Shiver Me Timbers (2025) [REVIEW] | Night Of The Sailor Comet

As the time of writing (and posting, since i improvised this trifecta of Popeye horror films’ reviews) this is the more recent in the batch of 3 horror films based around Popeye’s copyright falling into the public domain that were basically dumped on VOD, all released in a matter of months (or weeks) from one another, and while i’m fairly sure there by September (to be very generous) this specific declination of the fad will have died down due to diminishing returns (since it’s the third time, after Winnie The Pooh and Steamboat Willy’s Mickey Mouse) … i’m not putting this mini-marathon of modern “public domainxploitaition” in “extend mode” if another one or more of these eventually crop up, i’m not playing catch-up anymore.

So let’s see how Shiver Me Timbers, the debut film for director-writer Paul Stephen-Mann, fares out.

In the summer of 1986, a group of friends, led by Olive Oil and her brother Castor, are going on a trip in Northern California to witness the rare Haley’s comet meteor shower event, but they couldn’t expect that a comet piece would fall to the ground that night, a piece lodging itself into the corncob pipe of a reclusive fisherman living nearby, Popeye, now turned into a monstrous, violent killer with superhuman strenght, ready to sate its bloodthirst on Olive and his friends..

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[EXPRESSO] A Minecraft Movie (2025) | Yearning For

We all saw that horrendous first trailer for the Minecraft live action film, so i guess that lowered expectations for it, not that it made sense to make a Minecraft film, even less so in live-action, but instead of lamenting about Jack Black career moves, let’s cut the shit for the sake of brevity.

I do not care nor know much about Minecraft, aside from the stuff even gamers not invested in it will simply have learned via osmosis, and let’s be real, even i could tell you this is a stupid concept, borne of a decadent big budget film industry that is now riding on videogames’ everincreasing popularity (instead of the other way around) to sell tickets for whatever.

So imagine my surprise in finding out it’s not utter trash, even if there’s obvious irony of making a movie about a game thriving on creativity when it’s just Jumanji, again (couldn’t wait for the next one of the reboot series, could you, Jack?), just this time the guy wanted to actually go there, and there’s a washed up, John Romero-esque videogame champ of the 80s still stuck on the past, played by Jason Momoa, and we have stuff from Minecraft reworked into the plot of a fairly generic (and a bit unfocused) kids/family film fantasy adventure romp.

Still, there’s actual energy put into it, especially thanks to Black and Momoa going super hammy and clearly having fun with the silly material of a script, which isn’t good but isn’t atrocious, it’s nowhere near as cynical as one would expect, there are some solid performances (Jennifer Coolridge as the lonesome oversharing school principal for example), the effects are mostly up to snuff (which i didn’t expect from that awful trailer), even if the art style feels weird in live action.

[EXPRESSO] Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom (2024) | Lichdom: Battlemage

After the 4^th season of the anime, we got a Overlord film, depicting the Sacred/Holy Kingdom Arc that was discussed/teased but not shown during Season 4 itself.

For reference, the series is about a regular guy that get stuck in a VR MMORPG when the servers close, as its character, Momonga, an elder lich, with previous NPCs start acting on their own, including the servants/characters made by his fellow guild members basically electing him as supreme leader, and he’s basically forced to live up to their expectations while plotting schemes for world domination as the Overlord.

The plot here sees Momonga/Ainz Ooal Gown, finally having established its territory and himself as the “Sorcerer King” getting into an alliance with the Sacred Kingdom, needing help to slay the Demon Emperor Jaldabaoth that’s attacking them with his hordes of humanoid monsters..

Again, this is as about as good a synopsis as it gets without doing huge spoilers, and while it strikes a good compromise between being watchable on its own, since the story here presented (picking up the previously established but basically ignored “Jaldabaoth” storyline) has mostly original characters, provides enough closure, and you can guess/deduce some things… having context for the characters and situations definitely benefits the experience (since it doesn’t recap shit, just giving a very brief text explanation of the premise), which does deliver on both the spectacle, violence and some honestly fun, enjoyable “anime isekai non-sense”, including fantasy politics.

I was worried the animation might had the “CG-isms” seen in later Season 3 and Season 4… not as much, the animation isn’t notably better but you can tell there’s a bump in quality and direction to take advantage of it being a film, more battles to show the animation off, etc.

Quite satisfied with it, i must say.

Orcs! (2011) [REVIEW] | 3 Inches Of Snooze

Time to rummage through my B-movies DVD collection and pinch one out, in this case salvaging from one of the huge ass bookcase style holders Orcs!, a 2011 direct to video monster on the loose flick with a fantasy twist of sorts.

This time around it’s not mutated bears, cocained panthers, or landlubbing sharks running amok in a place, it’s the green, Dakka loving green boyz, that threaten to invade modern society starting from a US National Park, so it’s up to the resident Park Ranger, Cal Robertson, and his sidekick, Voluntary Cadet Hobie, to stop them hordes from leaving the park.

Sound like a fun little comedy horror B-movie, the formula it’s more than proven, have monsters invade and have two or more dorkuses left as humanity’s unlikely last stand, the cast being mostly made of people you’ve never heard or seen before it’s an acceptable risk and not damning in itself.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #36: A Sound Of Thunder (2005)

Since we’ve looked at a LOT of low-to-no budget dinosaur films this year (maybe even more than usual), let’s end with something that actually released in most english-speaking cinemas, had some actual movie studios and actually known industry faces attached to it, with A Sound Of Thunder.

