A very special episode of PIS Movie Review - Movie round-up

Welcome to PIS movie round-up episode 1. In PIS movie round-up I'll cover, in brief, some of the movies I watched less recently (and so am a bit sketchy on) and titles I really can't be bothered going the whole hog with. Grab yourself a rubber device, settle back and enjoy...

Dead Birds - A bunch of wild west characters end up in a haunted house and the ghosts kill them off one by one. I watched this little flick alone with all the lights off, well, alone if you don't count the beer. Dead Birds is honestly the only movie to creep me out for over an hour and I had to take a break at the halfway point because it was just so intense. Sadly, the last act of the movie is a bit of a mess and lessens an otherwise well constructed and scary movie. 6.5/10

Body of Lies - I'm a married man with two kids but for some reason DiCaprio does it for me. Like Blood Diamonds, which I also enjoyed, Body of Lies is a well constructed movie with few surprises but plenty of tense scenes, good acting and top action. I forget the plot but it was something to do with terrorists and pineapples...or similar. Anyhow, worth a look. Better then a turban in the eye. 7/10

Benders Game- Cocking disappointing after the larb that were the first two Futurama movies. Benders Game was sorely lacking in laughs, jumped around and had no place in the overall narrative of the four movies. Bollocks of the highest order but perhaps better if served with cheese and vodka. 5/10

Balls of Fury- Surprisingly un-entertaining. I think this is the one with the table tennis, Christopher Walken and hot chick. Umm. That's it really. The chick was hot. 4/10

Rambo (the new one) - John Rambo kills the entire Burmese army with arrows and knives and shit. If you're a male this movie makes you believe in miracles, much like Sliding Doors or Sleepless in Seattle does for women (or whatever movies are big with women these days). When Stallone gets on the big shooter at the end you realise there's nowhere else for action movies to go, this is the pinnacle. For that reason only I have to dock points, Rambo ruins every action movie that will ever be made from this day forward. 8/10

Doomsday - I love post apocalyptic movies. I didn't like this. I think. Memory is a bit vague. Better go watch it yourself. To be on the safe side I'll include a picture and a 3/10.

Doomsday - Breasts and fire.....actually, I think I was a bit harsh on this movie

 Outpost- Nazi zombies kill mercs. Shit ending - I really fucking hate the trend of most horror movies these days to end on a down note. Everyone dies...wow, dramatic. 5/10

Abominable- Badly made costume attacks nubile girls and crippled guy. Costs were kept down by using the monster suit from Harry and the Hendersons. Some breasts. 3/10

And that about wraps it up. Join me next time for more movie reviewing brevity!

Raptor throws up on Feast 3

What the fuck! I could end the review on that. Just What the Fuck!! Lets add some more exclamation marks too !!!!!. Now before I begin lets talk about the first Feast movie directed by Mike Tristano. I loved this movie. It was original, clever and funny and while it slapped the audience in the face at times it didn’t take them for granted. Great movie. Well done….so back to Feast 3: The happy Finish. What the Fuck!

I guess she saw the movie

I hated this movie. I rarely say that but I just walked away from this thinking this was the worst pile of dog crap that ever crept out of some mangy bitch with piles. I didn’t care about the main characters and when someone rocked up that you though hey, this may go somewhere, they get killed…again…and again….aaaaand again. “But” I hear you say, “that’s the point of the movie, it goes against type”. The point is it has no point? Are you kidding me? My two year old nephew could write a script better than this. And then there is the ending….let me just say What the Fuck! The few saving graces were some nudity and some funny gore gags and FX. That’s about it.

 This movie was a whole excuse for the writers being unable to come up with anything intelligible. Let’s just say that Feast 3 left me unsatisfied and calling for some Pepto-Bismol for a case of A grade heart burn. 2/10.

Dead Heat (1988)

Not pictured: nudity. Crazy, I know.

Dead Heat - starring Treat Williams, Joe Piscopo and Vincent Price (in one of his last roles) - is a horror/comedy vehicle from the director that brought you the 1989 version of The Punisher and also edited a bunch of pretty good movies. Mark Goldblatt in case you're interested.

In a nutshell, Dead Heat revolves around two cops and a machine that brings the dead back to life. From what I could understand the character played by Vincent Price was swindling rich old people into giving up half their fortune in exchange for eternal life, the catch being that those brought back to life only lived for 12 or so hours before melting into goo. Of course that part wasn't demonstrated to the captive and above all cashed up audience.

The movie zings along at a decent pace. Characters appear and are then slaughtered off screen, the action is okay, the jokes are horrendously bad and the acting is pretty abysmal. The one exception to this is Treat Williams, who I found far more believable than any of the others. Overall it was a budget 80s cop flick only with zombies instead of Colombians, Mexicans, Italians or whatever culture we're making fun of at the time.

