[EXPRESSO] Kinds Of Kindness (2024) | R.F.M. Does The Yubi Yubi

Yorgos Lanthimos has been on a roll lately, i especially loved Poor Things, so i was looking forward to his new film, Kinds Of Kindness, even though i had qualms about it being a tryptic/anthology thing, even with the novel spin of the same actors playing different characters in each of the segments.

Then again, Lanthimos reunited with his longtime screenwriter Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer) for this one, so yes, i’m definitely game.

Despite the segments having oddly some very light continuity, this is mostly done for a comedic pay-off/joke, so we have a collection of stories about the titular types of “kindness”, with the first being about a man that falls of favor after refusing to cause an incident for his boss (that also monitors and basically plans/commands his subordinate entire life), the second with a cop that has her missing wife survive from a crash on an island and return unscathed, only for the cop to feel increasingly paranoid about the wife being an impostor, and the final one concering a couple of members of a cult in search of an actual holy maiden able to raise the dead for real.

It’s a bit uneven, with the middle segment arguably being the best one, and the final one being kinda disappointing (and structurally too similar to the first one, which is classic old school Lanthimos all the way), with the feeling it all might have worked better with some of the ideas reworked into a single storyline, especially with its being the longest of Lanthimos films, almost clocking at 3 hours.

Still, it’s definitely worth seeing, even with the slightly excessive lenght and uneven quality of the segments, the acting by the stellar cast it’s incredible as expected. Good stuff.

[EXPRESSO] The Watchers (2024) Live Theathre In The Woods

Mr Twister is once again back on the silver screen, and we’re going back to the woods, this time not to hide while people believing to be the Four Horsemen invade your home and impose an improbabile apocalyptic task to you and your family, or to bother the geezers, but to play the sickest livestream event of them all… to an unknown audience.

… oh wait, this is actually written and directed by Inasha Night Shyamalan, one of M. Night’ (with Trap, directed by him, also releasing in 2024) daughters, here at her directorial debut.

The premise sees a girl, Mina, a 28 yo artist, finding herself lost and isolated inside a huge forest in western Ireland, only for her to take refuge in a cottage and unknownly get trapped in there alongside three other people, to be watched at night by some strange creatures dwelling there.

What’s scariest than improv theather to a fussy audience that might just kill you like a fly if it wishes so, after all? Very little, outside of some cosmic horror older than time itself and such.

While there’s definitely a similar imprint to her father, The Watchers doesn’t rely entirely on a last second last act twist to flip around the narrative, i mean, it’s kinda easy to predict partly what the creatures could be (if nothing else for the location), and they don’t throw out some stupid and-or unsatisfying curveball just for the sake of throwing off the audience, so for best or worst it relies more on actually making you care the lore and the plot being interesting in itself.

Still nothing really special despite the clever hook and good casting for what are just functional characters, but honestly i’d say it’s quite the decent watch, especially for a directorial debut.

[EXPRESSO] Under Paris (2024) | Enviro-Jaws

A french Netflix shark movie, released now, it doesn’t look like a Mark Polonia film, yeah, i’ll bite.

Though i’m now convinced the genre will never leave the nursery waters of Jaws, since we still get stuff like a recalcitrant douchy mayor in the plot… though this time is because they plan to host the Triathlon in the Seine river, and there’s a good reason this is a tradition.

Speaking of which, the premise sound like if Sharks In Venice happened in France and tried to be more realistic… it’s not really, it’s actually a shark finding its way into the Seine river, the same shark that massacred the crew of an enviromental protection squad, and despite her past she intervenes to see that the shark is saved from its new unplanned habitat she’s not made for, and to also avoid the same carnage happening once again.

It has the expected horror moments or situations, but it leans a lot more into being a thriller and its enviromental message, which is kinda to be expected since the movie goes for realism, it ain’t trying to be The Meg or even The Reef, and it’s not like it mishandles its own message or themes… it’s just a bit slow moving, even if it uses that time to make the characters more sympathetic and manages that, they simply aren’t good enough to completely offset the pacing issues.

The final act does really pick up “the slack” in this regard, and overall, Under Paris it’s decent, it plays well its modern enviromentalist angle, the effects are quite good… sometimes, it’s just a bit too procedural, the pace is kinda slow until the very end to be proper involving, so it ends up feeling longer than it’s below 2 hours runtime.

Nice ending, though.

