Anatar (2022) [REVIEW] | Howard The Fuck

No, this isn’t a typo. And it’s not that kind of pun.

And yes, this poster is 100 % legit.

Since it’s my birthday, let’s review a movie i’ve been meaning to cover here for a while.

This is an actual italian parody/spoof of Avatar, that released in italian theathers, for actual money, with the intent of launching a new brand of “cinepattone” (aka a type of italian extremely low brow dumb comedies that once infested theathers every year around christmas), the “spaghetti-fi”, in the words of Anatar’s producer Salvatore Scarico, whom also literally and openly calls this an Avatar’s mockbuster film.

So much for clarity.

Reeling back my jaw from the freezing pavement after realizing this isn’t a troll style marketing campaign for another, real movie…. i must also point out this was never really properly advertised anywhere (or almost anywhere) and i stumbled upon its existence last year while browsing upcoming early dicember cinema releases here.

While this also gives me whiffs of Creators: The Past (a huge italian scifi epic that flopped back into the obscurity from whence it came)… you know, at least they marketed it at popular Italian anime/manga/videogames cons that year, Lucca Comics & Games. They tried proper. And at least that movie had William Shatner.

Here they were so spineless that at the last second (literally, 2 days before the intended 1^st December release, hence 2 weeks before Avatar: The Way Of Water opened in theathers here) they chickened out – ha ha – and rescheduled the release between January and February 2023.

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[EXPRESSO] Alice, Darling (2022) | “The Truth Goes Unspoken”

As with most releases that distributors are afraid won’t do well, i had to catch this one in theathers not even a week after it was out, quickly before the week’s new releases would inevitably push it out of the schedule altogether, we gotta make space for a russo-hungarian cheap looking animated kids movie about a fuckin rat.

And i’m glad i did, because Alice, Darling tells the story of a woman in an abusive relationship, Alice (Anna Kendrick), that decides to go with her friends to celebrate one of them hitting the 30s, but to do so lies to her strange fianceè because she’s afraid of what he might say or do if he finds out. Or more likely when he finds out, as we slowly learn the kind of abusive, manipulating piece of shit he is, as Alice manages to eventually confront and escape from his web of calculated guilt tripping ways, and her friends also become aware of the situation, feeling like they could have done something better if they actually knew a long time ago.

What is notable is that despite the trailer (or the tags for the review, for that matter), Alice, Darling doesn’t have a “hook” in the way of epitomizing this via a horror or otherwise explicit and graphic angle. This is a slow burner without exploitation style trappings, the psychological abuse and violence is comunicated mostly visually, through timely silences, implications, the poignancy in the unsaid, and there’s no deliberaly exaggerated “setpiece”, as the movie depicts with success the many little things that seem innocuous or benign because the abused has accepted them as the new de facto normality, how they creep slowly over time unquestioned and can fester into a person.

A very solid, worthwhile feature debut for director Mary Nighy.

[EXPRESSO] Beau Is Afraid (2023) | Rightfully So

The new movie from Hereditary and Midsommar director Ari Aster, and what do you know, it’s indeed quite the intriguing piece of cinema.

Heck, i’d go further and say this one is quite the experience, and definitely something you’ve never seen before, not this way or with this imagery or themes, as Aster goes fuckin insane by delivering a surreal kafkian odyssey out of a very simple and – on its face – thin premise: a man named Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) with a troubled relationship with his mother is set to do his yearly visit home for the anniversary of his father’s death.

Then he learns of her dying in a horrible accident too and scrambles, shame he lives in what could be classified as “Kafkian suburban slums”, with naked murderers, tattooed man with black reptilian eyes, and crazied hobos.

Not that the world outside it’s better, as Beau is trapped in an eternal super short-circuit of grotesque weirdos accusing, manipulating or threatening him in ways meant to fuel the Kafkian uroborous, as Beau it’s guilt tripped into everything by everyone, while he stews in the “damned if i do, damned if i don’t” miserable state of existence, getting involved in weirder and increasingly surreal scenarios as his adventure unfolds from just him wanting to come back home.

It’s all so absurdly grotesque, preposterous and outlandish in the peak of weirds the movie reaches, definitely making you wanna see what the hell could ever happen next, but even with Joaquin Phoenix being incredible as usual, the deliberate slow pace and excess of…. well, everything, those take a toll on the movie, which ends up feeling too long and repetitive.

But still, even flawed as it is, Beau Is Afraid remains a movie that has to be seen to be believed.

