Raptor Sees it's Broken

There are movies that you expect to be pretty crappy which then turn out to be  pretty not crappy. The Broken, was one of those movies. I sat down to watch it and really was not pay to much attention for the first ten or fifteen mins. Then it got weird during a strange dream/flashback sequence and suddenly I was like WTF was that? Now I swear I will never look at a mirror the same way again, especially the sound of a breaking mirror.

Oh yeah, why you look 100% better with um...makeup

The story revolves around Gina McVey, played by the very hot Headey Lena (from 300), who after an accident and memory loss of events before it starts to believe that her partner is not who he is and has been replaced. As the story slowly evolves in an almost J Horror style we a picture builds up that shows an invasion of sorts. People having chest Xrays have their hearts on the opposite side than normal. This is rare. We get mirrors breaking for no know reason; until finally we find that something is coming through the mirrors. Doppelgangers of sorts and they kill the person they imitate and take over their lives Now I have probably spoiled of lot of the surprises for you, well it’s not the first time.

I’ve never heard of the Director/Writer Sean Ellis but he seems to have an eye for setting a scene up and uses European like slow takes the build these up. One creepy scene is a shot of the other side of the mirror. It’s pitch black with the only light coming from the mirror itself. This seems to be a clue as to why they want out. Another great scene plays out with Ginas father standing before a pitch dark doorway, then from the darkness behind him the face of his doppelganger appear and turns to look at him. It was moments like this that sealed it for me.

The pacing on this film is slow and if you’re not the patient sort this could bore you but if you don’t mind the slow build up it pays off. The reason for this “invasion” is never really explained and revolves around Ginas slowly returning memories. Also the ending is fairly open which a lot of people won’t like but I didn’t mind at all. There is nudity (Yay) and a couple of kill scenes but overall nothing too gory. The Broken appealed to me and in the end I give it a 7.5/10.

Raptors Hellraising Experience

Today I have two Hellraiser movies for you. Hellraiser: Deader and Hellraiser: Hell World so lets continue on with my special thought on part 7 and 8 of this blood soaked series.

Oh crap, another splinter

Hellraiser: Deader revolves around a journalist who investigates a cult called the Deaders when a video tape is sent to her office showing a girl being killed then resurrected. The journalist, played by Kari Wuhrer who I last remember being in Sliders and still pretty hot, eventually tracks down the Deaders amidst warnings from Pinhead that they are raising an army and are a threat to him. Honestly, what kind of a threat are a bunch of resurrected wannabes to a demonic S&M hook throwing leather fetishist. The movie set a moody atmosphere but in the end the pay off was a little drab. Also the Cenobites hardly appeared at all. You got Pinhead making a warning or two early on then they appear at the end to clean things up as usual and that’s it…I mean sure the nudity was there in the film but there wasn’t anything to surprising in this one. The acting was solid enough and there is a little killing here and there but it’s a pale comparison to some of it’s predecessors. I gave it 6/10.

Hellraiser: Hell World, I have a bit of a gripe with this one. All I can say is this wasn’t a Hellraiser movie. This was some slasher movies with Hellraiser themes tacked on to it. You could have easily removed all the Hellraiser elements from it and would have still had roughly the same movie. Basically the story revolves around a group of 20somethings who played an online game called Hell World and one of them died. 2 years later they are then invited a Hellraiser party by the host played by Lance Henriksen. I wont give it away too much but it’s pretty obvious that Lance knows the kid and he takes out the gang in let’s say by the use of fear. There is also some nudity in this one, it can’t be all bad and the actors while mostly attractive enough could have been anyone really. They also do dumb things like at one point one of the girls is trying to get the attention of a cop outside a window but the cops can’t see her. Try breaking the window maybe? You have a whole room full of crap to do it with. What about sticking your hand in some cracks in the floor boards? Yeah that always turns out to be a good idea. Anyway, this would have all been ok but my stickler is that it’s NOT a Hellraiser movie. I don’t care what wrapping paper you used. I give this one 5/10.

Gavor's movie round-up #2

Over the last week I've been busy selling cars and my house in preparation for le grande trip around Australia. Because of this I haven't had my usual spare time to find and watch movies so here's a round-up of the movies I've watched lately (and that I don't want to devote the space to full reviews).

