Don’t expect a review of the Lion King remake

Just figure i’d say it fiy, but don’t expect a review of The Lion King “live-action” (whatever the fuck it is) remake anytime soon. I refuse, after seeing the Dumbo live-action i’ve basically had enough, Disney clearly doesn’t care at all, no need to, so why bother? The dobloons will pour in anyway.

I’m not saying i won’t review it EVER, i’m saying i’m not seeing it in theathers, maybe in a couple years or if a want to go on a “live-action remake” review spree, these movies aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, come on.

Sorry, i just can’t force myself to care, even for a quick EXPRESSO review, it ain’t worth just to say Kemono Friends characters emote better.

I’ll have a review of another recent italian horror movie, so look forward to that.

Bye!

[EXPRESSO] The Nest (2019) | Scrambled, Scrambled Eggs

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Oddly enough as it may sound, there’s not many italian horror movies screening in cinemas here in Italy.

So when i saw the trailer for The Nest, i was intrigued, even more because it didn’t look like one of those (relatively) cheap production when it clearly redubbed despite being filmed in Italy and with a lot of italians in the cast, like The Music Box/Il Carillon.

The story involves a wheelchair bound boy, Samuel, who is raised in this humongous estate, treated with a princely respect by his family and servants, all bound to the estate by a rigid set of rules set to ensur “the program” is respected at all costs. But Samuel feels more and more like a caged songbird, moved around by the wishes of his stern mother, even more restless due to the recent weird happenings and the arrival of a young girl called Denise..

The Nest is a movie with some good performances, a good atmosphere, an intriguing plot revolving the cultish family and the drama that inevitably festers in an enviroment like that, but it’s also a movie that reminded me of Hereditary. And i don’t mean that as a compliment, but here it truly feels like the horror parts were forced in by a producer, as they stick out like a sore thumb, underveloped, clichè and almost vestigial.

Then… the ending, which i’m just gonna spoil because it’s so fuckin stupid it deserves shame. Zombies. Out of nowhere, i’m sure the scriptwriter thought he established it before, but it didn’t, at all. I hate this ending because it doesn’t gel with anything, and reminded me of the shit Fragasso and Mattei pulled in the 80’s, i truly hate to say this about a movie with some self-respect and ambition.

Decent, but frustratingly uneven.

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P.S.: It’s worth noting that there’s another movie simply called “The Nest” , it’s a 2016 fairly obscure italo-swiss production (so it explains why they named this one “The Nest – Il Nido”), directed by Klaudia Reynicke, maybe more talked about after Love Me Tender, her new movie which had its debut in Swiss cinemas this 9th of august.

[EXPRESSO] Crawl (2019) | Lator Gator

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My first thought when i heard the subject was: isn’t this like Bait/Shark 3D, but with a crocodile and a house instead of a shark and a submerged mart?

Nothing wrong with it, given how Bait is one of better shark movies of the lot (definitely a fuckton better among the endless pile of exploitation and B-Z cinema the marine predator attracts), and it’s not a rip-off of it anyway, it has a similar premise of being locked in the same location as an aggressive killer animal/monster. Which could also describe Aliens, so let’s just move to the plot.

Haley Keller is an underperforming swimmer, but hasn’t talked with her father (who also was her swimming coach for many years) in a long time, and their parents separated. But she goes to check on him when informed of a hurricane hitting their old house, and they find themselves trapped in the basement with alligators, with the water level constantly rising, and no help in sight.

Because what better bonding experience than trying to survive being eaten by Schnappi’s cousins can you wish for? Alexandra Aja (Piranha 3D, the 2006 The Hills Have Eyes remake, the 2012 Maniac remake, Horns) is back again with a relatively simple premise, one that could be seen in many low budget z-grade movies, but here is executed really well, with some stylish and brutal kills, tense scenes, a well known but still damn brutal primeval creature that’s lethal , no need to crossbred it with octopuses, sharks, isotopes, trilobites, etc.

Great pratical gore, great CG on the alligator, decent kill count, likeable characters, a perfect pace without any dull moment (just some brief moments of reprieve and character building), this has everything you may want from a fun “killer croc/alligator movie”, which are usually not this bloody good.

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[EXPRESSO] The Quake (2018) | Daijishin

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Disaster movies aren’t exactly my bag, but this time isn’t about american setpieces and explosion porn, it’s a norwegian thriller about a distraught geologist, Kristian Elkjord, who years ago was able to save his family and other people from a previous earthquake, but was also consumed by guilt over the many people who died, and became obsessed by his work and research. So much he practically abandoned his family.

When he hears of a friend/colleague dying, he starts looking through his notes and alternative theories about the methods of detecting and reading telluric activity, he realizes he was onto something, and tries to convince his old boss that an earthquake of gynormic proportion is about to break out in Oslo, but he dismisses it as him being paranoid as hell, even more since the technology they have now made monitoring sismic activity even better than before.

