Space Battleship Yamato (2010)

Space Battleship Yamato: things explode, people yell a lot (WOULD YOU LIKE A COFFEE! YES PLEASE, WITH MILK AND SUGAR. OKAAAAAAAAAAAAY!) and sake appears to be the staple diet.

It's the year 'sometime in the future' and the earth is being bombarded with asteroids by the evil Gamilas. These inundations of space rock have left the planet decimated - a radioactive wasteland of yellows and grays that has forced the remaining population underground. It's a population waiting for death, bereft of hope, lacking direction. We begin the story with two separate threads that quickly come together: one follows the protagonist Susumu as he scavenges the wastes of the earth for scrap and the other shows the humans being handed their arse in a space battle then one of the few remaining crews limping home just in time to be given command of a new super ship. The plans for this new ship, the Yamato, were found by Susumu on one of his scavenging trips, apparently sent from space by a benevolent race keen to save humanity. This space message also contains a promise of technology that will cleanse the earth of radiation and a map to the planet Iskandar.

Look out for that space writing anomaly! Damn sake!

A number of the characters are bound together already: Susumu's brother was captain of a ship destroyed in the opening battle, Susumu himself was once an ace pilot in the fleet, the captain of the Yamato fled the opening battle when Susumu's brother sacrificed himself. For all these reasons, plus some more that make little sense, Susumu re-joins the fleet and is immediately put in command of the Yamato's biggest weapon - the wave motion gun. One moment he is a civilian threatening to kill the captain, the next he's back in the fold - and later on he's even installed as Acting Captain.

I'll leave the commentary at this point and delve into the review itself. Space Battleship is an enjoyable but hard to swallow movie. The effects are excellent for the reported budget of about $24 million, though there are a couple of dodgy shots that should have been left out. The two themes of hope and the burden leadership are kind of patchy and never really grab you or make you think. A lot of what drives the characters is a fabrication designed to give them and the population left at home some hope that there is a solution, though in the end this fabrication turns out to be literal (though slightly twisted) truth.

Some of the cast: Hot girl (top left), serious guy (top right), pilot guy (bottom left) and Captain Beard (obvious).

All in all the story, backgrounds and plot are lightly treated and only there to support the mostly excellent action scenes and alcohol consumption. Alcohol consumption you say? Well, yes. You see this movie was hard to follow and the motivations of the characters muddied and erratic, until you pay attention to what's happening in several of the quieter scenes on board the Yamato. At all times, even when in the brig or on duty, the characters - military men and women - are drinking sake. Lots of sake. After coming to this realisation I found that the actions of the characters made more sense. They yelled a lot because they were drunk, they looked confused and made spur of the moment decisions because they were pickled, they rushed into the breach with excess bravado because they were tanked, they suddenly fell in love and fell into each others arms because...well you get the picture. The penultimate scene makes a lot of sense if you consider the character has been drinking non-stop for several months. There were several other solutions to the problem, but naturally he chose the most obvious one - probably assuming everything would be OK in the end and he'd be back home in time for tea and strumpets at 6.

Cast from the cartoon: main guy, hot girl and Captain Beard. The Yamato is far more interesting but they shoved it right up the back there for some reason.

Putting all the failings aside, I enjoyed Space Battleship Yamato and would recommend it to anyone who remembers sneaking out of bed early as a kid to watch the original cartoon (Star Blazers as it was known in Australia) on morning television. I think younger sci-fi fans who don't know the original material would still enjoy the simple mix of light themes and good action scenes. Now to practice my roll and shoot move from the original series opening credits. How that used to amaze and confuse my friends in primary school...

7/10 - Simple story, drunken decision making, pretty explosions. Bonus: Lot's of yelling.

Raptor becomes Immortal

 

 So back from Gavor and my hiatus I had to decide what would be my come back review. Well how about Greek Mythology with gay overtones. Let’s hit that! Wait! No I mean…ok poor choice of words.

I was pretty exited about seeing this due to no small fact that it resembled Zack Snyder’s 300. I mean the trailer had all this fighting and a bow that shoots glowing arrows and wait there was fighting and let’s not forget the fighting.



Is that a spear in my eye or are you just happy to see me?



