[EXPRESSO] M3GAN 2.0 (2025) | Panzer Kunt

2 years after the M3GAN killer robot was destroyed, her creator, Gemma, moved on and kept working in robotics while advocating for more cautious laws about IA, while taking care of her niece Cady, but unknown to them, someone stole M3GAN technology and created another killer robot, AMELIA, which has gone rogue and start killing anyone involved with the project.

M3GAN, whom has been hiding in their home cloud network, springs back to alert Gemma she could be next, and that if they want to have a chance of stopping AMELIA killing her and her niece, they need to graft M3GAN a new robot body, even more as the stakes quickly escalate…

Yeah, it’s not really a horror movie anymore, the gore is still pretty graphic but the tone is completely different, going basically for a ubercharged pastiche that skips a lot of modern narration to go for satirical and autoironical, which still has that 90s sci fi-horror aesthetic, as it’s a bit Robocop, a bit Ghost In The Shell, Matrix, Terminator, heck, you can even feel drafts of Alita Battle Angel, with M3GAN basically needing a new berserker body to fight.

It does manage to develop further the characters from the previous film, especially M3GAN herself, and it all does work since she’s indeed “the bitch”, “the slay queen”, she is incredibly fun to see in action and sells it.

If you expect a more in-depth critique of modern use of IA, or a more conservative sequel that’s actually a horror film, you might detest this one, which is understandable but honestly i do commend the effort to keep it fresh and not just rehash the first film, since it does embrace his deliberate sarcastic detour into action sci-fi, and for what it is, it’s a riot, hugely entertaining.

Earth Defense Force 6 PS4 [REVIEW] | All You Need Is Kill

As with what is now tradition, after a reboot follows a direct sequel, so Earth Defense Force 6 picks up some years after you killed God (or an alien God), with the global population reduced to a 10 % of what it was, but hey, you won, and reconstruction begun, as it always does.

You play as one of the elite soldiers from Team Storm that succeded in saving the planet years before, sent to a base that needs manpower as while the aliens retreated after… well, the “Hell Comes To Frogtown” ones were left abandoned on Earth, so they kinda still kick around in pure desperation, and you’re sent to deal with these poor bastards after a speech from EDF bootleg (and surprisingly nice) version of Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket, during the tutorial mission that continues the more attention given to presentation that started with EDF 5.

Then some old teleporting devices start teleporting monsters on Earth again, the monsters start laying down eggs to up their numbers, so it feels like you’re stuck on a loop of exterminating the hordes to avoid the enemies gaining more ground, and it feels like this stalemate is gonna keep going… until the biblical accurate alien mothership comes back, transports and un-transports another mothership kind of vehicle, then drops an entirely new kind of alien foes, very 50s/60s scifi style android enemies that launch their grabby knifed claws from afar.

So shit was already a desperate fight for a ruins filled Earth, NOW it’s basically a desperate struggle to fuck with a 0% chance of winning against super alien Hitler with a box of green army men as actual troops…. until you fight the biblically accurate ring shaped mothership again, fuck up something… and then you’re literally in an early mission of EDF 5.

That’s true, because after this – as the game itself puts it – “The Earth Defense Force 6 begins now”.

Continua a leggere

Shiver Me Timbers (2025) [REVIEW] | Night Of The Sailor Comet

As the time of writing (and posting, since i improvised this trifecta of Popeye horror films’ reviews) this is the more recent in the batch of 3 horror films based around Popeye’s copyright falling into the public domain that were basically dumped on VOD, all released in a matter of months (or weeks) from one another, and while i’m fairly sure there by September (to be very generous) this specific declination of the fad will have died down due to diminishing returns (since it’s the third time, after Winnie The Pooh and Steamboat Willy’s Mickey Mouse) … i’m not putting this mini-marathon of modern “public domainxploitaition” in “extend mode” if another one or more of these eventually crop up, i’m not playing catch-up anymore.

So let’s see how Shiver Me Timbers, the debut film for director-writer Paul Stephen-Mann, fares out.

In the summer of 1986, a group of friends, led by Olive Oil and her brother Castor, are going on a trip in Northern California to witness the rare Haley’s comet meteor shower event, but they couldn’t expect that a comet piece would fall to the ground that night, a piece lodging itself into the corncob pipe of a reclusive fisherman living nearby, Popeye, now turned into a monstrous, violent killer with superhuman strenght, ready to sate its bloodthirst on Olive and his friends..

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning (2025) | MISSION ALL OVER!(?)

