Resident Evil Umbrella Corps PS4 [REVIEW] | Dead On Arrival

Yeah, since the recent trailer for the new Resident Evil film reboot came out recently, it would be fine to look at something that even the most hardcore contrarian fans would agree upon, aka the deliberately forgotten Umbrella Corps, so bad Capcom didn’t even use the Resident Evil name on it.

I picked it up years later, for 3 bucks on the PSN, since the game received a physical release on consoles only in Japan, as in they sold a box with a manual, the OST on 2 CDS, but no disk, so there’s no point in importing it from Japan, even for collectors of retail releases, not that we’re gonna lose much when it’ll get unvailable to purchase.

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Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City trailer dropped, words and reaction ensue, etc.

Yesterday we finally got to see the first trailer for the Resident Evil film reboot, known as Resident Evil Welcome To Raccon City for a while, and people aren’t exactly going gaga for it.

Color me not surprised, since fanbases are notoriously both easy and fickle to please, and years of Paul W.S. Anderson brand of action have clearly rotted some people’s brain overtime, i haven’t seen them all, but i did witness the vomit inducing unwatchable mess of Resident Evil The Final Chapter in theathers, and that already should set the stage for things to go inevitably up. Or at least avoid triggering motion sickness in moviegoers.

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American McGee’s Alice PS3 [REVIEW] | The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

Oh yes, American Mc Gee’s most well known work, his take on Lewis Carrol’s Alice.

The story is not really that original in retrospect, it’s the usual “let’s give fairy tales an edgy reinterpretation with a grim, depressing tone” applied to Alice In Wonderland, so here Alice is Alice Lindell, a british orphan that by chance survived the house fire that took away her family at the age of 10 (or something), and was basically raised in an asylum, mostly likely treated to a Richard O’ Brian-less brand shock therapy as well.

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The Spooktacular Eight #1: Doom Annihilation (2019)

Ah, yes, the newer Doom movie adaptation, one that basically came out direct to video 2 years ago, to the sound of not much fanfare and people claiming it killed their mum in cold blood it was so bad, so terrible.

Clearly these people don’t know any better, because i was surprised to finally come around, unwrap my Blu Ray copy i got on the cheap last year, and seeing it was actually not that bad, at all, far from the disaster people claim it is.

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The Spooktacular Eight Cometh

Tis the season again, but due to the cursed nature of time itself, this year we’ll have a small horror retrospective for the “month of Halloween”, with 8 reviews sporadically released during the month. Hope you’ll like the selection of movies, and yes, there won’t a set release pattern, but we’ll start tomorrow, so look forward to that.

Parasite (2004) [REVIEW] | Not that one either

Not Bong Joon-ho’s. Not the Charles Band’s kind of Parasite either.

Not even the manga by Hitoshi Iwaaki, sadly.

With this one we’re reaching deep into the ass of forgotten crappy b-movies from the early 2000s, dumped among many of its brethren on streaming sites, i discovered it while browsing Amazon Prime Video, and i would wager it’s pretty much available on the service anywhere in the world.

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[EXPRESSO] Centipede Chaos ARCADE | Voxel Bug Blastin’

Atari in modern times is more garbage than it ever was, i don’t think i need to remind you of the previous incarnation of the company bearing this name actually wanting money for something called Alone In The Dark: Illumination.

Among other egregious crimes.

But what do you know, sometimes they manage to actually use the brands and franchises of old in new ways that aren’t unholy artifacts of shit, like actually making new arcade games of arcade series they own, like this Play Mechanix developed new Centipede game, Centipede Chaos.

Sporting a retro voxel graphics and a cabinet made for max 3 players, Centipede Chaos actually does things right and doesn’t try to reinvent Centipede into something else that’s not Centipede at all, it’s just straight, simple arcade shooter action with a decent soundtrack, fairly good looks and satisfying gameplay that stays true to the core formula, just throwing some limited use power-ups.

