Categoria: Slice Of Life

[EXPRESSO] Remarkably Bright Creatures (2026) | Psych-opus

Due to wallet woes, why not, let’s see what’s new on Netflix, this film about a woman and an old intelligent octopus she cares for in the local acquarium sounds cute enough, why not?

Based on the best selling book of the name same by Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures is the story of Tova, a widoved old woman that leads a lonely existence and does night shifts of taking care-cleaning the aquarium of a small coastal town.

She still struggles to cope with her son, Erik, having passed away decades ago, and the only one that she seems able to communicate with is Marcellus, a big old octopus that lives in the acquarium, its thoughts expressed in an elegant and sarcastic voiceover by Alfred Molina.

That is, until Cameron, a failed musician and a bit of a wanderer, troubled by his the absent father, comes into town…

While fairly obvious where the story points (and goes) to, it’s more about the manner of which these two will manage to connect for the better, with the touch of “whimsy-magic” of the octopus that acts an involuntary psychiatrist recipient and is given a “talking” voice to comment back for the audience’s sake.

That is actually the problem, as the film is either too scared to let the silent moments work, or maybe because it’s a Netflix release, it explains any metaphor or anything that expects audiences having some semblance of basic narrative literacy.

Yet, despite that and some issues like subplots being a bit too superficial, it does work because it’s not trying to “Oscar-max”, it’s actually just a little gentle, melanchonic, genuine feel-good tale of lonely people, normal people that talk as such, one never cynical in intent or execution.

Could have been better, but definitely worth a watch.

[EXPRESSO] Project Hail Mary (2026) | Boldore Dash

Based on the novel of the same name by Andy Weir (also author of The Martian, adapted by Ridley Scott back in 2015), Project Hail Mary is promoted once again as the kind of “sci film you’ve never seen before”, and i feel that might harbour some disappointment.

Not because the film is bad, mind you, but because – as already pointed out by other critics – this IS something we have seen before, or more correctly, an ensemble of sci-fi ideas we have seen before, to the point one could almost envision it as a more happy, family friendly take on Villeneuve’s Arrival, in a way.

The plot follows a math scientist, Grace, that wakes up in a spaceship with amnesia, only to find himself the only person left alive, but slowly remembers why he’s there, sent as part of “Project Hail Mary”, an expedition to study why only a single star in the galaxy, Tau Ceti, isn’t being “consumed” despite being in range of the infrared “Petrova line” connecting the Sun to Venus, acting as a vector for organisms known as “Astrophage”, which are slowly dimming the Sun and will eventually make Earth’s temperature drop by a catastrophical degree.

While working on a solution, Grace finds an unexpected visitor and forms a friendship that will help in his quest to avoid Earth freezing to death….

Dispelling the “it’s really original never seen before” marketing babble is more of a necessary observation than a diss, because it’s a really well done mix of already seen sci fi ideas, led by a notable performance by Ryan Gosling in a movie that’s ultimately a wholesome, family friendly ordeal, which is quite nice as the movie does manage to properly balance out the more cerebral aspects with the emotional and comedy-laden moments.

[EXPRESSO] Rental Family (2025) | Gacha Gaijin

Brendan Frasier is back in Hikari’s second feature lenght (the first being 37 Seconds), Rental Family, playing an american actor, Phillip Vandarplough, that has been living in Japan for a lot but now, despite some of his old commercials being very successful, struggles to find work and so takes on menial side roles in various shows and auditions for basically everything.

One day he finds himself hitched to play a role… at a funeral.

Where even the dead isn’t actually dead, just there in classic japanese funeral clothes, happy as a clam.

Turns out he accepted a bit part for an agency called Rental Family, that basically offers actors to impersonate a family member or friend by request, “renting” them for occasional performances, which of course sounds strange to Philipp, but has become a market niche in Japan due to various cultural reasons, including stigmatization of mental illness, meaning instead of going to teraphy, sometimes someone will hire you to be their granpa or soothe their shut-in life by calling you over as a friend to play videogames, among other things.

The company boss, Shinji, invites him on board, as they need a “gaijin” for the catalogue, and Philipp, more out of desperation than curiosity, decides to join them. After an almost botched first job, he gets the hang of it, but when he has to play the father of a japanese-american girl, Mia, for 3 weeks so she can get in a good school, Philipp does find himself more emotionally involved than the “farce” requires…

It’s a canned expression to say “the feel good film of”, but Rental Family does perfectly succeed in that, being inspiring, funny, emotional, and also properly tackle a modern, real problem, the evergrowing societal “loneliness epidemic”, without going for an unrealistic, overly positive ending.

