The very early December grabbag update post: Dinos, Animatronics Boogaloo, Letting It Die, PS5, and winter breaks

Time for an update post as Dicember looms very close… and is here already.

As previously announced, the first week of December i will be taking a break from full lenght reviews, which will resume on December 8th, on a weekly basis leading up to Christmas, and of course 12 Days Of Dino December.

Which will go on as always, no big changes.

I will have reviews of the new FNAF film out, and i guess the third James Cameron’s Avatar film, because that is a thing, and one i do not care for, i’d rather have Cameron work on that Alita Battle Angel sequel, if he’s willing to gamble zillions into a series, better than his First Nation alien Smurfs saga that apparently no one cares for but will see to go anyway, though the more it goes on the faster it might cull itself out (if you break records, then it becomes increasingly hard to keep doing that on a regular basis), so nevermind.

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[EXPRESSO] Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment NSWITCH2 | Mysterious Construct X

I had some reservations about this one, despite my love for the Hyrule Warriors subseries, since it wasn’t handled by Omega Force (i guess busy with the PW4 DLC, the Dynasty Warriors Origins expansion and the DW3 remaster), but developed by a new studio under TK, AAA Games Studio.

But my doubts were (mostly) put to rest once i got to play it.

This is indeed the prequel to Tears Of The Kingdom it was announced as, as in, unlike the previous Hyrule Warriors game, Age Of Calamity, this is an actually canonical entry narrating the War For The Imprisonment mentioned in TOTK and taking place at the very beginning of this timeline’s Hyrule, with his first king, Rauru, uniting the race-tribes of the land to fight back against Ganondorf, whose evil and lust for power led to him becoming the Demon King.

A time travelling Zelda also aids Rauru, alongside a mysterious yet very familiar feeling humanoid construct, accompanied in his quest against evil by a wandering Korogu…

Gameplay wise, it builds off the systems and overall structure from Age Of Calamity, adding new elements taken from Tears Of The Kingdom like the Zonai devices, making for a really solid and fun Warriors game, with satisfying characters that aren’t cloned from the previous HW iterations, even though the roster does feel famished to include secondary characters due to story limitations, and the map design doesn’t really dare to stray from the basics.

It’s a pity because it’s good, and close to being as great as Age Of Calamity, but eventually it shows some flaws or inconsistencies that stem from inexperience, though it also has a surprisingly decent-to-good narrative that isn’t stretched out, it’s a sizeable game and performance wise its runs so much better than Age Of Calamity did.

[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] The Toxic Avenger (2023) | Punk Pretend

Yes, Troma is still around, and just the fact the Toxic Avenger reboot is a big budget PG-13 rated film with big Hollywood actors is already indicative that yes, in this case – to paraphrase Grasshopper Manifacture’s motto – “Punk Is Dead”, coming off as a clear admission that, despite all that clammering, now they do actually want to be like Hollywood and ain’t even trying to mask it.

The plot is basically the same as the 1984 original, but tries to update the concept for modernity, changing some details and adding new characters, and making it more about family (since “Toxie” has a troubled stepson to care for) but basically keeping the idea of a derided janitor falling victim to radioactive waste, which mutate him into a superhero monster, The Toxic Avenger, ready to take down evil, and in this case exact revenge on the evil big pharma company that bamboozled the entire town of St. Roma Ville ( ah ah), harassed its citizens and pollute its waters.

And it’s all presented as subversive like the original was… in 1984.

Sure there is some splatter violence, but it’s kinda tame, even in the international unrated cut, today the ol’ excesses of the company are nothing.

It’s not even that unwatchable, ironically, it’s still trash like the original but that became a cult film for reasons, which do include its sincerity, here completely gone, as this remake also sucks out any of its anti-establishment, alternative, subversive and controversial qualities, being just domesticated and tarted up hollow trash.

Even worse, it’s just so desperate in wanting people to like it, to elect it as their new favourite “so bad it’s good” flick, which itself it’s old hat too.

It’s just fuckin pathetic, even more than it wants to come off as.

[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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[EXPRESSO] Pokemon Legends ZA NSWITCH 2 | Mega Starmie From Space

Pokemon spin-off time with Pokemon Legends ZA, bringing us back to the 7^th gen and the Kalos region of Pokemon X & Y.

5 years have passed from the defeat of Team Flare, and as a new trainer, you get involved in not only the new main attraction of Lumiose City, the night-bound Royale ZA, but also the strange events that see wild Pokemon undergo uncontrolled Mega Evolutions in the city, maybe related to the new company hired to rebuilt the city, and the reapparance of the mythical pokemon Zygarde…

Gameplay iterates on Legend Arceus foundations, but changing the focus from exploration to battles, now a real time affair with moves operating on cooldowns, which is strangely intuitive, works really well and provides some needed freshness to the classic formulas.

