[EXPRESSO] The Haunting Of The Queen Mary (2023) |

From the director of Dracula Untold, a maritime horror movie that’s also technically a Halloween movie too, since it shifts between 2 (well, two and a half, to be correct) main storylines taking place on the titular ship, now sitting as a tourist historical attraction rife with horrific past events, like the massacre that happened on the Queen Mary during Halloween of 1938, where the father of a family of entertainers went on an unmitigated killing spree.

In modern times, the Calder family visit the ship for a business trip, but the young child comes across some of the ghosts that haunt the luxury translantic, and in an attempt to save the lost soul of their boy, the Calders enter the ship again to try and learn of his terrible secrets and centhury old mysteries that are more than “spook tour material”…

I was honestly pleasantly surprised by this one, though this lead to some frustration as the set-up it’s good, it’s great, it’s rife with potential but the execution kinda stumbles, with the direction being uneven and falling back on jumpscares or cliches even though it doesn’t really needs it, having already established a solid atmosphere and having some fairly tense sequences.

The 1938 sections are by far the more interesting, visually intriguing, and while the narration does a solid job in slowly revealing how the massacre went down back then and what it implies for the modern day events… these often aren’t as strong in terms of either story, action or characters, feeling overall kinda uneven, and some questionable choices (like how the “dream scenes” are shown and the direction lacking confidence at times) stop this one to being straight up good.

Still, as it is, The Haunting Of The Queen Mary it’s a decent-and-above supernatural horror thriller.

The Cinema Show Experience Debate Cycle (2nd Round)

Told you we’re gonna do this dance again, and i feel now it’s the time to address some of the issues left unchallenged and unchanged, as anyone with any foresight could have told you before.

I guess the catalyst for new lamentations is the new blockbuster releases mostly doing very bad, regardless of quality or marketing employed, as even movies coming from recognizable and renowed studios and carrying recognized names and brands come out to basically big box office woes most of the time, in what most people have accetted as a “post-Covid 19” world, even in countries where it’s still far from over because reality and consequences and such.

Because i’m a dumbass, instead of making a thumbnail with a load of nonsensical buzzwords on it for a “video essay” (really, words mean nothing anymore to a certain subset of creatures) that’s somehow longer than the movie it discuss… i’m gonna say it’s obvious this wanna gonna happen.

Even if we collectively agreed to pretend the pandemic is over everywhere and forever, even pretending and disgarding the argument/issue as a thing of the past, this newly found “box office bombagery” should really not surprise anyone that has been to theathers more than once in recent years.

To avoid repeating what i said before, i’m just gonna link the previous editorial so you can check that out instead. Consider this an addendum more than a “follow up”.

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Futurama PS2 [REVIEW] | … With Blackjack and Hookers

To celebrate the second return of Futurama on TV (even if i’m not expecting much given how these modern resurrections-continuations of beloved animated TV series-franchises, but who knows, i’m remaining cautiously semi-optimistic), time to take a look at its forgotten – and by now quite rare – PS2/X-Box tie-in videogame, simply called “Futurama”.

And what it might as well be the only Futurama videogame, since there’s not much to say about the mobile only Futurama: Worlds Of Tomorrow, besides it being a cheap and shallow cash grab akin to many other free-to-play tycoon simulators, like Simpsons Tapped Out, maybe a little more complete since it had a combat system in it from the start, but still, mostly a shallow time waster very heavy on aggressively try to make you fork out cash for anything of “substance” available.

Then again, it’s not like you can play it anymore, the servers were closed for real (as in they were announced to be closing in 2022) this year on the 9^th of March.

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[EXPRESSO] Barbie (2023) | Life In Plastic

For once i’m glad here in Italy we don’t get movie releases as the US do, because Oppenheimer is releasing in late August here, so i can bury that stupid “Barbenheimer” shit.

So, the Barbie movie, by renowed director Greta Gerwig, it’s definitely something i’d been looking forward since announcement, wondering what the fuck the plot of a live-action Barbie movie could be, this isn’t aimed at children like the dozens of animated Barbie movies we’ve seen over the years, at all.

