[EXPRESSO] Wild Horse Nine (2026) | Party In The RA.PA.NUI.

Martin McDonagh (Seven Psychopaths, Three Manifests Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Banshee Of Inesherin) is back with a black comedy spy thriller, Wild Horse Nine, which takes back to the not-so-funky ’70s, just before the 1973 Chilean coup-de-etat, with the CIA bureau chief, MJ (Steve Buscemi) dispatching two officers, Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell), to Rapa Nui, as in, Easter Island.

The trip from Santiago there already proves hardous, as Chris seemingly suffers from some sort of alzeihmer, while also being overly candid about their motives and intentions, but among the peaceful tourist life and the gazing at the moai, many conspiracies are actually being acted on, putting Chris and Lee longtime friendship and loyalties to the test, especially as Chris befriending a local rebellious girl might sent the whole “operation” (whatever that is) to go belly up…

While the plot actually thickens and progressively reveals the real stakes at play here (or more correctly the machinations), the main crux of the film is how this affects the relationship between Chris and Lee, not only as colleagues but as genuine friends, as both events from the past and future treathen this too, especially due to dangerous cocktail of Chris’s deteriorating memory, its involvement in many secret operations and its questioning of those in his old age…

It’s honestly an amazing film, starts off a bit slow but the pay off is immense, as it manages to be incredibly funny, the comedy fairly brutal, not pulling any punch on the sensitive themes (and political period of yore) it tackles, but also able to deliver devasting emotional blows as well as many quotable lines, and everyone is on top of their game (even if Tom Waits is being progressively “Nick Nolte’d” the more he continues to appear in movies).

Highly recommended.

Riecco Aborym (2007) [REVIEW] | Cross Of The Seven Pences (free Talisman inside!)

I wasn’t expecting to do this review until next year, but i was able to luck out and find in early October an used Bluray of that very rare release of Cross Of The 7 Jewels, which includes as an extra the follow up short film Andolfi made in 2007, Riecco Aborym (which translates to “Aborym is back at it again”, more than “Aborym’s Return”) which has been shown at some regional horror cinema festivals in Italy, but never received a proper release or is officially available to stream, even unofficially i couldn’t find it for the life of me.

It’s early Halloween magic, so let’s make an extra unscheduled effort and conclude the tale of the Neapolitan werewolf man fighting the Camorra in the name of love.

Again, as i said at the end of the Cross Of The 7 Jewels review, i think its on us how this short film even came to be, because it became a popular movie to review and mock in the Italian Youtube scene, an internet sensation (thank to peer-to-peer file sharing making this easier to unearth from the folds of history), so i guess Andolfi noticing how suddendly people were talking about his movie, and decided to “do a sequel” 20 years later.

So yeah, in this way i guess it was ahead of the “legacy sequels” curve…. and only that because this isn’t even a sequel.

Heck, i’d argue this isn’t even cinema.

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The Spooktacular Eight #39: La Croce Dalle 7 Pietre/Cross Of The Seven Jewels (1987)

I wanted to do something special for the werewolf entry of this year’s Spooktacular Eight… and then realized i had the perfect movie hidden under my nose, in a way, because in anno domini 1987, in Italy released La Croce Dalle Sette Pietre (lit “The Cross Of The Seven Jewels/Stones”)….. and by that i do mean it got a theatrical release.

In just 2 theathers in the entire frigging country, but if you were lucky/unlucky enough and you lived in Sicily back in 1987 you could actually go to the cinemas and witness what would become hailed as one of the worst Italian movie ever made, ever.

Then again, an Italian horror movie with werewolves, satanic orgies, and the camorra (a Southern Italian specific mafia-style criminal group originating from Neaples) was always gonna be a cult trash film, especially if made on the cheap and treated as an embarassing relic to disregard.

And with good reason, this is some primo trash that feels made for retrospective reviewers to unearth and poke fun at…. which the movie does deserve, because it’s so unbelievably bad it’s downright magical, it’s that kind of “so bad it’s good” you can never forget.

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Platformation Time Again #10: Donkey Kong 64 N64 | NSWITCH/NSWITCH2

HISTORY

I don’t think i need to explain who Donkey Kong is, heck, you wouldn’t need to do so even back in 1999, as the reboot of the series by british developer Rareware proved to be incredibly successful, reinvigorating DK for a new generation by updating it, and other phrases i’m probably gonna repeat when i eventually tackle the Country games, so i’m just stopping myself here.

Plus its not like DK became this niche Nintendo franchise fans spend years begging for a sequel that they most likely ain’t gonna get.

