12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 57: The Jurassic Games: Extinction (2025)

As promised, here we are talking about the Jurassic Games sequel, as in the actual one.

I still can’t quite believe the Dinosaur World situation, despite reviewing it and explaing it’s linkage to The Jurassic Games series, i still kinda struggle to accept this absurd situation.

But this time Ryan Bellgardt is back with a proper follow up to his mash up of dinosaur film with sci-fi virtual battle royale shenanigans, more in the vein of the Running Man than anything else, now that i think about it.

Like in the first film, we are in a dystopian future where authorities force selected deathrow prisoners into a seasonal death show, The Jurassic Games, where they compete in a VR simulation against deadly traps and expecially dinosaurs, this time with the only one left standing being able to avoid death by lethal injection.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino December # 55: The Invisible Raptor (2023)

Sadly i learned of this midway through doing last year’s batch of reviews for 12 Days Of Dino Dicember, so i wasn’t able to cover it back then, but we’re fixing that right now.

The idea is both cute and obvious as hell: a dinosaur film without the dinosaur.

More correctly, the dinosaur is there, it’s a velociraptor, but due to “science” it was made super smart AND invisible, escaping from the lab and going on a rampage, leaving it up to a disgraced paleonthologist (reduced to mascot costume shenanigans at a dino themed amusement park) to save the day from the invisible menace.

I don’t need to, but i will point out that this so obviously feels like them stumbling into a somewhat genius solution when they couldn’t afford the dinosaur in their dinosaur film.

The film knows everyone would have sussed that out immediatly, so it plays as a horror-black comedy that’s basically a spoof of all things Spielberg… well, mostly a flood of references mushed in together, with protagonist being Dr. Grant Walker, an appropriately named fusion of Indiana Jones with Dr. Grant and i suppose Chuck Norris’ character from Walker Texas Ranger, maybe?) as he teams up with an hapless security guard in trying to stop the invisible dinosaur, while everyone obviously doesn’t believe his story until it’s too late, Jaws style.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 53: Primitive War (2025)

I wasn’t aware of Primitive War until a friend recommended looking up the trailer some time ago, and indeed it looked promising and actually kinda cool, like an actual effort and not just the usual low budget dinosaur drivel that we get nowadays.

I mean, if going for the Vietnam route worked for King Kong, it can work for a dinosaur film as well, why not? It’s at least something to shake up the formula.

And it also released earlier this year, so i didn’t have to dust this off from the crypt or something.

in 1968, during the Vietnam war, a Green Beret platoon goes missing during an operation, so a search & rescue team, named Vulture Squad, is tasked with a recon mission to locate the missing platoon, only for them to be attacked by dinosaurs.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino December #51: Ice Road Terror (2011)

Another one that’s been long overdue, and not because of any specific reason, besides resulting absurdly elusive to find so far, outside of buying a used import DVD of it on Ebay, which was also unbelievably expensive, hence the post-poning until eventual availability.

That did came when i found the thing uploaded on Youtube in full some months ago, glad i didn’t blow 40 bucks or something on just the US DVD copy. Without the box.

Especially for what is literally just a random SyFy dinosaur movie, Ice Road Terror is nothing more than that, and in hindsight it might sound like a mockbuster of that Liam Neeson starring film, The Ice Road, but that came out a decade later, in 2021, the title of this – apparently – its meant to reference a TV series i’ve never heard before, called Ice Road Truckers.

This movie too is about “ice road truckers”, as in a couple of truckers that are driving through Alaska’s frozen rivers in order to deliver some equipment to a remote diamond mine in the region.

But on arrival they encountered a prehistoric creature that had been long dormant in the ice.

Typical.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 50: Dinosaur World (2020)

I have been doing this long enough that i could tell this is a Chinese production just by the runtime alone, as it barely 80 minutes, like most of the stuff you can find on Chinese streaming platforms like YOKOU, or their equivalent channel on Youtube.

Well, i was half right, this is a Chinese-American production by a company called Flame Node (which just has this and something called “Clutch Shot” listed on IMDB) with mostly chinese or cino-american actors in the cast, and is also streaming on Amazon Prime Video (alongside other platforms) in some territories, and it has beloved social media comedian Steven He (aka the “EMOTIONAL DAMAGE” guy), whom also did star in a tokusatsu parody series called GINORMO, apparently.

Immediatly though i had a familiar feeling with the opening scene seeing people fight off dinosaurs with blaster rifles in sci-fi corridors… like didn’t Jurassic Games did the same maze as an activity mid way through the film?

The answer is yes, and immediatly after the title splash screen, it becomes obvious that this IS another copy of Jurassic Games, just this time done with the framing of “Dinosaur World” being a VR videogame coming off of its alpha stage and putting up a 5 million prize for partecipants to the closed beta, who will be picked randomly.

Continua a leggere

12 Days of Dino Dicember # 49: War Of The God Monsters AKA The Flying Monster (1985)

I know this is technically Giant Monster March material, but it’s Christmas, and kaiju are often dinosaurs in some way, so let’s have some technically correct fun with this obscure South-Korean kaiju film, The Flying Monster, better known as War Of The God Monsters because it is law for genre cinema films like these to have multiple titles.

1985 was definitely an interesting year for kaiju film as this was most likely made as a response to the North-Korean produced Bulgasari, itself made because of Return Of Godzilla debutting one year prior. Then King Kong Lives almost killed all of this new found momentum.