The basic gist is similar to Enchanted, as we’re introduced to Barbieland, a world where Barbies live perfect days, party and have fun in perpetuity… until the “Stereotype Barbie” (Margot Robbie) has an existential crisis, seek help from the wise old “Weird Barbie” that tells her she has to go to the real world and reconnect with the girl that played with her in order to fix the situation. Problem is, Mattel itself learns that “Barbie has breached contaiment”, and one of the Kens (Ryan Gosling) sneaks away into the real world too…

It’s a feminist comedy that use the brand to tackle the obvious themes you’d think, in modern ouvert (and very meta) fashion as expected and… well, neeeded, because at this point we know audiences can be quite “thick”, but it’s as brazen as it’s funny and caring in poking fun, showing a profound love of cinema in doing so, with some really nice musical segments and amazing sets.

It’s not perfect, for example the main plot is basically resolved 40 minutes in and then it kinda feels like they had to follow a “b-plot” for the sake of the runtime, the feminism itself it’s slightly superficial (not shallow, but not deep either), but even with its flaws, it’s a really sincere, entertaining and witty film.

Pirate Warriors 4… New DLC characters?

honestly can’t believe i’m talking about Pirate Warriors 4 again, but suddendly, out of nowhere, a week ago, there was a tweet announcing that One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 would receive more DLC characters in the near future, and info would be revealed during One Piece Day 2023, meaning the 22th of july, as in a couple days after the announcement was made.

I tuned it, and among other many announcements and stuff – including a new trailer with new footage for the Netflix live action One Piece series, which seems less awful than expected as we see more of it, but i’m reserving judgement for when the series drop at the end of August – and yep, it’s definitely what was reasonable to expect.

Yep, after 3 years of when the game launched (and all the DLC characters, which were released in 3 waves, the last one in December 2020), 3 years of what i guess now can be called “inactivity”, there’s new paid stuff coming for Pirate Warriors. As in a new Character Pass has been announced, with 9 new playable characters for PW 4 , divived in 3 packs that are gonna be released over time, each including 3 characters that are tied by a theme.

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Jurassic Shark 2: Aquapocalypse (2021) [REVIEW] | Sequelgeddon #sharksncrocspartdeux

I eventually had to find out this existed, because words like “sequels” don’t mean anything anymore, even more when we dwelve in the “homegrown/DIY” territory of the shark movies, where one name echoes through the vast oceans, Mark Polonia, and he stands atop of his carboard throne, commanding beasts of papermaciè and plastic (and whatever the budget can afford) to fend off the rare adventurers setting off in the desperate quest for the homegrown crown.

So powerful he is that only he can received the task of doing a sequel of a low budget shark movie he didn’t originally make, as Jurassic Shark was directed and produced by Brett Kelly, but that isn’t even the stranger thing about Jurassic Shark 2: Aquapocalypse.

That would be this one standing as the “official” sequel, as Brett Kelly also directed Raiders Of The Lost Shark, which was a surprise kind of sequel to Jurassic Shark, as i discussed when reviewing it.

But this one gets to have the Jurassic Shark name and slap a 2 on the end, for whatever reason, and so it kinda surprising the plot has anything to do with the first, as the oil company from the first movie (whom accidentally released the megalodon) is back and wanting to drill for oil of the coast of Cat Island (not that one), and its up to the workers of the oil rig – that accidentally discover the beast – to try and save what they can from its unfeeling jaws… And its amazing inflatable fin.

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[EXPRESSO] Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 1 (2023) | Man Machine Interface

That ol’ darn Ethan Hunt is at it again, with the seventh installment of the Mission Impossible movie series, or its first part, because – as it should be clear by now – the two parter trend is back for mainstream big budget movies released in theathers. Heck, even Fast And Furious did it!

But if you had somewhat lukewarm or mixed expectations about Dead Reckoning, especially when it also follows the other trend of making movies even longer than before, inching ever so close to that dreaded 3 hours runtime…. well, Dead Reckoning Part 1 will put those to rest, because it’s actually a rare treat, in a way, both as the new installment of a very long running series that remained mostly constant in tone and style, but also as a demonstration that this kind of blockbuster action thriller movie can still be done today and actually impress audiences.

First, the plot it’s actually very modern (though a decade before would have been considered pure sci-fi), with an advanced learning IA that went rogue, became sentient, then made its incredible power of changing reality known, thus starting a race between nations for the only item that can give control over this almost-omnipotent entity.