What I did enjoy were the effects, prosthetics and general level of technical expertise. In particular the Chinatown butcher scene is awesome, well thought out and kind of horrific. Sadly though, an interesting premise and good effects were wasted with a crap script and horrible acting. Perhaps a remake should be on the cards using an all new script that exploits that central idea and builds a bunch of clever scenes like the Chinatown scene. Throw in some good jokes, decent actors and an underlying theme that explores the feelings of those brought back to life yet facing death again - and we have a winner. Someone send me lots of money and I'll get right on it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq90fHRJOiA - Trailer

5/10 - Dead Heat had some potential, but ultimately it's a dead duck.

Oh and the ending was fucking terrible. I think I had a 6/10 in mind until I saw the ending.

Star Trek (2009)

Watching a new Star Trek movie and knowing that frothing masses of people holding plastic tricorders milled around cinemas worldwide in their pyjamas waiting for the midnight showing while I just wandered in on a whim with no knowledge of what the movie was all about makes me feel a little bit as if I'm missing the point of something grand. A little bit. Mostly I feel like a better person for it as I drop change in their tin cup then go about with my cushy life.

But anyway, enough with comparing Star Trek fans to bums, on with the review. As hinted above I knew next to nothing about the movie before watching it; the crew was all new, it was a 'reboot' and that guy from Heroes was in it. Speaking of the cast, we have Chris Pine replacing Shatner as Kirk (not do-able, but he tried), the above mentioned Heroes guy - Zachary Quinto - as Spock (who did a pretty good job) aaaand Simon Pegg as Scotty. Standing in as generic bad guy is Eric Bana playing Nero, an angry Romulan with a mining ship more powerful than the death star. Kirk's father was played by an Australian actor once seen in Home and Away. This amused me very much since the last time I saw him was on an advertisement for said soap opera - wearing board shorts and staring seriously at the horizon in true soap opera fashion. Either he was considering cosmic issues you and I could not possibly understand, or he really needed to shit and couldn't remember where the toilets were.

Star Trek cast posing for a shot at the after party

I'm not going to bother with the other cast or characters because either I don't know the actor, don't know much about the character, or the character they played was relatively minor. Suffice to say that I was happy with the performances and nothing stood out as crap acting from the Martin Lawrence school of 'oh god what is he doing??!'.

Basically the plot is this (STOP READING NOW if you're one of those whiney 'no spoilers' idiots). A small ship captained by Kirk's father is blown up by a larger ship captained by Darth Vader but someone central to the overall plot is rescued by being shoved in an escape pod. Later, the young and rebellious man - let's call him Luke though his real name is Jim - joins Starfleet and is mentored by an older guy. Then along comes Vader...no wait I should consult my notes...Nero actually, and Nero uses his mighty death star to destroy a planet (the Vulcan home planet - that might be important to know). Did I mention that Nero is from the future? Well he is and by coming to the past, pursuing an old Spock by the way, he creates an alternate trouser of time thereby justifying and explaining this reboot of the Star Trek universe. Neat idea. I'll leave out the reasons for all of this just in case you missed the spoiler warning and are busy composing a bile filled comment about how I ruined your day. Before you do please allow me the courtesy of  saying fuck you and let's move on.

In the end the plucky crew fly their banged-up ship to the rescue and everything is good again.

So down to it. What I really enjoyed was seeing how the various crew members met and what brought Kirk to Captain-ship at such a young age. The story was okay and the SFX quite good so if you're looking for some enjoyable sci-fi, regardless of whether you even know what a tricorder is, check out Star Trek.

On a side note - I'm normally a really hard marker and difficult to please but lately I've seen some bloody entertaining new releases and Star Trek is one of them. Therefore, so people don't think I'm a soft reviewer, I won't be reviewing any of those great movies for a while - if ever. Instead you can look forward to such greats as Lifeforce, Rise of the Reeker and the new Punisher movie.

8.5/10: The new Star Trek really did go to the final frontier, entertaining me. Damn you Abrams.

Disclaimer: While writing this I came across a cool video demonstrating the similarities between A New Hope and this Star Trek movie. I unashamedly borrowed some concepts from that video for this review. 

Raptors Take

I like 'em Star Trek movie a lota. Beam me up! 9/10

Berserk for X-Men Origins: Wolverine

 I have to say I am a comic book geek.  Iron Man, Kapow! The Hulk, Smash! X-Men, Boom! So when I heard that X-Men Origins: Wolverine was going to be made I was like a giggling little school girl with too much candy at her tea party. So what did I think? Does anyone care? Of course you do! It was great. For those that wanted to see Wolverine go sick on some bad guys asses (in a purely plutonic way of course) then this is the movie for you.

Ok now give me EMO! Yes! Yes! You dirty monkeys!

