[EXPRESSO] Mercy (2026) | One Amazon Ring To Judge Them All

I’ll give director Timur Bekmambetov this: he does not lack tenacity, kickstarting the “screenlife” type of films with Unfriended back in 2015 and sticking to it to this day.

After the “so bad it’s good” Amazon commercial-crapfest that was his 2025 War Of The Worlds, we now have Mercy, a sci-fi thriller set in a distopic future where, to curb the criminality rates skyrocketing, the government and police concocted a new system to dole out justice: an IA program, Mercy, which basically acts a judge, jury and executioner.

One day a veteran police officer wakes up to find himself strapped to a chair and being a subject of the Mercy program, accused of killing his wife, with the IA giving him access to various databases, telephone records, private social media accounts, to try and defend himself from the accusation, by lowering a “guilty” probability rate via proving his arguments, all in 90 minutes, before he gets executed via sonic blast when time runs out.

It’s basically an attempt at a modern take on Minority Report in screenlife fashion, and it’s actually kinda okay? For once, it manages to not entirely take place via holograms and sci-fi screens from where a bound Chris Pratt has to investigate remotely, it’s kinda compelling and unlike War Of The Worlds 2025, it’s actually competent enough to engage the viewer and entertain enough, despite it also being fairly mediocre,

It’s also not really well written and the more you think about the plot points the more shaky they become, plus it’s also gross propaganda, given it’s a sci-fi film allegedly warning about the danger of leaving the judicial system to IA and algorhythms, but also promoting as the only solution a survellaince state (no qualms about the ethics of zero privacy), an Amazon sponsored one.

[EXPRESSO] Return To Silent Hill (2026) | Pyramid Ass

Okay, i’ll confess i haven’t really played proper the mainline Silent Hill games, as ironic it might sound given my obsession with horror in general, and while deserving the tar & feathering, i will say i do know at least the premise of Silent Hill 2 and some surface stuff about the plot and characters via cultural osmosis.

I say this because Return To Silent Hill is sold as a faithful adaptation of Silent Hill 2, not a sequel of the first Silent Hill film from 2006, apparently, i never bothered with the SH movies either.

That said, the premise is what you’d expect for a Silent Hill 2 film adaptation: James Sunderland is devastated after being separated from his love, Mary, receives a mysterious letter that leads him back to the sleepy town of Silent Hill, where he hopes to find Mary.

Upon entering town, though, he realizes Silent Hill has changed drastically, as he fears something malevolent is haunting it, and while struggling to discern reality from allucinations, he ventures hoping he’ll be strong enough to find and rescue Mary…

the director of 2006’s Silent Hill film, Cristophe Gans, is back here, but (as explained above) that doesn’t mean anything to me as of now nor stops this from being a honestly aggressively bad film.

Sorry, it’s just not good, at all, every way you slice it, production values are high and acting is decent, but it feels more a 2000’s high budget amusement park ride adaptation of Silent Hill 2, with the script triple-explaining everything in case you got a lobotomy after entering the cinema, it’s almost a parody so veemently the scripts fights any attempt at vagueness, let alone mystery.

Still, i’ve seen far worse horror films, at least it’s not boring and goes by fairly quickly.

Iced (1989) [REVIEW] | Ski Slash

Last year’s review of the original Until Dawn on PS4 did left me with a peckish for icy, wintery slasher flicks, i did mention this in the review itself, so instead of The Chill Factor, we’re doing Iced, a forgotten slasher that i’m surprised doesn’t have an Arrow Video rerelease.

That’s because Vinegar Syndrome did release this one on Blu Ray (via their sub-label Degausser Video) last January, though i wouldn’t mind an import friendlier option later down the line.

Iced definitely doesn’t wanna reinvent the “slasher wheel”, as its premise it’s indeed pretty typical.

A group of friends are mysteriously invited to a ski resort, only to be systematically stalked and killed by a masked serial killer.

I’m sure this has nothing to do with how one of their friends, Jeff, died 4 years ago in a nightime skiing accident after being dumped by his fiancèe.

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[EXPRESSO] No Other Choice (2025) | Canis Canem Edit

After Decision To Leave, Park Chan-Wook is back with a satirical black comedy, No Other Choice.

Based on the novel The Ax By Donald Westlake, the film sees Man-su, a paper industry expert with a 25 years sterling career, paper being his profession but also providing for his family wealth and being part of his identity…. being laid off without notice.

