Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

That's right, a cartoon. I mean an animated feature. A little detour from the horror, porn-like gore fests and adult comedies we normally deal with. So, why? What am I doing reviewing a kids movie? Does it have adult undertones, no. Does it have adult humor, not really. Does it have some cool animation, yes. Did it make me laugh a lot, yes. And that's why this movie is being reviewed - I often lament to myself that movies just don't make me laugh anymore. Quite often I see the humor and I'm amused, but not much makes me laugh out loud.  This did, several times.

Mustache...

Meatballs (as I will call it from now on) is a weird little movie carrying several little themes - friendship, family, achieving your dreams, being yourself. But mostly it's just funny. In a nutshell, the key character, Flint, invents a machine that can make food from water. While trying to draw electricity directly from the power station to make it work properly, the machine flies off into the sky and stays there like a little satellite. Soon after it rains hamburgers. To the people of the town, stuck eating sardines for years, this is mana from heaven - twice as tasty but just as farcical. Flint is ordered to make it rain food every day, for every meal, so the town can promote themselves as the new tourist mecca of gastronomy. Naturally it goes butt up and the machine begins making bigger and bigger food. So it's up to Flint and his friends to fly into a food storm and save the world.

I have the voice of Mr T. Game over.

It's a movie of two distinct halves. The very amusing and entertaining first half, and the more action oriented second half. The first half is by far the more entertaining, which isn't to say the conclusion was bad...it just lost a little steam and went down the traditional 'man vs mutated foods' path. Of particular note in the humor department are the monkey (who loves mustaches), Flint, and his father - for whom everything is a fishing metaphor.

Flint and father...testing a new invention. Hair un-balder I think it was.

So that's my review. I watched this with my 2 year old and it made for a delightful distraction from disembowelments, gun shot wounds and bare breasts. We had a great time and I wager you will too.

8.5/10

A spaghetti twister. Tasty and deadly all at once.

ps. It has the voice talents of Bruce Campbell AND Mr T. That's right. So go watch it.

pps I also watched Up recently. It was good, but not as good as this movie.

A tasty serve of movie with entertainment sauce

Raptor looks at Sin in the City

I’m a big fan of Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller. I remember when I heard this was in the works I was pretty excited. Just this week I watched it again and bam it’s still as cool as a glacier in a shot glass.

Rodriguez took Frank Millers graphic novels and literally transferred them to the big screen in a stylised, black and white and almost panel for panel in some instances. It’s beautifully rendered with splashes of colour that are used as highlights and focus points. It doesn’t skimp on the violence either with stabbings, shootings, severed heads and dismemberments.

Yes black and white makes us look cooler

The story is really 3.5 stories rolled into one. It starts with short story of “The customer is always right”, blink and you’ll miss it. We then get the first part of “That yellow bastard” about a hard boiled cop Harington (great job by Bruce Willis) who is tracking down a little girl who was kidnapped by raping paedophile/murder days before his retirement due to a heart condition.  Having cornered the perk Junior on a pier finds out he’s the son of some Big Wig and his parter steps in to try and stop him and cover up the fact. Harington takes care of his partner and puts a few bullets into Juniors crotch and hand for good measure. The next story “The Hard Goodbye” has Mickey Rourke who is almost unrecognisable as Marv a thug of a man who is framed for the murder of Goldie the one person who had ever shown him some compassion. So he begins a violent investigation that eventually leads to the Cardinal Roark (Rutger Hauer) who is hiding his secret, a cannibalistic killer Kevin played by unnervingly by Elijah Wood who feeds on the prostitutes of the city.

The red makes Jamie Kings boobies look perkier

We then move to the third story “The Big Fat Kill”. Tough guy Dwight (Clive Owen) gets involved with Jackie Boy (Benicio del Toro) and with Gail (Rosario Dawson) leader of the Old Town Prostitutes kill him and find out too late he is a cap. Trying to hide the body the wraith of the law descends upon them and they desperately try to figure a way out. The last story “That Yellow Bastard” Picks up from the second story 8 years later where we see Harington discovers that Nancy is now a 19yr old stripper (yes she is Jessica Alba and she is hoooot). Too late he finds out that Junior, who now looks like a yellow fatso has been following him to track down Nancy. Then he has to protect her and possibly with his life.

I want to be Jessica Albas horse

So there, those are the stories and the as you can see from above there is a really strong cast and they give a great performance. I loved the hard boiled pulp detective novels dialogue and the tongue and sarcastic humour peppered through out this. The stories link together seamlessly, with characters from earlier parts appearing in later ones or mentioned in some way which creates an overall continuity.

