[EXPRESSO] Black Widow (2021) | Velvet Assassins, Inc.

Marvel movies are back into theathers, a fact of life made accidentally more intriguing after the pandemic stopped the torrent of Marvel theatherical releases, and saturation gives way to acceptance and wishing to return to the “pre-Covid 19” habits.

At the very least this particular movie had already plenty of delays and issues behind the scenes before, but the Black Widow “origins” movie is here.

Not exactly my favourite of the Avengers, i will say this upfront, but still, easily more intriguing that anything they could come up with Hawkeye (at least judging what the Marvel movies did with him), i’d say. Like the previous movie hinted at, she had a troubled upbringing, was a KGB, and here we see her momentarily leave the Avengers team (in a timespan between Civil War and Infinity War) to meet up with her old “family”, leading her to take on the villain Taskmaster and confront a figure from her past youth as a selected trainee for the “Black Widow” program.

As Natasha Romanoff is simply human, her origin story uses this to give the movie a more “realistical” feel (though don’t worry, there’s the usual Marvel bombast), and aside from some of the inevitable mentions of the other Avengers, the movie does want to stand on its own and distinguish itself by tackling darker (and a bit more “grounded”) themes than usual, as this action thriller about child soldiers raised -at all cost – to be the most efficient assassins and spies, the new characters are good, there are some fun moments (alongside the usual, obligatory Marvel self-jab).

The cast is pretty dang good too (it has Florence Pugh), and while not sensational, it’s quite entertaining and willing to not really rely on other Marvel movies to tell its own story. Fun one.

Bacalhau (1975) [REVIEW] | Brazilian Jaws

After almost a year of searching the digital sea, i got hold of the legendary and obscure Brazilian Jaws spoof… like most of the few people that even knew about it did, by ordering a bootleg copy with english subs on a foreign DVD site, which delivered. I will not name or recommend this site, since the quality of the film was atrocious and the english subs where clearly handled by an online translator tool and/or a person who also doesn’t have a real grasp on english as a language.

I seriously doubt there’s even an official release of the movie in Brazil, and IMDB isn’t helping at all on this regard. It’s that barely documented, yes.

I’m gonna have to apologize in advance for the abysmal quality of the screenshots, but i have never seen better looking images of this movie online (there’s a trailer on youtube in decent quality), and i wouldn’t hold my breath for a Criterion re-release or anything like that anytime soon for Bacalhau, There’s not exactly much demand.

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Empire Of The Sharks (2017) [REVIEW] | Fury Boat

As you might remember, i frankly hated Planet Of The Sharks, so i post-poned the review of Empire Of Sharks, which i also incorrectly described as a sequel.

Because it isn’t: completely different cast, completely different characters, no continuity, you know the drill by now.

It still kind of a follow up to Planet Of The Sharks, as in this is The Asylum trying again to make work the ill-conceived- and under budgeted – mash up of Mad Max, Waterworld and a shark movie.

I don’t why exactly they felt the need to try again, since i’m not even sure it raked in much profit for the Asylum, but i guess Mark Atkins wanted another go at the concept, so this time he directed but also wrote the script himself, which is not necessarily encouraging piece of info.

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Shark Killer (2015) [REVIEW] | Diamond Jaws

Given the ludicrous amount of shark movies, we gotta specify is this isn’t an alternate title for 2001’s Shark Hunter, which i haven’t yet seen, but seems very similar to the 2000 movie Megalodon, with a bit of Moby Dick style obsession from the lead to the megalodon shark/whale substitute. This one is a different movie, but i don’t blame anyone confusing the two, with the ultra confusing alternative titles these movies get, especially when you have seen hundreds of shark movies, they kinda start to blur and mesh into each other in your mind, and probably there’s also a movie you don’t know about that’s exactly the “plot blend” your brain accidentally brewed.

This one, directed by Sheldon Wilson, is about Chase “action hero name here” Walker, the titular shark killer, as he gets called for a job by his criminal step-brother, Jake, the head of a crime ring, and wants Chase to kill a black finned shark that accidentally swallowed a diamond during a transaction. He also enlists his subordinate-love interest Jasmine to keep an eye on him, but things get more complicated as a rival eastern europe-y crime boss, Nix, wants to get his hands on the diamond as well, and kidnaps Jasmine to ensure Chase doesn’t try anything funny….

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Open Water 3: Cage Dive (2017) [REVIEW] | Wisdom N’ The

11 years after Adrift, Lionsgate felt the time was right to resume the “series”, and might as well drop any pretense, so they just released it as Open Water 3 right away, which surely prompted viewers to ask “was there a second one?”. Again, not that it matters because these are completely standalone stories, so you could waltz in theathers in 2017 without any real need to see the “previous ones”.

Not that many moviegoers are bound by that anyway.

