[EXPRESSO] Paradise (2023) | Ripe Ripe Fruit

Another dip into Netflix fresh batch, this time a German sci-fi thriller about aging that tries to mesh In Time and Children Of Men, with the plot set in a dystopian future where people can “donate their time” in order to receive big money (without the big prizes), the years taken converted into a serum that transfers the “timespan” to the receiver, often rich people.

Basically a more boring sci-fi version/application of the Soul Soul Devil Fruit eaten by Big Mom, but whatever, i can roll with it.

When the protagonist wife has to pay her debts with personal belongings that include 40 years (due to their insurance not covering the apartment accidentally catching fire), her husband swears to take them back, eventualling bumping into Aeon, the terroristic organization that opposes this controversial procedure, especially the rich gaming the system in their favour.

It sounds interesting enough on paper, but this is undeed the textbook example of “surface deep” sci-fi thriller that wants to touch upon heavy themes… as in, just “touch” and never really explore anything to any degree of nuance, or flesh out its worldbuilding, so it can focus on its basic “employee of evil megacorp is wronged and then turns against it for revenge” plot.

it’s also a 2 hours filmwith a slow pacing and characters that are mostly cliched, like the corpos villains that are evil because the narrative demands it, not that the heroes are any better.

The frustratingly open ending further grounds Paradise into disappointing mediocrity, direction is solid and makes for a movie that’s not boring, but has untapped potential as the script overdoses on clichès instead of attempting any nuanced exploration of the subjects its plot brings up, itself constructed with ideas borrowed from better films.

Still, watchable, at the very least.

Pinocchi-O-Rama #7: Gepetto (Manwha)

If we’re talking about comics, we all known where Pinocchio comes to mind, though indirectly, as “The God Of Manga” Osamu Tezuka was inspired by Disney’s adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s book, and wanted to create a “reverse 21^th Centhury Pinocchio”, a robotic boy already created to be as close as possible to perfection. I really don’t need to introduce Astro Boy, do i?

Tezuka would eventually do his own manga adaptation of Pinocchio, which would be interesting, but maybe too obvious, so we’re not reviewing that or Astro Boy.

Nope, we’re going for something far more recent, and pay visit to what i feel it’s an underestimated country in terms of comics, South Korea, that while it did get inspired by Japan’s anime/manga style and legacy, managed to create something distinct or similar but possessing its own personality and soul, dubbed as “manwha” for shorthand.

Though one could be forgiven to think that mostly it’s a matter of where its coming from instead of the content itself, given we had many distincly “manga” series come out from european or non-japanese artists (an easy example is Tony Valente’s Radiant), and the more successful/publicized often are aimed to the same age demographic as shonen mangas, or belong to popular genre trends.

But for each “God Of High School”, we have more unique work, like Hyung Min-woo’s western horror themed Priest, inspired by Monolith Productions FPS game BLOOD.

While a number of manwha series were and are given print editions in many countries (including Italy and France), the most common way to consume and access manwha in both its country of origin and international is “the internetz” and sites like Webtoon.

And indeed one can read the entire manwha we’re talking about today, Gepetto by Jewon Yeon, english translated on Webtoon, for free.

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Futurama PS2 [REVIEW] | … With Blackjack and Hookers

To celebrate the second return of Futurama on TV (even if i’m not expecting much given how these modern resurrections-continuations of beloved animated TV series-franchises, but who knows, i’m remaining cautiously semi-optimistic), time to take a look at its forgotten – and by now quite rare – PS2/X-Box tie-in videogame, simply called “Futurama”.

And what it might as well be the only Futurama videogame, since there’s not much to say about the mobile only Futurama: Worlds Of Tomorrow, besides it being a cheap and shallow cash grab akin to many other free-to-play tycoon simulators, like Simpsons Tapped Out, maybe a little more complete since it had a combat system in it from the start, but still, mostly a shallow time waster very heavy on aggressively try to make you fork out cash for anything of “substance” available.

Then again, it’s not like you can play it anymore, the servers were closed for real (as in they were announced to be closing in 2022) this year on the 9^th of March.

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Venomous/Venom (2001) [REVIEW] | #snakesofjunetoo

We’re out of Anaconda sequels at the moment (there’s a reboot in the works, confirmed 3 months ago with Tom Gormican, better known for The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent) , so let’s start digging into another barrel o’ snakes by rummaging – as we usually end up doing – through Fred Olen Ray filmography.

Not that i picked up the movie this way, it was another random find on Amazon Prime Video, but there’s no real surprise to see him listed as director… under one of his pseudonyms, Ed Raymond this time, why shouldn’t be his work?

Not to be confused with Silent Venom from 2009, also directed by Fred Olen Ray, in which he realized he could put snakes inside of submarines instead of planes.

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Earth Defense Force AKA Monster Attack PS2 [REVIEW] | Thus The EDF Fought

As we wait for the western release date of EDF 6 (which came out in Japan last August), let’s go all the way back to the beginning, with the original Earth Defense Force on PS2.

Unlike EDF 2 which got an enhanced port on PS Vita, the original Earth Defense Force still remains a PS2 only game, one that americans didn’t get, as the first EDF was only localized in PAL territories as Monster Attack and distributed by Agetec in… lets say limited numbers, since today finding an original copy can be fairly pricey, if you find a PAL copy to begin with, instead of the many cheaper japanese PS2 copies floating around the net.

