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.




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 Mega Day!

Recently I watched the B grade movie of Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. Why? Because I’m a sucker for both punishment and giant monster movies.

Oh yeah, full on Plane eating!

Both the two monstrosities are released from some glacier after being trapped for hundreds of thousands of years meh why not millions, that’s a number too, and carry on the battle of eating planes and oil rigs um WTF? Yeah that’s pretty much how it all starts. Some scientist in a sub played by 80s pop princes Deborah Gibbs see some soldiers in a chopper cracks open some ice with some fancy charge thingy, that’s the technical term. The first thing the octopus does is take down an oil rig. Why? Who knows, maybe it looked like it’s mommy. The Mega shark then jumps some 2 to 3km out of the water and eats a passenger plane…yeah that’s right. Obviously physics or for that matter logic are part of this movie. At some point you get Lorenzo Lamaz as some super army general called Allan, he orders the navy after the beasts and yes you get it, get eaten. Nom, nom, nom. Eventually they decide to use phermons to lure the beast to America and Japan where they well eat people and then decide to use the same tactic to lure them together so they can have an unholy union and make sharktopus babies or eat each other.

Oh yeah, full on Bridge eating!

Well that’s all very well and good but how good were the special FXs hey. They must have been monumentally awesome! Er not really. They slid from passable to very average to gauge your eyes out crappy. They also had a habit of reusing scenes. I swear I saw the same scene of a soldier guarding a secret base three times. Also the ship and submarine bridges were in a electricity plant or something. I guess the budget didn’t cover that.

Oh yeah, full Shark on Octopus action!

The acting was ok for a B grade movie you just had to roll your eyes a lot to get past most of it. Believe me at the end of it I thought that it was the world spinning and not me.

This movie was sucktastic. Hey watch it if you have nothing else better to do like knitting or trying to see how long you can make a Mintis wrapper. I give this a 3.5/10.

Martyrs (2008)

For some reason I hesitate to watch movies described as dark, depraved and cruel. I guess I know subconsciously that depravity isn't my thing. It therefore took a few days after getting it to finally watch Martyrs - a movie either praised quite vaguely and held up for it's surprising ending, or reviled for being pointlessly sick and hard to watch. I'd like to forward another review, but first some plot.

A young girl, Lucie, is running away from something and obviously something unpleasant judging by the state of her - bruised, bloody and terrified. Lucie has been tortured and locked away for reasons unknown and this is shown through little flashbacks as the movie progresses. While in an orphanage she's befriended by Anna and this friendship continues when the movie flashes 15 years into the future. Lucie is now crazy as a loon and guns down a family as they sit eating breakfast, claiming these are the people who held and tortured her all those years ago. This is also the point where a decent movie could have become a great thriller and instead...well...goes in a different direction. In a nutshell, Anna turns up to help bury the bodies and Lucie is tormented by a demon who cuts and beats her - a demon Lucie had been tormented by since childhood and thought she would purge by killing her tormentors.

Not this phylum of demon, unfortunately

So that's a pretty good start. Lucie is obviously crazy, and not the disco crazy everyone loves, oh no, she's imaginary demon crazy. Homicide crazy. Cutting yourself crazy. It's pretty obvious the demon is in her head and the cutting/beating thing is self-inflicted. Although obvious, I thought that was a good idea and had to wait until later in the movie before I was 100% sure. Anna on the other hand isn't so sure that Lucie is right about these people being monsters, in fact she isn't sure Lucie was even tortured. As a viewer I was left pondering whether the whole thing was a construct in Lucie's mind - perhaps she was abused as a child and built a fantasy over the years then latched onto a couple who superficially resembled the people she remembered from childhood and used them for revenge to 'purge her demons'. Oh, if only the movie had gone that way this would have been something worth watching.

A note on the gore and torture. It's pretty mild. I expected everything laid bare, no punches pulled, right in your face gore and horror. Nope. A lot was done off camera or obscured by something else. Horrific stuff was glimpsed or filmed from an extreme angle to mask what was being shown. Only twice did I wince a little, and that was Lucie cutting herself. It wasn't extreme, I just don't like scenes of people openly cutting themselves. The torture at the end, though overly long and unpleasant, wasn't hardcore or graphic. Just pointless. Perhaps when the girl is skinned you could make a claim for extreme, if muscles and a little blood freaks you out. I've seen worse, a lot worse..and I don't even watch movies like Hostel or Saw.


So, what really happens in the second act is weird and disappointing. Lucie kills herself. Anna finds a torture chamber under the house. A bunch of people rock up and talk about martyrs and creating martyrs so they can gather information about the afterlife. Apparently extreme torture can make someone a martyr and push them into glimpsing the afterlife. Or something. Obviously this is bad news for Anna and her hope of a full and rich life. Which I'm sure she'd have lived after 15 years with crazy Lucie and witnessing a bunch of gruesome murders.

