[EXPRESSO] The Northman (2022) | VIKINGS, RAISE THE SHIELD WALL

Robert Eggers is back, this time not going for a psychological horror-thriller, but a way more straightforward tale of revenge, based on the legend of scandinavian prince Amleth (upon which Shakespear himself based his tragedy), here a young boy welcoming his father back, only to killed by his uncle for the throne and spouse. Amleth escapes, woving bloody vengeance.

Years pass, and as he wanders the lands as a berserker unit, he heards the name of his uncle and then concocts a plan to reach the isolated island where he scurried back some time ago, and exact his long held life-time wov made to his brutally murdered father.

And indeed brutal is the keyword here, as this movie really warrants the title of a “brutal viking epic”, as it depicts this nordic barbaric world inhabited by cruel men more akin to beasts, where pillage and murder exist on daily bases, villages hold ritual sacrifices (even human if need be) to appease their gods, mystical rites are held, witches reveal visions of inescapable fate, etc.

It’s that kind of barbarian middle ages, and The Northman sure as hell doesn’t shy away from showing raids, people being burned alive in houses (and a lot more graphic stuff), and it’s fittingly inhabited by refreshingly unapologetical, unflinchingly brutal characters that all perfectly fit in this world, as even what in other movie would be “the hero” it’s arguably even more despicable than the “villain”.

A lot of style (with Eggers’ touch easily recognizable in some weird psychedelic sequences), great characters, amazing atmosphere, superb cast and a captivating, graphic vengeance tale that enraptures from beginning to end.

It’s just hard to look away, even when a guy it’s getting an unrequested Skeletor-style “nosejob”.

To quote Nathan Explosion yet again: “Brutal”. In all the right ways.

Snowmageddon (2011) [REVIEW] | Promise (NOT featuring Kohmi Hirose)

If you’re like me, you don’t need to be told that there is a deluge of disaster movies up on Amazon Prime Video, often looking so easy to review that makes you feel bad, so low hanging and free (as in, included with Prime, i’m not paying extra subscription) the fruits of this “tree” are.

So i often end up browsing, looking at the description, just adding to the watchlist and moving on, forgot i’ve even added them, etc.

This one does break the mold and managed to make me kinda intrigued, as the premise made Snowmageddon (E- for the title, btw, it could have been way more stupidier and tortured) sounded very fuckin stupid, cheesy but slightly different.

And it’s still fairly cold here, so before springtime hits proper let’s indulge in more icy TV trash, the review for the Uncharted movie it’s coming later, so please, join me in this mystical garbage dive.

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[EXPRESSO] Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) | Eternal Pyre

Fuck it, i’m reviewing this one as well, since it did eventually arrive just now in theathers here in Italy…. after being made available on Amazon Prime Video months earlier, but i’m willing to watch it again to support anime cinema releases, and to properly assess things further for a review.

Since the series it’s the more recent shonen manga success story, i doubt i need to introduce Demon Slayer/Kimetsu No Yaiba, even more since i feel its success lies in being pretty straightforward and easy to connect, as its set in a fantasy Japan of old, where demons lurk at night and feast on people, but are fought back by a secret order of samurai with mystical blades and techniques, the Demon Slayer Corps.

The protagonist, Tanjiro, becomes a Demon Slayer in hopes to undo the curse that made his sister Nezuko a demon, and along the way befriendes the cowardly lightining fast swordman Zenitsu, as well as Inosuke, a wild boy wearing a boar mask.

The plot revolves around the trio being tasked to – alongside an experienced demon slayer called Rengoku – embark a train and protect the people on it from eventual demon ambushes, and this isn’t an original story, a mostly disconnected one-off adventure, as most of these shonen anime movies are, but actually bridges the events of the first and second season, and has some important stuff happening in it, so i wouldn’t recommend jumping into this if you haven’t seen the first season (or red the equivalent manga chapters), for spoiler reasons.