But for today, let’s pretend we don’t know what Bananza is, or even what Conker’s N64 game would turn out to be, for that matter.

After wrapping up the SNES trilogy of DK games with Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie’s Double Trouble in late 1996, a team of Rare employees were put to work on a Donkey Kong game for the N64….allegedly it was intended to launch for the then new N64DD add-on but most likely it was an idea by producers that quickly died when the add-on sales were shown to be exactly as low as they were expecting, after years of delays to debut into a market where the Compact Disc was indeed becoming the new norm and making cartridges obsolete.

Curiously it wasn’t even intended as a full 3D platformer, but instead as 2.5D platformer more in line with the Country series , though this version spend 18 months in developments, was ultimately scrapped (if anything of that version survives to this day, it’s being held secret by either old Rare and-or Nintendo staff, there’s no images of it circulating at the time of posting,), a lot of people that worked on Banjo Kazooie were brought in, and the game was reworked into being a typical 3D collectathon platformer in the vein of BK and it’s sequel, Banjo Tooie.

There’s a bit more to the production history of Donkey Kong 64, but it was mostly Rare doing their thing as usual by then, there’s no major scandal, but i would be a fool not talk about about how Nintendo staff checked-in to see the game early on, leading to a terrified Shigeru Miyamoto seeing DK given a realistic double barreled shotgun (producing realistic gun sounds) as a weapon to shoot cartoon beavers with, only for him to quickly sketch up a less alarming, more child friendly and less problematic weaponry, adding leaf branches, a more wooden design, the now iconic “coconut gun”, which was immediatly implemented in the game.

All of this just because the realistic gun was a placeholder Rare absent mindedly left in.

For reference, this review is based on both my old playthrough of DK 64 on original N64 hardware and a fresh run of the version released via the N64 Classics app/service on Switch 2 (as all N64 games, it can run on the old Switch 1 consoles as well).

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Platformation Time Again: The James Pond Collection GenAI Marketing Suicidefest

Never tought i would have to say it, but we have to talk about James Pond.

I guess since retro collections are in now, System 3 decided to resell its old series of Amiga borne platformers, the James Pond games, of which i played a bit of the second one, Operation Robocod, as a PS1 Classic release on the PS3, actually, with this collection including pretty much all versions of all 3 James Pond games, plus the sports spin-off The Aquabats.

They are rereleasing this also a physical release on Switch 2…. but even that being “exclusive” is most likely bullshit as a PEGI rating for a PS5 version has been spotted already.

Look, System 3 already were famous for being cheap since forever, heck remember when they put out on PS4 a SNES game they pretended was cancelled back in the day, for full price (and lied about upcoming free DLCs), with Putty Squad… which they also released basically on launch for the PS4.

These people wanted 40 bucks for Super Fruit Fall on the Wii during its launch, i do remember that, so it checks out, System 3 peddled crap like this for a living since forever, and given what i played of Operation Robocod, i can believe people commenting how this is kinda apt because the James Pond games were indeed trash even back then.

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EX VITA manga [REVIEW] | Ghost In The Shiny Metal Ass

I’ll admit, there is something sadistic about going back before the Crunchyroll Original anime adaptation of a frankly mediocre GITS rip-off made sure EX-ARM was a name known for all the worst reasons.

Yet, curiously while searching for more used volumes of the EX-ARM manga, i realized there was actually a previous iteration, written and illustrated by Shinya Komi alone this time (so writer HiRock wasn’t involved yet), simply called EX-VITA.

Yeah, eventually (roughly 2-3 years later) they remade EX-VITA as EX-ARM, which ran for Shueisha’s Grand Jump and Shonen Jump from early-2015 till mid-2019, and eventually ended, rereleased then over 14 volumes/tankobons.

I do wanna eventually cover that, but i figured we took a look at EX-VITA first, also to celebrate the new Ghost In The Shell anime launching on Amazon Video… well, yesterday (or today, in some regions)!

It’s gonna be a relatively quick review since this original iteration of the concept ran for just 2 volumes.

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A Murcielago anime in this economy, Steel Ball Run actual release schedule, the new GITS anime, Tanya Degurechaff is back, AOT 3 and the Mini Summer Of EDF delay

So, Murcielago is a manga about a super serial killer woman with 715 homicides to her name, Komori (she the titular “bat”, since “murcielago” means exactly that, but in Spanish) gets her death penalty halted due to the city being overrun with crime, and Komori gets into assisting the Japanese police in tackling other murderers and criminals that the regular police force fails to catch, helped by the expert driver Hinako and the daughter of a yakuza boss

Komori is also a super lesbian and she basically tries to get into the pants of the many extrabosomed female characters, and even without her there’s a lot of nudity just shy of scissoring because i don’t think you could get away with that on Shonen Gangan. not quite.