[EXPRESSO] Civil War (2024) | FraKctured

I was disappointed by Garland’s previous (and winner for “most on the nose possible horror title”) film, MEN, and the trailer for Civil War really was so generic i could almost believe it was promoting a live action adaptation of Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s The Division 2’s, or whatever a big budget version of a “January 6 Simulator” without a Trump phrophecy orb would have looked like.

(then again, this is an issue A24 seems to have recently, see the trailer for The Zone Of Interest)

That aside, when i actually got to see the film in theathers, i was pleasantly surprised Garland didn’t “lost it”, so to speak, at all, as Civil War definitely deserves the critical “praise nugget” of punch packing and delivering, as you would with the subject matter.

The plot follows a couple of war journalists that, after surviving a suicide bombing attack while reporting in New York, they decide to accompany a mentor of theirs and a young girl that idolizes their work while travelling through an America torn apart by (yep) a civil war, as many states have split and factions formed, with the goal of interviewing the president, as he holes up in a contended Washington, and his forces slowly losing steam to the “Western Forces”…

It’s a bleak depiction of a fairly realistical future scenario where the many contraddictions and divisions in the American social stratum broke out from social media mudflinging into actual, literal, civil war, but the movie avoids any easy weaponizing and name calling by putting focus instead in the day-to-day ground reality and the routine atrocities witnessed and perpetrated.

And it’s an uncompromised vision because it denies itself comforting platitudes or hypothetical, naive resolutions, while sporting a stellar cast and being constantly engaging and entertaining on an immediate level.

[EXPRESSO] The Zone Of Interest (2023) | Heil Honey I’m Home

Jonathan Glazer’s film about the Holocaust won the Oscar for best screenplay, that much is true, but given El Conde received a similar nomination at last year’s Venice Film Festival, i wasn’t really sold on the movie because of that, but regardless i finally managed to catch a screening.

And this honestly surpassed my expectations.

Loosely based on the novel of the same name by Martin Amis (itself based partially on real events), The Zone Of Interest is about the life of Auschwitz SS commander Rudolf Hoss and his family, as they live in a home in the titular “zone of interest” that places them meters away from the concentration camp itself, so close that you can see prisoners go in and out the camp to do chores, and hear the many atrocities committed there.

The plot focuses on the Hoss family life and the drama that Rudolf having to move to another outpost causes them, while they fully believe the Nazi creed through and through, all to further enunciate the abhorrent reality of the concentration camps and the Nazi war machine while we never even move outside of their house, let alone enter Auschwitz.

And this slice of life apporeach it’s indeed perfect to fully expose the “banality of evil” at the heart of it, it’s a glacial remind there’s no need to shock people when its far worse to remind us the Holocaust wasn’t run by a small gaggle of evil demon warlords alone, but was also accepted by regular people, and reminded that it was also run by capitalism as everything else, with architects calmly discussing with Rudolf Hoss the plans of how to costruct the more efficient, cost-saving method of massacre, while his wife idly chats over tea with her friends in another room.

Noteworthy indeed.

What To Do With The Dead Kaiju? (2022) [REVIEW] #giantmonstermarch

In what i assume it’s attempt at doing a “post-kaiju” type of treatment to the kaiju formula, while also echoing somewhat the old austerity-driven Daigoro VS Goliath, the movie by director-writer Satoshi Miki makes it clear from the title this isn’t a tale about how humanity pushed back against the monster, but instead about its aftermath, and it’s a fitting concept that makes sense as an evolutionary attempt for the genre in question, after Shin Godzilla basically laid the groundwork.

The plot starts with the big bad kaiju dying, with the people cheering, and the carcass of the creature is nicknamed “hope” for the many potential uses it could have.

But as you’d imagine, it soon begins to rot away and (stink aside) fears of explosions begin to arise, so it’s up to a selected crackpot team of weirdos, dubbed the Tokumutai, to dispose of the kaiju’s carcass with the future of Japanese’s economy at stake….

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Abyssal Spider AKA Mad Spider Sea (2020) [REVIEW] #giantmonstermarch

Want more spider movies? Want spiders so bad you’ll marry Rachnera Arachnera?

Well, here’s one about a fricking giant water spider from Taiwanese director Joe Chien.

No, it doesn’t involve a crew of on a ship trying to romance off the storm and the aquatic creatures, they just have to survive the weather and these mysterious things that attack them from the water, with the help of Aije, who previously survived a boat disaster where a large shadow in the abyss pulled the entire vessel into the depths….

