Raptor Visits District 9

The first Peter Jackson movie I ever watched was Dead Alive when I didn’t even know who he was. Well he didn’t direct District 9 but it was his brain child to get it on screen with reasonably new director Neil Blomkamp. Blomkamps first short film, Alive in Joburg, was the inspiration for District 9. He has done a surprisingly good job of directing here. The screen play is tight and the pacing doesn’t lag at all especially once the things begin to heat up and he manages to get a lot out of performances of a relatively low key cast.

I told you to go before we left!

The premises of District 9 is that an alien ship arrives in Johannesburg, South Africa and they find the worker aliens to aboard to be in a bad state of malnourishment and without leaders. The aliens are processed and placed in a slum called District 9 and looked after the MNU corporation. Enter Wicus Van De Merwe played by first time actor Sharlto Copley who is put in charge to relocate the aliens to a nicer cleaner District 10. While his group are serving out the papers he comes across a flask with a liquid in it and accidentally sprays it on himself. This starts his transformation into an alien and a really bad week. Along the way he discovers what the MNUs real interests are invested in alien weaponry and bio technology, which they haven’t been able use yet, and that one of the aliens may be able to help him get back to being a human in a trade to allow the aliens to leave Earth.

For a first time actor Sharlto Copley plays Wicus to a T. He portrays him as a rather enthusiastic and naïve individual who’s well meaning intentions are based on human prejudices towards the aliens and treats them more like intelligent animals rather and advanced race. Little things like calling them “prawns” due to their resemblance and even “exterminating” a cache of alien eggs and the referring to the popping sound they make when set on fire suggest a blasé attitude to creatures. The movie itself doesn’t make any excuse about being an apartheid piece, I mean set south Africa with aliens segregated from, I’m pretty sure that’s blatantly obvious enough for everyone.

Yes, no Michael Jacksons. Gasp!

The locals and gangs are now taking advantage of the aliens as well which is an interesting juxtaposition that suggests that there is always someone praying on the weaker even if things change. Alien sex with whores and buying their alien technology for cat food (It’s like cocaine to them) are just some of the schemes but also more sinister machinations of Voodoo cannibalism of the aliens to gain their powers.

There are some plot holes that can be overlooked, such as, where is the rest of the world? I mean if aliens came to Earth you would have scientists from everywhere looking into this not to mention all the major countries involvements. Overall these can be overlooked.  The SFX are fantastic, the aliens are CGI generated as is the awesome mech suit Wicus hops into at the end. Pew pew anybody?  For those looking for exploding humans and aliens there is plenty of that with a great fight scene at the end.

Hello Sir. Have you seen an anyone who is 7ft tall, looks like a prawn and can't speak English?

This movie is an action think piece with a lot of humour thrown in to boot. You can walk away from it thinking man, humans are bastards or I can see their point or just walk away thinking “Wo awesome dude” but you will walk away thinking about the movie which in my mind makes it great. I give this one 8.5/10 for sheer alien in the eye action.

Dog Soldiers (2002)

Just a quick one. I was really disappointed by this half arsed mess of a werewolf movie. After all the hype, all the time I spent (2 minutes) borrowing a copy and the hundred odd minutes sitting down to watch it, I can safely say this movie is underwhelming.

While it's true there's gore, soldiers, monsters and a woman; Dog Soldiers is never convincing. We have acting at Friends level (shouting fills in for emoting), non-existent scares and a mixed bag of characters. Two of the characters are memorable in that I can actually remember them at all. There's the short guy who has an epic fight with a werewolf and the older guy who dies. The key character's main traits appear to be his odd shaped face and scraggy hair, because those are the only things I remember.

Kevin McKidd - I act like I wear a shirt...er...unbuttoned

Redeeming features? Some cool scenes, Doctor Who's son (Sean Pertwee) and an ending where someone survived.

You got sauce on your suit/rug. Better get that in to soak.

