Yeah, i’m not asking Saint Nick (as i wouldn’t like to overburden the fella even further and its past-Christmas anyway) but the – JOJO MEME – itself what i would pleasantly welcome in this brave new year of real life, disgusting cyberpunk dystopia.
Continua a leggere “2021 World Wishlist”
Yes, “Predator”, singular, this has nothing to do with Extinction: Jurassic Predators (plural), which was done because The Dinosaur Project/The Lost Dinosaurs did ok in review and made some money, so we’re gonna make another found footage dinosaur movie, with good practical effects and worse in every other aspect.
But i already reviewed that. Just yesterday.
I have to preface i was gonna review Jurassic Thunder (the one head mounted machine guns on a T-Rex) for this Dino Dicember slot, but i relented, because i felt nothing i could say will matter to a movie built on the foundation of the Dr. Evil meme, and doubles downs on its putrid shit factor, amplified and self-excusing itself due to the narrative frame of 80’s comic book and action flicks.
Continua a leggere “Dino Dicember #30: Jurassic Predator (2018)”
I often joke or belittle the alternative titles these movie get for home video releases, but this time i feel the “Jurassic Predators” subtitle helps, since now people are gonna think more of the 2018 Netflix produced movie, not this 2014 release also titled “Extinction”. Then again, you might find this one under the other alternative title of “Jurassic Island”.
And while looking at the premise, i had to do a double take, like, didn’t i already review a movie with a nearly identical plot? And i kinda did, since it’s basically The Lost Dinosaurs/The Dinosaur Project, with a research team led by a professor or academic figure going into a jungle to protect endangered and vulnerable species, but after some kerfuffle the guides run away, the group eventually stumbles upon dinosaurs, and has to survive the unexpected peril.
Continua a leggere “Dino Dicember #29: Extinction: Jurassic Predators (2014)”
From the director of Silent Night, Zombie Night, and Terror Birds (also editor for many films, including Sand Sharks, obviously), we have yet another dino flick where Los Angeles is attacked by dinosaurs… not a single giant dinosaur, because people that write the synopses for these movie (on Wikipedia and/or IMDB, depends) don’t actually watch them most of the time, or they do watch them drunk and try to piece together the plot later, because there isn’t a T-rex (or equivalent) rampaging alone through LA. Yes, the DVD cover has it, but that’s false advertising.
In this occasion the dinos didn’t arrive via a Stargate-style time portal, but were created in a lab and escaped a secret facility manned by a shadowy government squad, and due to an incident they bring an armored van (containing 3 Monolophosauruses, in the same genus as the T-Rex but acting as this movie’s raptors equivalent) inside a nearby prison, where they just brought a serial killer… and a trio of college girls temporarly detained (having been busted the night before at an obnoxious party). As the dinosaurs break free and kill most guards and soldiers, the girls and the serial killer and are now forced to escape deeper into the prison, bedgrudgingly having to cooperate.
Continua a leggere “Dino Dicember #27: Jurassic City (2015)”
Thunder, thunder, thunder rex!
Actually, not quite, but i wonder why not also give the “rexes” magical elemental powers (since the Aztecs call them “Thunder lizards” in the movie itself), if we can stretch the imagination to have a movie like this, set in the 16th centhury about a group of conquistadores going to Mexico in order to search for treasure and colonialize the “savages” while they’re at it, but end up captured by the tribes, whom plan to sacrifice them to their sacred gods, T-Rexes.
I mean, i do trust in Godzilla, but ….
Continua a leggere “Dino Dicember #26: Aztec Rex / Tyrannosaurus Azteca (2007)”
Yes, the ever elusive Water-Dragon type of T-Rex, because nowadays you could make fake monster movie poster art with Pokemons as a joke, and realize someone did it for real already, beat you to it years ago. And if someone had to do it, might as well be the director of cult films like Commando, Armed And Dangerous, and Class of 1984, Mark. L. Lester himself, as he eventually went back to doing B-movies for TV or the home video market after the “Hollywood years”.
