Piranha II: The Spawning (1980) [REVIEW] | Flying Jaws

Ah, yes, the first and only killer piranha movie directed by James “James Cameron Presents James Cameron In Association With James Cameron” Cameron, here at his directorial debut , after years of working as a special effects artist under good ol Roger Corman (who else?), stars Tricia O’ Neill and Lance Henriksen, who would later appeared in the original Terminator film and Aliens, with the script by then also newbie Charles H. Eglee – credited as H. A. Milton- better know nowadays for his work on series like The Shield, Dexter and Dark Angel.

You gotta start somewhere, and in this case that happens to be the sequel to 1978’s Joe Dante directed Piranha, in what would become a full series, with a 1995 remake simply called “Piranha” and another, looser remake with Piranha 3D, which also had a sequel. Not bad for what was conceived as a Jaws knock-off with a degree of self-awareness.

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Zarkorr! The Invader (1996) [REVIEW] | Cinephiles Of Earth, Beware…

You can hardly go more Z-grade cinema than with Zarkorr! The Invader from Full Moon Entertaiment, at least regarding movies that do have production values and some backing behind them. Of course, you can go even worse, as the company itself demonstrated last year by making a zombie movie about the Coronavirus… and by that i mean putting a shitty comical dub track over Bruno Mattei’s Hell Of The Living Dead, with a tiny bit of new footage to act as a “framing device” of someone watching Hell Of The Living Dead while quarantined at home. Good lord.

But thankfully this is just Full Moon Entertaiment doing a direct-to-video kaiju movie, about aliens that have been observing Earth for centhuries, and one day decide to challenge mankind by sending in a huge monster called Zarkorr to wreak havoc with its size and lazer eyes. As the human champion, they choose an incredibly average postal worker, Tommy Ward, as the only one who can defeat Zarkorr and save the planet.

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Dragon Wars: D-War (2008) [REVIEW] | Imagine Depressing Dragons

You know Reptilian, the South Korean 1999 movie also known as Yonggary, despite not really being a remake of the South-Korean Yongary: Monster From The Deep?

We’re not talking about that. It’s pretty well known for its unfinished crappy CG for the monsters, the laughably stupid dialogues and its clear attempt at copying Godzilla… the 1998 Roland Emmerich american remake Godzilla, that is.

It’s a cult sensation, one i feel it’s pretty well known to genre fans, so i would argue there’s not much point going over it again. And i won’t, not today.

What is less discussed is Dragon Wars: D-War, despite also being a Korean monster movie from director Shim Hyung-Rae, and pretty much a continuation of Reptilian, as in a second attempt to make a proper Korean monster movie for home and abroad.

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Dino Dicember #20: Theodore Rex (1995)

The 1990’s had such a thing for the “extinction impaired” that they managed to spawn not one, not two but three (at least) dinosaur cyberpunk movies, and yes, i’m counting Super Mario Bros The Movie as one of them, because it fits. But we’ll reference that one some more later, when we tackle Anonymous Rex, today we’re talking about a movie that people knew about at the time… but wish they didn’t.

Clearly it didn’t help Whoopi Goldberg’s career, but neither this nor Monkeybone stopped her. Baby Geniuses 2 did more on that regard, as far as playing a character (instead of herself) in a movie.

Of course, this means Theodore Rex, the sci-fi dinosaur buddy cop comedy that was meant for theathers, but ultimately went straight to the home video market, at least in the US and Italy. Also, it did earn Whoopi Goldberg a Golden Raspberry Award, but the Razzies… yeah, whatever.

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Genshin Impact PS4 [FIRST IMPRESSIONS] | Paimon Patrol

After spending ¾ hours in it, having gone past the obvious tutorials and tutorialized parts of the game, i’m ready to put down some impressions on the latest game/live service by the developers of Honkai 3^rd Impact.

Just wished i did some research first, because while this game is also available on PC and smartphones (and it’s also coming to Switch soon enough), the PS4 version doesn’t support cross-platform play, it just ties the game’s progress to your PSN account.

So even if you did already have a miHoyo’s account, it doesn’t matter.

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Oneechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers WII [REVIEW] | Carpal Zombie Syndrome

As i said in the review of Bikini Samurai Squad, D3 Publisher released that and this Wii exclusive the same year in western territories. Aside being a fairly logical choice to do a “double feature” with games clearly drawing heavily from exploitation cinema of the 70s, these two games happen to be sequels, main installments in the Oneechanbara, as Bikini Zombie Slayers (“Oneechanbara 4”) is set after Bikini Samurai Squad (“Oneechanbara 3”), and features all characters from that game.

The story itself… it’s hard to say it has a plot. I played it years ago and completely forgot anything about the plot, so i had to google it and even that didn’t yield any synopsis, so i had to bust out the game’s physical manual, the old, old school way. One that would never fail… if they actually print any kind of story in the booklet to begin with.

They didn’t in this case.

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Shark Month approacheth

Sweetness And Lightning same song

So yeah, as this month comes to a close and coincidentally i go back to work, i’d like to announce that you will see a lot of shark movie reviews in june, as this quarantine was quite boring, with 15 planned reviews, and maybe some extra ones, if i have the time.

And no, i don’t plan to review JUST shark movies in june, nor i planned to dub it “shark month”, but you get the point!

Forever

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EXPRESSO 2020: The Unchanging

Happy 2020, fellas, the novelty has already worn off, or maybe not, whatever, i just wanna say that all the EXPRESSO reviews from now on will be made only here, previously i wrote them mostly for the italian blog Wise Cafè, and i rewrote them (often from scratch, sometimes coinceived in tandem, etc.) in english, or i just wrote here some new ones that weren’t on the italian blog.

This will save me some time, which i can then focus on more articles for both blogs, though i plan to eventually write here mostly. Bye!

First post (aka the placeholder one)

Hello, i’ve been writing in my native language (italian) for 8 years, but i wanted to make an english blog, so here it is. Don’t worry, i won’t just translate my old reviews, my opinion may be the same about that movie or game, but i’ll rewrite i from scratch, and write new ones. Expect mostly videogame, movies and manga/anime reviews.

And yes, i see the movies/play the videogame i review, and i don’t copy my content from other sites. Might as well point this out right away, i’ve seen sites copying articles verbatim from Bloody Disgusting and just translate them in italian (i usually say “i’m ashamed in their stead” but fuck that, i’m not a renowed writer, but i write it all myself, i don’t want praise for what should be standard operating procedure).

I will update and start publishing as soon as i can make a decent long-term schedule, if you happen to be or know italian, i direct you here for videogames, and here for everything else.

See ya!