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[EXPRESSO] The Iron Claw (2023) | Dynasty Warriors

Wrestling films are nothing new, but sure as hell i’m more curious when we have A24 distribute a wrestling film, but aside from that initial marketing hook, there’s actually a fascinating tale here that i feel isn’t famous or overly familiar to most outside of the wrestling community, because i have a very passing interest in the thing and i didn’t know the story of this wrestling family at all.

The Iron Claw tells the story of the Von Eirich family, with the father Fritz gathering notoriety in Texas and adjacent wrestling leagues (his signature move being the titular “Iron Claw” head grab) in the early 80s, and him basically founding a wrestling dynasty, as he trains all his sons to be wrestlers themselves, subjecting them to a strict training all together, so one day the belt of world wrestling champion will fall in the hand of the family, and also to make them stronger, tougher, in the hope they don’t get hit by the so called “curse” that struck all the previous Von Eirich family members.

While it focuses mostly on the oldest surviving son, Kevin (Zac Efron), the movie tells of the family ascension through the ranks of the violently competitive business of professional wrestling, the behind the scenes side of the sport in its pre-corporate era, its victories and the human toll that the father’s quest for his wrestling dynasty demands, due to his constant pushing for supremacy at all costs that he allegedly did to avoid the very same tragedies that ultimately befall his children.

The cast (including a truly transformed Zac Efron) is nothing short of stellar, the performances amazing, and the emotional punch delivered by the emphasis on tragedy doesn’t preclude some positive light shining and breaking through the toxic deadlock of their “fate”.

[EXPRESSO] Poor Things (2023) | Lanthimos’ Frankenhooker

Yorghos Lanthimos’ latest movie, Poor Things, based on the novel of the same name by Alasdair Grayand (and presented during last year’s Venice Film Festival) has finally hit theathers here, and i’m overjoyed to say this might be my favourite film of his, and honestly even better than the previous one, The Favourite (har har), despite being very different.

As in this is Lanthimos basically reinventing Bride Of Frankenstein but as a modern progressive dramedy about the sexual liberation of the “Creature”, in this case Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a woman resurrected through an unthordox experiment by the scarred and controversial scientist, Godwin Baxter (William Dafoe), whom hires a medical student to look after and document her learning process, as she has the mind of a child. As she gains more lexicon, more concepts and start seeing more of anything outside of Godwin’s house/laboratory, she eventually wants out and escapes with a suave and dissoluted lawyer, Duncan Webberburn (Mark Ruffallo), on a trip around the world.

A very odd world, because (aside from some of Godwin’s spliced animals that feel Burtonesque at a glance) this isn’t another hystorical setting, as the time period looks like it’s straight out Frankenstein (with many initial black-n-white sequences reinforcing that feeling), with horse-drawn carriages, the circular study halls to observe the autopsies, the overall fashion, but it’s also a very overlysatured retro-futuristic – almost steampunk- world.

Most importantly, it’s another amazing display of Lanthimos ability with comedy, brutal, relentless comedy, especially about sex more than horror as you might think, demonstrating any lack of restrain but alway a lot of wit to sell the absolute farce of these increansingly weirder situations, while knowing perfectly where to the let the drama of Bella’s situation sink in, all with fantastic performances by the stellar cast.

Terrific.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 31: The Dino King AKA Speckles The Tarbosaurus (2012)

Time for a little trip to South Korea, though this time we aren’t going back to the 90s like for Tyranno’s Claw, just back to the early 2010s, where after the success of a two parter documentary movie about dinosaurs in the Korean peninsula, Tarbosaurus: The Mighiest Ever, director-writer Han Sang-Ho decided – helped by Avatar making popular the 3D fad again – to follow that up with a computer animated feature film

I actually own the UK DVD release, going under The Dino King title, and at least this specific release has the english dub only on it, no korean audio with english subtitle options.

One of my few gripes with the movie actually lies there, as the movie opts for no talking animals in the Disney stile, BUT we have the main protagonist narrating over the events of his life, but in the english dub the voice for him as a youngling tarbosaurus (which is in the same family of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, FIY) has that “4KIDS dub of a toy anime from the late 90s”, like i’m fully expecting to hear a secondary dinosaurs explain some obscure effect of a Yu-Gi-Oh card to the viewer for no diegetical reason whatosver.

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