Raptor becomes Immortal

 

 So back from Gavor and my hiatus I had to decide what would be my come back review. Well how about Greek Mythology. Let’s hit that! Wait! No I mean…ok poor choice of words.

I was pretty exited about seeing this due to no small fact that it resembled Zack Snyder’s 300. I mean the trailer had all this fighting and a bow that shoots glowing arrows and wait there was fighting and let’s not forget the fighting.

 

 

The story starts off with Theseus played by Henry Cavill who has been getting awesome Kung-Fu skills under the tutelage of a disguised Zeus (ok not kung-fu just battle skills still awesome). Living by a sea side community set in some cliffs, little do they know that King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) is looking for the Epirus Bow and his army is going to go straight through them on their way to Mount Tartarus to release the Titans. He had previously kidnapped the oracle Phaedra (Freida Pinto) and her maids to help him but they refused. Anyway Theseus gets captured, escapes with oracle and the thief Stavros (Stephen Dorff, Yeah I know right! The Dorf! What the hell!) and locate the bow in the Minotaurs’ Labrynith but it gets stolen by Hyperion and so off then off to the big battle at the mountain. Now Zeus forbids the Gods to interfere in the quest but alas the Gods are rambunctious and scantly clad porn stars except for Athena (Isabel Lucas) who is hot and Zeus gets all mad and kills one of them so the gods get all sad and angst ridden. Yes, the worst kind of angst. The one in the pants. That means the heroes end up on there own. Gasp!

 
 Immortals was directed by Tarsem Singh who also directed The Cell. If you have seen that you can see a lot of his signature on this. There are a lot of dream like sequences and imagery that looks like it has been taken out of a renaissance painting depicting idealised Gods and heroes. That probably explains why most of the men run around bare chested. It is a visual feast for the eyes but it can be distracting at times. As far as the performances go, Cavill was fine as Thesues. He did try a heroic morale raising speech towards the end but it felt pretty forced. I liked Rourke as Hyperion, he was a brutish bastard who didn’t give a fuck what the Gods thought and did everything he could to let them know of it. Good job there. Dorff played a side kick and he did it well. Freida Pinto was basically eye candy. She really didn’t do much at all. The gods themselves were just lack luster for most of the movie, except at the end when they were kickin’ it with the Titans or intervening. Otherwise they sat around looking angry, sad or confused in various iterations.

Emoting...hard

There was also one plot hole that irked me. The bow was invented by the God as the only weapon that could kill another God. Right. Good. So at the end Gods are killing Titans and Titans killing Gods with their bare hands or random weapons. What the hell happened there? Did someone pull the plug on their immortal status? Alright a pet peeve there. Also I didn’t like the Minotaur. Spoiler alert: he was just a man with a crappy head gear. Grrr I hate that.

 

What did I think overall? It isn’t a perfect film and had a few dull moments but overall it kept me entertained and there were some booby shots from our leading ladies so. I give Immortals 6.5 out of 10 for a good try.




Raptor Suits Up Again

I remember when the first Iron Man came out and I walked out of the theatre thinking man that was awesome so it was with some trepidation that I walked into Iron Man 2.

Oh yeah check out my guns....and donuts

The story begins directly after Iron Man. We are introduced to Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) who’s dying father was cheated by Howard Stark. His death sets him on a revenge cycle and after a failed first attempt and a prison break out he is befriend by billionaire rival weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) enlists him to build him and ultimate suit to make Tony Stark look bad at his own Stark Expo. Vanko has other ideas and builds drowns instead. Mayhem ensures. The power core in his chest is also poisoning Stark and his father may be the key to saving him and the world.

The camera is where? Oh what if I stand like this? Do we need these two in the background?

Now Robert Downey Jr is still impressive as the charismatic Tony Stark and his chemistry with the rest of the cast was still spot on from witty dialogue to emotional moments it didn’t skip a beat. The character of James Rhodes (War Machine) has been replaced by Don Cheadle who I actually though was a better choice than Terrence Howards portrayal from the original Iron man. He seemed to give a more human and sympathetic version of Rhodes. Mickey Rourke still looks like a bad ass and while his Vanko isn’t as sinister as Jeff Bridges Iron Man villain he still quite intimidating. Sam Rockwell is still a great fun character actor and his Justin Hammer is portrayed as an overly ambitious and a jealous business man who is not afraid to bend the rules to show up his rival. Of course things get out of hand.

Did you touch my butt? I know you tricks.

Gwyneth Paltrow returns as the gracious and sorely tested Pepper Potts. I really feel for her having to deal with Stark, one tick there.  Also returning is Shield agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) who shows some teeth in this while still remaining calm and collected. Can anyone say bodies in the cellar? Finally a big surprise to me was cool Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury who plays a large part in revealing some of Starks back story and role in the Avengers program (To be seen I’d say). Oh and lets not forget Scarlet Johansson as kick ass and sexy shield agent Natalie Rushman who is keeping an eye on Stark for Nick Fury. Dame you Ryan Reynolds, dam you all to hell.

Iron Man flows smoothly in most parts from scene to scene. They defiantly took the formula from the previous move and used it here. That’s not a bad thing at all. As I mentioned before the chemistry between characters is great and there are numerous comedic moments to keep everyone amused. The action rattles off at a fast pace and yes to the tunes of ACDC and other rock songs. For anyone wanting slow-mo “300” type moves then this isn’t  the action for you.


So the CGI and practical FX? Well I can’t say there was much wrong here. The FX were awesome as usual. Top notch. There was one point were Downey was acting drunk in his Iron man suit and the helmet looked kind of dumb but hey he was acting drunk too so what ever. There were explosions fights between Vanko and Iron Man, Iron Man vs War machine, Iron Man Vs War Machine and Drones, Iron Man vs Drones and Iron man and War Machine Vs Drones. What more could you want. Really.

I find it hard to say anything bad about Iron Man 2. It is defiantly on par with the original film, and sitting alone in the cinema on the weekend I walked out with a grin on my face. Oh yes. There is a happy ending. I give this an 8.5/10. Bring on number 3!

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.