Directed by Jeong-yong Kim, War Of the God Monsters/ The Flying Monster (originally titled “Bicheongoesu “, which would translate literally to “(The) Undead Beast”), and it does somewhat still fits for Dino Dicember, the plot IS about a shunned professor trying to prove that dinosaurs still exist, with a young reporter trying to get a story from him.

But at it turns out, “Vegamunk” is right, as various giant dinosaurs (and a Pterodactyl kinda thing, the titular “flying monster” i suppose) suddendly appear, forcing the odd to confront the peril and find a way to save the world from the kaijusauruses.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Alice In Borderland (Season Three) (2025) | Mistaah Jay

So, it’s one of those cases, as season 2 teased a “joker” card at the end, implying a continuation, despite the events seemingly having been wrapped up for good.

Fine, i guess, i assumed there were more volumes of the manga to draw from… there were not, Season 2 adapted that fully, and apparently this third season it’s not a direct adaptation of the sequel series, Retry, nor the prequel Border Road, though it (allegedly) takes some elements from those.

Years have passed, the survivors of “Borderland” have come back and forgot about the death games, moving on with their lives, but someone is bringing new people into that world, like a professor obsessed with the afterlife, while also stringing survivors from previous games back into the fray, including Arisu and Usagi….

It’s not even bad, but even just going blind into this third season there’s this air of contrived cop-out, it just feels like this wasn’t planned but imposed upon from the higher up that demanded another season of the show regardless, and so the writers had to wing it because “the content must flow”.

And to their credits, the new games (aside from the bullshit one with the fire arrows) are fun enough and do feel in line with the show, some of the new characters are somewhat interesting, but that and the crumbs of worldbuilding about “Borderland” aren’t enough to sustain or incite much curiosity, not helped by the timeskip that allows for some convenient off-screen characterization.

It just feels mostly unnecessary, existing because the series (allegedly) keeps breaking its own viewership records, and while it being shorter than the previous seasons is most likely for the best, i’m not gonna praise them for it since the ending teases a fourth one taking place abroad.

[EXPRESSO] Avatar: Fire And Ash (2025) | Cigarette Butts

Here we are again.

Somehow “disappointed”.

Sound silly, i know, the second one was admittedly a bit better than i expected and had some surprises in there… this one having a new Nav’i tribe of brutal savages (just short of being cannibals) isn’t enough to stave off boredom, but then again plot comes third or fourth more than usual this time around, taking a backset for just repeating almost verbatim the same plot beats of Way Of The Water, with some extra piles of new stuff that conveniently happens just because the script needs to -once again – free from capture these dumbass characters.

It’s pointless to be angry about an Avatar movie being another pile of shallow, utter nonsense, but this time around is even more boring dull nonsense that goes for a 3 hours equivalent of jiggling keys to infants, and it has framerate issues, which i don’t remember being a thing when i watched Way Of The Water in theathers just 3 years ago.

Maybe i got lucky back then, but regardless of how it looks that way, it’s distracting since it often fluctuates from looking like a big budget cutscene of a videogame, looking like we’re a HD camera feed from the set, looking actually cinematic, and so on.

It’s just insanely distracting and the added motion smoothing almost gave me a headache, and mind you, this was for a 2D screening.

I was reminded of something actually borderline unwatchable, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, but the sentiment is there, as i wonder why Cameron keeps making tech demo movies for proven tech (or telling a worthwhile plot with this astounding technological prowess), or he just doesn’t go make videogames instead.

Not that anything of this matters, as people will go see this on droves anyway.

The Crawling Eye AKA The Trollenberg Terror (1958) [REVIEW] | Nightmare In Alps Land

Since in recent years i found it was “HD remastered” on DVD by the Italian distributor Sinister Film (hence it was cheap and something i didn’t need to pay extra to import), i’ve been curious to check this out. Even if this italian re-release is under the “I Mostri Delle Rocce Atomiche”(lit “The Atomic Rock Monsters”) title, somehow an even worse title than the more common one its known in the US and worlwide, The Crawling Eye, which fuckins spoils how the monsters look.

But oh well, who cares, since the movie had quite the legacy, which included being the inspiration for the latter John Carpenter’s The Fog and being spoofed during the early days of MST3K.

Kinda funny how despite the DVD title the movie itself still shows the original title, The Trollenberg Terror…. i kinda understand why it was changed for international releases, honestly.

It’s not incorrect, thought, as the plot starts off with mountaineers being mysteriously decapitated on the slopes of the Swiss mountain known as the Trollenberg, scientists with a mountain observatory for catching cosmic rays finding there’s an odd cloud that simply sits upon the mountainside, never moving, while emanating a clear radioactive trace.

Continua a leggere

The very early December grabbag update post: Dinos, Animatronics Boogaloo, Letting It Die, PS5, and winter breaks

Time for an update post as Dicember looms very close… and is here already.

As previously announced, the first week of December i will be taking a break from full lenght reviews, which will resume on December 8th, on a weekly basis leading up to Christmas, and of course 12 Days Of Dino December.

Which will go on as always, no big changes.

I will have reviews of the new FNAF film out, and i guess the third James Cameron’s Avatar film, because that is a thing, and one i do not care for, i’d rather have Cameron work on that Alita Battle Angel sequel, if he’s willing to gamble zillions into a series, better than his First Nation alien Smurfs saga that apparently no one cares for but will see to go anyway, though the more it goes on the faster it might cull itself out (if you break records, then it becomes increasingly hard to keep doing that on a regular basis), so nevermind.

Continua a leggere