Fukushima 50 - My Japanese interests led to me wanting to see more on the actual events from back then, as I only had casual knowledge of it and mostly was about recovery efforts and the state of things in recent years through channels like Abroad in Japan. I thought the movie was decent, the actual disaster had some real great effects and the events as they went along were interesting. I did check opinions on it afterwards and it sounds like some of the political stuff was probably embellished and it doesn't go into details about how the electric company probably could've avoided the disaster with the right countermeasures in place, something they delayed to 2016, instead of installing them before the disaster, but otherwise it gave me what I was looking for.
I thought the English dub was overdoing it at first, but switching to the Japanese, it's definitely on point lol Japanese dramas can go abit overboard with the melodrama. I think the dub just stands out kind of in the wrong way, because the dub audio is so clean and noticeable compared to the Japanese audio that is actually done from the rooms and places they are at. That could've used a little tweaking, but otherwise fine.
Rift (1990) - And for something completely different, a pretty cheesy B-movie that feels like it's from the early 1980's, but released in 1990, like this was a year after The Abyss and you would never be able to tell lol I don't jump into random old movies, I'm not someone usually trying to find some "so bad it's good" sort of thing, but underwater creature movies are a fun scenario for me and I had never heard of this one.
It's pretty bad, but entertaining enough I thought. Lead is your generic 80's action man that feels like the budget Mel Gibson or Stallone, super handsome, buff, and also a genius engineer. It does at least have Ray Wise and R. Lee Ermey for a little bit of star flair to it. It's kind of a bad underwater creature movie, because while the first half is them traveling in a sub to find another one that was lost, it then kinda becomes a generic bit of action schlock, though you do get some silly, but fun creature effects, people getting killed, all you'd expect from a movie like this. All the cliche's are here, for better or worse lol
It's nothing I'd recommend, but if you got a taste for these types of 80's b-movies, it's not super bad.
Apollo 18 - One more random watch, from the deep sea to the moon, an interesting found footage idea. Basically the moon trips stopped with Apollo 17...OR DID THEY?!?! And that's the premise for a horror movie. It's pretty solid setup, I actually really enjoy very scaled down movies like this, very small cast, if not just a single character, usually singular locations, but the premise is pretty great, though I question how they "found the footage" for this lol
Apparently it was kinda critically thrashed? I don't know why? Sure, it's got some clear Alien homage to it, but it's a well acted, great setting, lower budget horror flick (As low as 5 million bucks can be), that does a great job making it feel like they captured this 70's era moon trip. Glancing at some reviews, people didn't really like the lack of an overarching narrative, but that's not the point of the movie, it's found footage, it's showing something that happened, but even then, it has a pretty solid story to it that gets expanded as it goes along. I feel like people expected something on the level of Alien, but it's like going to Cloverfield and expecting a Godzilla movie.
I would recommend this one if you like scifi horror, it's nothing amazing, but I thought it was a good watch and a nice way to kick off the spooky month with the handful of games and movies I've got planned.
