[EXPRESSO] Anaconda (2025) | Thunder Of The Gigantic Tropic Serpent

Yes, the Anaconda serie is back…kinda.

You might have heard of this reboot being in the works for a while, and it being as a quasi-January release here definitely did not feed any hype, not that there was any in the first place, gotta admit.

In case you didn’t, Sony decided to reboot the Anaconda franchise as a Tropic Thunder sort of dealio, not a bad idea in itself even though it already felt kinda masturbatory and “lazy” since Jack Black was already in Tropic Thunder.

This film sees some friends that meet up together and decide to actually follow up on their childhood dream of being proper directors, instead of being relegated to menial cinema-adjacent jobs like making video wedding invitations or playing tertiary one-line characters on TV shows, when one of them propose the project of rebooting Anaconda, one of their favorites.

This means not only writing the script, getting some funding, but also going to the Amazon river and hire a snake expert so they can “shoot the shit” there. But things gets messier when they find themselves involved with smugglers and actually stalked by a giant anaconda…

To be honest, this is noticeably better than i would expect it to be, it’s actually quite ok.

It would be better if it was able to be more original instead of doing again Tropic Thunder via Be Kind Rewind and if it was a bit less of a compromise between a more edgy and satirical take on meta-cinema and being also “safe for kids”, to say nothing about how it is fairly safe in the “self-poking humour” department.

But i will admit it has some surprises and it’s actually funnier than i expected, it’s decent and knows it’s for the best to keep runtime on the short side.

Jack Frost: The Amytiville [MANWHA REVIEW] | The Teen Hellsing Years

This has been on my bucketlist for a while because it was such a transparent case to me.

As in, sometimes you have comics more or less explicit in showing their inspiration, their model to copy and emulate, happens a lot in shonen manga but it’s not always what one would assume

Sometimes it can be just a conflation of this kind of comics being very iterative and built (like most books and movies, for that matter) on clichès, on proven formats, time-tested formula, so similarities are often more coincidence than deliberate emulation of a specific series among the sea of many similar ones, expecially when in turn they influence each other as they go, and in time are themselves taken as examplse to follow.

But once i laid eyes on this manwha (a “korean manga”) by Ko Jin-Ho, Jack Frost: The Amityville, aimed at basically the same demographic of an edgy Shonen Jump series, then red the first volume, i was kinda happy in how immediatly obvious it was to me what this wanted to be.

As in, a more shonen take on Hellsing, the renowed pulp classic by Kohta Hirano about vampires, guns bigger than people, religious freaks with knives that double as lances and undead nazi cyborg monsters.

Continua a leggere

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.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #52: Baby: Secret Of The Lost Legend (1985)

Unlike the other 1985 film review for Dino Dicember this year, this one is indeed a proper dinosaur film, and one that does know the target demographic its going for, not that a title like “Baby The Lost Legend” would led to people assuming the opposite.

It’s also another dinosaur themed by Disney, this time under the Touchstone Films/Pictures label

like One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, thought thankfully no “Yellow Peril” age chinese stereotypes, we’re moving to Africa as the movie premises involves a couple of archeologists trying to track down the local legendary monster known as mokele mobembe, whom happens to share many characteristics with sauropods, dinosaurs basically, leading the two to find a family of brontosauruses deep in the jungles of Congo.

The two are followed by the African military, which seems the dinosaurs as a potential treat and will have to escape them in order to save the baby and its parents as well…

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Avatar: Fire And Ash (2025) | Cigarette Butts

Here we are again.

Somehow “disappointed”.

Sound silly, i know, the second one was admittedly a bit better than i expected and had some surprises in there… this one having a new Nav’i tribe of brutal savages (just short of being cannibals) isn’t enough to stave off boredom, but then again plot comes third or fourth more than usual this time around, taking a backset for just repeating almost verbatim the same plot beats of Way Of The Water, with some extra piles of new stuff that conveniently happens just because the script needs to -once again – free from capture these dumbass characters.

It’s pointless to be angry about an Avatar movie being another pile of shallow, utter nonsense, but this time around is even more boring dull nonsense that goes for a 3 hours equivalent of jiggling keys to infants, and it has framerate issues, which i don’t remember being a thing when i watched Way Of The Water in theathers just 3 years ago.