Not the best werewolf movie going around after all. Boo

5/10

Raptor Becomes a Fan

If you had to break into the Lucas ranch so that your dyeing friend can watch Star Wars Episode 1 would you do it? Of course dude and that’s the premises of Fanboys. In 1998 Eric Bottler (Sam Huntington) has left his best friend Linus (Christopher Marquette) behind to start his career but when his other friends, Hutch (Dan Fogler) and Windows (Jay Baruchel), let him know that Linus is dying of cancer and may not get to see the anticipated Episode 1 then they all come together with an old dream they had about a road trip to break into the Lucas Ranch and see the movie before it’s too late. They are joined by Zoe the very cute Kristen Bell but all is not easy for is it not the destination that is most important but the journey. Along the way they encounter a Star Wars fans greatest nemesis the Star Trek fan. These are lead by an extremely geeky nay nerdy Seth Rogen who also turns up as a Star Wars loving pimp later on. We even get a cameo from the Shat himself, William Shatner. Kaaaaaahhnn!!! Yeah I had to say it. The guys do have some issues to work out, Eric being true to himself instead of a corporate monkey, Linus with his mortality, Hutch and his dream to own a car detailing business and Windows who is also on the trip to meat a girl he met online. These issues are all helped by The Chief (Danny Trejo) and a lot of marijuana of course in a spirit walk.

Only one of us can hold the Light Saber! Ok two of us...but no more.

This is a movie for the fans but also for anyone who has had a dream, a dream they would dare to fulfil. Ok enough of that. It’s a pretty good movie. The characters are likeable and you want to see them get there in the end. It all resolves itself quite nicely even if a little bitter sweet but the high jinx along the way is worth it. I would say that Star Trek fans beware, they get a bit of a bashing in this…and really why not although the new movie rocked.

Tell me this isn't your Star Wars fantasy...not so much the one on the right.

I give this movie a 7/10 and a must see for any Star Wars fan. If you’re a Trecky…well you may want to watch it anyway and then have a shower to wash the Star Wars taint off. May the force be with you.

Kristen Bell...she can hold my Light Saber anytime

Raptors One Eyed Monster

For starters let me just say that for a movie about the disembodied penis of Ron Jeremy killing people on the set of a porn movie. I hear you ask “Raptor, stop talking crap and tell us what the movie is?” Fine, since you asked so nicely. The movie is One Eyed Monster and the basic plot is what I listed above. Who’s Ron Jeremy? Well he is some huge, innuendo intended, porn star who started in the sixties and has been in movies with titles like Samurai Dick and Cherry Cheese Cake. The list of movies that he has appeared in is phenomenal. I’m talking over 1000. Sure some may be cameos only but dam that is still a huge body of work, innuendo again.

He still gets the ladies...for $75 an hour extra for back door action

The movie starts off with cast filming a porn shoot in some cabin that gets snowed in. During a break on the first Scene Ron Jeremy takes a walk outside and is zapped by a shooting star like alien. He seems fine until they continue on with the sex scene and his dick gets out of control injuring the starlet Veronica Hart, another old school porn actress and then detaching itself from Ron. He then goes to the big porn set in the sky and from that point on Ron plays the Alien Dick. Quite ironic really.

Anyway the Alien Dick is looking to procreate, hey you’re on a porn set why not, I’d want to do the same thing right but it sees all other non females as the threats so starts a killing rampage. This premise kind of falls down at several points such as when the pretty Jenny Guy is killed while making out with the rooky or when Carmen Hart is killed by fatal blow job. I guess it was still trying to figure out the right hole? On a side note Carmen Hart has stared in films such as Bless Their Little Holes and Big Cocks in her Little Box. These crack me up.

Too....much....viagra!

On to a few of the other cast members. Jonah, the token black guy played by Jason Graham who turns out to be well not so token and saves the day! Jason did a great job with this character with a down to earth no nonsense attitude. I was rooting for him from the start. Our heroine is played by Amber Benson from Buffy The vampire Slayer lesbian girl fame. We also get a hilarious Jeff Denton who plays the self centred asshole produce/director of the film. He gets it in the end of course…hehe in the end get it? Bah! Veteran actor Charles Napier also makes an appearance as an ex-soldier and hermit who turns out a pretty cool back story monologue.

We don’t see the alien itself for most of the film and get an Aliens’ eye view instead, when we do well yes it’s a 1.5ft long penis thing….what did you expect? All the kills are all tongue in cheek as is most of the movie.

