[EXPRESSO] Obsession (2025) | Yandere Simulator USA

Apparently there is a youtuber to horror filmakers pipeline/trend and it seems to be panning out fairly well (i haven’t seen Iron Lung yet), even if i never even heard of Curry Barker before, and to be frank i didn’t knew that going into the film, at all, nor it matters much to me.

Set in some modern pre-COVID american small town, Obsession tells the story of “Bear”, a very typical shy boy that works in a music store had a crush on one of his coworkers, Nikki, for a while, but couldn’t muster up the courage to confess even when he could, so he instead uses a “willow wish stick” novelty toy he originally bought on a whim to wish for her love absolute.

But like in every classic “be careful what you wish for” kind of story, Bear gets more than he bargained out of cracking that novelty item, as Nikki’s new sudden behaviour has her go to increasingly creepy, delirious, erratic and violent ways, basically going for that infamous “american yandere” experience, a suburbian flavour of Yuno Gasai for the yanks.

And while it’s funnier than you might expect, it still works tremendously off its simple and apparently “thin” premise, as it commits to it without resorting to cheap jumpscares or trying to destroy your eadrums with sudden volume increase and screaming or shit like that, it builds this tension between Bear and “Nikki”, as the guy is also – for lack of a better word – obsessed to get her affection one way or the other that he’s willing to simply go along with whatever insane or horrific event is thrown is way, despite his fear of Nikki growing stronger every day.

It’s a very good modern take on a very familiar formula, in short.

Recommended.

[EXPRESSO] Remarkably Bright Creatures (2026) | Psych-opus

Due to wallet woes, why not, let’s see what’s new on Netflix, this film about a woman and an old intelligent octopus she cares for in the local acquarium sounds cute enough, why not?

Based on the best selling book of the name same by Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures is the story of Tova, a widoved old woman that leads a lonely existence and does night shifts of taking care-cleaning the aquarium of a small coastal town.

She still struggles to cope with her son, Erik, having passed away decades ago, and the only one that she seems able to communicate with is Marcellus, a big old octopus that lives in the acquarium, its thoughts expressed in an elegant and sarcastic voiceover by Alfred Molina.

That is, until Cameron, a failed musician and a bit of a wanderer, troubled by his the absent father, comes into town…

While fairly obvious where the story points (and goes) to, it’s more about the manner of which these two will manage to connect for the better, with the touch of “whimsy-magic” of the octopus that acts an involuntary psychiatrist recipient and is given a “talking” voice to comment back for the audience’s sake.

That is actually the problem, as the film is either too scared to let the silent moments work, or maybe because it’s a Netflix release, it explains any metaphor or anything that expects audiences having some semblance of basic narrative literacy.

Yet, despite that and some issues like subplots being a bit too superficial, it does work because it’s not trying to “Oscar-max”, it’s actually just a little gentle, melanchonic, genuine feel-good tale of lonely people, normal people that talk as such, one never cynical in intent or execution.

Could have been better, but definitely worth a watch.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II X360 [REVIEW] | ♬ ‘Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down ♬

The first Force Unleashed was good, not original or amazing, but good hack n slash fun, it was.

So a sequel wouldn’t be surprising, given it was the fastest-selling Star Wars videogame at the time, even if the first one actually had a proper ending and a definitive fate for the main character, Star Killer, so how do you continue the story?

Since i’m about to discuss the story of the first game and spoil the ending, i’m gonna have to make it extra CLEAR.

As in.

SPOILER WARNING

SPOILER WARNING, again.

You have been warned.

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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed X360 [REVIEW] | Starkilling It

This is a revised rewrite, but it has been so long since the old review that back then the Sequel Trilogy had just begun, and Disney wasn’t quite drowning people in Star Wars related projects and series up the wazoo, and to be honest while i still don’t consider myself a Star Wars fan… fuck if i know what a “Star Wars fan” actually means nowadays.

Nor i do care to properly find out.

I did like it casually enough to play some SW games like this and the sequel, and – as i said before – i would love a Star Wars Musou, which sadly will never happen, and in general i do like people fighting with lightsabers and magical space powers, i’m not above it, absolutely.