That said, it can be watched fine on its own, and rewatching it made clear it’s a pretty good shonen manga film, with excellent animation from ufotable as expected, funny moments, good drama, likeable characters and intense fights with high stakes.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #12: Journey To The Beginning Of Time (1955)

It’s the final day of the 12 Days Of Dino Dicember, so let’s end it with a proper obscure gem, the Czech movie Journey To The Beginning Of Time. As in the original, not the re-cut, re-filmed version that reached US territories in 1966 under the same name.

Today thankfully you can watch it as it was released on a region-free Blu Ray by Second Run, which also includes the English version, but i’m not gonna bother with that for now. Sorry, but i simply can’t afford the time to watch that as well and compare the two.

This comes from Karel Zeman (no, not the soccer manager), nicknamed the “Czech Melies”, famous for his fantasy films combining live action and animation, and hugely influential, not surprising to fellow czech Jan Svankmajer (you can’t imagine how happy i am by just having the occasion of nominating him in any of these reviews, retrospectives, but beloved by many american directors, like Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton, and serving as inspiration to Jurassic Park itself.

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Extinction PS4 [REVIEW] | Mockbust On Titan

Remember this one? Most likely not, i don’t blame you if you didn’t even out this was out when it released in 2018, at least until it entered – deservedly so – that year’s “Top 10 Worst Games” list, only to immediatly fade into the miasma of obscurity, where it should really remain.

But since i like raising the dead for a laugh and try to make people remember the lessons of old, in the hope there will be something to learn and so avoid wasting money on stuff that was launched on the market to no fanfare. And if it nothing else, it’s fun to reignite some old dumpster fires.

In the case of Extinction, the main takeaway is that you shouldn’t be afraid of anything you wanna put out on the market, not because you should dump whatever garbage you want, but because it’s hard to say you shouldn’t do what you want, as games like these somehow managed not only to get released, but to get the full boxed retail and “multiple tiers editions” treatment.

Be bold, ye children of the Yellow Turbans, i guess this is the takeway. Don’t be garbage.

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[EXPRESSO] Shang-Chi: The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021) | Wuxia To The West

So, this is Marvel first attempt at doing more asian style action movie, introducing a new protagonist, the titular Shang Chi, forced to face his past as he was raised from infancy to be a perfect assassin by the criminal organization known as the Ten Rings, commanded by The Mandarin (connecting it to the Iron Man movies), and we also have Benedict Wong – as one would expect – is playing… well, the character of the mystic Wong, seen before in Doctor Strange.

YEAH, if it feels quite generic from the premise, and the idea of having Marvel “manufacture” a wuxia fantasy film while also doing a superhero movie and keeping their style of doing it.,…it’s not exactly that alluring, especially with the plot sounding really cliched as hell: the “face the master-father that’s also the boss of a criminal assassin ring so you can be free” thing, etcetera, etcetera

And while it a good step in terms of representation, it also just like the bare minimum by today’ standards.

It’s not a bad movie, but in a way it’s exactly what you would expect from a Marvel movie cramming asian martial arts, wuxia style fights and fantasy-mystical elements usually seen in Chinese (and chinese-related) cinema into their usual superhero mold, and while the action scenes are fun, it’s hard to care much about the story or the characters (aside from the sympathetic villain played very well by Tony Leung, outacting Simu Liu as the main character a lot), they’re mostly ok, but their arcs are brashly executed or not really interesting, given how token pretty much everything is here.

It’s a bit frustrating, as it could have been EASILY so much worse, but also isn’t quite decent, not helped by boring, cliched flashbacks and feeling a bit too long.

One Piece TV SP 1: Luffy’s Adventure at the Bottom of the Ocean (2000) [REVIEW]

Director: Yukio Kaizawa

Writer: Hashimoto Hiroshi, Junki Takegami

Runtime: 50 minutes

We start your journey through the One Piece anime’s TV specials with one most fans known, and a fairly long one, even if it’s actually on the shorter side for runtime among the TV specials.