It’s a fun time even solo, but sadly it’s limited by own nature as a ticket redemption machine, meaning it’s fairly short even for an arcade Centipede game, as to not require a lot of work to get to the final boss worth the fabled 500/1000 tickets, but since this is arcade gameplay design, they throw in a dickish curveball by giving you one shot to kill the final boss, regardless of lives left or money put into the machine. Yep.

And that’s basically it, there are no extra modes or anything else to see, which it’s a bit disappointing considering the license used, but not too surprising due to the nature of redemption ticket arcade cabinets and the surrounding economy.

It’s just that kind of arcade money beast. Nothing that special overall, but definitely worth a go if you can find it in your neck of the woods.

Bone Eater (2007) [REVIEW] | So, as i pray

Yes, there’s more. There’s always more TV movie monster movies for me to dig up… often just picked to kill off some time on a sleepy saturday morning from my Amazon Prime Video watchlist (when the frigging service decides to keep or relist them without charging more for it, despite being obvious fodder, always were, always will). And there’s a 40 % chance Jym Wynorski directed them.

Jym Wynorski direct this as well, why even doubt he didn’t direct them all at this point?

And as you might have guessed from the year it was released (and my other reviews of similar TV movies), it’s another SyFy commissioned crapfest produced via CineTel films, who also brought us movies like Lavalantula, the Ghoulies franchise, Super Shark, Indipendence Daysaster, even the new strand of I Spit On Your Grave sequels (following the 2010 remake). Just to name a few.

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Mega Snake (2007) [REVIEW] | Snake Of The Father

Things lead to things, and so i accidentally started out a Tibor Takacs mini-retrospective of sorts. It just kinda happened, i guess.

And sadly, no, he never made a TV movie about killer frogs or slugs to complete the “asian rock-paper-scissors” trifecta or the “Aesop fables’ bingo”, but he did direct this for SyFy the same year as Ice Spiders, and that would the last creature feature from him until Spiders 3D, as he preferred to do more disaster movies about tornadoes (regular ones) and christmas-family movies, which is – in a way – quite usual for older genre directors to end up doing in the later years.

But today is snakes, or at least one singular Mega Snake, and it’s a bit more interesting than Ice Spiders, more ridiculous but also less by the numbers, even if it’s another Nu Image joint shot in the Bulgarian capital for the same reasons already discussed in previous reviews, as it’s quite cheap.

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[EXPRESSO] Space Jam: A New Legacy/New Legends (2021) | Look On My Works, Ye Great Mighty Poo

Let’s get this over with, even if it’s pointless to review, as it’s just a WB corporate flex.

I revisited the original Space Jam just before seeing this, it was a corporate vehicle emphasizing cross brand promotion, spectacle, and references over story, with the “hook” of real life celebrities acting a cliched “inspiring sports film” formula alongside animated characters.

But in retrospect it had some laughs and some self awareness NOT weaponized to just suck corporate cocks in a proud cynical fashion, all the time.

And yes, this is just a new one, a “stand-alone sequel”, make sense since it has been in development hell for 15 years.

It has the same basic premise, with a basketball game deciding the fate of a real life person and the cartoon characters he mets in a new world. Obviously this one swaps Michael Jordan for James LeBron, but also tries to up the ante and modernize it, setting it in a virtual WB-verse where an evil algorhythm-IA has trapped LeBron and his younger son Dom.

Problem is it also quadruples down on corporate bullshit, to the point it’s way longer than it needs just to have countless references using WB owned IPs. Not jokes, references. It also takes itself more seriously for no reason, and it’s often more embarassing and awkward than funny or fun.

This is an official feature length shitpost filled with memes and references (not so much jokes), and while the animation isn’t bad, it’s a stylistically spineless affair, even the older Space Jam had a consistent style to the mixing of live action and animation.

The original was a product of his time as much as this new one is, but even the 1996 movie it’s still better than this specimen of pure corporate public narcistic wanking.

Horrendous.