You'd better be paying me triple for this!

Some of the action and violence could be a little over the top, reality really is not grounded here and as much as I did love the dialogue a few times I even rolled my eyes but that was rarely.

In the end I just dug the style and flat out coolness of this movie. I give it an 8.5/10 with a bullet in the eye.

Raptor Goes Mad as a Hatter

I had been looking forward to Tim Burtons Alice in Wonderland for some time and I have to say it did meet my expectations but did it exceed them? Well yes and no.

This is not the traditional Alice in Wonderland story but takes places a number of years later when Alice is set to be betrothed to some up himself lord. She panics and following the White Rabbit finds the hole to Wonder Land or Lower Land as it’s called in the movie. It seems it was foretold she would come back, slay the jabberwocky and save the realm from the red Queen. With the help of the Mad Hatter and he white queen she finds the courage to accept her destiny and face her fated foe. Roll tape.

I think I need to lock the doors to my house if these people showed up.

Alice in Wonderland boasts a huge cast. Alice is played by the pretty Mia Wasikowska who was born in Australia my home turf.  She plays Alice as a girl trying to find herself and confused by the reoccurring dreams of Wonderland. She really does play the heroin quite well with no pretentiousness at all and by the end I was really cheering for her to get that Jabberwocky. I think she is going to be an actress to look for if she keeps up her performances as she has in this movie.  Now to one of my favourite actors, Johnny Depp who was cast as the Mad Hatter, really who else would you cast? I liked what he did with the character, played as a bipolar mad man who wavers between a simpering tailor of hats to his alter ego a frighteningly psychotic Scotsman barely holding back his rage. This was further enhanced by the yellow contact lenses he wore through his portrayal. A nice touch was also the black that grew around his eyes as he swung further towards his more violent side. You could actually judge how much he was affected by the amount of black around his eyes. Others of note were the Red Queen played bitchingly by Helena Bonham Carter. That big head of hears really did tilt the world one more step towards madness, her courtesans even wore fake ears, noses or stomachs to appease her love of  um…big things. The Knave of Hearts, her consort and somewhat champion was played by the underrated Crispin Glover. Manipulative and power hungry, Crispin brought enough realism to the performance so that it didn’t appear cartoonish which could have easily happened. Also Anne Hathaway was great as the white queen, she played with with such cheek that it put a smile on my face...and she is hot which helps. What? Sorry zoned out.

Excuse me, I need to dress up as the white king for some cos-play.

The performances by all means were the strongest part of this movie. This was by no small part due to Tim Burtons immaculate direction who always seems to get the best out of the actors under his hand. He also gave the movie his stamp, with the stylised gothic elements mixed with flamboyant swaths of techocolour not to mention some macabre scenes such as the moat around the Red Queens castle filled with floating heads of those that had displeased her.

Oh god, the drugs! The faces, the little girl with the teeth!

Most of the SFX  were CGI generated but it was done really well. I watched this in 3D and it did look good but it probably wasn’t necessary. I would still recommend it without the 3D although it does draw you into battle scenes somewhat. Their were a multitude of creatures and denizens of Wonderland animated such as the Red queens guards, the talking animals, flowers etc but the two most prominent would have to have been the Bandersnatch a squat cat like creature with a shark tooth grin and the Jabberwocky who’s image I’ve always found to be bizarre. Here it’s not so much buck toothed as it is deadly predator. As a point of interest the Jabberwocky was voiced by Christopher Lee. How about that.

Alice in Wonderland wasn’t perfect. The story did meander at times in the middle and there was a stupid scene with a dance that Johnny Depp does at the end. Why God why? Anyway al minor notes. Really. I liked this film. I give it an 8/10.

Short Sharp Review:

Quickly, I also watched Richard Kellys’ The Box (Previously reviewed by the esteemed Gavor). What started off interestingly enough turned into a “what the fuck” pointless ending with a convoluted plot trying to explain the “what the fuck” ending. It could have been better but ah well. I’ll just put on Donny Darko. I gave this one 4/10.

Movie round-up #3

Today I bring a movie round-up of the many average flicks I've endured (plus a couple of ok ones) over the last month. I accept your thanks in advance for sifting through the junk and saving you the time wasted viewing some of the rubbish below. 