I did manage to get a used PAL copy under 30 bucks, but one could suggest it’s better to just emulate the thing, if you’re really curious to see how EDF started as a fan of the series, otherwise there’s really no point to simply recommend you play EDF 4.1 or 5 nowadays.

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Touken Ranbu Warriors NSWITCH [REVIEW] | #musoumay

As i previously said while discussing the demo for it, i eventually did get the pricey ass retail North American version, since i wasn’t paying full price for digital, or 100 bucks for the game and one of the most desperate and worthless example of season pass content ever devised by a publisher.

Due to import taxes i paid the same anyway, but we’ll talk about that later in the review.

FIY the game is also available worlwide digitally on Steam.

Touken Ranbu Warriors story is set in 2205, about a group of Touken Danshi sent back in the Sengoku period in order to avoid timeline alterations by the History Retrograde Army.

What are Touken Danshi? But beatiful boys with the souls of legendary japanese swords (often as iconic and famed as their possessors/wielders) bestowed upon them, because nothing else aside “bishounen sword boys” would strike fear in those dastardly time travelling history revisionists.

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Nezura 1964 (2020) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Would it really be a Giant Monster March if i didn’t reserve a spot for a japanese monster movie?

This time though we’re going for a triplette, as this one does not only – indirectly – involve the Friend Of All Children himself, but also it’s a dramatized biopic of a now defunct movie studio regarding the failed production of the Giant Horde Beast Nezura, which was slated for a 1964 release in theathers, but was never finished or completed.

Which led the company, Daiei, to try again in entering the kaiju market, this time with a more shameless but also safer choice of a reptilian creature, a giant turtle with fangs, the ability to travel through space by rotating firejets when retracted into its shell, Gamera, and squarely aim its movies at a far younger audience than what the Godzilla series targeted at the time.

But before he could fly into the deep abyss of space to defend all the younglings of the universe, Daiei was indeed planning something else, something else that wasn’t original at all either, as the producers were inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, with the idea to replace the swarm of avians with one of rats.

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Konga TNT (2020) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Since the sequel to the Asylum’s “Godzilla VS Kong” mockbuster from 2020, Ape VS Mecha Ape, is not gonna officially be released here in time for the rubric (or at all, who can sah for certain), let’s dig through some other “based on comic book series you never knewn existed” garbage, we did the Fred Olen Ray produced Reptisaurus film, so here another Konga film, called Konga TNT.

Not based on the 1971 film with Michael Goeff, but on the Charlton Comics produced comic book series that spawned because of the movie, and how you’d like if Konga was basically remade from the director/producer behind Oujia Shark, Brett Kelly?

Because that’s what we’re getting, a homegrown no-budget knock off of a King Kong knock off.

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[EXPRESSO] Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (2023) | King Kang

Ah yeah, the sequel to that one most people (me included, to be truthful) plain skipped, until they had to hurriedly watch it in order to follow whatever was gonna going on Quantumania.

I say this because i get the feeling many threat this series as “multiverse marmite”, a byproduct of this fucking decade long MCU plan, a lot more “skippable” than others, even if this is supposed to be the movie to kick off Phase 5, i had my expectations fairly low as expected by now, thanks to the evergrowing Marvel fatigue – itself tiresome to point out, even if it needs to be, as years of Marvel movies pile up – doesn’t help.

Anyway, this time Ant-Man and The Wasp….and basically the entire quantum scientist team get sucked into the Quantum Realm, which is quite different than before, housing a myriad of unknown species and races of humanoids, all theathrened by Kang The Conqueror, helped by his servant MODOK, and YES, the screenshots were right, he looks like he escaped from the music video of Peter Gabriel’s Steam, but then again, its a silly design, what the hell did you expect?

He’s actually kinda one of the best things about Quantumania, as the quantum world is very, VERY Star Wars-esque, the villain is decent but feels like purposefully underveloped for future MCU movies, the plot it’s so ironically tiny and feels tacked on (pun), direction is unremarkable, the cast seems to be kinda phoning it in (aside from Jonathan Majors as Kang), and action isn’t great, just incredibly average for these movies.

It’s okay, as in, it’s not boring, it has its moments but it’s just plain “mid”, fairly uninspired, and honestly the two previous Ant Man movies were better, smaller in scope but just more fun overall.

Pinocchi-O-Rama #1: A Tree Of Palme/Palme No Ki (2002)

While it’s not completely unknown, i’d say A Tree Of Palme it’s quite obscure, definitely forgotten, overlooked and rarely discussed, despite being created, written and directed by respected anime veteran Takashi Nakamura, who also previously worked as a key animator for Nausicaa And The Valley Of The Wind, joined the acclaimed anime anthology of Robot Carnival in 1987, and just the next year would be animation director for a little movie called AKIRA.

It was also laboriosly made over the span of 6 years, and you can just tell by the cinematography that indeed A Tree Of Palme was treated as a big project that Nakamura wanted to cultivate as well as possible without compromises to his vision.

The story concerns the titular Palme, a puppet created by a man for his sickly wife, and upon her death the puppet becomes paralyzed by sorrow, until he accidentally stumbles upon a misterious woman (whom Palme mistakes for the man’s dead wife, Xian) being pursued, and she entrusts the puppet to deliver a certain special item to a sacred place called Tama.

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