Planet Terror

Robert Rodriguez's underwhelming zombie movie as part of the Grindhouse feature collaboration with Tarentino. It's okay, but having just watched Dawn of the Dead(both original and remake) it pales in comparison. Good for a couple of beers and a bag of popcorn.

5/10

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Takes all the subtext about consumerism and throws it in the bin then goes on to make a pretty decent movie about zombies. There are a couple of slow moments and not all of the acting works but I still enjoyed it. The grim ending leaves things open to interpretation, which is my kind of grim ending. Not as good as the original, but pretty close. The trailer below is rubbish and doesn't represent the movie well at all.

8/10

Shaun of the Dead

Funny zombies done right, and with a pretty good soundtrack too. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost work well together (and continued to do so in Hot Fuzz),  fingers crossed for more amusing collaborations in the future. Throw in Dylan Moran as a complete tosser plus the future Prime Minister of England as Shaun's mum and you have a great movie about zombies taking over London.

8.5/10

Drag me to Hell

Terrible, cliched shit with no laughs, no scares and almost no gore. I gave up about two thirds of the way through and skipped to the end. She dies. The end. Thank fuck for that. Someone please ask Mr Raimi to stop making movies.

2/10

Raptor is a Bastard

Every now and then there is a movie that’s just fun to watch. Inglorious Bastards is one of those movies. Directed and Written by Quinten Tarantino, like him or hate him you know you’re going to get a movie that isn’t like the rest. Tarantino has put together a cast of charismatic bastards that really step up to the plate and hit a home run. The movie is set in during World War II occupied France and the Americans have sent over a group of elite soldiers called the Inglorious Bastards, so named by the Germans. Well just The Bastards to them really. The bastards are sent on a mission to kill a number of German Officers at a movie Theatre screening a terrible German propaganda film about a Private Frederick Zoller, a sniper and war hero who killed over 300 enemy soldiers over 3 days. The movie pretty much just shows one sniper kill after another. The Bastards find out that Hitler and his inner circle are going to be attending the screening so the mission becomes more important and much more risky.

Do these pants make me look fat?

We begin the story with a French family hiding a Jewish family. In comes Col. Hans Landa “The Hunter” played brilliantly by Christoph Waltz as a cunning, charming and flamboyant self serving Nazi Jew hunter. The scene and dialogue where he corners the French farmer into revealing the Jewish family is truly masterful. He orders his men to kill the Jewish family but one of the daughters manages to flee. This is Shosanna Freyfus (Melanie Laurent) who becomes the owner of the theatre and has her own designs of finishing of the Nazis leaders by burning down the theatre.

Gun and bat? I think he is over compensating?

The Bastards are lead by Lt. Aldo Raine played hilariously by Brad Pitt as a chin thrust out no nonsense military man with an American Indian blood line. With his band and his second in command Sgt Donny Donowitz, the club beating “Bear Jew” played by Eli Roth they start a campaign of gorilla warfare designed to unnerve the Germans. I would have to say Pitt and Roth probably have the funniest scene in the movie with a “Who speaks the best Italian” skit.

When they are asked to meet an undercover contact, Bridget von Hammersmark (Dianne Kruger) a famous German movie actress, a British officer, Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), is sent in with two of the bastards. Things don’t go as planned when they find that a there is a small party in the tavern selected for the meeting for a German Staff Sergeant becoming a father and also cunning SS Officer. The fire fight that ensures leaves everyone dead but Hammersmark. Unfortunately the aftermath ends up being investigated by Col. Hans Landa who puts a snag in their grand plot.  Speaking of dead, I would have liked to have seen more of Michael Fassbender with the almost Ian Fleming style British officer but alas eggs had to be broken.

Hi, I'm 5ft 8'' arian features, like long walks on the beach and oh I'm a Nazi.

Back to Christoph Waltz, he is in my mind the centre of this movie, you could say its Melanie Laurent but she paled in comparison to the performance given by Laurent. He was so likeable that I kept thinking man this guys is going to get you but hey so what! He’s the man. This is when he is in control and has all his moves planned out but as one scene shows with Hammersmark he can be extremely violent and irrational when betrayed.

