12 Days Of Dino Dicember #42: Caveman (1981)

Ah yes, the caveman movie with Ringo Starr, that was a thing, and honestly anything with actors or people that are actually known in the wider sphere of interests… it’s a welcome break from a lot cheap ass dinosaur flicks done with nobodies and with the cash of a ham sandwich, i’ve said this before but i’ll repeat myself since the 30 cents trash is by far the more numerically abudant.

Especially as it’s kind of ambitious for what’s conceptually just another cavemen comedy, as the main appeal is the cast, with Ringo Starr, Dennis Quaid, Barbara Bach, but it’s almost completely recited in “caveman language”, and in some theathers they even gave out a translation phamplet for 30 words in caveman lingo, which isn’t a complete gimmick since there is a sort of caveman dialect-vocabulary that’s recurring through the film, so no subtitles will ever be needed to watch it.

There is a plot of sorts, with Atouk, a caveman a bit too thinky and curious for its tribe, getting kicked out and joining a merry band of outcast cavemen, and with them they basically go on to improve themselves, invent fire, weapons, learn to walk not hunched like a baboon, all that stuff.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #39: Dinosaur From The Deep (1993)

Don’t worry, this one has dinosaurs in it.

Most likely, anyway.

Didn’t think about that being a required feature, but that’s why you should do some research first, just in case, otherwise you get duped into watching a cannibal movie, somehow.

No my friends, this time we’re in for some semi-notorious lower case Z-grade filet from France, with Norbert Moutier’s Dinosaur From The Deep.

After all, the success of Jurassic Park wasn’t an USA thing only, at all, so here comes a low budget film done to capitalize on Spielberg’s dino opus and hopefully trick enough people (especially younger dinosaur enthusiasts) into renting or buying it on VHS, only to realize it’s basically a “shot in shitteo”/”home video film” of French people with no budget.

What were they gonna in 1993/4, look up the metascore on sites that didn’t exist yet, or required anyone in the household NOT to use the phone?

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #37: Two Lost Worlds (1951)

h boy, two lost worlds for the price of one?

Sign me up for one ticket, Jimmy boy, because you know a movie it’s good when it marketed the same way as grocery store coupon for breakfast cereals or boxes of cuetips.

It’s kinda funny too how curiously there wasn’t a Lost World adaptation (talking about the Conan Doyle book, obviously) in the 50s, so i guess, just in case, they doubled the worlds lost, just to give you more bang for your buck, or make you believe that only to get suckered into watching a dinosaur film that couldn’t even afford its own dinosaurs.

Leaving aside the dinosaurs/reptiles don’t show up until 45 minutes into this… 61 minutes film, this in independent production that literally borrows his dinosaur footage from One Million B.C., the 1940 film that will end up being mined of its of stock footage for decades, as in used not a quick reference to the olden days, just ripped off because they couldn’t afford the special effects for the prehistoric creatures they wanted to as a selling point on the poster.

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Dynasty Warriors Origins [DEMO] [HANDS-ON] STEAM

I didn’t promise a hands-on first impressions on the demo of the newest Dynasty Warriors game, Dynasty Warriors Origins, because i don’t have a next gen console, and usually i play my musou games like that, but i figured out, there’s a Steam demo as well, maybe my relatively ancient rig can run it fine… and it did, actually surprised me that it’s good enough to run it decently.

So here it my opinions on the demo of Dynasty Warriors Origins, which lets you play one of the classic bouts of the series, The Battle Of Sishui Gate, where the Anti-Dong Zhuo Coalitation attacks united and you also get to meet the demon in red, the mightiest among men, the one you do not pursue: Lu Bu.

So, in case you didn’t follow or knew of this new Dynasty Warriors game, the gist is that you play as a lone Wanderer, a skilled yet aimless martial artist that gets involved into the turbolent battles and political machinations of the characters from Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, so you can basically decide around a bit, and interact and fight alongside the many characters fans of the novel and Koei series have learned to know, love and hate.

