Sky Sharks (2020) [REVIEW] | Gott ist im Himmel

Let’s close this year’s Shark Month with a big bang, shall we?

And frankly i don’t think there’s anything better in that regard as Sky Sharks, a movie you’ve might have heard of but wondered when or if it’s actually coming out.

Borne from a succesful Kickstarter campaign, Sky Sharks was supposed to come out in 2018, but production hit roadblocks, various issues came up, for some time we didn’t hear anything about it at all, but then, in 2020 it resurfaced, complete and was released, even on home video (might have to import it, though).

And it was definitelly worth the wait, since this one of those rare shark movies that sets out to be a big B-movie by design, trying to tick all the usual exploitation-but-awesome points… and actually succeds in living up entirely to its trailer promising flying sharks piloted by undead nazi uber-soldiers, alongside nudity and lots of gore. It’s just missing vampires, a christian-protestant feud, psycho priests with bayonet-blades longer than an arm, but i’m really nitpicking in this case.

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Virus Shark (2021) [REVIEW] | Bad Taste Sharks

While i promised myself i wouldn’t review stuff like the Corona Zombies films (made DURING the height of the pandemic in 2020 by an even more more shameless and cynical Full Moon Pictures)… i still will pretend they didn’t actually happen, alongside stuff like Angry Asian Murder Hornets, but chance and curiosity took the best of me when i stumbled upon this movie while walking down the river. I figured i could at least use it for this year’s Shark Month, and i selected it for the title alone.

So color me…. not really surprised when i actually started doing some research and finding out it’s yet another Polonia Bros joint.

And no, i didn’t plan out to review so many of their movies, at all. It just sorta happened.

At least they waited until 2021 came around instead of shooting it 3 days during mid-2020 so it could be “shot” and released during the height of the pandemic?

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[EXPRESSO] Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness (2021) | Monstrum Abruptum

So, this review wasn’t planned at all, not so soon anyway.

I was aware of the Resident Evil CG films going back from the early 2000s, but i never cared to check them out. This one just came out on Netflix as an exclusive, i decided to watch some episodes… and i have the suspicion this first “season” was originally a short movie, as it’s incredibly short and a bit too much “definitive” in its resolution than expected, let’s say that.

I guess Capcom went for the “Castlevania” approach, with a first season only lasting 4 standard lenght episodes to test the waters, and plans to eventually make more and longer seasons, but this doesn’t change that this thing isn’t exactly mindblowing. Again, at the time of writing (and posting) i haven’t seen the previous CG films, so i can’t compare to that.

But i can say that the dialogue isn’t good, often cringey and redundant. While the 3D CG looks honestly quite good, despite still feeling like a big budget long ensemble of cutscenes from a videogame… this first season barely does anything with the set-up, one oddly located in an early 2000s America where Leon has to stop a conspiracy involving a foreign nation and avoid that the US President (father of Ashley from RE 4) sets on the path of war against China.

It’s just so underwhelming AND short, not really an inspired or surprising script, even the action scenes and the monsters leave a bit to be desired. It’s not completely awful, it’s mildly entertaining, but it’s just so generic, uninspired and forgettable, even as a “foundation”. There IS something to work with, sure, but judging by this, i would expect more stories that barely interconnect and are resolved too quickly to create anything.

We’ll see.

Aquarium Of The Dead (2021) [REVIEW] | Aqua Zoombies

Today i’m gonna ask you a question, answer sincerely.

Who exactly asked for a Zoombies 3?

I’m not even being sarcastic, i’m genuinely curious because i’m pretty sure most people that at least saw the first Zoombies didn’t knew it had a “sequel” to begin with. This is not a series that has anything as a following, as far as i understand.

But yes, this is actually the third movie in the Zoombies trilogy, despite the title.

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Zombi Holocaust (1980) [REVIEW] | With Extra Falernum

Let me take you back the days of italian zombie movies, with one of the slightly more obscure films, even if we’re still in the familiar territory of italian directors credited with laughable american pseudonyms and a plethora of alternate titles, it wouldn’t be an italian zombie from that era if it somehow got the alternate title of Zombie 3 (yes, with an extra “e”), others trying to link it to the “Zombi non-series” or the cannibal subgenre, one that happens to have been mostly dominated by italian genre directors.

Zombi Holocaust does have 2 recognized alternative titles, Queen Of The Cannibals and Dr. Butcher: M.D., and to be honest they’re not too that outrageous or mystifying, because this one decide to go ahead and combine a cannibal and zombie movie together, throwing in a mad scientist that created his own zombie army, as an expedition to the Eastern Indies finds out more than they bargained for, as this group of doctors and journalist went there to investigate, after episodes of cannibalism by immigrants of that particular island started happening in various city hospitals.