[EXPRESSO] My Father’s Shadow (2025) | Abiola ’93

Presented as last year’s Cannes, My Father’s Shadow is one of those films that they sneakily released in theathers and i almost missed, which would have been a shame.

Though i understand there’s no point pushing to general audiences an UK-Nigerian coming-of-age story presented with subtitles only.

It is June 12th 1993, day of the presidential elections in Nigeria, and two young boys, Remi and Aki, are brought along to Lagos by their often absent father, Folarin, as he goes there to ask for months of unpaid salary to begin with, but decides to bring the boys along and – as he waits for the supervisor to come back later that night – have them seen some city life, relax at the beach, go to an amusement spark, spend some time with them.

The boys in turn get to see more him open up to them, but in the tense political atmosphere of the city (with military mowing in pre-emptively into town after denying a massacre happened some days prior) and eventual uprising due to the election failing, their father is suspected of subversive activities, making them question even more who he really is…

It’s a really good coming of age story that while is enhanced by taking place on the backdrop of a politically troubled piece of Nigerian history (which doesn’t narrow it down much, the more i think abourt it), it doesn’t use it as a “crutch” for the characters dynamics, and is a heartfelt drama about absent fathers with great characterization and terrific performances.

In spite of the predictable “revelation” at the end, it still lands quite the emotional punch, since the drama and characters are relatable but not banal, heavy but not sensationalized, making My Father’s Shadow an amazing debut film for director Akinola Davies Jr.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 60: Grunt! (1983)

Back in the mid 60 and 70s cavemen films had come back, going initially for an adventure feel, alongside other dinosaur or prehistoric themed films (most already covered here), but it became clear soon that what made One Million Years B. C. a success wasn’t the stopmotion dinosaur effects by Ray Harryhausen, but Rachel Welch in cavegirl garments, and hence these film began more focusing on the cave girls and the “historical” excuse for pseudo-nudity.

In Italy we had a tradition of sexy comedies budding in the late 60s, so in the 70s some filmakers hopped onto the bandwagon and made sexy cavemen comedies like When Women Had Tails, while others latched unto the more extreme trend of the cannibal films.

It was a fad, in the grand scheme of things, but the genre survived into the early ’80s with stuff like the alredy reviewed Caveman, the one with Ringo Starr, which i assume was the catalyst for director Andy Luotto to try his hand at a caveman slapstick comedy, with Grunt!, indeed one of the more apt titles ever for a caveman comedy, sporting the tagline “La Clava E’ Uguale Per Tutti” (lit. “The Club Is Equal For All”), also used as a subtitle for the kinda modern DVD rerelease it got and which i’m using for review.

You can find the entire movie on Youtube, but you might need to find some subs unless you understand italian, as yes, it’s a dialogue-less film…. BUT there’s also a voice over narration by the director, Andy Luotto (also in the film as the caveman that looks like a Squawkabilly) talking bollocks that intervenes here and there.

Then again, it’s not like it makes the thing have more sense (it’s mostly bollocks, including random homophobic shit and shit tier cabaret jokes), but maybe there are some german dubs around, or maybe french, as far as i know there are no official english dubs for the film.

Which makes sense since there’s just so little voiceover to dub, and no spoken dialogue per sé.

Continua a leggere “12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 60: Grunt! (1983)”

Yuru Camp/Laid Back Camp (Season Three) (2024) [REVIEW] | Encouragement Of Camping

Since i’ve promised we would correct the lack of newer Yuru Camp/Laid Back Camp content on the site, here is the promised review of the anime third season.

I won’t be covering the mobile game, Yuru Camp Together/All For One, despite planning to do so, not this time, maybe next year, it’s such a clunky pile of gacha ass (not that kind of gacha ass) that i struggled to even bother with it, even putting aside its performance issues.

That will get a full review, eventually, because it’s awful, but for now i will review the last season of the Yuru Camp anime, after giving some first impressions some time ago.

Might as well, since Season 4 has been announced back in November 2024, 1 year ago, so it’s confirmed (with a picture drawn for the occasion by the author of the Yuru Camp manga, Afro) but we still don’t know anything else besides it will eventually exist.

… this is where i would say some updates on that dribbled down between me starting this review and the day of posting, but nope, still nothing about it besides “is in the works”.

Continua a leggere “Yuru Camp/Laid Back Camp (Season Three) (2024) [REVIEW] | Encouragement Of Camping”

[EXPRESSO] The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) | The Warrens

As i guess many did, i approached Conjuring Last Rites with tired obbligation, and i’m sad to say the movie just gave off that very same vibe in return.

Yes, i basically gave up expecting much from the series after the spinoffs and James Wan not directing anymore, but this is the final installment of the Conjuring series (and its cinematic universe, for spoiler heavy reasons), i do expect a better baseline of quality for these.