The story starts off with Theseus played by Henry Cavill who has been getting awesome Kung-Fu skills under the tutelage of a disguised Zeus (ok not kung-fu just battle skills still awesome). Living by a sea side community set in some cliffs, little do they know that King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) is looking for the Epirus Bow and his army is going to go straight through them on their way to Mount Tartarus to release the Titans. He had previously kidnapped the oracle Phaedra (Freida Pinto) and her maids to help him but they refused. Anyway Theseus gets captured, escapes with oracle and the thief Stavros (Stephen Dorff, Yeah I know right! The Dorf! What the hell!) and locate the bow in the Minotaurs’ Labrynith but it gets stolen by Hyperion and so off then off to the big battle at the mountain. Now Zeus forbids the Gods to interfere in the quest but alas the Gods are rambunctious and scantly clad gay porn stars except for Athena (Isabel Lucas) who is hot and Zeus gets all mad and kills one of them so the gods get all sad and angst ridden. Yes, the worst kind of angst. The one in the pants. That means the heroes end up on there own. Gasp!



Oil me up big boy!





Yup, the Minotaur still annoys the crap out of me.

Immortals was directed by Tarsem Singh who also directed The Cell. If you have seen that you can see a lot of his signature on this. There are a lot of dream like sequences and imagery that looks like it has been taken out of a renaissance painting depicting idealised Gods and heroes. That probably explains why most of the men run around bare chested. It is a visual feast for the eyes but it can be distracting at times. As far as the performances go, Cavill was fine as Thesues. He did try a heroic morale raising speech towards the end but it felt pretty forced. I liked Rourke as Hyperion, he was a brutish bastard who didn’t give a fuck what the Gods thought and did everything he could to let them know of it. Good job there. Dorff played a side kick and he did it well. Freida Pinto was basically eye candy. She really didn’t do much at all. The gods themselves were just lack luster for most of the movie, except at the end when they were kickin’ it with the Titans or intervening. Otherwise they sat around looking angry, sad or confused in various iterations.



Uoo I'm going to thpank you so hard Mr Pointy Head.



There was also one plot hole that irked me. The bow was invented by the God as the only weapon that could kill another God. Right. Good. So at the end Gods are killing Titans and Titans killing Gods with their bare hands or random weapons. What the hell happened there? Did someone pull the plug on their immortal status? Alright a pet peeve there. Also I didn’t like the Minotaur. Spoiler alert: he was just a man with a crappy head gear. Grrr I hate that.



Yup, gay god porn stars.



What did I think overall? It isn’t a perfect film and had a few dull moments but overall it kept me entertained and there were some booby shots from our leading ladies so. I give Immortals 6.5 out of 10 for a good try.




Isabel Lucas, trust me she does appear wearing only paint...I swear.



Aaaaaaaand...we're back!

PIS Movies is back online! Get ready for all new content, coming really, really, really...ok enough of that. New reviews are on the way, but for now why not sit back and browse through our extensive archives.

See you again soon!

Raptor Goes Reaping

I have haven’t watched many movies of late, why? Don’t question me! Ok, I tells. I’ve been watching the now cancelled series of Reaper.

Constipation? We have the cure.

It’s about Sam (Brett Harrison) whos’ parents sell his soul to The Devil(Ray Wise). Since The Devil now owns his soul on his 21^st birthday he recruits him to bring escaped souls back to hell. The Devil obviously makes this task difficult for him so to help Sam recruits his friends Sock(Tyler Labine) and Ben Gonzalez(Rick Gonzalez, yes same last names, neat) to help in his task. Mean while he is trying to ignite a relationship with his girl-friend Andi(Missy Peregrym).

Hey it's the Scooby Doo gang. Wait, which ones the dog?

The series ran for 31 episodes and sadly was cancelled after plans to sell it to another channel fell through. I’d have to say I really was into the series by about 5 episodes in.  Brett Harrison was quite likeable as the harassed and frustrated Sam. He doesn’t portray him as looser but more of an every day guy who is stuck in a bad situation.  Ray Wise is in the perfect roll as The Devil. I mean he was made to play the conniving, manipulative and vindictive lord of all evil. Oh he does dress well too. Both Brett and Ray gave the series a good solid base but the ones that made it shine were defiantly Tyler Labine and Rick Ganzalez as Sock and Ben. Sock is an outrageously extraverted eccentric who is the guy that comes up with crazy plans to get the girls. Not always successful. He was the character that had me laughing nearly every episode.  I'd keep an eye out for this Labine character, he is going be be appearing a lot more on TV. Ben is almost the opposite being really nice and sensitive but still prone to the crazy ideas that plague his colleague. His family lies in fear of his grandmother who rules with an iron spoon. Oh he likes bunnies and has a demon girlfriend. Score! Andi, Sams lady friend, is also quite likable and hot. I think she was in a cheerleading movie. Mental note: must find cheerleading movie.