I did enjoy this film plot holes included. This one was defiantly not made to be taken seriously. The acting was solid as was the editing and the movie itself looked polished enough for a low budget film. I give this movie a 6/10, a good watch if you have nothing else to do.

Late night double feature: Session 9 and The Grudge

Recently I was retrenched from my job of almost 3 years, and it really sucks. Blah blah blah etc etc. The crux of it is that I've lost a bit of motivation lately so I find myself sitting up drinking beer and watching movies/reading books long after I should have gone to bed. Bad for my youthful looks, good for this review site. Last night I had a late one which included watching football then going on to view a couple of movies I'd read were unsung horror classics of the 2000s.

Note: If you're about to scroll down looking for breasty pictures, please be aware in that neither of these movies included nudity or sex. They've been marked down accordingly.

 Session 9

Imagine a world where all horror movies included David Caruso as a lead actor. A lot of intensity, looking out of windows at nothing in particular and wearing sunglasses even after sunset. He'd have to be the softly spoken character with a nerve of steel and murky past. Why does he sleep in that van? Did kids at his school call him Bluey? What's with the implied but overlooked drug use plot line?

But I digress right from the start. Session 9 is actually a thriller set in an abandoned insane asylum and so named for a series of tapes found by one of the characters. Each of these tapes contains the recording of a doctor and former patient as they discuss her irrelevant mental condition and past crimes. The tapes are labelled sessions 1 to 9, with 9 being the ultimate reveal of her naughtiness. Session 9.  She's kind of crazy on the tapes with 3 seperate personalities that each take turns talking to the doctor. The princess represents innnocence, Billy is her protector and there's a third personality that embodies murderous rage. He only pops up on tape 9, surprise!  This whole plot line, beside giving the movie it's name, felt detached from the rest of the movie. It also failed to be creepy. In hindsight I'd have cut the whole she-bang and renamed this flick 'No-boob Asylum Movie'.

The other portion of the movie follows an asbestos cleanup crew as they push to get the asylum tidied up and ready for redevelopment. The crew is made up of David Caruso, a tired looking irish guy who doesn't drink or hit anyone randomly(initially), a young kid with a mullet, some hick character who stole Caruso's girlfriend and a smart guy who should be a lawyer but instead opted to clean up asbestos. Er, sure. I have a computer science degree but I'd rather clean sewers. If you can swallow that bullshit you're sure to love this movie.

In a nutshell, these characters are all shit. They have vague motivations, weak emotional responses and wander around doing random shit throughout the movie. The irish guy hit his wife when she spilled water on him, the hick finds treasure in the incinerator, the smart guy discovers those tapes, the kid likes loud music but is afraid of the dark and so on. As the movie slowly bores you to death it's portrayed as a supernatural flick - in that weird stuff happens, lights go off, sounds are heard and theres a scary chair upstairs.

Sweet baby Jesus! Make it stop!

The hick dude eventually goes to the asylum at night to collect his treasure and while there runs afoul of some one or some thing. Later in the movie he reappears but has lost the ability to form coherant sentences. He dissapears again and only the kid has seen him. Is he a ghost? I really didn't care. This sort of thing goes on for another half hour. Scary bits, people looking out windows, the irish guy gets angry. There's a brief moment where we suspect Caruso of being the bad guy but right at the end it turns out the irish guy actually killed his wife and baby when she spilled that hot water on him. This scene is showed over and over again in the course of the movie, each time slightly different to the last with the ultimate scene being him stabbing her and the kid to death. Nice guy. He then goes on to kill everyone else and the movie ends.

While not really a horror movie, Session 9 tries to present itself as one by having an asylum, scary (or not) tape recordings of a crazy person, people acting strangely and characters that might or might not be ghosts. In the end the tapes mean nothing, the ghost guy has just been lobotimised with an ice pick (for some reason) by Mr Irish, and all the weird behaviour can be attributed to the fuckwittedness of the characters. This movie was vapid and un-entertaining. The plot was fatuous. The dialogue didn't use as many important sounding words as I just did. In short, Session 9 will scare you right to sleep.