So this feels like an extra disappointing and limp finale, but first plot.

Final Rites goes back to chronicle the Warren’s last case, about an entity haunting the Smurl family in Pennsylvania, 5 years after they basically retired to do university work and live a normal middle aged life with their young adult daughter, whom also seems to share her mother’s ability to sense spirits…

While the series is mostly focused on the characters more than gore or blood, Final Rites takes it way too far as the Warren’s plotline is an overly long soap opera-ish slice of life mostly detached from the Smurl haunting, with the movie taking forever to become what you wanted to begin with, and when it finally does its incredibly underwhelming.

To say nothing of the final reveal that tethers between making some sense and being a cheap, stupid, frustrating arsepull because they couldn’t think of anything else, maybe.

I honestly personally enjoyed it even less than The Nun 2 (still more than La Llorona), the only reasons this one doesn’t score lower is because of the great performances by the cast, (especially by Farmiga and Wilson as the Warrens), the residual characterization work and the fact there’s a sense of finality to it.

Even though i do hope this is the actually the end for mainline Conjuring films.

[EXPRESSO] Atarashii Gakko! The Movie (2025) | Youthaganda

So, what is this?

I had no idea, i decided to go into it mostly blind, since i did basically the same for the theathrical release of the Ado Shinzo concert, and i became an Ado fan, so….

I wasn’t actually aware of this Japanese all-girls group, Atarashii Gakko!, at all, so it was a gamble to go see a documentary biopic of sorts that chronicles the last concert of their “Nippon Calling Tour” in late December 2024, after a successful wourld tour (and with 2025 marking the group’s 10th anniversary) that had them even play at Coachella, and goes into what the band “Eternal Youth” slogan-motto actually means to them, and their impact on fans and so on.

I didn’t call them an “idol group” because i don’t think it fits, since – with their “freestyle & free” theme of doing what they want regardless of norms – they basically run the gamut and mix j-pop with rap, tokusatsu style hero songs, hip-hop, metal and even some EDM style beats, while sporting revised school uniforms.

It’s tempting to call this documentary a bit too self-serving and the band overall approach-way of doing things a bit too sappy… but honestly i can’t because they do embody their “eternal youth” approach as they mean it, as in, it’s fine to be silly, to be goofy, to be true to yourself, to let yourself be “cringe but free”, to go your way without having to antagonize people or “break the system”.

It might sound like a convenient “compromise” but it’s a surprisingly positive and healthy attitude to spread around, and it’s hard not to get “infected” by their sincere positivity, their youthful energy, their actual committment to their mantra, or not be intrigued by their freeform musical pastiche (and-or their peculiar coreographies).

Kancolle 1944: Itsuka Ano Umi De/See You Again On Another Quiet Blue Sea (2022) [REVIEW] | The Real Fleet Girls

So yeah, that “season 2 which it’s actually not a second season” of the Kancolle anime did happen, i wasn’t able to re/write any of my old pieces on the first season and the follow-up movie, but we can actually do that next year, since this – let’s make it EXTRA clear – this ain’t the continuation/second season, but a completely different Kancolle anime project that had been years in the works without any info or proof it wasn’t scrapped… until it resurfaced in early 2022 as Kancolle 1944: Itsuka Ano Umi De, translated/localized “Kancolle 1944: See You Again On Another Quiet Blue Sea”.

And by “years in the works” i mean that there was enough time for rival series Azur Lane to make its own anime series with Azur Lane: The Animation, and then adapt a spin-off 4 panel manga into animation with Azur Lane: Slow Ahead… so much time that i did review that!

Look, i’m sure Kancolle still has its fans (me included) and a decent player base in its original browser game iteration, but even when this new anime series eventually surfaced… it did so to a dead fanbase, as the franchise was basically “dead” in terms of international appeal, with most people moving on to either Azur Lane, give Arpeggio Of Blue Steel a rewatch, or moving on to other gacha (or gacha adjacent) games with a similar theme, a healthy playerbase or some other anime-multimedia franchise that had content and had become popular, like Umamusume Pretty Derby, with the anime series and its seasons managing to keep interest even when the main product (a F2P smarthphone game) was delayed for 3 years before even just Japanese players could get their hands on it, alongside the spin-offs, related projects, even a brand new feature film.

Sometimes there’s taking so long that the fanbase dies in the meantime in terms of “being late”, as Kancolle 1944 demonstrates, but let’s get to it!

Continua a leggere “Kancolle 1944: Itsuka Ano Umi De/See You Again On Another Quiet Blue Sea (2022) [REVIEW] | The Real Fleet Girls”