Gay angels. I knew it. No one wears clothes that well

The series has some reasonable FX and creature costumes. The demons who appear reasonably often are quite the spiffy practical make up. Also the souls from hell tend to all have their individual powers such as turning invisible, exploding into fire, multiplying etc which leads to some interesting situations although the escaped souls are not always the centre of each episode.

Missy Peregrym and friends. I'll volunteer to fluff the pillows.

The weakness of the show was the demon hunting was a little repetitive, especially at the start. This though decreased a lot latter in the first series when multiple story archers began to be introduced. Maybe this was a little too late to save the show. Who knows but I was really looking forward to next episodes of the series.

Reaper is a cross between Supernatural and possibly Scrubs. If this sounds good to you then check it out otherwise go QQ somewhere. I give this series a 7.5/10

Jenny Wade from Feast was Bens Demon Girlfriend. Bastard!

Raptor is Heartless

Every now and then there are scenes and depictions in a movie that just creep you out. In Heartless it’s a street gang but I’ll elaborate.

Wow what a crappy poster!

Heartless is revolves around Jamie Morgan (Jim Sturgess), a photographer born with a heart shaped birth mark on his face. This has caused him to be withdrawn and lonely which was made worse when his father, who he looked up to, died earlier in his life. As the movie continues news stories of violent and unprovoked murders begin to be reported on the news. Then one night while taking a picture he finds an image of a disturbing creature in the background. This sets him on a path to find out what it was and discovers that there is a demonic gang incinerating random people with Molotov’s. He is eventually approached to Papa B(Joseph Mawle) who turns out to be the devil who offers him his hearts desire for one simple task, graffiti a wall. Jamie asks for to fall in love and in a phoenix like scene is reborn without the birth mark. He then meets Tia played by a cute Clements Poesy and they fall in love. This all starts to fall apart when the Weapons Man (Eddie Marsan) calls in on Eddie to help him complete his task of murdering someone by ripping out there heart while still alive and placing it on the church steps. Wait a minute you say, that’s not graffiti? Yes the devil lied. Who knew? Things all go down hill from there.

So what do you see here? Yo momma. Bazinga!

Director and Writer Phillip Ridley has put together an eerie and at times disturbing movie on a small budget. The British cast all give very solid performances. Jim Sturgess as Jamie is a flawed anti hero. The birth mark is his weakness rather than a strength and when this disappears he gains his confidence back or so it seems. The other characters are not as fleshed out as Jamie unfortunately and the story revolves mostly around this character.  Joseph Mawles Papa B is menacing in an underworld bikey boss sort of performance. There wasn’t a vast range of emotions to show but that seemed to help rather than hinder character.

I want to talk to you about God. Wait come back! I have pamphlets!

Now the creepy part that I mentioned above is the gang with the serpentine faces, screeching bestial screams all while dressed in hoodies and jeans. I must have been the meshing between the demonic and street gang that was unnerving but it worked for me. The tension and unease was also built up in news reports of violent crimes and second hand accounts of what was happening so that when Jamie actual meats up with the gang there is a certain about of dread already built up.
On the down side and also a spoiler warning the movie ends with the ambiguous notion of it was all in his head which I find to be a cop out most of the time. I can kind of accept it here but barely as there were clues throughout in a Sixth Sense kind of way. The pacing was also a little to slow at times especially at the beggining.
Overall I would say it was a reasonable effort as a Faustian tale. I give it a 7/10.

Multiple booby shots of Clements Poesy. Win!

Raptors been Bitten

So what the hell is that guy, you know that guy from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back? The Jay guy Jason Mewes? Well seems he is in this vampire film called Bitten. What the?

Ah Christ! Giving head would be painful.