Based on a short story of the same name by Ray Bradbury and set in the still “distant” future of 2055, it tells the story of a company, Time Safari, that offers to rich customers the possibility to travel back in time and hunt dinosaurs.

Due to the huge risks involved with the “space-time fabric and whatnot”, the company regulates the safari by hunting species of dinosaurs that would have eventually died anyway of natural causes and keeps the clients from stepping off the designated path of the safari experience.

While on a hunt, a gun malfunctions, forcing the team to scatter and flee from an Allosaurus, and even if they eventually regroup, when they come back to their time with no harm done… they soon find out their actions had consequences, like a sudden increase in global temperature and the over-night instant, abudant growth of plant life, with further trips resulting in even more messing with the space-time continuum and endangering the existence of humanity as a whole…

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[Resident Evil Live Action Film Retrospective] 4#: Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

By now it was official and expected to get a new Resident Evil film sequel every 3 years, and in like clockwork in 2010 arrived Resident Evil: Afterlife, the fourth one, which also brought back to directing Paul W.S. Anderson, whom passed around the director duties after the first one, but was always writing the scripts, and as we will see, he would stick around for the rest of the film series as director & writer of his wife fanfic adventures in this Resident Evil canon.

And since we passed the third entry already, i guess they felt necessary to also go the 3D route, as the entire movie was shot this way, for obvious gimmicky (and lucrative) reasons, with the obvious parts meant for 3D as easy to notice in 2D as usual.

We immediatly continue from where Extinction left off, with multiple Alice clones attacking the Tokyo Umbrella hideout as promised, wielding kunai, double uzi, double katanas, and their psionic power, so yeah, Anderson it’s so obviosly and strongly back at the wheel, for better or worse, and it’s definitely not in the mood for hotdogging, so we jump straight into the bombastic action at the beginning, we’ll do the exposition and new and returning characters later.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #2: Pinocchio: A True Story (2021)

Let’s get the “meme boy” one over so we can kill any mystique it could possible accrue in time, by tackling one of the more recent adaptations, the Russian 2021 one that pretty much nobody would have cared about if the english dub had Paulie Shore delivery such a stock effeminate – and most importantly out of place – performance as the titular Pinocchio, especially notable in the clip you’ve seen of him talking to Gepetto of how he wants to see the world on its own, as he ready for it.

Tybald being Pinocchio’s horse, which he never had in the original story, but then again, it bound to be expected from your movie when it can’t even have the gall to call itself “THE true story”.

Just one of the many. Whatever.

I guess someone finally saw Tangled and wanted to have a funny horse character, so much it presents the movie as a story he’s telling you about, giving the basic gist of Pinocchio being carved by Geppetto, dissing the “growing nose” thing and then actually… preseting more than actually narrating the whole thing. Liar. And odd as a Jiminy Cricket replacement. Sort of. Not really.

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[One Piece Film Retrospective] #11: Straw Hat Chase 3D (2011)

Strong World was such a step up in terms of One Piece movies, such a big deal that in 2010 they didn’t release any new One Piece film, but that can be – partially – attributed to the fact Strong World was delayed to December 2009 from its original spring release windom that same year.

Clearly it was a bit too good or too much, as for the next installment Toei basically went back to the roots so hard it did a 360°, heck, arguably even more, since this is the shortest One Piece released so far (and probably will forever hold that distinction), just 30 minutes, to the point one would struggle to even consider it as such, despite being included in many One Piece films collection.

Even the first 3 movies were each longer than this, still films, but we’re basically back to that type of dealio, complete with the fact it was a double bill screening, so you would see this and Toriko 3D Kaimaku! Gourmet Adventure, which also marked the first movie for that series, but not the last time One Piece and Toriko would crossover with each other, and some space ape warriors too…

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[One Piece Film Retrospective] #4: Dead End Adventure (2003)

You might disagree, but i’m fairly confident in saying that we’re finally starting in proper with Dead End Adventure, as it’s the first One Piece movie to shackle itself from being a double bill 1 hour middle lenght film meant to be compromises releases for various anime company fests.

Yep, no Toei Anime Fair release alongside an even shorter Digimon movie, Dead End Adventure was the first One Piece movie to receive a proper theathrical release, and fittingly so as it’s the first actual feature lenght film for the franchise.

The plot sees the Straw Hats suffer from the usual lack of any cash left, leading them to enlist into the Dead End Competititon, a secret race between pirate crews, with a huge bounty for the winner and the expected lack of any proper rules or etiquette.

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Horror Shark 3D AKA Blood Shark 3D (2020) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

Shark attack movies are an appealing worldwide phenomen, so it’s not surprising even mainland China would eventually invest more and more in these, as they can serve a fairly new domestic cinema industry and are easy to export since the genre is pretty popular everywhere. Shark never get old for audiences, after all.

Obviously this isn’t the first chinese shark movie ever, or even the first one we featured here, but it’s China very first 3D big budget shark attack film. It has received a fairly easy to find DVD release on online marketplaces, but i watched it on Youtube, as it was uploaded in full on YOUKU’s Youtube Channel, with english subs available.

The plot of Horror Shark 3D (also known as Blood Shark 3D) concerns “a swimmer and a marine paradise trainer (trainer for what?) who accidentally fall into a huge conspiracy about blood sharks.”

At least this is the plot synopsis you’ll find around the web, but i’d say it’s badly translated and partially incorrect.

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