But because the movie would stop 40 minutes in otherwise, Kristian is right about the earthquake, and tries to grab his family and run away before it happens, but he has to rescue them from a crumbling skyscraper in the center of the city during the aftershocks.

If you’re here mostly for the spectacle of Mother Earth undoing the work of man in a fell, catastrophic swoop (which delivers in the final act), then The Quake isn’t for you, because it’s mostly about Kristian trying to make amends with his family left behind for a cause he found to be more important, feeling responsable for not having done more before.

Which isn’t a bad thing since the drama is compelling, acting is good, but characters and direction feel a bit too dry, especially in the action scenes of the last act.

Not “good”, but quite, quite close, a B++, if you will. Worth seeing, still.

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P.S.: Also, this seems to be a follow up of sort to a movie called The Wave (cited in the american tagline), which i didn’t see or knew existed.

[EXPRESSO] Fighting With My Family (2019) | Wrestle for it!

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Preface: i was not familiar with the real life events this is based upon, or the 2012 documentary The Wrestlers: Fighting With My Family, about the wrestler Paige.

And one could have made some educated guesses that some of the events didn’t actually happen, i didn’t even know it’s basically a dramatization of a documentary based on a true story. I did know it had Dwayne Johnson, Nick Frost, Vince Vaughn and Florence Pugh (recently seen in Midsommar) in it, and i was already sold on that.

Zak and Saraya Vebis, brother and sister, since the age of 10 are trained by their parent in their work and family tradition: putting up wrestling events and training other kids in their gym in ol’ Norwich, UK. They grow up with the dream of making it big, until Zak and Saraya manage to attend a try-out event, but only Saraya is ultimately accepted, which crushes Zak’s long held dream.

So Saraya moves to Florida to train and try to actually be signed into a league, and Zak stays in Norwich to attend to his newborn son and the family gym.

You’ve heard this story before, you know where it goes, but it’s done without over-romanticizing the sport/craft in question, with believable character arcs, believable characters, a great cast, and it isn’t a glorified ad for the WWE, or its’ public, for that matter. And more importantly, it has a honest, big hearted attitude about the drama, so it never feels too contrivedly syrupy or more dramatic just for the sake of being dramatic, but more grounded in reality.

Not a complain about the movie itself, but there’s a bitter aftertaste to it knowing this year the WWE strikes a 10 million deal with Saudi Arabia for pay-for-view shows, so no women division, because Saudi Arabia.

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[EXPRESSO] Biker Mice From Mars iOS | Nostalgia & Rat Milk

Yeah, time to reach for some low hanging fruit. If you were born in the 90s, you probably saw or remember this TMNT rip-off from you childhood.

Not that it’s worth remembering.

Then again, you probably didn’t know (or care to know) about this smartphone game, which i stumbled upon when browsing for other stuff in the bowels of the App Store.

Of course it’s a crappy endless runner. Functional, yes, but so bad it doesn’t feel like you’re moving through space in a bike, more like you’re a toy with magnets moved around a crap plastic city by a bored child. It looks like ass, unfinished, and is so cheap it reuses badly cropped images from the old cartoon, because who cares.

This one is so fuckin pathetic it won’t even try to coerce you into using premium currency to retry a level or continue, it knows it’s dung to the max. The game being so shit it pratically begs you to keep playing would be laughable enough for a cheap ass license videogame that exists to mine some some cash from desperate, naive souls.

But i just lost it when i arrived at the first boss, and got stuck in a loop, able to continue from a checkpoint, but since the ammo isn’t recharged when you continue, i kept inevitably smashing into enemies i couldn’t kill. I was gonna quit and end it there, but i kept trying and somehow the game decided to skip me to the boss, which managed to “kill” me with oil puddles… which just didn’t appear, if not for a fraction of a second when hit.

Then i somehow managed to fail the mission entirely, which required me to replay the stage from scratch.

Disinstalled into the void from which it came.

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[EXPRESSO] Demon’s Crystals PSN | In The Age Of Wonders..

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The story of Demon’s Crystals (related in half-assed text scrolls at the very beginning and end) is some evil monsters arrived and changed everyone into monsters, strange since you control half-dragon half human characters, but whatever, kill them all and reclaim your crystals back using magical guns, because it’s a twin stick shooter.

The hordes making up a stage will require you to collect a set number of crystals, kill a set number of enemies, or do both under the time limit, but besides that, it’s very typical of the genre. You get a good array of power ups with time limited usage, a very simple level up system (which makes you take and dish more damage) but there’s not loadout or any sort of customization or depth,

It would be a decent game of this genre, more on the “budget” side (not helped by the “halloween store” aesthetic), simple but fun, with a decent difficulty curve. Shame that the camera is a weird – and bad – compromise between isometric and “bird’s eye”, and in heated moments it becomes hard to tell which are your bullet or the enemy’s (when they don’t get accidentally camouflaged by the level), if you manage to see them coming at all, who knows what specific part of the stage will bother to block them.