 

The Actors: Hugh Jackman is a perfect Wolverine (Logan). I couldn’t imagine anyone else barring myself in the role. I honestly believe he enjoys playing an un-killable guy with metal claws, the sick little monkey. Liev Schreiber plays Victor Creed (Sabertooth), Wolverines brother, and I’m glad he did. He brings a subtle menace to the performance and a feeling of unpredictable violence. Good choice I say.  William Stryker is played by Danny Huston, who I loved as the head vampire in 30 Days of Night. In here he is ruthless and manipulative just like you’d expect him to be. Now some misgivings on casting, Ryan Reynolds, What the fuck! He was in it for like 10 mins. His dry witty sense of humour was great but in the end I wanted to see more. To bad. Also Dominic Monaghan from Lord of the Rings fame as Bolt was one of the guys which I was hoping would make it a little longer. Oh SPOLER ALERT! Bah too late. We also get some guest appearances from other mutants such as Cyclops (Scott Summers) as a kid and Charles Xavier which tie in this to the X-Men Trilogy quite nicely.  Oh and finally Gambit played adequately by Taylor Kitsch was a bit of left field fun.

Where's my rubber ducky!

The pace of Wolverine is pretty good. It did let up a little during the middle where we had Logan living the happy life for a little while, awwwe isn’t that nice, just before the inevitable screwing over and we get to see Wolverine go schytzo again. Yay, my moneys worth. At the beginning of the movie we delve into Wolverines past and his relationship with his brother Creed. While both are angry old men, Creed revels in the violence and doesn’t deny his base nature that eventually ends in them parting ways. The end fight scenes are awesome with Wolverine, Creed and Weapon X all at it and had me cheering for more schnikitta schnik action.

So was Wolverine the best movie I had ever seen, ever? No, but it was a lot of fun, with a few misgivings here and there that I could easily overlook. So for my rating I give X-Men Origins: Wolverine a solid Comic Geek 8/10.

Raptor Gets a Splinter…Groan

Prostate exam?!?

For my first movie I’m going to be reviewing Splinter (2008), an indie flick directed by Toby Wilkins. The movie is about two college students who are wrangled up by two crims on the run from the law and end up at a gas station which happens to be the local hang out for a crazy arse parasite.

So to start, lets just say I loved this film. The plot kept me involved, the actors were pretty good and overall it was kept in the realms of the believable without going too far out or into any clichés.

Now, I'm a huge monster movie fan and this monster was reminiscent of both Ridly Scotts Alien and John Carpenters The Thing, both great movies. Lets look at the Alien similarities; you didn’t see the monster much and when you did it was quick glimpses or a blurry look. This would have to be due to the movies low budget but damn it, it worked. I found myself craning to see it around corners and thinking, "what the heck is that blur over there - dear god save me now! Oh…no I’m fine". On The Thing reference, the creature was grounded in reality which can make for great monsters. It’s a parasite that after entering the blood stream begins to take over the host and distort and shape them by breaking bones and twisting flesh. It’s attracted to heat and will mindlessly go after anything it sees as alive including cars and fire. It also has a few other surprises but let leave them for you.

Bottom line, I give this move a solid 7.5. I minused 1 for lack of nudity since I always go into a horror movie hoping the main actress will get her kit off. Also another minus a .5 for not having Arnold Schwarzenegger save the day. I also believe that a bigger budget would have decreased this movie but hey, I’m game. Go the big budget crap sequel!

Night of the Demons

I'm going to kick this off with two movies: one that is occasionally called a classic by those who don't get out much, and another that will probably become a bit of a classic...to people who don't get out much. Let's start with the older one - Night of the Demons.

To give you an indication of how much I enjoyed this movie let's just say I watched it in two parts (partly because of how much I liked it and partly because my 18 month old woke up).

Summing up in three words I would describe the movie as 'really, really boring'. Another three words that accurately reflect the movie are 'piece of shit'. I expected gore, demons and nudity; what I saw was a bunch of teenagers wandering aimlessly for 90 minutes spouting generic dialogue, intercut with demons standing still baring their teeth. One would expect a certain amount of demonic showboating, but these guys always stood still for the exact amount of time required that the protagonist could get the screaming over with and hightail it out of there. Every now and then a mediocre death was thrown in. Some nudity happened also. That's my review.

Night of the Demons is a solid 1/10 for being made, 4 bonus points for breasts and some flange, minus 2 for boring the shit out of me.

3/10 - Crap 80s horror with few redeeming features

I live, Again

So this where we will be blogging our movie reviews <looks around> hmmm it could do with some touch ups but I can work with it.

Your critics for this journey into ineptitude will be Gavor and Raptor.  Expect witness....um....like serious issues affecting man...and er some movies reviews that will be controversial and hopefully explicit. Yay explicit!

Oh by the way this was all Gavors idea so I blame him.

Coming soon, my first crappy PIS Movie review.

- Raptor