Actually seems like he’s been pretty busy all round with over fifty screen credits to his name but I digress. In bitten Mewes plays paramedic Jack who girlfriend just gave him the flick. With his work buddy Roger (Richard Fitzpatrick) they go about their nightly rescues but his life is seems pretty depressing even with Rogers crude encouragement to get over it. One night Jack comes home and find the extremely hot Danika(Erica Cox) covered in blood and dumped in some trash after an assault. He takes her in and soon finds out she maybe a drug addict after going through what may be with drawl symptoms. After Jacks ex-girlfriend rocks up, Danika kills her and drinks her sweet sweet blood Jack realises she is a vampire…oh the growing teeth were also a giveaway.
I have to say that Erica Cox is super hot. I would kill for her and ask “how many times do I have to stab them?”. Thus I can kind of see where Jack tries to help her at the start but Danikas blood lust becomes uncontrollable and she starts to kill anyone who walks into the apartment all along pleading for jack to help her pain. This really does get annoying after some time and I don’t see why Jack doesn’t take a more hard ass stand after the second killing. I mean first time, ok you’re a little confused, she is hot, yes she tried to bite you too but surly we can forgive her one killing if you’re going to get some right? Jack hides the bodies in the freezer he has but that fills up pretty quick after the 2nd body. And another thing, why does he nonchalantly hide the bodies in his house and ignore them? Wouldn’t you try to dump them somewhere?

I'm not sure if the guy Erica Cox is feeding on is happy or scared

Acting here is pretty good. Jason portrayal of Jack is spot on barring the logic holes in the character. I did like the asshole character of Roger. He is an asshole but underneath it his hearts in the right place…kind of…maybe a little to the left of the right place but overall in the general area of the right place. I must also admit that Erica Cox did portray Danika as predatory drug addict who’s addiction over rules any common sense or morality she may have had. I can accept that.

I think she broke her.

Bitten is a fair movie but I still couldn’t get over some of the characters logic choices. I can concede that it’s not a standard situation that you could find yourself in.  I give this movie a 6/10 for vampire booby action.

What did I tell you about eating in bed!?!

Side Note Movie of the Weeeeeeekah!!!
Yes this is my side note movie of the week, Hatchet. A movie with a great start, great characters and a good background story for the bad guy which ends up with a tacked on cliché ending.  What is it with horror moves now days that require a double ending? You know the one were the survivors get away but then it’s an oh no they didn’t really get away that was just a ruse. I mean really. Just pick an ending, we don’t all need to have James Cameron endings on everything.

Hey I have two as well. Tee hee!

Oh and Mercedes Mcnab from Buffy fame shows us her boobies so it’s not all bad. I give this one 6/10 too.

Television as an alternative to film

I've seen a lot of shitty films lately, and yes I know this is the way it has always been and that amongst the dross are nuggets of cinema gold (or in my case, home cinema gold) - but seriously, so many movies have left me cold or disappointed lately I'm losing interest in the whole medium. I ask myself, when was the last time I watched a highly anticipated or recommended piece of work that caught my attention and made me feel something. This year? Maybe 1 movie. Last year, perhaps a handful.

I've been to the cinema twice this year, thereby setting a 5 year record for number of cinema visits in a calendar year. Both times I was gouged at the register and let down by the product. Avatar was spectacular but boring and The Expendables adequately made but lacking that special something to get it off the ground. At home, I don't even want to consider how many hours I've wasted watching shit films. Expensive, cheap, horror, action, drama - whatever - I swear to something or other that 85% are below par and I wonder why the producers even bothered. I'm not talking about embarrassing junk like Meet the Spartans, Sex in the City or anything starring the guy from Black Knight and Big Mommas House - no, I mean movies that should have been worth watching, even for a quick bit of escapism.

Like an glitzy dress on Miranda Kerr. Good to look at once or twice but there are plenty of pretty things with more substance out there

I'm going out on a limb here to say this includes such snore fests as Lord of the Rings (all of them), the Spiderman movies after the first one, Avatar as previously mentioned, almost all of the top tier action, drama and horror movies and I assume most movies from other genres too (I can't imagine this is limited to a handful of genres). When I've enjoyed something lately it's almost always come from left field or been a rare recommendation that held some weight. Movies like Pandorum, Children of Men, the recent Rambo movie, The Descent (and the sequel), Dead Snow, Body of Lies, Taken...okay I'm running out of movies I've really enjoyed lately.