If the subtitle sound somewhat familiar, it’s because this third installment in the Open Water series clearly took wind of what Dimension Films was cooking up with 47 Meters Down, it’s not that there’s a copyright on the concept of “cage dive scuba session goes wrong, with sharks”, but this one was released the same year, just 2 months after 47 Meters Down, so comparisons are bound to be made..

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Jaws In Japan AKA Psycho Shark (2009) [REVIEW] | Sharkmills Of Your Mind…

In retrospect, it’s kinda hard to believe that Japan didn’t really contributed much to the avalanche of “sharkxploitation” movies seen in late 2000s and the 2010s, aside from the movie we’re talking about today, since this is the country that the very same year gifted us stuff like Vampire Girl VS Frankenstein Girl, to say nothing of the amazing exploitation masterpiece of Tokyo Gore Police.

You would think japanese genre directors would have jumped on the trend and gifted us plenty of insane shark movies with people cutting off their limbs to replace them with shark heads or something, but nope, the only exploitation japanese shark movie that pops up in related searches is this one, and it becomes clear why now it has just been kinda forgotten and left to obscurity.

Because it is fully deserving of such treatment.

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Open Water 2: Adrift (2006) [REVIEW] | Sequel Sharks

What happens when you get to do a sequel that’s really not a sequel, but another iteration on the same basic premise? You get slapped for asking obvious and stupid rethorical questions, as you know damn well the industry will conjure series out of unrelated movies anyway, so doesn’t matter that not even the production company is the same as Open Water, we’ll release it with a different name first and then slap “Open Water 2” when it hits home video, passing the original title as a subtitle. Not to be confused with the 1993 movie by Christian Duguay, also called “Adrift”.

This one is directed by Hans Horn, also behind german produced TV movie like Death Water (Tod aus der Tiefe) and with a new movie in pre-production, Going Down, which sound like it’s gonna be an unofficial Open Water or a rip-off. But we’ll see about that.

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Barracuda (1978) [REVIEW] | Burn it to the wick

Most movies about killers animals from the 70s can be “blamed” on Jaws success, this one is a “double whammy” because it can be also linked to one of Jaws’ most notorious rip-off, Piranha from 1978, which – as mentioned before – it’s almost a parody as well, and was directed by Joe Dante. As Piranha did quite well that year, America General Pictures approached him to direct Barracuda (also sold under the title of The Lucifer Project) as well, but clearly it didn’t happen, so directing duties went to Harry Kerwin and Wayne Crayford, both already pulling double duty as actor and co-writer. Gotta pump em out fast, so fast this came out 2/3 months after Piranha.

And while there are plenty of Jaws rip-offs made in that decade, the comparison between the two films in question is fairly obvious, not just because they came out the same year, but because they both have the same theme of secret government experiments that end up mutating marine fauna, in this case more declined into an enviromentalism issue, but also a fairly direct critique of the military, as in they didn’t breed combat-ready mutant cyborg barracuda, but the government basically used a small town as guinea pigs for conditioning experiment to make everyone more aggressive and violent, and more easier to whip up in a frenzy or recruit for war.

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Mega Piranha (2010) [REVIEW] | Rider (Bycicle) KICK!

No, it’s not a spin-off of the “Mega Shark” series, nor a companion piece to Mega Python VS Gatoroid, despite being all produced by The Asylum. It’s that other type of Asylum movie, a mockbuster, but one incredibly desperate, in a way.

As in, the usually try to fool people by chasing after popular big budget production with cheap, fast features titled in a similar way to the movies they’re trying to indirectly rip-off, the plot is usually quite – if not completely – different.

Which is why we ended up with Transmorphers and stuff like Age Of Tomorrow, among many others. But, as i said, they usually do this with huge Hollywood productions, to feed from the crumbs left by the “actual movies” people went to see in theathers.

In this case, it just happens in 2010 we got a very loose remake of the original Piranha from 1978, Piranha 3D, handled by one of the better modern directors for horror and genre cinema, Alexandre Aja, and he definitely crafted a good modern B-movie in the spirit of old Roger Corman creature features, quite good, quite fun, which a direct sequel, Piranha 3DD, which went completely for total exploitation (almost Troma style), and was also quite fun in its own right.

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Blue Demon (2004) [REVIEW] | El Tiburon Pasa

It’s both banal and amazing how many shark movies exist, you’d figure there are plenty, but that’s not the case, there is an entire ocean of them. An ever-expanding ocean.

So much that some are pretty much to accidentally “fall through the cracks”, even if you own dozens upon dozens (almost thousand) of shark movies, and this one of them, found it at flea market. After triple checking i don’t already own this on DVD under a different name or it’s available to stream on Netflix or something, that is.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

But no, Blue Demon is just called Blue Demon pretty much everywhere in the world, and somehow i didn’t even heard about it. Or maybe i did and my brain removed it to store some porn, i dunno.

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