[EXPRESSO] Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3 (2023) | Third Time’s The Charm

The overdue closing chapter of the beloved Guardians Of The Galaxy trilogy if finally here, with its 3^rd volume that does signal an end for this particular line up of characters and their stories.

We know we’ll hear the name “Guardians Of The Galaxy” again, somehow, but let’s make it clear that this feels like the final entry and provides closure, without being too bothered by any overarching or carryover plot points building to anything bigger for what it’s now Phase 5, but in hindsight (given the Johathan Majors controversy and its fallout), maybe that’s for the best.

Volume 3 sees the Guardians chilling in their home base of Knowhere, with Quill still not dealing well with the “Gamora situation”, until a mysterious foe attacks them to capture Rocket, and after failing the gang (including the alternate universe Gamora we got from Avengers Endgame) is forced to confront The High Evolutionary (colluding with the Sovereign race, still hankering for revenge on the Guardians after the events of the second movie), an eugenetics cyborg genius from Rocket’s past, in order to save their friend from imminent death.

As the trailer alluded, this one deals heavily on Rocket’s horrendous origin story by the hand of the villain, The High Evolutionary, which is a truly despicable monster obsessed with creating the “perfectiom” and makes for a very good villain.

It’s no surprise GOTG Vol. 3 had very big expectations to live up to (since it’s also one of the MCU series people loved the most over the years, unsurprisingly so), and i can safely say it does not disappoint, with Gunn still putting out very fun space adventures with cool fight scenes, stylish use of vintage licensed music, good humour, good emotional scenes that pack a punch, great, lovable characters, etc.

Highly recommended.

[EXPRESSO] Suzume (2022) | Sit On My Face

Ah, Makoto Shinkai, one of the relatively newer (and fewer) popular anime film directors, often compared to other big name anime directors that have nothing in common with because we don’t expect anyone to read behind this clickbait opener of an article, and his later work, Suzume, finally hitting theathers worldwide.

For the record, i do find Shinkai to be a very talented director, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that after Your Name he just pigeonholed himself into making the same type of movie over and over again, of which he’s seemingly self-aware because Suzume is a far more straightforward story…. that almost immediatly features a guy turning into a chair.

I knew of that before hand but the execution still threw me off, in a good way, as the story unfolds around a common 17 yo high school girl, the titular Suzume, and a young man named Souta, who end teaming up in preventing eartquakes by locking away mystical doors that appear in ruins , in a road movie-esque fashion.

All “obviously” inspired (even more than Shinkai’s previous movie) by the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011, referred to simply by its date (3/11) due to its cultural lasting impact on Japan.

While there’s a lot to like as it’s usual with Shinkai works (characters, animation, mastery in handling emotional weight)… it also suffers from the fact the plot it’s structurally the same we’ve been before, twice, it has some pacing issues towards the end, and you better believe there’s a romance subplot, because.

I do find the ending more fitting the overall message and theme than in Weathering With You, and to be honest even with these flaws, it’s undeniably a good movie that once again demonstrates Shinkai didn’t fluke his way into “anime film royalty”.

Super Mario: The Great Mission To Rescue Princess Peach! (1986) [REVIEW]

Before this deal of an animated Mario movie was written between Nintendo and Illumination, heck, 7 years before the infamous live-action film with Bob Hopkins and John Leguizamo, Nintendo already had its Super Mario anime movie, with Super Mario: The Great Mission To Rescue Princess Peach, based on the seminal Super Mario Bros game, which was released just 1 year prior.

While not totally unknown, for years it had been quite the rare, obscure and elusive piece of forgotten Mario media, with some horrible VHS rips flying around the web of thing, until some absolute chads in 2021 came together to fund and execute a 4K restoration project of the film from a rare (possibly even the only surviving) 16 mm print secured by another madlad called “Carnivol”, and then put it on Youtube for free, with updated (and upgraded) english subs.

So you can easily check it out there, not gonna put the link directly because Nintendo, but the effort it’s more than laudable and the people behind the restoration deserve some money thrown at them.

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Devil Monster AKA The Sea Fiend (1936) [REVIEW] #giantmonstermarch

Really feeling the old with this one, but i don’t really care since it’s one of the few – as far as i know, the only – monster movies about a killer manta ray. And thankfully it’s so old that it is in the public domain (in the United States at least) and can be found at the Internet Archive… at least in his edited version released in 1946, which was apparently more focused on South Seas drama and also supplemented the 20 minutes of material cut from the original with stock footage of native girls, half dressed ones, which was oddly a loophole for the Hays Code prohibition on nudity by considering them “etnographic scenes” of “native” life (the parenthesis doing a lot of lifting here).