Maybe i got lucky back then, but regardless of how it looks that way, it’s distracting since it often fluctuates from looking like a big budget cutscene of a videogame, looking like we’re a HD camera feed from the set, looking actually cinematic, and so on.

It’s just insanely distracting and the added motion smoothing almost gave me a headache, and mind you, this was for a 2D screening.

I was reminded of something actually borderline unwatchable, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, but the sentiment is there, as i wonder why Cameron keeps making tech demo movies for proven tech (or telling a worthwhile plot with this astounding technological prowess), or he just doesn’t go make videogames instead.

Not that anything of this matters, as people will go see this on droves anyway.

[EXPRESSO] Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment NSWITCH2 | Mysterious Construct X

I had some reservations about this one, despite my love for the Hyrule Warriors subseries, since it wasn’t handled by Omega Force (i guess busy with the PW4 DLC, the Dynasty Warriors Origins expansion and the DW3 remaster), but developed by a new studio under TK, AAA Games Studio.

But my doubts were (mostly) put to rest once i got to play it.

This is indeed the prequel to Tears Of The Kingdom it was announced as, as in, unlike the previous Hyrule Warriors game, Age Of Calamity, this is an actually canonical entry narrating the War For The Imprisonment mentioned in TOTK and taking place at the very beginning of this timeline’s Hyrule, with his first king, Rauru, uniting the race-tribes of the land to fight back against Ganondorf, whose evil and lust for power led to him becoming the Demon King.

A time travelling Zelda also aids Rauru, alongside a mysterious yet very familiar feeling humanoid construct, accompanied in his quest against evil by a wandering Korogu…

Gameplay wise, it builds off the systems and overall structure from Age Of Calamity, adding new elements taken from Tears Of The Kingdom like the Zonai devices, making for a really solid and fun Warriors game, with satisfying characters that aren’t cloned from the previous HW iterations, even though the roster does feel famished to include secondary characters due to story limitations, and the map design doesn’t really dare to stray from the basics.

It’s a pity because it’s good, and close to being as great as Age Of Calamity, but eventually it shows some flaws or inconsistencies that stem from inexperience, though it also has a surprisingly decent-to-good narrative that isn’t stretched out, it’s a sizeable game and performance wise its runs so much better than Age Of Calamity did.

[EXPRESSO] Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (2025) | Cross-Gen Capers

Aside from the title that would have befitted the second entry in this series instead of the third (as this is Now You See Me 3), the “Ocean Eleven-esque X Robin Hood” gang of illusionists (labeled The Horsemen due to the “Knights Of The Round Table” style secret society they belong to/work for) and with ready to foil villains with incredible “magic” based performances heists are back, with some next generation members entering their ranks to help steal a huge ass diamond from an arms dealer played by Rosamund Pike.

It’s an actually very old fashioned type of plot, something not too distant from Carmen Sandiego or Lupin The 3rd, but done in a glitzy modern way with an emphasis of illusionism, mentalism, parlor tricks taken to anime style levels of ability of deception for twists upon twists, snazzy setpieces and daring escapes. The usual crime caper stuff, basically.

There’s not much to say, it’s that kind of “let’s get the gang back” kind of sequel with the injection of new blooded “tricksters” for justice members, the third installment in the series, this one directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Zombieland Double Tap, the first Venom movie, the Uncharted film), which does a decent job, i did enjoy this more than the second film, i will say that, and that is somehow mantains that plucky energy, despite the franchise being more than a decade old by now.

It’s still the kind of very light, shiny and glitzy popcorn entertaiment that the previous Now You See Me films were, not completely mindless, but also not deep or complicated by any definition, molsty predictable but not completely, the sort you do enjoy but also kinda throway, forgotten by the very next week at best.

But it does the job decently enough in theathers.

[EXPRESSO] The Toxic Avenger (2023) | Punk Pretend

Yes, Troma is still around, and just the fact the Toxic Avenger reboot is a big budget PG-13 rated film with big Hollywood actors is already indicative that yes, in this case – to paraphrase Grasshopper Manifacture’s motto – “Punk Is Dead”, coming off as a clear admission that, despite all that clammering, now they do actually want to be like Hollywood and ain’t even trying to mask it.