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Princess Connect RE: Dive iOS [EXPRESSO] | Idle Moe Mediocrity

Now that “Priconne” has gone global, let’s give it a look.

Ok, story. You start in the usual “media res battle you lose”, then wake up as your generic male fantasy anime protagonist, now amnesiac but apparently a prince-knight known by everyone else in the world, so alongside your girl retainer and various battle princesses you go on a quest to scale Sol Tower and get a wish granted.

At least it’s not an isekai (?).

Combat is automated with interaction restricted to activate special skills when charged up… that’s it. There’s no complicated system to power up characters, so it’s not confusing but it’s also lacking any real depth, it just a matter of upgrading enough the characters and choosing the party composition, especially the latter i can see being important when you’re in deep with the harder levels.

Not that i will be reaching that point, but still, i don’t consider “the game really playing itself” a plus, even in a game like this where gameplay is vestigial to the “idle waifu collecting” activities.

One filled with lots of just….incredibly generic fantasy anime moe designs. There are some exceptions like the Alpaca Princess, but not many interesting or good designs. This is to make the rarer characters more desirable and con you into buying premium currency for the gacha.

While the F2P elements aren’t abrasive, the game is relatively generous in giving out gems/crystals and doesn’t gate features with insane grinding… it’s manipulative generousity, there’s always a catch.

The games uses clips from the anime series (which look good), production values are high, it’s harmless, inoffensive, but i just find Priconne to be very disposable and uninteresting, if i didn’t force myself to do some decent progress before writing this review i would have dropped it on day 2.

Dino December #15: The Ghost Of Slumber Mountain (1918)

Let’s do something a bit different, and fitting, not only because this is one of the older movies i’ve ever spotlighted, it’s a silent film and it’s in the public domain (at least for the US), but it’s also a partially lost film as well.

As in we know the original runtime was 40 minutes, but for years the only surviving version clocked at 12 minutes, until a print of the film running 19 minutes was found. As for why half of the movie’s is still missing, Christopher Workman (citing a scene in the restored footage where Joe tries to convince Jack to take off his clothers and pose as a faun) suggested it was due to the homosexual subtext. Probably naming the hermit’s ghost “Mad Dick” didn’t help.

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[EXPRESSO] Creators – The Past (2019) | Star Odissey Barbarian Italian Gods Of Space Magick

You might be wondering what the hell is this.

I did too, until i remembered the name from 2019’s edition of the Lucca Comic & Games convention in Italy, but i never “investigated” and i….completely forgot about it.

Then again, they didn’t market it AT ALL, despite being an italian production with William Shatner and Gérard Depardieu, alongside a cast mostly made by americans, italian actors at their first role and italian musician Angelo Minoli.

The year is 2012, and an extraordinary planetary aligment is about to happen. The eight members of the Galactic Council (each governing their own planet as a “Creator”) meet to discuss of the coming events, but following an incident they lose an essential artifact, and task a human girl to retrieve it before the planets disalign.

This is the basic gist… the movie itself it’s INSANE, it really lives up to the “colossal” monicker, as they basically threw together 3-4 movies. And – as you would expect – it gets confusing, as the sub-plots splinter into smaller sub-plots, each of the Creators has their hidden agenda, and the movie just keep throwing things at the viewer, like Jesus Christ, aliens abductions, conspiracies, sword and sorcery bits with scorpion-men, the very specifically italian “battle of the oranges”, etc.

And YES, all these things are connected together. The drawback is that with that many subplots and a runtime under 2 hours, some are abruptly resolved in seconds. Often because the movie just makes up new bullshit rules to do so. It’s anything but boring or stale, it’s visually intriguing, there is definitely dedication and ambition here, alongside a lot of money for an italian production of this type.

It tries to set-up sequels.

… I really wouldn’t mind, at all, but i “feel” they ain’t gonna happen.