4/10

The Grudge

The Grudge is a remake of the well regarded Japanese horror movie, The Grudge. This movie is told piecemeal from the viewpoint of several characters, starting from pretty much the present day and going back into the past to show other characters.

In the beginning a young girl cares for an invalid woman until something in the attic kills her. This something is basically a pale woman with dark hair that covers most of her face, the emo ghost as I called it. The only thing I found scary was the prospect of her music and clothes taking the world by storm and making us all look like total wankers. The story rolls on. Some young thing, played by Buffy the vampire slayer, takes over the case of  the old lady and quickly experiences the naughty old emo ghost - and her son whom I'll only mention one more time in passing due to his complete irrelevance.

Just as a brief aside, I never understood what the attraction of Buffy was until I saw this movie. Sarah Michelle Gellar is pretty hot in a way I'm unable to describe; in the first scene my initial thought was 'look at her nose!', but that quickly devolved into an appreciation of other things. Is it the body, the emotive acting, nose envy? I don't know.

What follows is a showing of some past events. Another couple, business type man and his horse-faced wife, move into the house with his mother, the demented old lady. They're both killed in short order, leaving the old crone alone and in need of someone to help her. Business guy's sister is then killed off in her apartment after escaping from emo ghost in an office building. I'd like to say this was relevant or creepy but it was more like something a 6 year old is scared of and had no bearing on the story whatsoever.

Finally we come to the reason for the hauntings and murder (do ghosts commit murder?). Turns out emo ghost was once a flesh and blood woman married to some guy. Emo woman had an obsession with her old university professor and wrote him letter after letter outlining the depths of her stalker-ness. Jelly and rubber rockets were involved I believe. So anyway, the husband guy finds her obsession diary and goes crazy; killing emo lady, their son and even the cat. I'd like to mention the cat is killed in their bathroom, please insert wet pussy joke here. Husband hangs himself and this whole story is kicked off. Unfortunately. As an aside, professor guy comes by and sees the bodies then throws himself off a building. Professor guy was Bill Pullman so this can be viewed as a 'good thing'.

Back in the present, Buffy rushes to the house to save her doe eyed boyfriend - only to fail horribly and start a fire that burns his body along with the ghost. Oh wait, no she doesn't. The firemen come along and put the fire out, so emo ghost is free to kill and kill again. Movie ends with the ghost standing behind Buffy, probably on the cusp of making a cutting remark. Cut to credits. Get it - cutting, emo? No? Ok, roll score.

4/10 - The Grudge is not a frightening film, nor is it an interesting film. It falls onto the heap that includes overrated crap like The Ring and Session 9, medicore movies that do nothing new and throw up 'scares' not fit for anyone over the age of 6. I've seen scarier episodes of Land Before Time. Littlefoot, watch out for the sharptooth! SNAP! Er, TV off now kids.

I'm really sad because the music told me to be!

These guys are happy because they haven't wasted their night watching two shitty movies. Lucky bastards.

Big Trouble for Raptor

Today I will be reviewing one of my favourite films and a classic, yeah that’s right a classic, forget you Gone with the Wind, out your ass King and I this is Raptors classic and that one is Big Trouble in Little China. Queue synthesiser music.

Is someone here is a little under dressed?

This movie was directed by John Carpenter and has his signature all over it. From the now iconic synthesiser music that he is noted for to the creatures and goolies he has peppered through out this. Hi direction is spot on and considering it’s a side step from his usual horror fair it is a pretty impressive effort. The pacing ticks along nicely and the editing keeps it all tied together which could have easily caused this to fall apart or get bogged down with all the Chinese mysticism, legends and folk lore. This was kept to a minimum and mainly for comedic effect. The dialogue is snappy and the acting is good.

Feel my gaze of shiny!