Also, i love how often deliberately goofy the new Mega Evolutions are.

On the downside, it does indeed take all place in a big open world city, which is bigger than i anticipated, has some fun sidequests and some internal variety (thanks to designated wild areas where to catch pokemons) but isn’t quite as packed or varied as a Yakuza game, and also suffers some incredibly archaic movement mechanics.

Speaking of archaic, even on Switch 2 we have the same modern issue of Game Freak being handled EDF style budgets (comparatively) for games that sells gorillions, but have jpeg windows and characters with great designs sporting lypsynched words with no voice acting.

The story is good, even the NPCs have hilarious shit to say, the city it still rewarding to explore and there is a decent amount of content, i had a good time with it, more than i expected, but this could and should have been even better, for many – that should by now be obvious – reasons.

The Spooktacular Eight # 30: Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead (2012)

Can’t believe we’re finally doing this, but after post-poning it for years and basically featuring every other Noburo Iguchi film, it’s time to go deeper into the septic tank with one of the lesser known films from the well known (among the expected circles) gonzo gorefest-pink film-tokusatsu extraordinarie director, his Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead.

What a fuckin title. Can’t say you didn’t know what it was about when you walked in.

I would love to play the “what has this blog gone to?” bit more but i was this close to feature Monsturd in a previous Spooktacular Eight, but didn’t, not yet, hope this literal zombie shit fest will do as i also consider it kinda the “cut off” film for Iguchi, even though he didn’t actually stop making films like these, heck, the same year as Zombie Ass he also directed the aptly titled segment “Fart” for ABCs Of Death, and his last movie is 2023’s romance anthology Tales Of Bliss And Heresy.

So while his career didn’t die, i guess the foreign fan and specialized press interest around japanese horror gorefest with ludicrous premises, excessive displays and absurd special effects kinda petered out around that time, and i would assume this would be the case in Japan too, though that didn’t stop other directors to put out similar stuff like Bloody Delinquent Chainsaw Girls live action adaptation (which i didn’t know got two sequels in 2019, taking notes).

Enough foreplay, what is Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead about?

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[EXPRESSO] Chainsaw Man The Movie: Reze’s Arc (2025) | I R I S O U T

I guess the thing now for shonen (or shonen-esque, as Chainsaw Man doesn’t quite fit the bill) anime films is to adapt an arc so it can bridge into the following TV seasons, because Demon Slayer did it.

Okay. Why not? I’ll take this over compilation films any day.

In case you aren’t familiar with the series, Chainsaw Man is about Denji, a homeless boy used and betrayed by the yakuza, whom becomes a human-devil hybrid that can sprout chainsaws from his body, after his dog, Pochita (actually the Chainsaw Devil) saves his life by fusing with a dying Denji.

He’s then recruited by Makima, commanding a special unit of Devil Hunters on behalf of the japanese government, which is tasked to kill devils that show up threatening the peace, and also search for the whereabouts of the incredibly powerful yet elusive Gun Devil.

In this specific case, the movie cover’s Reze story arc, with the first season finale seeing Denji confront Katana Man and his allies that were seeking revenge.

The first season did receive some backlash for the animation, but honestly i think MAPPA did a good job with that as well (even if some episodes did suddendly look like ass at times), so expectations were high, even more as it’s a pretty good adaptation of a hit series that didn’t just luck out with its timing, i’ll say that much.

The movie does have better, more consistent quality animation and the decision to adapt this arc pays off in terms of more cinematic flair to the insane action scenes, while also giving the needed time to introduce Reze and his relationship with Denji, it is her story, after all, as much as his.

Pretty good stuff, and the opening theme by Kenshi Yonezu is once again fire.

The Spooktacular Eight #28: Suburban Sasquatch (2004)

Enough of Mark Polonia’s stuff, let’s go deeper into the homegrown cinema territory with a “classic” by David Wascavage, Suburban Sasquatch.

Sometimes you think you know a certain genre, then see shit like this or Fungicide that makes you realize, yes, we can go lower than an early Polonia Bros direct-to-video film made in the late 90s, there is a 10^th circle of movie hell… or heaven, depending on whom you ask.

If you ever wondered what those Donald Trump VS Bigfoot VS Nazi Shark fuckin movies would have looked like if they were made in the 90s, and were somehow worse than Curse Of Bigfoot… well, wonder no more, because while this was made in 2004, it looks like the first Feeders film or something like that, it’s that territory of shooting your own shit with pocket change (and some “locally sourced” weed as stand-in for salaries) as budget, with your friends as “actors” and location shooting meaning you most likely recorded the footage (“filmed” is too strong of a word) somewhere in some woods or field near your home, or inside a friends’ house.

This is HIGH amateur hour stuff, my fellows bad movie buffs, so amateur it hurts.

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