Ethan Hunt and his crew are enlisted too, but they realize that to do the right thing they will have to go rogue themselves, given the unbelievably high stakes at play.

In a way there’s – mostly – nothing we haven’t seen before, but the execution is so good, the dedication to not cut corners and actually use the budget where it matters, especially the incredible stuntwork, there’s just so much obvious committment to make this as intense, suspensful and entertaining as possible, while not making the long runtime feel excessive.

Quite a blast, honestly.

L’Isola Degli Uomini Pesce (The Island Of The Fishmen) (1979) [REVIEW] | Dr. Moreau From The Deep

I guess fate does exist, because i randomly picked up at a local flea market a DVD copy of “L’Isola Degli Uomini Pesce” (translating to “The Island Of The Fishmen”, literally) for less than 3 bucks, figured i’d review that for a lark, only to find out this movie is actually known among fans of B-movies as “Screamers”, in its edited and reworked version handled by Roger Corman that cuts some footage, inserts a new opening and adds extra gore.

While also using false advertising in marketing with text claimining it’s about “people turned inside out”. This is an utter lie, because it also implies this is a horror film…. yes but it’s also a fantasy adventure flick that also pinches ideas from Island Of Dr. Moreau (and also reminding one of the Corman’s Humanoids From The Deep, for example) and uses horror cliches like a mad scientist creating a humanoid hybrid race of people, but it also has heavy adventure movie elements like the natives and the sunken civilizations and stuff.

So if you have memories on seeing this as “Screamers” on TV or VHS, sorry, we’re talking about the original, untouched italian version of “The Island Of The Fishmen”.

Also, i promise there are no One Piece jokes here, tempting as they were to make.

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[EXPRESSO] Run Rabbit Run (2023) | Babad’oh

A new Netflix psychological horror thriller involving a mother and her child, looking vaguely Goodnight Mommy-ish from the trailer, let’s give it a punt.

The plot follows a single mother and her daughter, whom happen to take in a rabbit that one show up waiting for them at their door, take him in as the daughter really wants to, but after that she starts remembering events of a “previous life”, freaking out the mother and eventually digging up the family’s past, especially the mother’s late sister….

The latter part was shown in the trailer…..but it shouldn’t, as it basically gives away too much of the “twist”, as you can assume and by large assume it right, because there’s really not much to it.

It’s clearly trying to follow in the wake of Babadook and Hereditary, with family traumas festering into nightmares and dysfunctions as beholden secrets try to claw their way out of the darkness, but the movie just potters about the same thing over and over, looking good with an amazing cinematography and some great acting by the lead, but it’s all mood, atmosphere that belies nothing more than stale cliches that feel dull and pedestrian more than anything else.

A thin and predictable plot with mostly unlikeable, underdeveloped characters crown the usual mother vs daughter screaming scenes, bog standard “hallucination scenes” and equally generic bursts of violence, with the slow, slow burn to “reveal” nothing that hasn’t been already reiterated on ad nauseam by the movie itself since the very beginning, making the experience more tiresome than thrilling.

Plus it’s also very frustrating because there could have been something to this, it could, but the script it’s too afraid to dig deeper than the bare surface on any of its themes, so epidermis unbroken, the truth goes unspoken. ♫

Crocodile (1979) [REVIEW] | Thai Croc Jaws #sharksncrocspartdeux

Can’t get more basic than “Crocodile”, not “killer”, not “mutant”, nor “apocalypse”, just your plain old reptilian creature to not be confused with an alligator.

Which is arguably kind of a lie, since this is an obscure Thai monster movie that was made – in unison – “to ride Jaws’ coat-tail”. I don’t even do this on purpose, there’s that big a chance even killer croc movies somehow can be linked back to it, either due to the decade of their release or the basic plot structure and popularized cliches.

Often it’s both, as “Crocodile” was released just years after Jaws rocked the box office, AND the plot it’s virtually identical… or is it?

Not to be confused with a 1978’s Korean movie also with the international title of “Crocodile”, from which this 1979 Thai film is edited from… and by that i’d say it borrows some stock footage from the 1978 one, i don’t know to what extend, since i couldn’t find a copy of the 1978’s film, because i do believe these are two different – yet almost identical sounding – movies, not one and the same.

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