As his life falls apart and the sudden firing theathens to kill off not only his hobby greenhouse, but his family’s passions, even their future career (with the daughter being a budding violin master to be), as they have to even send away their two dogs to make due, Man-su decides to start killing off his competition in the hope he well get his job in the industry back and maintain his way of life.

Man-su also isn’t particularly cut off to be a killer, but is desperate enough to try and do anything it takes, which often involves being caught in odd or embarassing situations, or worse, being very understanding of other fellows in the paper industry biz it’s trying to kill as he’s got (like many characters say in the film itself) “no other choice”.

As expected of Park Chan-Wook, it’s a very brutal, humane yet relentless film, this time picturing a normal man who is chewed up and then spat out by the corporation that gave him a fairly wealthy lifestyle, and then takes extreme measures as his status quo falls apart, ready to do anything to win the corpo rat race, feeling more than pressured to be what he wants and wants other to think he is, as comformity and optics are king.

Very clever and also pretty damn funny, honestly might be one of Park Chan Wook’ bests, maybe even a masterpiece, it’s excellent.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 59: Area 407/Tape 407 (2012)

In our quest to maybe eventually one day review all the dinosaur films ever made, i had to wonder if we missed something.

We features dinosaur comedies, dinosaur battle royales, virtual dinosaurs of the future, some really decrepit pieces of dinosaur media, and an over excess of soldiers fighting raptors.

Heck, we even did see attempts at mixing the dinosaurs with a found footage film in the very decent and mostly realized The Lost Dinosaurs, and today we found him a play-date of sorts with something i never heard once about, and i had to stumble upon by combing upon lists of dinosaur films.

and i mean “stumble” because you wouldn’t guess a movie called Area 407/Tape 407 would be abotu dinosaurs, which i guess should count as a spoiler. I suppose?

Let’s be real, it’s not that much of a spoiler when you have the poster art for the film sport the recognizable “triple clawed scratchmark” that might as well spell “Velociraptors”, or a Garfield creepypasta abomination, i suppose.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #58: The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

For our entry on what now is the “Nessie subcategory” of Dino Dicember, we’re going away from the Irish lochs and into the b-movie version of Northern California, with The Crater Lake Monster.

Directed and written by Richard D. Stromberg, this is an infamous one, indeed, often hailed as one of worst giant monster films ever made, or at least one of the cheapest ever put into production, and unsurprisingly it has received the Rifftrax treatment.

The plot is an obvious, deliberate throwback to monster films of the 50s, and was originally meant to be about the Bigfoot, but due to a glut of films on the cryptid, Stromberg figured it would be better to go even further back and make it about dinosaurs, why not,

Archeologists find a cave in Crater Lake that has wall drawings depicting humans fighting something that looks like a Plesiosaurus, incredibile evidence that dinosaurs did actually exist in the same time as humans. Pity that a meteorite lands in the lake, causing a cave-in that completely destroy the discovered caves system and its wall drawings.

On the bright (?) side, the meteorite seems to revive or awake a long dormant creature within the lake, a giant plesiosaur akin to the more famous Nessie.

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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.

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[EXPRESSO] Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man (2025) | Crusader: No Remorse

Sorry for this being later than planned, got sidetracked.

No limited theatherical screening for this one in my area, as with Del Toro’s Frankenstein. Bummer.

Master detective Benoit Blanc is back again for the third Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, called upon to investigate another impossible murder mystery, this time teaming up with a zealous young priest to solve the mysterious murder in the church of a sleepy small town, itself harboring a sordid past that’s about to be uncovered.

If Glass Onion was a huge piss take on not-Elon Musk and his ilk, Wake Up Dead Man goes to a more classic murder mystery scenario type, the religion themed ones, foregoing taking the piss of techbros for taking on the modern realities for the Church and its struggles with new realities, that often are rejected and taken in stride to be more regressive, to harbor hateful, homophobic, fascist-spirited circlejerks of zealots ready to fight the “holy war on the heathens”.

As in, we don’t eat the rich, we eat the bigots as well, makes sense.

This time around we aren’t dropped into the aftermath but we spent a good amount of time characterizing the young priest struggle against the local monsignor and depicting the various, utterly despicable-pitiable soon-to-be-suspects, as Daniel Craig’s character doesn’t show up until 40 minutes in. He’s slightly less fancy this time around, but still a great genre savvy quirky genius detective as ever.

It helps this sequel (though like Glass Onion this can be enjoyed on its own) stand out for itself, which is kinda needed since it’s the third Knives Out film, and in short it’s indeed more of the same, it is what we’ve come to expect from the series, but damn, it’s still quite good, funny and fairly witty stuff.

[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] 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.