Also, while this isn’t the first hack n slash/beat em up based on the property (i remember the home consoles versions of the Episode III tie-in game being that and mostly well received), it was certainly one made because God Of War became popular, so Lucasarts wanted in, as everybody did.

Namco even resurrect their Splatterhouse series to get some of that violent 3D beat em up action.

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Bujingai: Swordmaster PS2 [REVIEW] | Wuxia GACKT Action

You think you know the depths of the Playstation 2 library.

You don’t. You just don’t.

If this wasn’t the case, a title like Bujingai: Swormaster would have been covered by gaming Youtubers as a “forgotten gem” to the point it’s not forgotten at all anymore.

And yet, 99 % of you before know never knew there was a PS2 era hack n slash in the vein of Devil May Cry but where you play as sci-fi wuxia Gackt.

Again, the PS2 library is so big we still are finding more obscure titles to showcase.

Personally, i remember seeing this one a lot in bargain bin cases after a while, since it was distributed here by 505 Games/Gamestreeet (figures since they are an Italy based distributor), which back in the early 2000s were famous for mostly peddling ol’ budget games/shovelware by the bucketloads, so that didn’t help, but at least a PAL copy is fairly cheap and easy to find still today.

Can’t say the cover helped because sure as hell the general public wasn’t gonna go “is that Gackt?” after looking at the box art.

But yes, he gave right to the teams to use his likeness for the main character, Lau Wong, a wuxia hero that has to do the usual: sky surf on an ethereal cloud while doing the usual wuxia ballet-combat aerobics and eventually go back to Earth, 100 years after an apocalyptic event wiped out most of the population while giving survivors powers, to rid the planet of a demonic army that has holed up in the asian city of Bujingai.

And since it’s a martial arts inspired game, it just happens the head of the demon army is a former fellow martial arts student turned rival that has gone evil, as you do in these.

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[EXPRESSO] Don Chisciotte (2026) | Romance Dusk

A new, Italian adaptation of the famous Don Quixote by Cervantes, also based off an old theathre adaptation of the same classic story by an often unsung master of italian cinema and theathre (among others thing, he co-wrote Bycicle Thieves) Gerardo Guerrieri.

While i’m not familiar with Guerrieri treatment-version of the story, i think this aspect it’s worth noting because some there’s a theathrical flair and approach to some scenes, for better or worse, not that i think this is a proper, major flaw.

That said, this is a straightforward adaptation of the classic novel, taking place in its proper time period and locations, but aside the beginning and end framing this as Cervantes himself envisioning his book while being treated at a hospital after partecipating in the Battle Of Lepanto (and a couple of events are cut to avoid the film go over the 2 hours runtime) it is indeed Don Quixote, and ironically the fact it’s not a modernized take gives it more impactful.

Sure, while i did like Gilliam’s take on the tale (for example), i also understand that in a way there’s no need to modernize the story, as it’s themes do keep on resonating as strong as they do today, and reconfirm this as a modern classic not just because they tell you it is and make you read it in school.

I won’t lie, at times its committment to being faithful makes it a bit too didactic, some of the acting isn’t amazing, but the main performances of Alessio Boni (Don Quixote) and Fiorenzo Mattu (Sancho) are great, photography is quite good, and the committment to have the world feel extra concrete extends to avoid any digital effects, as in, they actually built real windmills and windmill props, which is extra laudable especially now.

Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman (1958) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

One thing that might surprise younger people is that despite its popularity, Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman ain’t a precursor on the trend of giant/miniaturized people, quite the opposite.

It’s also funny how is such a movie obviously conceived for the drive-in circuits, since it’s so short than of course it had to be shown as a double feature, that being Corman’s War Of The Satellites.

So short than to expand the runtime from 66 minutes to 75 for the TV version they had to basically reuse sequences, add a long crawl at the beginning and even fuck around with frames manipulation to artificially lenghten the thing. Jesus Christ, the desperation indeed.

In hindsight, one does learn to appreciate the efficiency of these cheap movies from the era, for better or worse they ended up not wasting your time as much as some crap movies now do, even if they clearly wanted to reach the standard 90 minutes, but in the “age of content”, these films being to the point are quite welcome in their brevity.