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I Eat Your Skin (1971) [REVIEW] | Burial Grounds – Voodoo Terror

Summer means it’s a perfect time to revisit some black and white “exotic flavored” zombie flick of yore.

Made in 1964 as “Carribean Adventure”, titled this way to hide from investors the fact it was a zombie movie… it never saw the light of day until 1971, when the zombie genre was “properly” born via the unexpected, shocking and – as time would tell – seminal release in theathers of a low budget flick called The Night Of The Living Dead in 1968.

Of course, zombies existed in cinema before, but mostly “voodoo zombies”, as in people put under hypnosis or drugged by a scientist or master of some kind, used as both forced labour and goons to dispose of people, usually made invulnerable by magic to compensate their slow, stiff movements, but even by 1964 the “voodoo zombie genre” had already plateaud… heck, you can argue it basically died in the mid 40’s when zombie comedies like Zombies On Broadway happened, as Universal later would make Abbott and Costello meet its own monster roster.

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#E32021 Conferences Recap/Review/Thing

As already pointed out, E3 coming back this year was kind of a big deal, as the pandemic made it impossible to be held as usual in 2020, and even with the usual croc of shit that the event is and promotes… it’s a ritual, it’s a tradition for many people with huge interest in videogames, it’s a communal experience.

But i wonder if one year of non holding the event made many companies just forgot what the hell the expo was even supposed to be, like old people forgetting something they usually did out of habit because they had to stop doing it for a reason or others.

Mind you, E3 history is full of cringy – and often legendary – conferences often full of people that barely could speak english or had any PR experiences, overblown lies and hype for everything, announcements of announcement without nothing to show for titles of interest, so it’s telling this year’s output was a complete mess.

I don’t think that’s too hyperbolic to say.

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#E32021 Koch Primetime Gaming Stream & IGN EXPO [Highlights]

Yeah, compressing both together for my own convenience and because i really don’t have much to say about the Koch Primetime Stream (originally aired on Twitch) they had. I can say it was quite bad as a showcase for Koch Media new gaming label, named “Prime Matter”, 2 hours of mostly boredom thanks to the shit format of having basically an awkward interview relay race between various developers, with a lot of very dry talk and very little footage shown.

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Disgaea 6: Defiance Of Destiny (Switch) [DEMO] [HANDS ON]

So, the new Disgaea has a demo out, you betcha i was gonna take the opportunity to talk about it, even more since i will not be able to a have a review for it in a timely manner (or at all), i’m pretty sure, i know my schedule it’s gonna be hell when the game releases.

the demo is fairly beefy, and let’s you play the first 2 chapters (of 15, as i understand) of the story, making for 2/3 hours of content (maybe a bit more if you want to clear all the quests you can actually finish without the Item World available) more than enough to get a grip with it. I will not talk about the story because i’d rather let you enjoy it for yourself, just know this is primo Disgaea style of absurd and zany.

Yeah, it’s not like the demo for Disgaea 5 Complete where you could immediatly access uber-peta-leveled characters just to try them out, this demo is just a slice of main serving, so it makes sense you’ll be able to carry the save data to the full game when it releases this 29th of June.

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[EXPRESSO] Army Of The Dead (2021) | The Uncertain Dead

Zack Snyder has taken a break from superhero movies to come back to the zombie farm for Army Of The Dead, a zombie flick that’s also a heist movie, originally conceived as a spiritual successor of Snyder’s own 2004 Dawn Of The Dead remake, but over time becoming his own distinct thing, while it stewed in development hell until Netflix picked it in 2019.

While Las Vegas is plagued by a zombie epidemic, a group of mercenaries is crazy enough to try pulling the absurd and hugely risky feat of going into the quarantined zone to pulls off the biggest heist ever conceived, and do it before the government drops a nuclear bomb on the area.

This sounds like a great recipe for a bombastic, excessive good time… but it isn’t.

Putting aside that the movie is not so full of action as it marketed and presented, it’s a flawed execution of a good premise, one that’s also very long (2 hours and a half) and totally feels like it, even more as it feels unclear on what exactly it wants to pull off, not helped by the fact there are tonal inconsistencies; figures when it feels so conflicted between almost being Zombieland or a more Romero-style zombie film.

It’s frustrating, because it has some interesting, noteworthy variations and additions to the zombie mythos, it does live up the title in that regard, the actions scenes are quite good, there’s even some decent humour. There’s something to it, but it tries to pack too much stuff in and it never fully “clicks” because of it.

We’ll see more regardless, as Snyder wants to do a sequel, and Netflix already greenlit two prequels, in form of a film and an animated series, so maybe something better could come out of it.