Paws Of Fury: The Legend Of Hank/Blazing Samurai (2022) [REVIEW] | “You know…. morons”

While i’m no Saberspark, i feel this deserves to be spotlighted for it’s such a weird, messy and obtuse piece of animation cinema and its tale has all the juicy bits, from misguided inception, development hell rot, leeching off an already established film, Paws Of Fury: The Legend Of Hank has it all.

If nothing else because somehow a sequel/tie-in game for it was released last year and i recently found out to my complete bewilderment.

Nothing to with the Sega Genesis videogame Brutal: Paws Of Fury, they both just happened to be recycling Bubsy naming conventions for when you can’t be arsed to make jokes, just puns, and taking a martial arts-asian aesthetics, though for different reasons since The Legend Of Hank is not a ’90s film, but a product of the late 2000s-2010s, when it was still in vogue to remake foreign (often Asian) films for the “american-internation market”, in a way also a product of the same vein of racism already tapped into the 90s by most western shows and games.

For the youngins it might sound strange, but especially in the late 2000s you couldn’t blink without seeing America remake a Japanese horror film, heck, they even remade Park Chan Wook’s Old Boy, they couldn’t stand the idea of something not being western enough at the time, especially if it dared ail from a country in the Asian sphere, so to speak.

Unless Tarantino did it.

I say this because this movie was pitched in this climate, back in 2010, as Blazing Samurai, an animated remake of Mel Brook’s beloved western parody Blazing Saddles.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] The Marvels (2023) | Three Of A Perfect Pair

Once again i have to preface i do not follow the Disney + Marvel series, i simply do not, i do get a laugh at reading how the fuck Marvel has issues with the Blade reboot (it is absurd), but i do watch the theathrical releases, with this later one being pretty much a Captain Marvel sequel, with the twist of having Danvers form an unlikely trio with Kamala Khan AKA Ms Marvel, and her believed to be lost niece, Monica Rambeau, whom also received energy powers after an accident.

As to why, it’s because a new villain, a Kree survivor and rebel, has acquired a powerful artifact, which has the side effect of making the three heroines do a switcharoo every time they use their powers, and they’ll have to find a way to work together in order – as “The Marvels” – to avoid the universe is further teared apart by wormholes and space-time completely breaks down…

I wasn’t a fan of the first film, or Captain Marvel herself, but this feels like a step-up, as there’s more going on, Kamala Khan being….. herself is very cute, the premise is more fun, there’s definitely more energy to the characters and plot, and thankfully Nia DaCosta’s (Little Woods, Candyman 2021) direction embraces the fact this is a very simple and silly tale, and boy do i appreciate when these movies can actually play it simple.

Shame the villain, while making sense for this type of story, it’s kind of a forgettable tragic kind of foe, and the resolution seems kinda underwhelming, but i did enjoy it a lot more than the first one, also because it’s under 2 hours for a change, though once again the “cat-like creature” is arguably the best damn thing in this franchise.

Decent fun.

[EXPRESSO] Spiral – From The Book Of Saw (2021) | Uzumeki

I have been a big fan of Saw since forever, so i was looking forward to this new one, liked the casting, and you know, it had to work hard to be even worse than the pointless and neutered Jigsaw/Saw Legacy. Plus, we have Darren Lynn Bousman (who directed Saw II, III and IV). So yeah, i’m in.

The plot sees an old cynical detective getting assigned a freshly promoted and entusiasthic rookie as partner to investigate on a series of gruesome murders that look unsettingly inspired by one of the more sordid serial killer stories to ever happen in that city, the Jigsaw Killer. Helped by a veteran cop, they soon find out that they are stepping on a spiral of mistery and traps set up for them.

Yeah, plot wise it’s not exactly a reboot, as in this continuity The Jigsaw Killer was a thing of the past, but it doesn’t make clear if the events of Jigsaw even happened or mattered, so it also works as a new take that doesn’t really rely or require seeing the other ones, and this installment does indeed give the series a new direction, focusing more on the detective/police drama, dedicating more time to flesh out the characters directly instead of a heavy “flashback diet”.

The traps are actually creative, vicious, and deliciously sadistic as expected, with a lot of gore and gruesome details, already making this a lot better than the bloodless boring shit in Jigsaw. But as far as actually reimagining and reinventing Saw as a whole.. no, really no, Spiral sticks to formula with decent results, not really feeling that eager to reinvent itself in the first place, after all.

Not bad, but it lacks the ambition to really try something new with the series and potentially fail.