It’s delectable action yuri exploitation trash, i love it, i’ve been following and buying the volumes for the past years, but given there’s so much premarital selbian gex and hyperviolence, i never really expected it to get an anime adaptation, heck, it’s ridiculous how much difficult is to see new horror anime exist, which is why i’m not really expecting a Franken Fran adaptation or something.

Yet, a few days ago a teaser trailer for the Murcièlago anime just popped up, and yes, my birthday was earlier this year, but whatever, it may be on time for that since is slated for a generic “2027 release” and i guess will stream on HIDIVE in US territories, we don’t have that here..

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Batwoman: L’Invincibile Superdonna/La Mujer Murcielago AKA The Batwoman (1968) [REVIEW] | The Spy Who Lucha’d Me

While i could have waited to spring this one on you when The Batman Part 2 finally releases…. that date is still far away, but the Supergirl live action film is not, so why not, and there’s still shit like Batman Da Il Pianeta Eros or Batpussy i could review for the occasion.

I’ve been recently studying up on ye old lucha libre mexican cinema, whom some of you might have been exposed via the few localized american version of El Santo movies, which called him “Samson” since El Santo as a figure wasn’t really know in America… nor is it now, but him and many other masked luchadores were also starring in their own film as themselves.

Some of you might remember stuff like the MST3K fan favourite Samson VS The Vampire Vomen, or the adjacent “luchador free” old The Robot VS The Aztec Mummy, but let’s just say these are just the tip of the sweaty beef iceberg, as there are dozens, hundreds of these films made in Mexico, most about El Santo but other luchadores like Tinieblas, Mil Mascaras or Blue Demon had their own film series, which often mixed spy film, gothic horror, mad scientist and monsters and of course had crossover, with some like El Santo and Blue Demon now teaming up to undo a sinister scheme of world conquest or strange murders ordained by some comic book styled mad doctor.

These were basically superhero series of their own right, just that the hero existed inside and outside of the ring, and his masked identity was kept as such, so, in the same way we call Dwayne Johson by his nickname regardless of what movie he is or what character he is playing, these movie do star El Santo or Black Shadow in the credits, they are playing a character alright, but they’re still rocking the luchador persona as the main one, as you would due to lucha libre tradition in this regard.

Due to some cultural sensibilities in common, we in Italy did get a few more localized films of this genre, but this one today is a bit of a “cheat”, in the sense it was an Italian-Mexican co-production starring Maura Monti, an Italian-Mexican actress and model that was in many Mexican films in the 60s, aside from this one, even if this the one she’s more recognized from, alongside 1966’s neo noir thriller Rage, where she acted alonsgide Glenn Ford.

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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.

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[EXPRESSO] Lupin The IIIrd The Movie: The Immortal Bloodline (2025) | Mystery Of Monkey

So, i did decide to just go see this new Lupin The 3^rd film for funsies, i mean, i sure do love me some Lupin (and it’s a freakin institution here in Italy, so it’s already screening here), and is directed by Takeshi Koike, of Redline fame, i am in.

Problem is, i haven’t really kept up with Lupin many anime iterations, i’m more of a casual enjoyer, and this is meant as the conclusion of Koike’s “Lupin the IIIrd” subseries, maybe a send off for the character of Lupin itself, as it also takes story elements from the very first Lupin The 3^rd movie, The Mistery Of Mamo.

Not that you needed this digest as the movie does a handy recap, which also makes it obvious this isn’t a random Lupin movie at all, but for what concerns this film, is about Lupin & the gang being lured into an uncharted island by someone that knows them very well, and forced to face not only the island venomous mists, but an apparently immortal being known as “Muom”….

I don’t know if this will actually be the last Lupin III film ever, doubt it, but it’s the first one in 30 frigging years made in traditional animation, and it sure as hell looks great, even with the occasional 3D CG bits for the monsters, it’s very stilish, the action is great, but it’s also lacking on plot and character development, despite the very strong start the pacing also suffers as soon as the story does, so it ends up being “almost good” but nothing feels properly developed, more focused on being stylish old school pulp action (more serious in tone than “classic Lupin”), which it is still fun, but the film does ultimately suffer from it.

Decent, but kinda disappointing.