This is especially noticeable during the few boss fights, especially the final one, which – on top of being cheap and frustrating – may obscure half the screen, when its routines don’t bug or glitch out.

When the game doesn’t randomly crash at the continue screen, which it loves to do – a LOT – at the final boss. Lovely.

You have local co-op, some competitive online modes and a survival mode, but… yeah, play Ruiner or anything by Housemarque, instead.

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[EXPRESSO] Toy Story 4 (2019) | Stories Of Old

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Let’s get the obvious out right away: Toy Story 4 didn’t need to exist, especially with the perfect closure given by the third one. And we didn’t expect “The Toys Room” quality, we didn’t.

The plot this time centers around Debbie, the little girl that Andy gifted his old toys to at the end Of Toy Story 3 (which was 10 years ago), anxious about going to the kindergarden, and on the first day (with the help of an apprehensive Woody) she makes a toy out of a plastic fork and craft materials, naming him Forky, and basically bestowing sentience and life unto it. Forky is confused by being alive, a toy, and he keeps trying to hurl himself in the bin, from which he literally came.

Woody, who is feeling pretty useless and forgotten, continuously undoes the endless “suicide” attemps of the newborn toy, and wants Forky to understand how important he is for Debbie, etc. But things get a bit hairy when the family goes on a road trip, and Woody encounters an old acquaintance, meeting new, weird toys….

You know what, this is quite good in itself, with funny new characters (including a canadian Evil Kenivel knock-off toy), some interesting resolutions for Woody, the animation is top notch as you’d expect…. but it feels like there is just so much you can do with this idea, the writers are trying to keep it interesting, but it retreads more old ground than expected (Woody’s character arc, in particular), some jokes are hammered in the viewer a bit too much, and the new songs… kinda meh.

It’s good, as you’d expect, but this fourth installment just feel unnecessary and doesn’t add much to the series. Still worth seeing, without a doubt, but i worry about the future of the franchise. Mh.

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[EXPRESSO] Stockholm (2018) | Chillin With The Captives

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So, this finally arrived in ol’ Italy a week ago, let’s review it!

Very loosely based on the events of the infamous Stockholm bank robbery of 1973 (and hence on the concept of “Stockhold Syndrome” which spun from it), Robert Budreau’s movie tells the story of the bizzarre bank robbery operated by Lars Nystrom, an eccentric and quirky criminal that occupies the bank, takes some hostages, and negotiates the release of his friend Gunnar, that joins Lars as a mediator.

But as the standoff between the criminals and the police proceeds, the hostages form a bonding relationship with their captors, willing to take their sides over the police’s.

As you may expect, it’s a very romanticized take on the story, with many liberties taken (like the use of Bob Dylan songs instead of Elvis and Roberta Flack’ tracks by the strange criminal), and the oddity of the whole situation lend itself quite nicely to a crime comedy, with some decent drama and interesting execution, and likable characters.

While it’s done fairly well, well casted and acted, the idea of a movie about the Stockolm bank robbery is quite nice, it has some issues, mostly because it never fully commits to it’s stance on the matter of police abuse, despite the script being pretty clear who you’re supposed to symphatize with, but ultimately painting the picture of a complex situation, an absurd but more realistic one, which is fine, but it’s also playing a bit too safe.

For me, at least.

That and the characterization is ultimately uneven, because we get a romance between Lars and Clara, but even Gunnar is just……… kinda there for the most part, like the other hostages. Which is kinda disappointing.

Still, a more than decent movie, could have been better, but not bad at all!

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[EXPRESSO] Pet Sematary (2019) | Truckin’ Dead

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I’m not familiar at all with Pet Sematary, be it the original book by Stephen King, or the 1989 movie adaptation (and his lesser known sequel, Pet Sematary Two), but there’s a new adaptation in theathers, so why not?

The premise is similar to the book (which was inspired by the famous The Monkey’s Paw story) or the previous movie incarnations, with a family that moves in their new country house, with a burial ground for pet animals – the titularly mispelled campo santo -located in the nearby woods. The house cat dies, and the father buries it in the “pet sematary”, which seems to hold a strange power, as their neighbour warns them of the ground being cursed…

I’m not gonna gonna point out differences between the book or the other movie, or say this is one of the better S. King adaptations, because i really can’t (i don’t count reading wikia as “having watched/read thing”), and you’re probably more familiar with the material than me anyway. I’m gonna say that the film is a bit frustrating to talk about, because the premise is intriguing, the tone is quite good, the acting and characterization too, i like that the entity is never overexplained (they say Wendigo at one point, but its got bugger all to do with the actual Wendigo from Algonquian folklore) but it’s a shame that the numerous attempts at jumpscares don’t really land.

And the pacing is slow, not particularly so, but enough to make the movie seem longer than it is, and the third act in contrast feels like it’s going fast, with some kinda silly sequences, which beg some explanation (or a better execution). I do like the ending, but i struggle to say that is “good”, quite close, but still not exactly there.

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