Tag: Miranda Otto

[EXPRESSO] The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim (2024) | Anime Lord Of The Mononoke Rings

Disclaimer: i haven’t really followed/properly engaged with the Lords Of The Rings IP basically since… the original film trilogy.

But yes, when WB puts out in theathers an animated feature lenght Lords Of The Rings movie directed by Kenji Kamiyama (GITS: Stand Alone Complex, Eden Of The East, Napping Princess, GITS Stand Alone Complex 2045, Blade Runner: Black Lotus) in anime style, my interest is EXTREMELY piqued.

Taking place 183 years before the original film trilogy, the story concerns the destiny of the Helm House, as Helm Hammerhand suffers from internal strife and is then attacked by the wild tribes in the region, united by a vengeful man named Wulf, that leads them to war, with the Helm princess Hera at the forefront, eventually forced to hole themselves in the fortress of Hornburg, that would become known as Helm’s Deep.

It’s a weird combination because there’s a lot of might and barely any magic or fantasy stuff in this LOTR animated film, the animation by Sola Entertaiment (a not so random but still weird choice) it’s honestly kinda lackluster, as they have 2D animation overlayed on CGI backgrounds that opt for some kind of high fidelity “realism”, when it’s not just cheap 3D CG, or 3D CG passing as 2D animation, with a very inconsistent quality and the feeling this was kinda rushed.

The characters being so and so and the story having to retrofit and connect with later LOTR events don’t help, but i will say direction is quite solid, even with the animation issues and uneven quality it does deliver on the spectactle and pomp, it’s still enganging and very entertaining that its long runtime doesn’t bog it down.

A decent movie, even if it’s a weird yet familiar attempt to mine the LOTR IP to the bone.

[EXPRESSO] Talk To Me (2022) | Ghost Hand Overdose

Curiosly, this one being distributed by A24 in the US is just that, a casual happenstance, because this is a South Australian production more in the vein of a Blumhouse joint, apparently by people that had some fame as Youtubers/content creators, can’t say i did know of twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou output on the “Tube”, but this pivoting to a theathrical full lenght horror feature is fairly impressive for a big screen film debut, there’s a reason it has “done the rounds”.

Talk To Me is basically an updated, modern take on the “possession” subgenre, feeling a lot like The Evil Dead but really not when the plot is described, as it deals with a group of teen friends that start doing these rumored seances with a cursed hand, speaking to the dead and letting the spirits possess them for a short while.

After all, everyone is doing it and they get addicted to these “controlled possessions” like the ghosts are laced with nicotine (at best), everyone instinctually records these episodes with their phone and shares them on social media, so eventually the younger brother of one of the girls want to try, things go awry as the possession gets out of control, so our flawed but likeable teen characters will have to scramble and find a way to save the boy from the spirits…

The premise is far from new, and some of the themes are not fully explored, but i’d be lying if i wasn’t surprised by how good the scares were, to say nothing of the excellent gore and extra-solid practical effects, it’s reliance on long sequences that build on each other and aren’t just leading to jumpscare climaxes, making the most of the 90 minutes runtime and culminating in a great final twist. Recommended.