Even though often they are so more due to budget than anything else.

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[EXPRESSO] The Bride! (2026) | Mary Shelley’s Frankenmess

This was a film i did look forward to see, obviously, being a peculiar take on Bride Of Frankenstein, with the trailers showing off The Creature (the Frankenstein monster) and The Bride in a Bonny & Clyde, Syd & Nancy style dynamic as they travel a 30’s America of gangsters and trenched detectives.

The premise sees the ghost/spirit of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein herself, meta narrate about her “sequel” about the “Bride” of Frankenstein, in this case the corpse of a prostitute working undercover to gather info about a particularly violent mob boss, which is dug up after the Creature travels to America and seeks the help of Dr. Ephronious to make him a companion in order to soothe his unique loneliness.

The experiment is successful and so the Bride is borne, but it becomes difficult for the two monsters to go unnoticed, not only due to the police and the mob befuddled by a presumed dead woman showing up on the newspapers’ headlines, but also because Mary Shelley herself occasionally possesses the Bride’s body…..

the idea of a feminist take on Bride Of Frankenstein makes perfect sense, i do believe so, even if discordant by design, as it’s not only a horror-crime duet of deranged protagonists complementing each other’s delirium, but it’s also a gothic romance that often dips into comedy and even musical sequence that seems to tribute-spoof Frankenstein Junior.

It’s ambitious and – again- by design tries to combine together pieces that don’t really naturally fit, which is indeed “very Frankenstein”, but the execution honestly feels like a really hot mess of intentions, even more stitched together and messier than intended, downright clunky.

I do respect its ambition, even if the final result is indeed quite flawed, but also proper interesting and never quite boring.

Queen Kong (1976) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Time to give it up for the one and only… Queen Kong.

the only “Queenie Fo’ My Weenie”.

It’s very obscure and forgotten as Kong rip-offs go… and thankfully so, because it might be the worst one, as in “so bad it’s jarring” kind of bad.

Let’s be honest, this should have been a 10 minutes sketch on TV, making a full lenght movie out of the concept “let’s swap genders to the King Kong story” as some sort of performative progressive feminist take on the classic tale (purely performative, it’s just the same exploitation style brand of random racism and “sensibilities”) and let’s make it a parody because so we can stuff it full of whatever, like shitty comedy too and hackenyed gag.

plus since it’s “for a laugh” we can excuse away the shitty ass effects, it’s that kind of cynical film that deliberately ridicules itself in order to excuse how fuckin awful it really is.

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[EXPRESSO] Scarlet (2025) | “Why Don’t You Ramlet?”

After debutting at 2025’s Venice Film Festival, Hosoda’s latest film, Scarlet, is releasing in theathers worlwide.

And to be honest i was ready to be disappointed, but you know, even Belle with its flaws was quite interesting, but Scarlet instead surpassed my expectations for the worse, and it pains me to say that it is, without a doubt, the worse Hosoda film ever, however you slice it.

The premise is not necessarily bad, at all, basically doing a genderbend version of Hamlet, but when the heroine Scarlet, fails to avenge her father’s death at the hands of her evil uncle Claudius, she finds herself in a limbo where souls gather after death, regardless of era or nation.

There is she informed by a strange shaman woman that her uncle Claudius is here too, and is amassing an army to stop others going to the “Infinite Lands” beyond the mountains, so she continues her quest for vengeance, helped by Hijiri, a pacifist paramedic from modern day Japan.

Scarlet it is the worse written Hosoda film ever, with a story that even by its own fantasy sci fi logic makes little sense, a super basic Hamlet deconstruction that has nothing to say and doesn’t proper explore anything, just throws in the air the usual waffling about the “futility of vengeance” and “the necessity of violence”, features incredibly dull, uninteresting characters and ends with one of the stupidest “optimistic” endings i’ve ever seen.

To make matters worse, it’s not even pretty, starting off strong with good 2D animation in the prologue but then it’s a constantly inconsistent flip-flopping between 2D and 3D CG animation, all looking astoningly cheap for a feature film by Hosoda’s Studio Chizu, with musical scenes meant to wow audiences being downright laughable and featuring generic, unispired music to boot.