Visually the movie is spectacular and the costumes and settings are very authentic. The violence goes from violent to over the top. There are club beatings, Scalping (The Bastards trademark) and yes gun fights and explosions and frankly all good fun. The script is rattles along at a good pace and the only real problem is the size of the cast. You may want to see more of one character but being so many some of them obviously some get left on the cutting room floor. Still after all that I have to say that the best parts of Inglorious Bastards is the dialogue between characters which in my mind tend to be clever without becoming pretentious.


Inglorious Bastards is a great World War II action movie, a great script and great actors. I give this one 8.5/10. Blow the next thing up thanks.

Humanity's End (2009)

A great example of how far we've come with CGI when a movie can (at times) look so good but play so badly.

Cool fonts, things blowing up and someone in a welding mask....so far so good.

Humanity's End (YouTube trailer) promised so little yet delivered slightly more than expected. Far off in the future of a cliche story involving too many races, sub-races and plot holes - homo sapiens is wiped out by the Nephilim. The Nephilim are a race that evolved parallel to homo sapiens but always strived to grind humans under their heel. After being destroyed, coming back, being destroyed again and coming back again,  the Nephilimhave teamed up with Homo Technis(I think) to destroy all humans. Homo Technis is an off shoot of homo sapiens, their street name being the Konstructs. Throw in some bio engineered races and bio engineered robots (not clear on the distinction) and you've got a movie that tries to do too much with too little yet succeeds at creating some, at-times, impressive visuals regardless.

Did I say humans were wiped out? Well mostly. Two survivors, a breeder and a mercenary captain, team up with another woman who thinks she's human but turns out to be a robot, plus a bio engineered bald guy and a ship called Blue. They fly to Mars with the purpose of finding weapons that turn out to be of no consequence to the plot, then manage to destroy the entire Nephilim fleet with a single fighter (their big ass ship being all crashed on the planet). Also, the Konstructs are now humanity's friend as part of a suddenly revealed double cross by the Konstructs against the Nephilim. Could have sprung the surprise BEFORE killing all other humans. Oh and the mercenary guy is killed at the end. His character was rubbish and his acting poor so it didn't matter so much. I was a touch sader when Blue, the computer, was taken offline.

While on the topic of acting, I must say I struggled to detect any. There was talking at each other, bad emoting, fake crying, a laughable sex scene(but in fairness I think it was supposed to be) - but no actual acting or character building.

The effects on the other hand were plentiful and generally well executed. Given the low budget there was obviously a mix of good and bad, but for the money they got some decent sets and many many effects. Ships, explosions, more ships, guns, more ships. All externals shots were quite attractive and the ships well realised, however the explosions and some of the incidental effects came out pretty awful. Overall, plenty of eye candy and most of it good.

I'd be interested to see what the same studio could do with more money. My sincere wish is that it'd free them not only to create more and flashier effects but also pay some decent actors and buy a proper script. That's a movie I wouldn't mind watching, the world needs more sci-fi movies with ships, explosions and humorous one-liners. Throw out the fucking subtext and intense stares and throw in more leather pant and cleavage. There, done.

No boobs, no acting but lots of decent effects (remembering the budget).

5/10

Raptor gets out of the Crypt

The Crypt seems to be a movie that is trying to be a new take on Descent but doesn’t achieve quite what it’s planned out to do. It involves a group of criminals, who after a car jacking gone wrong decide to go for a bigger and safer heist by stealing jewels from an old early 1900s crypt. So they wonder down and soon find themselves trapped. Gasp! Who would have thought that would happen? So now they are stuck underground and stealing jewels and the spirits of the dead are killing them one by one.

It plays by the numbers. If you seen one escape from a haunted house/cave/paper bag movie then you’ve probably seen this. The acting, while not terrible, wasn’t what you’d call great and the script seemed to have a few too many plot holes such as one of the characters saying that the dead are killing them because they have the jewels. So they dump the jewels but after all her speech about jewels are bad she decides to keep some…WTF! Get rid of it you moron!

The ghosts were reasonably cool with glowing eyes but again nothing too spectacular. It tried to setup some creepy moments which were hit and miss probably because by this point I didn’t really care if they lived or not and was rooting for the ghosts. One or two of the kills weren’t too bad such as the hand down throat but most involved the cast getting dragged away and that’s it.


In the end I wasn’t overly impressed. There was a booby shot at the beginning so that put up the score a little which was 4.5/10. Blah, watch it if you have nothing else to do.