The Box

Another mediocre effort from the guy who gave us Donnie Darko. The Box puts to us the premise that a young couple is delivered a box with a big red button on it and pressing the button will grant them 1 millions dollars. Great you say, but of course there's a catch. Pressing the button gives them 1 million dollars but also kills someone they don't know. In the end, it's all a big test by aliens (of course) to see whether the human race is worth saving or if we're all greedy little fucks. Suffice to say that everyone seems to press the button. The other catch is that the unknown person who dies is the last person to have pressed the button, so you get your million but you're pretty much guaranteed to die soon anyway. There's a bit more too it and I thought that at least the end was logical, but otherwise The Box is average. Starring Cameron Diaz and some guy.

5/10





Fire in the sky

A bunch of hicks head out to chop wood and run into a spaceship. Probably more interesting if you're into fairies and UFOs, but I'm not. Based upon the ravings of a real person whose story about alien abduction has been pretty much debunked over the years. Amusing but ultimately not worth the time unless you're short a few dozen IQ. The bit on the alien ship is well done and by far the most entertaining. Starring the terminator who could turn into liquid metal.

5/10

 



The Mothman Prophecies

Apologies in advance, I watched this movie late at night so some details are fuzzy. Richard Gere stars as a guy who, years after his wife's death, starts experiencing odd things. He goes for a drive one night and somehow ends up many hundreds of kilometers away in a different state. Like with teleportation and shit, or something. Anyhow, that's not important. The town he ends up in has experienced many weird things. A 'Mothman' appears to some people and gives warnings of future happenings to others. Gere's wife appears to communicate with him, I think. There's also a premonition of something to do with a river and many deaths. In the end a bridge collapses but through his choices and actions, a youngish female cop whom he flirted with throughout the movie doesn't drown. The end. I kind of liked this movie, it was well made and just a touch creepy. I expected more scary based on the reviews I'd read but it will probably depend on your fear tolerance.

7/10





Battle Royale

A bunch of Japanese schoolkids are put on an island with random weapons and commanded to kill one another. The last survivor will be released, but if there is no result after a specified time frame they will all die when the collars they wear explode. This movie explores what depths people will sink too when fighting for survival and how the dictums of law and society are sometimes the only things keeping certain people fro doing as they please - in the case killing all the people they dislike. There's a decent ending and some good characterisation here, though the ending is overly drawn out. Battle Royale gets a thumbs up as well.

6/10



The 4th kind

Junk. An interesting premise but laughingly put together. Another movie based on the 'real-life' accounts of a few crackpots. Not at all believable and even worse, it's presented as an actual documentary - 'real' footage and recordings interspersed with reenactments, sometimes side by side in split screen for reasons that can only be 'arty'. The fourth kind title comes from their being different levels of alien contact as specified by the FBI (or was it CIA), from first kind to fourth kind. The movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind uses the same designations. 'Starring' Milla Jovovich.

3/10

Raptor Sees a Blood Moon

Blood Moon Rising is a flick that could have done with a bigger budget and probably a better cast since the story was actually interesting. It involved a cursed couple who are transformed into a werewolf and vampire by some she bitch Vampire because she had the hots for the guy (Vampire).  The she bitch gets killed and buried but a clause in the curse states that she will rise again if the girl(werewolf) is killed and using a Necrenomicon type book open a gate to hell. Oh, her fathers the devil. Add some vampire bikes, zombies created from the wolf bite and the cast from a horror movie shoot and it’s general mayhem.

This poster looks cooler than what the movie actually does....why God why!?!

This poster looks cooler than what the movie actually does....why God why!?!

The movie was filmed with a grind house style even with annoying loss of voice sections, man that was annoying since it happened like 3-4 times. I’m sure once would have been enough. They also used the old dust hair on the screen, missing footage and burn out scene tricks too. I didn’t mind them so much.

The actors generally went from bad to ok. I guess the Darrell Lee (Neal Trout) the soda shop teller was probably the highlight as a comic obsessed gun carrying idiot. Although the surprise was Ron Jeremy who shows up as a sleazy producer and promptly gets eaten by zombies. Way to go.

The CGI that was in this was pretty average. It wasn’t used to much but when it was it mediocre. There was a lot of practical blood and guts and head exploding done which was pretty good. Some of the devils at the end looked like they were out of the World of Porn Craft back lot. Especially bad was the werewolf. Man was that a crappy looking werewolf. Let me not explain it other than to use the word craptacular. Also anyone bitten by the werewolf gets teeth. The only way you can tell a werewolf from a vampire is they also have fangs on the bottom row. That’s it.

Reiterating this move would be great with more money thrown in. I mean it had zombies, werewolves, demons and vampires.….oh yes and some booby shots. What more could you want? More money I guess.  I give this one a 4.5/10.