.

Pretty good.

[EXPRESSO] Dracula: A Love Tale (2025) | Gothic Hark

Talk about a left field proposal from Luc Besson, a director better known for sci-fi films (among other things), doing a Dracula adaptation in the traditional period piece setting, and making it focus on the gothic romance aspect.

Especially since we weren’t exactly that starved, with Egger’s Nosferatu and Last Voyage Of The Demeter, among others moving based on the Bram Stoker’s novel as a whole or specific parts.

Not much to say about the plot, it’s Dracula, as in, the expected plot for a Dracula adaptation, hitting most of the expected scenes and having the expected characters from the novel, and even some of quirks of previous films incarnations, like Dracula greeting Harker with that ridiculous hairdo he has in Coppola’s version, with some differences to accomodate this take on the story.

It’s well acted, the production values are high,… but it’s also all over the fuckin place.

Yes, the idea is that it focuses a lot more on being a gothic romance film, which is clearly the focus, and that does work… when the tone doesn’t shift drastically from a semi-quirky lore talk about Van Helsing explaining how to tell if a person is a vampire, the pacing grinds to a halt so Dracula can flashback even more, or jest around with Harker almost like we are in a spoof film.

Or have multiple, elaborated swordfights-war battle scenes.

It’s almost like at times Besson remember there’s the usual Dracula subplots to move along and then zoom, then why not, let’s take a break to have a romantic stroll through festival activities, i’m sure the pacing can take it.

To say nothing of the kinda expected conclusion that still feels like an anti-climax.

I’m not even mad, just a bit confused, but i will say it’s anything BUT boring.

The Spooktacular Eight #31: Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)

As an Italian, it always tickled me silly how back in the late 2000s EA’s idea for competiting with Sony’s God Of War franchise was to pillage The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri and basically transform it into a power fantasy action game about saving a damsel in distress, which happens to be done by traversing Hell as described by the Tuscanian poet.

I guess because it was a well known public domain literary work that would also work as a quick and dirty band-aid to feign some refinement, and to be honest everyone was jumping on the hack n slash action game bandwagon at the time, so of course EA would have tried their hands at it.

Still feels fuckin random because they could just have made a Roman Empire themed hack n slash, but i guess they couldn’t push a marketing campaign literally encouraging to “go to hell” and the “sin to win” marketing shizzle.

I’m not even offended because this is so fuckin american it’s hilarious, i mean, sure, it’s based on Alighieri’s first book of The Divine Comedy as in it has the concept of venturing through Hell, it has a guy named Dante, a gal named Beatrice, and The Devil(TM) sure, it’s the same thing.

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the Midtober Post Of Pokemon, Halloween Movies releases and Stuff

So yeah, let’s do a “checkpoint” post.

Movies wise, most of the big or relevant releases here have been pushed for a Halloween or Halloween adjacent release, meaning it will all be crammed in 2 weeks and so far it has mostly been drought (aside from Ari Aster’s Eddington and the new Guadagnino film, After The Hunt), so it’s gonna be a mess to play catch up.

At least the Chainsaw Man film comes out a week before Halloween, where not only they decided to release the Toxic Avenger reboot (guess i’m gonna watch this one, after all), but the very same days also premiere here the new Luc Besson Dracula film (a weird proposal i must say), Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein and the new Lanthimos sci-fi comedy Bugonia.

Also, i have to get around to see Alice In Borderland Season 3, i meant to but still haven’t at the time of writing.

in terms of Switch 2 releases, i will be doing EXPRESSO reviews of Pokemon Legends ZA (which i got today because Nintendo itself broke D1) and later Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment, at my own pace but since the full reviews will be late (especially late in the case of the new Hyrule Warriors game), these will come out as soon as possible.

Maybe i’ll whip up a hands on of that Bubsy 4D, since they released a sizeable demo on Steam and apparently it’s good, actually good, not just comparatively better than shit.