The plot is basically the same as the 1984 original, but tries to update the concept for modernity, changing some details and adding new characters, and making it more about family (since “Toxie” has a troubled stepson to care for) but basically keeping the idea of a derided janitor falling victim to radioactive waste, which mutate him into a superhero monster, The Toxic Avenger, ready to take down evil, and in this case exact revenge on the evil big pharma company that bamboozled the entire town of St. Roma Ville ( ah ah), harassed its citizens and pollute its waters.

And it’s all presented as subversive like the original was… in 1984.

Sure there is some splatter violence, but it’s kinda tame, even in the international unrated cut, today the ol’ excesses of the company are nothing.

It’s not even that unwatchable, ironically, it’s still trash like the original but that became a cult film for reasons, which do include its sincerity, here completely gone, as this remake also sucks out any of its anti-establishment, alternative, subversive and controversial qualities, being just domesticated and tarted up hollow trash.

Even worse, it’s just so desperate in wanting people to like it, to elect it as their new favourite “so bad it’s good” flick, which itself it’s old hat too.

It’s just fuckin pathetic, even more than it wants to come off as.

[EXPRESSO] Dracula: A Love Tale (2025) | Gothic Hark

Talk about a left field proposal from Luc Besson, a director better known for sci-fi films (among other things), doing a Dracula adaptation in the traditional period piece setting, and making it focus on the gothic romance aspect.

Especially since we weren’t exactly that starved, with Egger’s Nosferatu and Last Voyage Of The Demeter, among others moving based on the Bram Stoker’s novel as a whole or specific parts.

Not much to say about the plot, it’s Dracula, as in, the expected plot for a Dracula adaptation, hitting most of the expected scenes and having the expected characters from the novel, and even some of quirks of previous films incarnations, like Dracula greeting Harker with that ridiculous hairdo he has in Coppola’s version, with some differences to accomodate this take on the story.

It’s well acted, the production values are high,… but it’s also all over the fuckin place.

Yes, the idea is that it focuses a lot more on being a gothic romance film, which is clearly the focus, and that does work… when the tone doesn’t shift drastically from a semi-quirky lore talk about Van Helsing explaining how to tell if a person is a vampire, the pacing grinds to a halt so Dracula can flashback even more, or jest around with Harker almost like we are in a spoof film.

Or have multiple, elaborated swordfights-war battle scenes.

It’s almost like at times Besson remember there’s the usual Dracula subplots to move along and then zoom, then why not, let’s take a break to have a romantic stroll through festival activities, i’m sure the pacing can take it.

To say nothing of the kinda expected conclusion that still feels like an anti-climax.

I’m not even mad, just a bit confused, but i will say it’s anything BUT boring.

[EXPRESSO] Chainsaw Man The Movie: Reze’s Arc (2025) | I R I S O U T

I guess the thing now for shonen (or shonen-esque, as Chainsaw Man doesn’t quite fit the bill) anime films is to adapt an arc so it can bridge into the following TV seasons, because Demon Slayer did it.

Okay. Why not? I’ll take this over compilation films any day.

In case you aren’t familiar with the series, Chainsaw Man is about Denji, a homeless boy used and betrayed by the yakuza, whom becomes a human-devil hybrid that can sprout chainsaws from his body, after his dog, Pochita (actually the Chainsaw Devil) saves his life by fusing with a dying Denji.

He’s then recruited by Makima, commanding a special unit of Devil Hunters on behalf of the japanese government, which is tasked to kill devils that show up threatening the peace, and also search for the whereabouts of the incredibly powerful yet elusive Gun Devil.

In this specific case, the movie cover’s Reze story arc, with the first season finale seeing Denji confront Katana Man and his allies that were seeking revenge.

The first season did receive some backlash for the animation, but honestly i think MAPPA did a good job with that as well (even if some episodes did suddendly look like ass at times), so expectations were high, even more as it’s a pretty good adaptation of a hit series that didn’t just luck out with its timing, i’ll say that much.

The movie does have better, more consistent quality animation and the decision to adapt this arc pays off in terms of more cinematic flair to the insane action scenes, while also giving the needed time to introduce Reze and his relationship with Denji, it is her story, after all, as much as his.

Pretty good stuff, and the opening theme by Kenshi Yonezu is once again fire.