It’s not quite an OC or a CAW character similar to how you had a self-insert protagonist in the Samurai Warriors Chronicles games, as the Wanderer is a precisely designed character and so you can’t change much about his looks (nor you can choose for a female option, as far as i remember), not that it matters for the portion of game given by the demo.

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[EXPRESSO] Napoli New York (2024) | Once Upon A Gabagool

Context: this is a December 2024 release in Italy based on a script written by Fellini long before he became a director, adapted by a modern and fairly well regarded italian director, Gabriele Salvatores, whom, instead of a neorealist picture, opted for the tone of fairytale, of fable, while indeed tackling a sensitive period in italian history, depicting a ruined post-WWII Naples were the misery set back in after the american troops returned home, with two orphaned street-smart children, Carmine and Celestina, struggling to make any money or food by any means.

The two then basically decide – after getting duped – to secretly sneak aboard the only american ship anchored nearby, as Celestina’s older sister did leave for NY years ago….

It’s the ol’ tale of Italian immigration in the US during the 40/50s, focusing on Neapolitan immigrants specifically, which tackles the expected themes… but it does so with a strange, uneasy and uncovincing middle ground, as it clearly opts to be this uplifting, optimistic Christmas fairytale, skewing most realism…but also doesn’t quite fits the “magical realism” tone, as its built and based on the perceptions America had/has about around italian cinema of old (and Italy to a point), while also lacking the actual complexity that would have still made possible by the “fable” angle.

The cast is actually amazing, but these aren’t characters, there are balls of stereotypes, some true, but here not even vaguely discussed, challenged, this is the “40s America present Paisà as a puppet theathre play for tots” level of nuance, but resented a comforting fact, because despite the lavish modern production, this film’s soul is old (ancient, even), deliberately so to a point where it hurts it.

And yet, in a way, it’s too italian for its own good, if that makes any sense.

The Spooktacular Eight #24: Mother Joan Of The Angels (1961)

Let’s conclude this year’s Spooktacular Eight by reviewing the 1960 Polish classic Mother Joan Of The Angels, also known as The Devil And The Nun.

Based on the real, documented case of demonic possession (or mass hysteria, let’s be real) that affected the nuns and took place in 1634 at a convent in Loudlun, France… well, indirectly, as it actually based on a novel of the same name by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz (which would later by adapted by Kent Russell for the infamous The Devils), itself loosely based on the aforementioned Loudlun possessions.

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[EXPRESSO] Megalopolis (2024) | Golden Experience Requiem

Megalopolis it’s Francis Ford Coppola doing a more modern take on Metropolis, basically, just with the city of the future being a New York-Imperial Rome hybrid, and the framing of “a fable by Francis Ford Coppola” setting the angle right… but that won’t really soften the blow.

The plot sees New Rome, a city split between tradition, embodied by the city mayor Cicero, and innovation, represented by Catalina, a genius architect willing to seek a new better way, with the crux of the conflict incarnated by Cicero’s daugher, Julia, whom falls in love with Catalina.

Aside from the opening really making you feel like you tuned into the movie 1 hour in (which is a costant all throughout, btw), and the implication of Adam Driver’s character having a time-stopping Stand power of sorts…the movie is a mess, it’s a long, sprawling, unwieldy mess of scattered plotlines (some never resolved by the end), trippy imagery, pretense of being profound when its all so utterly blunt it’s almost comical, and even when you do where the hell is going, it’s hard to care, with too many characters (though that would imply “characterization”), the starfilled cast having no chemistry, bad dialogues, and the direction that makes it all feel like they’re rehearsing for when they gonna actually shoot the scene… doesn’t help.

It’s not boring, at the very least, but it’s an hilarious damning moment when the best scene of a Francis Ford Coppola film is John Voight as an old gajillionaire shooting Shia Labeuf in the ass with a bow. Twice.

It’s a weird, messy, disjointed vision that becomes outright bizzarre with these Hollywood high production values and quality cinematography, so in a way, it’s a fascinating bad movie from a legendary director, the kind that don’t come around so often anymore.