The old art of technically correct nudity, the best kind of nudity.

Also, in a similar fashion to Universal’s treatment of their monster movies back in the 30s, there was a different Spanish language version shot back-to-back, called El Diablo De Mar, which also used some of the same actors and footage from the 1936 english speaking version, upon which we’re basing this review, and which can be found on Youtube at the time of writing.

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[EXPRESSO] Shazam: Fury Of The Gods (2023) | Atlantomachia

Superhero time again, this time of the DC Comics variety, with the sequel to 2019’s Shazam, which introduced new audiences to the magic-powered hero and its origin story, before we got a DC Extended Universe entry related with last year’s spin-off film about Shazam’s nemesis, Black Adam, but honestly i’d rather not discuss of that movie again, what’s the point since their MCU attempt was such a mess that they hired James Gunn as well to reboot the entire thing?

So, talking about Fury Of The Gods, we have our boy Billy Batson and his foster siblings having to face a new menace, the Daughters of Atlas (played by Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren), who have come to reclaim a world ending artifact.

As you can guess, thanks to the new foes we get the explore the lore a bit more, learning of the origin of their powers, the world of Greek gods long gone, which also means it’s a great “excuse” to have a pandemonium style of monsters from said mythology run amok, from cyclops to harpies and manticores, and like the first you can tell this is from a horror director, because a lot of people get straight up killed (or worse) even in the prologue.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the first Shazam movie, and this one it’s just as good, being also a n everincrensigly rare specimen of superhero movie that isn’t plagued by tonal issues, has genuinely funny comedy bits (and the style of writing fits more with the protagonists being young teens), and balances well all of the aforementioned with the more emotional moments, which do feel earnest and not just there because the template says so.

Third act could have been a lil’ shorter, but still, lots of silly but genuine fun.

Galgameth (1996) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

We already discussed the best known film from legendary South Korean director Shin Sang-ok (whom sadly passed away in 2004), and i feel one really deserves the epiteth of legend given the history behind the 1985 Bulgasari/Pulgasari, especially as it feels like a last middle finger to the then current North Korean dictator, as him and his wife (kidnapped to make movies for Kim Jong-il, again, not joking, at all) managed to escape while at a Vienna’s film festival.

We went through the whole ordeal for that movie’s review, so i’m not gonna repeat myself too much on this regard, but i do think we’re long overdue for a movie about the whole ordeal, since it’s a perfect case where reality is crazier than fiction.

After his escape in Vienna the director and his wife became US citizens for a while, and during the 90s he made some movies under the pseudonym Simon Sheen, including some “3 Ninjas” sequels, and today’s feature, the ever-so-obscure Galgameth, also known/released as The Legend Of Galgameth or The Adventures Of Galgameth, of course it has alternative titles.

And Galgameth is of interest for us because director Sean McNamara basically recycled the script from Shin Sang-ok’s Pulgasari/Bulgasari remake (the original 1962 Pulgasari is sadly a lost film) but made it into a sword and sorcery film for children. As you do.

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[EXPRESSO] Empire Of Light (2022) | UKinema

From director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Jarhead, 1917, Skyfall) comes this drama set in 1980’s UK, about the cinema Empire, which used to be a majestic theather with 4 screening rooms (alongside a restaraunt), but is now on the decline due to recession and the cinema’s owner, Mr. Ellis, not really doing much to get the estabilishment’s luster back.

The soul of the place is actually his segretary, Hillary, who is the real glue holding together the place, the workers and the morale with her dedication, despite her ailing mental health and questionable love life, and she is struck by this new recruit, a black man called Steven, as they forge a difficult but sincere relationship, all made more heavy by the overwhelmingly racist tendencies that spike during periods of recessions like this period in british history.

With the expected takeaways of how cinema can be a healing escape, a brief one , while also serving as a way to mend together a broken populace that during recessions and hardships are quick to scapegoat minorities with all kinds of violence, and despite sounding a bit preachy and kinda obvious, they work as the movie takes its time to fully flesh out the characters, their relationship, their issues and how they relate to the turbolent fragment in time the movie it’s set in.

And with a top-notch cast of familiar faces giving out great performances, that helps as well. 🙂

Empire Of Light it’s definitely one of those movies that will require some patience due to arguably slow pace in its first half, but it’s worth waiting for the movie to get into gear as the set up does pays off, and the drama does pack quite the punch.

Maybe more “familiar” material than some might like, but still quite good.