Tag: Jacob Elordi

[EXPRESSO] The Dog Stars (2026) | The Post-Apoca-Bore

Ridley Scott is not thinking about retirement anytime soon, which is commendable, in a way, but between Spielberg arguablu shitting his Jesus aliens pijamas in public and a film like The Dog Stars, i do wonder if might be for the better to simply call it quits.

Mind you, this is a better film than Disclosure Day, you can quote me on that, it is.

And it’s not even “bad” per sé, there is nothing particularly wrong with anything in The Dog Stars, there’s just not much of anything new, original, unique or otherwise that hadn’t already been done to death with the post-apocalypse survival drama.

In 2035 America, a flu pandemic led to civilization collapse, forcing the few survivors to scavenge for food, items, humanity reverting back to being more tribalistic, feral and murderous.

Hig has “dead wife” syndrome and yet tries to help out the few peaceful pockets of humanity he knows, while fending off intruders on the lot he shares with his old friend-survival partner Bangley, and hoping to find a better place somewhere out there…

Again, nothing wrong, but also nothing that engaging either, and i’m not talking about the action and how is all located in the second half of the film, as it doesn’t change the fact it’s all very uninspired and frankly kinda dull, as the plot offers no surprises or compelling narrative, and is as stock and basic as the characters.

All amounting to 2 hours-ish of mediocre, sleepily paced, derivative film that doesn’t hurt to watch or becomes outright boring, but it’s just middling, constantly reeking of “been there, done that”, the good cast (and the very good photography) can only do so much, and regardless, it just feel fueled by the obligation of doing something more than an actual vision.

[EXPRESSO] Frankenstein (2025) | At Stein’s Gate

Sadly no theathers in my area or close did limited screenings of Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, so i had to wait and watch in when it dropped some days ago on Netflix, like most people will,

Which is fine and all, but you know…

That said, i think it’s kinda funny to see how it compares against odd choice of Luc Besson doing a very romance heavy version of Dracula…when he didn’t get distracted, almost accidentally did a Dracula Dead And Loving It kinda spoof of sorts, and remembered he left the subplot with Christopher Waltz as Van Helsing waiting for a call back to be resolved.

Both films do indulge in the nature of their literary sources as gothic sacred beasts, but Del Toro’s version stands on the opposite of the spectrum, and unlike its recent take on Pinocchio, his retelling of Frankenstein it surprisingly simple from a conceptual standpoint, being a fairly faithful retelling of the story as written by Mary Shelley, even with the narration starting out at the end at the North Pole and then Victor Frankenstein telling his story and the Creature’s to the captain of the icebreaker ship that rescued him, then having the Creature tell his side of the tale.

Even at is most “unoriginal”, it is Del Toro doing one of the gothic magnus opuses, so it’s exactly what you’d expected from him, and i mean that in a purely flattening fashion, i really do, he obviously loves and treats Frankenstein with such respect i understand why not try a subversive take on it, despite how many times the story has been done in film, as it’s not pedantic in recreating verbatim the book, and strays enough to avoid it feeling like stale regurgitation, kinda needed given the sizable runtime.

Pretty good.