[EXPRESSO] The Colors Within (2024) | Catholicspotting

From Naoko Yamada comes The Colors Within, which in many ways looks kinda basic, especially compared to the director’s previous, more well known film, the “A Silent Voice” film adaptation. This one it’s just about Totsuko, a music loving girl that has the capacity to see the people’s emotions emanating as “colors”, and when searching for Kimi, a girl whose “colors” dazzled her before but isn’t showing at their catholic all girls school anymore, he meets with a young boy, Rui, also into music, and on the spurt of the moment, they “decide” to form a band, practicing in an abandoned old church on a island.

There is a bit more to this, but that’s about it, being a fairly straight story about teenage friendship through the love of music, there’s no supernatural horror or sci-fi twist, or any nasty bullshit, you know where it’s going and there is no deep focus on the “process” for example, because it centers mostly on the friendship between these 3 characters (with some LBGT undertones), it wants to do that, to depict the teen awkwardness of many istances as well as the genuine passions, troubles and tribulations, which include religion, as Totsuko especially is fairly devout, but the catholic theming isn’t criticized or promoted, it’s just a part of the characters lives in one way or another.

It’s incredibly wholesome without being gratitously saccharine, it doesn’t feel the need to justify being this jovial and earnest tale of friendship and music by being gritty out of nowhere, and the execution (alongside the excellent animation handled by Science Saru) it’s great, it’s hard not to be engaged and share in its the movie sweetness

Also, gotta give props for the wholly unexpected, cute and non random as it seems instrumental rendition of “Born Slippy”.

[EXPRESSO] Conclave (2024) | Papal Royale

There’s an italian saying about the Pope succession system that doesn’t really translate well into english, but it’s basically a clerical version of “the king is dead, long live the king”, and with this thriller (based on a Richard Harris book of the same name) we see indeed the titular conclave, held in order to vote the next Pope, with the cardinals being ritually closed off from the world until from the Sistine Chapel a white puff of smoke can be seen, signifing a new Pope has been chosen.

The conclave is held by a recalcitrant Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), that eventually gets a hold of many secrets about the many other Cardinals moving their influence around to get elected as the “Sacred Big Cheese”, from affairs to hidden documents, rampant display of a hunger for power, realpolitik stuff and an even darker secret that could shake the very core of the Church itself..

And yes, it’s nowhere near as profound or complicated as the movie treats itself, with most of the Cardinals vying for power being nearly cartoonishy douches, the speeches making thing way too simple, and the final reveal being honestly kinda ridiculous (and really selling the “whodunnit” – minus the murder – structure of the film), but direction by Edward Berger (All Quiet On The Western Front) really sells the isolated world where these holy men are forced to live until the deed is done, that even if you can guess most of the resolution, it’s equally enthralling to see it unfold, and the acting from the cast (full of great character actors) is often amazing, sometimes hammy but still immensely entertaining, that it elevates what would be otherwise quite silly stuff in context.

Even with these flaws, it’s undeniably a worthwhile watch for the acting alone.

The Spooktacular Eight #24: Mother Joan Of The Angels (1961)

Let’s conclude this year’s Spooktacular Eight by reviewing the 1960 Polish classic Mother Joan Of The Angels, also known as The Devil And The Nun.

Based on the real, documented case of demonic possession (or mass hysteria, let’s be real) that affected the nuns and took place in 1634 at a convent in Loudlun, France… well, indirectly, as it actually based on a novel of the same name by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz (which would later by adapted by Kent Russell for the infamous The Devils), itself loosely based on the aforementioned Loudlun possessions.

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[EXPRESSO] The First Omen (2024) | Damien Begins

It may look silly (or worse) to see the review for a new Omen film pop up after i outright refused to even see The Exorcist: Believer in theathers and just skipped it, but after hearing more than a few early reviews being positive for The First Omen, i figured why not, oddly sounds about right.

And for the record i never bothered with any of the sequels, which must have been the case for many, as this new Omen film does the other trend for new entries in old or long running horror series, as in its a prequel to the original The Omen from 1976 instead of a legacy sequel or a reboot.

Which is oddly kinda refreshing, at least in the current horror climate.

The plot concerns a young american woman, sent to Rome in order to be initiated into sisterhood, as she encounters a darkness so shocking it shakes her beliefs to the very core, and has her learn about a conspiracy to birth the Antichrist.

While it too suffers from some fixations of these prequels and legacy sequels, like having to redo a scene (or more) from the original movie mostly for the hell of it, and it has to move within the limits of an already established story which limits the potential twists and surprises, but honestly i was really surprised, as not only it works out a really creepy origin story/prequel to the 1976 movie, really taking advantage of the setup for some devilish twists and most importantly, an incredibly effective, graphic and twisted tale of evil, that manages to stand out by its own merits and uses the borrowed lore to the best it can, instead of just chasing the ghost of an older, better movie.

Surprisingly very good horror prequel, recommended.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #13: The Velocipastor (2018)

After teasing it in mentions before, it’s time to properly sit down and confess your sins to The Velocipastor. After all, “he’s a man of claw”, as boasted by the tagline poster.

This sounds like they came up with the title first and made the movie based on that, but it doesn’t even matter anyone, this isn’t even a valid joke anymore to make at these movies, i’m aware of that.

We’re past that, and so were already when The Velocipastor released through the power of internet curiosity for the new “bad movie of the week” sensation able to make people talk about it by the virtue of the title and a trailer that encapsulated the modern breed of poverty produced movies that wanted to be so bad it’s good because they knew an actual audience for it existed, and online film buffs willing to “surprise” themselves upon discovering the next worst thing ever to actually exist.

This isn’t a dig at the movie itself, it’s just that this modern strain of shit movies filmed with no budgets are made by and for audiences that are in on the joke, or actively search for them, so it’s a completely different situation from when people made crap like Video Violence in their backyards, slapped it on a VHS store shelf in America during the mid 80s, and nobody at large talked about them until decades later, because almost nobody knew these kind of films even existed.

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