Now past all that the real star her is Kurt Russel as Jack Burton. In my book there are only two rolls that Kurt Russel will ever need to play, one is Snake Plisskin from Escape from New York the other is Jack Burton. Who? “Jack Burton, me”. Kurt Russel turned this truck drive from ho-hum to a wise cracking, ego inflated hero who is just in the wrong place at the wrong time but now he’s going to get the job done. His character spews’ quotable lines like it’s going out of fashion such as the great opening monologue “have ya paid your dues?” The repour between Kurt Russel and Dennis Duns who plays Wang Chi is perfect. Wang Chi is Jacks friend and the guy who manages to rope him into all the trouble he just wants to avoid. The romantic interest, Gracey Law played by Kim Cattrall. A feisty and no mucking about lawyer out for the greater good and also trouble with a capital T! Now who is the bad guy in this? Lo Pan!...wait let’s add some more of them exclamation marks for good effect Lo Pan!!!!! Acted out with devilish flair by James Hong. Lo Pan is an evil sorcerer cursed by an Emperor and demon to live in undeath until he can find a girl with green eyes to appease him and the demon. Lo Pans nemesis is Egg Shen (Victor Wong), he knows everything there is to know about Lo Pan and has been trying to thwart his evil plans from the get go…or at least as long as he has know about him.

I think the white guy farted.

The story starts with Jack meeting up with Wang in San Francisco and after a card game gone wrong heads over to pick up Wangs’ fiancé. When she is kidnapped at the airport they wind up in an alley with him in his truck amidst a turf war between two rival Chinese gangs. Soon it all get’s weird and Lo Pans minions turn up, The Three storms, Thunder, Wind (must not make fart jokes) and lightning then finally Lo Pan himself. Jacks truck is stolen and it’s up to him and Co. to get the truck and girl back while shaking the pillars of heaven.

The SFX while still pretty good, are a little dated but that’s a minor point, there is no nudity (boo) and no gory effects or anything like that and in this case who needs them. This movie is fun, filled with hokey action, memorable characters and a great watch for anyone who is looking some martial arts, monster and bang kapow adventure. I give this one an 8.5/10

The Descent (2005)

A bunch of over-enthusiastic, under-skilled women go on a caving trip together to help move long the healing process of Sarah, a close friend who lost her husband and daughter in a car accident 12 months ago. Long story short, they get lost in the caves and killed off by a bunch of proto-humans called crawlers, though I don't remember them being referred to as such in the movie. In part, the women turn out to be their own worst enemies and the final score is something like Crawlers: 4, Humans: 2, as the girls manage to kill each other off both accidentally and through terrible revenge! Well done humanity, 2 hours in a cave and out come the knives.

"I am become death. I feel the spirit of Sigorney Weaver channelling through me!

I quite liked how several of the women had a moment of panic when initially trapped and attacked, then hardened the fuck up to go on a monster killing rampage. Very British. Had this been an American movie the group would have included a chisel jawed man to rescue their useless arses and a black ex-navy seal that taught them all the meaning of life through drinking your own urine and building a catapult from stones. He'd be killed meaninglessly. Back to the actually movie; some of the women go to pieces, some are terrified but keep it together and a couple just go Ellen Ripley bat-shit crazy. Two thumbs and perhaps something else up.

Overall, performances were good and the creatures believable. Gore was moderate when compared to Feast or Dawn of the Dead, but well done. No complaints there. The direction was tight and camera work quite stunning at times, I could really relate to the women imagine just how difficult it would be to keep your shit together in tunnels no higher than the length of their forearm. In fact, at least half of the tension and drama is drawn from the caving experience and environment, with the crawlers only showing up in the last third of the movie to really fuck things over.

The actresses aren't known to me but I particularly enjoyed the characters portrayed by Saskia Mulder and Nora-Jane Noone (of Doomsday vintage). These two acted like real people with natural reactions to everything around them and I appreciated their work.

As you may have read in the past, the ending is a bit arse - especially when you know the basic plot of the upcoming sequel. Sarah escapes and we see her drive to safety, then she's back in the cave again and the escape was all a dream. I don't enjoy that style of ending but in fairness she isn't actually killed, it's merely suggested as she lies in a dark cave with the cries of the crawlers growing louder and louder. Well here's the spoiler, she survives to lead the sequel. Apparently in the North American release that whole dream sequence was dropped anyway so her escape was a given.

To sum up:

The Descent - good old suspense with plenty of gore and decent monsters. 7/10