Dropping the “Part 2” from the title, Mission Impossible Final Reckoning is still the direction continuation of the previous film, Dead Reckoning (with a recap of that films events further making clear it was planned as a two parter), that had Ethan Hunt and his team having to go rogue in order to escape the grasp of an IA program (dubbed “The Entity”) that accidentally gained sentience and spread itself all over the globe’s networks, bringing the national networks into chaos, fanning the flames of war, etc.

After the agent working for the Entity, Gabriel, manages to retrieve the “counter program”, Hunt and his team are forced into a desperate gambit to try and retrieve the Entity’s source code (still lost in a sunken submarine near Russian waters), retrieve the counter program from Gabriel, and outsmart the Entity, before it hacks every major nations’ nuclear arsenal and sink the globe into full on nuclear holocaust….

Honestly, i’m kinda impressive how the formula still works wonders, keeping that specific concoction of high octane action, death-defying chases, occasional comedy and espionage extravaganza, straddling the lines between realistic and improbable action movie magic.

And of course, the reminder that Tom Cruise biggest superpower is not his defying the Reaper, but his ability to run on film.

It ain’t trying to revolutionize the genre, at all, but the plot does actually manage to resonate perfectly with today’ fears, without desperately trying to be modern, “hip”, and the execution is pretty damn good, making for a fun and sentimental sendoff of the series altogether, there’s actually a real sense of finality to it, as it ties or brings back events and characters from the older films, gives some closure, and honestly would be the perfect place to end it, or have Hunt/Cruise pass the baton.

Summer Of EDF redux, Shark-A-Palooza, Idol Honses, Switch 2 and One Piece August

Update time!

Since i’m knee deep in thesis work which it’s gonna take my entire summer and up to October, i had to make some changes to the schedule up to August.

Due to personal stuff, i will be away for thi weekend, hence some EXPRESSO reviews are gonna be late or aren’t gonna happen at all, some were not gonna regardless, for example don’t expect a review of Final Destination Bloodlines as i really haven’t kept up with the series, at all, and this ain’t a reboot, it’s a direct sequel continuining from FD 5, but i will see and review Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning (aka Dead Reckoning Part 2), with some luck i can catch a preview screening for that.

Surprisingly there’s also a Largo Winch movie (this will mean something only to “Europeans” comics fans, maybe) here… but its a sequel to another Largo Winch movie they made in 2008, technically also the sequel to 2011 Largo Winch 2, so it’s the last in a trilogy that just got home video releases (not really publicized at all, too, just put out there) until now here, one i didn’t know it even existed until now.

You know, now i’m kinda tempted to see the movie anyway to see if it made sense to release it as they did. Kinda.

Expect one of Umamusume Pretty Derby too, as the original smarthphone game is finally hitting a global release in late June, i’m gonna be ready.

Summer of EDF is still gonna happen, but will be in “mini” format, meaning 2 reviews instead of the planned 4, and i guess that means we’ll still be doing it next summer, so…

On the flipside, there are gonna be more shark movie reviews, alongside some anime series’ reviews.

Continua a leggere

Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 PS3 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

As promised, here we are again with more Dynasty Warriors Gundam, though don’t worry, Koei had an habit of making their old Warriors games in a sub-series obsolete or needed when making a sequel back then, and they mostly kept at it, since they also did this with the Attack On Titan hunting games by Omega Force they published.

So if you never played the first DW Gundam, no need to fret, my boy, as Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 is basically a revised and greatly expanded follow up, with more Gundam series covered properly in Story Mode, improved graphics and performance (while still retaining the same art style, for better or worse), and a revamp to the old content, with new systems added for good measure.

The game covers/retells canonically most of the same Gundam series already featured in the first title, though now with Char’s Counterattack added and the previous anime storylines redone and expanded in terms of events narrated and details, and even more of the non-UC series represented in the non-canonical stories offered in the secondary mode, with Gundam Seed Destiny, Gundam F91 and Gundam Victory and their characters featured in this non-canon mode.

We’ll talk more about that later, as there are some changes and additions to gameplay, one of the more welcome ones is how you can just keep dashing instead of the “start & stop” finnicky dash of the first DW which required you to spam the jump/dash button, balanced out by a fuel/stamina bar that takes a bit to recharge once depleted, and while there are still robots (hence they still have that weight to their movements), the MS feel more fluid to control here, and there are more enemies on screen too.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Thunderbolts* (2025) | Antiheroes’ Day Out

So we doing Suicide Squad now, but with a bucket of Marvel characters no one has ever heard before (Bucky aside)? I guess.