[EXPRESSO] My Hero Academia: You’Re Next (2024) | Mafia Might

Ok, that was fast, i didn’t heard any marketing for this new My Hero Academia film, but i guess its hitting theathers internationally and simultaneously this 10^th of October onwards (after its Japanese premiere in early August), so let’s go!

I wasn’t exactly too excited about this one, as this is the 4^th MHA movie, the premise screams of “taking time” until the TV series catches up, but then again the manga actually concluded and this released in Japan precisely close to the last chapter’s publication, which means this is the last MHA film, ever, and is set chronologically at the start of Season 7 of the anime.

This time we have Dark Might, an impostor italian mafioso willing to forcefully “carry on All Might’s will” by replacing him, using his mysterious powers and his Quirk enabled mafia goons to engulf anyone into his giant flying fortress, including the 1A students and a lone assassin, Giulio….

Minor villains are forgettable, and even the better of the movie’ original characters, Giulio, even he is a bundle of cliches, and while Dark Might as the main villain has some potential, the script never explores any potential themes that would naturally come with the “Dark Might” concept or character, so he ends up being… basically a less interesting Gild Tesoro from One Piece Film Gold while also doing the “villain posing as the superhero” sthick, and yet he’s not the worse of these sadly lukewarm MHA movie villains.

Animation is pretty good and more consistent than in WHM, and let’s be clear, MHA You’re Next it’s far from bad, it’s quite enjoyable, it’s not even the worst one of the films, heck, it might arguably be the second best, it’s decent overall, but its disappointing for the final film bout of the series.

[EXPRESSO] Joker: Foliè A Deux (2024) | Pierrot Le Bore

Cards on the table: i didn’t like the first Joker, but it was influential, and more importantly, it made money, also i guess Todd Phillips was still bummed about people calling his (mostly) garbage comedies antiquated garbage, so Joker 2 it is.

Though i will admit that, on paper, the idea of a Joker sequel taking into account the reception of the first movie, as it basically became an unintentional big budget “incel manifesto”, deliberately not giving the audience what it wants, in order to do a character assassination of the Arthur/Joker persona.. it’s quite the interesting idea.

Problem is, it does so over a grueling 2 hours and 20 minutes of Todd Philipps exposing the thesis/message that should have been obvious in the first Joker, overexplaining it over and over, now wih musical numbers that are made to be loathed by musical fans and haters alike, so overabundant and pointless are these song inserts with lyrics either too vague or on the nose.

Just to make the whole thing feel even more of a punishment, not only for the people that saw the first movie as an endorsement of Joker’s actions, as Foliè Au Deux doesn’t have anything else of substance to add or say to compensate for what it purposefully sets out to deny… probably because it would have contrasted with the need to make people hate the film (and by extension the Joker persona) on purpose.

Which it does accomplish greatly.

I almost wanna like it for its unflinching committment to its unpopolar vision, but there’s still no amount of “post-irony” that changes the fact this is a boring overly long slog, too content to having “outplayed” its audience, too happy to wallow in its own smugness on having “made a point” to care about being entertaining.

Parasite Dolls (2003) [REVIEW] | Bubblegum Boomers

Wanted to get around to this for years, as i distinctly remember its cover displaying in the anime section of pretty much any video stores here in “Da Boot” back in the 2000s, and also being pretty featured or sold online. The power of anime cyberpunk and early CG.

Curiously, i’m not really familiar with the series this being a spin-off for, Bubblegum Crisis, which may sound sacrilegious to many, but i never saw as it was distributed on VHS at the time here too, but it was never pushed as much as others, at least as far i remember, i was a more casual anime fan back then and i would have been busy catching localized broadcasts of Dragon Ball, Hokuto No Ken/Fist Of The North Star and -especially – Ranma ½ anyway.

Parasite Dolls does feel immediatly like a product of the late 90s early 2000s, as in it’s not a feature film per sè, not a compilation film of 3-4 episodes, but an anthology/mini series of 3 stories set after the events of the original Bubblegum Crisis OAV series.

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