This picture doesn't clearly illustrate what the movie is about. Work safety? Medical incompetence?

On the other hand, and the reason for this rant, i've seen a lot of quality television lately. Not all of the shows I'm about to mention are super fantastic, but they're worth watching every week and the heightened depth of story (DoS) (TM) over most movies is in the order of several magnitudes when measured on my secret and patented DoS scale. Now, the salient difference here is probably what, for me, makes good television series superior to films these days - the amount of time producers have to work with. A single season of a good television program should run about 8 hours, any more and you're scrambling for material, any less and there's insufficient time to flesh thing out. Being broken up into 45 or 60 minute chunks also means it's easy to watch parts of a larger story arc at your leisure and without your arse going to sleep on an uncomfortable cinema seat. The trick, of course, is to know when it's time to stop, Heroes being the perfect example. Sometimes television is the perfect medium to tell a complex story that requires 8-12 hours to do it justice, and when that story has been told in it's entirety it's best to move on, not make another (otherwise unplanned) season.

A movie has from 90 minutes to 3 hours, with 3 hours being way too fucking long in my opinion. For the attention deficit society of today, 90 minutes of attention may be about all we can ask, with plots containing story and characters stretching things a bit too far. Therefore, we get shit shoveled into our homes by the truckload. It's cheap to make and easy to market, but I'm sure most people know this.

What I though after watching The Book of Eli

Returning to television, I've not seen many bad productions lately. I'm not talking about Glee, Jersey Shore or whatever masquerades as entertainment in some circles. No, I'm watching shows recommended by friends, genre experts and even - gasp - critics. Over the last couple of years I've watched shows both new and old and fuck me if I've been impressed by episodes far more often than I've been let down. I've wanted to write about particular television series several times, but this is a movie review site so I've had to put that aside until now. The tipping point came this week when I started watching the second season of a show that was yet another victory for story telling and characterisation over fart jokes and over loud explosions.

About as entertaining as reading this article, though not as long. I'm 100% sure these girls will be doing topless art films within 5 years.

So what have I enjoyed? I hesitated to list anything here because my tastes are not necessarily your tastes and I don't want to come across as a fan boy of these particular genres. I'm 100% sure there's great television being made in other spaces as well and I'm not in any way suggesting that my pet likes are where all the good TV is at. Nevertheless I decided to make a quick list to illustrate the breadth of material out there (and this is only a very small sample of all the great stuff floating around).

Battlestar Galactica - I loved the first season, then it was a little up and down. Still, it was great sci-fi and good drama, with memorable characters to boot. BSG was the series that got me back into watching television and movies after many years of avoiding both.

Firefly - You love it or you hate it, but it was well made with interesting characters and good stories. The greatest strength of this show will prove to be it's cancellation. It never had a chance to go bad and will live on as a much loved genre piece that  fanboys can obsess over for years to come.

Caprica - I don't love Caprica but I can see how it might turn into something quite interesting. Nevertheless, it's fairly complex and has a few novel-ish ideas.

Stargate Atlantis - I expected this to be crap, which is why I didn't watch it until this year. Totally worth it. Popcorn sci-fi done right, very entertaining.

Being Human - The blurb made this sound like a hokey supernatural comedy, but it came sort of recommended from a friend so I figured I'd give it a shot. I'm not sure if I read the right blurb. While it has humorous moments and some absurd set-ups, it's not played for laughs so much as satire.

Doctor Who - Was mostly really good, the lowest points being the 3rd and 5th seasons.

Dexter - Dexter is an excellent example of a show that should have been retired at the end of the second season. The first two seasons constituted a complete story and Dexter should have been put on the shelf after some loose ends were tied up.

Spartacus Blood and Sand: Fantastic mix of drama, scheming, violence and nudity.

Stargate Universe: An interesting idea that started ok, wandered around the season without its pants on for a while then finally took some pills and got it together. Maybe the second season will be more consistent.

V - Wasn't good. Just wanted to say that.

One of the many, many nude scenes in Spartacus - legitimate adult entertainment we can all enjoy. Except prudes and religious nuts.