The question is this more like 2017’s Suicide Squad or James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad?

The question turns out it’s kinda incorrect, because it’s close enough but not quite that kind of story, and more surprisingly is the better Marvel movie i’ve seen in a while, which blindsided me entirely.

After her sister, the Black Widow in the Avengers team died, Yelena Belova feels depressed, but turns out her last job is a set-up by her employer, corrupt CIA director Valentina DeFontaine, whom is trying to remove all evidence of her shady illegal operations and experiments, and has decided to do so by setting up a trap for Yelena as well as other shady assassins and mercenaries.

The group of antiheroes (and a strange man in hospital garment that they found there, just called “Bob”) decides instead to collaborate in order to escape the trap laid out for them, and eventually have to team up against their will to save the day from a new menace, cheered on by Red Guardian (“Soviet Captain America” of the Black Widow film) and a concerned Bucky, whom is trying to empeach Valentina DeFontaine…

Nothing new, at all, it’s the usual “ragtag team of underdogs that are antiheroes of sorts and are gonna take this chance to do good for once”, but it’s pretty obvious that this time around there’s some chemistry, some effort, with actors that actually feel like they wanted to be there instead of anywhere else; heck, even the villain doesn’t suffer from most the usual problems of later Marvel films, making for an overall surprisingly decent flick, which is not how i expected “Phase 5” to end.

Dynasty Warriors Gundam PS3 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

I don’t think Mobile Suit Gundam needs an introduction, given its one of the more popular and old mecha franchises that are still around, arguably THE mecha franchise if there ever was one.

You know it, you love it… i mostly kinda experienced it via osmosis, as i never fully bothered to be invested in any of its many iterations, be it the classic 0079 original, the Z Gundam one, the super deformed Three Kingdoms ones, the ones about milfs and kids building Gunplas.

Or the space tomato lesbian one. Or whatever the new Gundam series that will come out in the meantime of me posting and you reading this will be about.

I didn’t even plan to ignore Gundam, i just never really went deep into any of its iterations, as it happened, and – as i think i’ve said before – i’m actually way more familiar with frigging Sgt. Frog (yes, Keroro) than actual Gundam, so it both kinda counts and not really counts at the same time, meaning i’ve been told the series is about the horrors of war more than the cool robots… but the robot do LOOK cool, there’s no anti-memery (or counter arguments, and so on) to argue that at simple skin deep fact, them mobile suits design are legendary stuff.

So in a way i’m really not “qualified”… or i was, because this did serve as a gateway entry for me, sure i love them Dynasty Warriors, make them cool looking robots instead of superhero fantasy warlords, just as good, or even better, i will finally learn what the fuck the original Gundam and some other of its series are about with Dynasty Warriors Gundam, why not?

Continua a leggere

Musou May is back on the menù

yes, indeed, as promised, Musou May is back this year, with a mix of rewrite and brand new reviews all throught the month! Also the planned works for the summer most likely won’t change much, i’ll make a post about those in more (any) detail later down the month.

[EXPRESSO] Kaiju No. 8: Mission Recon (2025) | Kompilation Kaijus

I usually rag on compilation films for anime series… for the obvious reasons, but i did watch Kaiju 8 Mission Recon it because i was curious about the manga but i never had time to check that or the anime out,, so i guess compromise it is.

Speaking of, the premise it’s set in a sci-fi future where academies train young people into anti-kaiju troops to dispose of the endless hordes of big ass monsters attacking Tokyo on a daily basis.

The protagonist, Kafka, actually a man in his 30s, working on cleaning up the kaiju remains and debris, after he flunked his entry exam as a soldier, but one day, while on the job, he’s infected by a parasite that lets him turn into a humanoid kaiju…

Obviously one of these new series that rose up after Attack On Titan success, even if the similarities are only superficial , as Kaiju 8 is more inspired by Ultraman (and a bit by Patlabor) than anything else, and the tone is more akin to One Punch Man than AoT… and honestly i think it’s pretty fun.

Nothing we haven’t seen before, but done fairly well, the animation is quite good, the action is solid, the kaiju designs are pretty cool, the cyberpunk aesthetic is well done, and i do like the protagonist being an older man than usual (despite being a teenager at heart) not just used for comedy bits.

The new material is a post-credits slice of life bonus episode about the other characters’ day off duty, which i feel is needed because these recap films of shonen battle manga series usually sacrifice most non-action scenes, especially if they aren’t about the protagonist.

Hope i can set some time aside to see Season 2 when it airs later this year.