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 This has caused him to be withdrawn and lonely which was made worse when his father, who he looked up to, died earlier in his life.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.

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?

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.

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.


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.

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.

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.

Raptors Breaking his Day

Daybreakers goes on a great premise, the world has been converted to Vampires and there are only a few humans left. This is a problem for Vampires since they need blood to survive….because they are Vampires see. It’s just like if all the cows in the world suddenly died how would we get our Macas? McTofu burger anyone?

It's really not the Matrix and 28 days later at all....FYI Yo!

So the Vampires go about farming humans for blood but knowing this isn’t sustainable they also look for a blood substitute. This has not gone well like exploding of said vampire not gone well. Charles Bromley (Sam Neil) is head of the corporation which farms the blood and his lead scientist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawk) is the lead scientist working on the blood substitute. Dalton has become disillusioned with his failures and when he runs into a group of human survivors led by Audrey Bennett (Claudia Karvan) and decides to help them. Bennett takes them to Lionel Cormac (Willem Dafoe) who is leader of a camp of survivors. He used to be a Vampire but cured himself by accident using….THE POWER OF THE SUN….yes that’s right. Now Dalton is trying to replicate this. Oh vampires that don’t get blood for a long while go feral and turn into these half bat creatures.

I'm soooo pretty! Oh so pretty. So pretty and witty and gaaaaay.

Daybreakers is directed by the brothers Peter and Michael Spierig who brought us Undead and is largely and Australian production. It’s quite polished and has a very dark dystopian feel to it, sort like Ethan Hawks older movie Gattica.  Ethan Hawk and Dafoe put some effort into in to their characters and Sam Neil is quite insidious as Bromley, he seems to do subtle evil pretty well. Must be all that practice at being the Anti-Christ from Omen 3. Claudia Karvan gives us some female acting muscle here. We also get Vince Colosimo as a scientist here. What? Wasn’t he in the Wog Boy? Ok what ever. Finally with a minor part we get Isabel Lucas the girl that played the sex transformer chick from Transformers 2. She’s basically eye candy. All in all the performances were adequate. I wouldn’t call this Oscar wining acting but good enough.

Isabel Lucas. Role: Eye Candy.

On the Special FX side we do get some crazy bat vampires. There are explosions, car chases, gun fights, a few bodies getting ripped up and lots of blood. There are also some freakish scenes of vampires lining up for Coffee/blood or kid vampires just hanging, as you do or peoples eyes lighting up when the lights go out breifly waiting for a train.
I did like the plot overall. It grabbed me more towards the end when the true version of the cure was show but I’d have to say the last 2-3 minutes kind of spoiled it some. It was if they wanted to tie off the loose ends. It was virtually the last few mins. They didn’t need that.
Overall the Daybreakers was quite watchable with some good ideas put on screen and some competent acting. I give it a 7/10.

Centurion (2010)

I'm not sure how to review Centurion: on the one hand it's a basic action/travel tale movie with gratuitous violence from the 300 mould and little to no plot, direction, ending or character development.  On the other hand it's all of the above things. You can view those points as negatives if you're looking for the next Mulholland Drive, or positives if you want to kill a couple of hours watching grown men in costumes chop each other arms off. Personally I took a bit of a positive view, and it paid off. I had never heard of Centurion until after watching The Expendables and reading reviews with comparisons between the two i.e. no plot, no characterisation, lots of loud noises and death. Ever the fan of Romans (especially after the epic Spartacus) I was sold on the idea and signed up.

It doesn't matter what's going on here, you only need to know that gratuitous killing is but moments away.

Centurion is a movie of many disjointed parts. Characters come and go, the story has no direction and we're never quite sure what this is all about. It's kind of good in that a few cliches are avoided, such as a big battle of retribution at the end or portraying either side as the real bad guys. It's kind of bad in that the movie ends and you wonder what is was all about. The answer is sword porn. Centurion is really only an excuse to take swords waved at people and lots of limbs sliced off. The methods of slaughter depicted are many and varied: decapitation, lots of throat cutting, disembowelment, stabbed, stabbed with a spear, clubbed, burned and so on. It's done quite well except for that overwrought blood thing from 300.

Quintus, just moments away from gutting another faceless extra

None of the actors excel and none of the chicks are especially hot. We have Michael Fassbender as the titular good guy Centurion Quintus Dias, Liam Cunningham from Dog Soldiers as a guy called Brick, Olga Kurylenko as the main bad guy...or girl as it is here, Noel Clarke from Dr Who as token black guy with very non-period accent, and Imogen Poots from 28 Weeks Later as some girl who lives in the woods.


Ultimately, Centurion is a drinks night movie or something best enjoyed while a little un-sober. It doesn't matter in the end whether the story made sense (or even existed), because I don't think it was supposed to. As an exercise in simple entertainment, Centurion has achieved it's objective.

6/10

Summary: An action winner with no substance past the opening credits. Leave brain at the door but bring in your 6-pack.