Because, really, the sharks enjoyed preying on B-movie beaches for decades, it’s time to move out and let dinosaurs do it for a change. At least in some of the cover art, in this specific case it does happen, but often with movies like this the posters promise more than what the movies themselves can actually deliver.
Continua a leggere “Dino Dicember #24: Poseidon Rex (2013)”
You may argue that most of the crappy dinosaur movies featured in Dino Dicember are “puerile excuses for entertaiment” or some crap like that, so you know what, let’s actually review a dinosaur movie made for kids or intended as a “family picture”. No, not the Land Before Time series (yes, it’s a series). No, not “We’re Back! A Dinosaur Story!” No, there’s not a live-action movie adaptation of Cadillac & Dinousars.. yet, you never fuckin know with the nostalgia market.
Because i’m stupid, we’re gonna do something less known and far more recent, the austrialian My Pet Dinosaur, directed, written and produced by Matt Drummond, who previously directed Dinosaur Island (2014), and cured visual effects for TV documentaries and TV movies like Attack Of The Sabretooth.
Never heard of them either, so no harm no foul.
Continua a leggere “Dino Dicember #23: My Pet Dinosaur (2017)”
As pointed out in the Super Mario Bros The Movie review, the 90s had a fascination with anything dinosaur related, and this is definitely another testament to that, a more obscure – not that obscure – comedy horror film that’s still kinda unique, and became a cult sensation, enough to warrant a 2019 uncut, restored to 4K re-release on Blu-Ray.. only in the U.S. Yeah, there’s no cheap UK DVD release for this one, and apparently the italian VHS version is rare as hell… and i draw the line at collecting VHS tapes. I’m sorry, i have to draw the line somewhere, for my own sake.
And yes, that title screen is correct, since the uncut edition has the movie’s original title, “Tanny and the Teenage T-Rex”. Regardless of what title you see, it’s both explicit and incredibly vague, as in, would you expect a teen drama that turns into horror, with a mad scientist transplating the brain of Tammy’s deceased boyfriend into a robot dinosaur, whom then goes around killing Tammy’s jealous ex-boyfriend and his thugs, as they are responsable for his death? No you wouldn’t.
And i gotta admit, i’ve never heard a plot like this.
Continua a leggere “Dino Dicember #21: Tammy And The T-Rex (1994)”
Of course we’re not reviewing the original novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, or the more known 1975’s adaptation by Amicus. We’re doing the 2009 one, done by The Asylum, which in a way it’s kinda fitting, and… kinda isn’t; sure, it’s about dinosaurs, but usually the company sticks to ripping off Jurassic Park and whatever it spawned over time (including the Carnosaur series), not so much in adapting Burroughs. Almost as surprising as the lack of many adaptations this story received, very little in comparison to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.
The story follows the same premise of the book (which didn’t start off but in the later parts develops into a “lost world” story, as popularized by the aforementioned Conan Doyle’s opus), but it set in modern times, it involves frigging portal/dimensional rifts the group of main characters, which aren’t soldiers but just some random persons that were doing some “extreme vacation-activity” thing. Given this is an Asylum production, i’m not really surprised, i mean, they’re not gonna try to film it as a period piece, you just know they ain’t going to… and they don’t.
Continua a leggere “Dino December #18: The Land That Time Forgot (2005)”
This one was really a given (and yes, we’re reviewing an adaptation of Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot next), not featuring Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World in Dino Dicember…. just wouldn’t have been right. I would have kicked myself if i didn’t.
Then again, it didn’t immediately came to me as an obvious choice, since most people nowadays think about the second Jurassic Park movie, Lost World: Jurassic Park, loosely based on Michael Chrichton’s book The Lost World (sequel to Chrichton’s own Jurassic Park book), itself borrowing elements from (and paying direct homage to) the original 1912 novel of the same name by Arthur Conan Doyle, and even the 1925’s film adaptation of the book, which we briefly referenced before.
Continua a leggere “Dino Dicember #17: The Lost World (1998)”
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