The future of virtual reality isn't quite what they promised

The bad guys go on to torture the fuck out of her, which we get to watch for 20 minutes or more, then skin her. The skinning works a treat though and Anna apparently sees the afterlife. A gathering of people participating in the program (mostly rich older people, because rich old people have lots of time for crazy) is called at the house to have Anna's words related to them by the old woman who heard her testimony. The old woman kills herself instead so I guess Anna told her they don't have chocolate eclairs in the afterlife. The end.

But they do have trifle in the afterlife. Lots and lots of trifle.

Martyrs, therefore, was not a very good movie. The first half had potential but the rest was unpleasant claptrap. I can only assume that the people who describe it as extreme are more familiar with the works of Disney and those who praised the ending are under the age of 16. Or have received a large blow to the head recently.

Now you're ready to watch Martyrs, here's your ticket

3/10

Summary: Martyrs is shithouse, don't believe the hype.

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.

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.

Raptors Stuck in the Doghouse

You know Doghouse is a frightening movie for men mainly because it’s about women on PMS with weapons. Actually it’s about zombie women on PMS with weapons.

It starts with a group of guys getting together to head off for a weekend out to cheer up Vince (Stephen Graham from Snatch) after he had a break up with his wife.  So they hire a bus and take him to a town in the middle of no where. Soon they find that all the women are infected with some virus released as an experiment by the government that changes the women to flesh eating zombies who can still wield weapons.  They try to make it back to the bus but that now has been overrun and so begins their plan to escape.

I think they are scared because they saw the extra meat and two veg.

This movie seems to be a vindication for all the trouble that men have with women but it does wear a little thin by the second half and just leans a little too much into the misogynist side.  Even so it does take it all with a comedic bent that takes the edge off enough too be watchable and frankly you wouldn’t want to meet these zombie women in a dark ally and please, please don’t ask for the $10 drop the pants special.  The guys put on a reasonable performance and the British banter makes them quite likeable. The zombie girls, and there are a lot of them,  each have their own individual look such as the hair dresser runs around with two scissors or the gothic paraphernalia store owner is a large breasted zombie with a huge sword….compensating for something. Maybe, just maybe. They also have two phases in their disease. Phase one is a slower, not so bright zombie state. Phase two they morph into red eyed long clawed she demons with more smarts…oh noes!


The ending on this one kind of irked me. They end up getting away but find that one of the guys they left behind was still alive, so they go back to get him and then after finding him are about to leave the village again and…that’s it. What? You couldn’t have put in an extra 5 mins of footage. Bah! What ever.


Over all, the movie was ok. The zombies were interesting and the characters quite solid. I give this one a 6.5/10.

Who's Watching Raptor

With so many super hero movies out at the moment it’s rare to see one with breadth and depth that Watchmen brings. Director Zack Snyder of 300 fame has taken the true spirit of the Allen Moore penned comic book and brought it to screen with his own kinetic and stylised er…style.

It starts off with the death of the Comedian, who is one of my favourite characters I’ve decided. This starts a search for the killer by a vigilante called Rorschach (My other favourite character) which cascades into a wide spread plot to bring about world peace but in a very immoral way which begs the question. Do the ends justify the means? I truly was torn at the end of the film with this exact question.  Is killing a million people to save several billion ok? I could see the point and I could see they why but even I had a hard time justifying it and I guess that’s the crux of it. It’s not an easy decision and most people of moral values would say no it doesn’t but then isn’t it just as morale to save so many…well kind of.

Thuck it in girls! Let the thpandex do its thing.

Now as mentioned before the Comedian, played by  Jeffrey Dean Morgan who you may have seen in the series Supernatural, was the epitome of the Anti-Hero. He performs acts which may be considered heroic or deplorable but all in the name of his country and time after time he is forgiven because of it.  He drips sarcasm and to paraphrase he is a parody of mankind. We see his actions and relationships with the other characters in flashbacks which are used a lot to fill in the plot and background of each of the characters. Laughing while firing a flame thrower at the Vietnamese we finally see him guilt ridden and confessing to one of his old enemies.  Rorschach is another stellar performance by Jackie Early Haley . He plays a gruff, hardnosed mask wearing detective type who sees everything in black and white. There is no grey. The good are there to be protected and the bad to be condemned to hell.  Even at the bitter conclusion he stands firm on his beliefs even to his detriment. He is almost the purist Hero, a violent crazy hero but still a hero. Dr. Manhattan, portrayed by Billy Crudup, is the most powerful naked blue man on the planet. He is so far removed from humans that he is loosing what little humanity he has left and his part shows a lot of his struggle with it. Other notables are Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) who is practically your Clark Kent crossed with batman superhero who along with Silk Spectre (A very cute Malin Akerman) are swept up in the plot. Finally Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) the smartest man in the world, is a very cool Super hero/villain.

I can’t fault the performances of any of the main characters. They were all quite strong and each had there hearts in their roles and brought their A games to characters that could have come out quite plastic and cliché instead became mutli-faceted which in part was also due to the strong script.

Because the movie spand several generations of superheroes the soundtrack fit this perfectly with song by Bob Dylan to David Bowie and other similar musicians form the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Did I mention that the story unfolds in the 80s? Oh yes, there is spandex galore as well as naked blue penis….you’ll see.

Now special FX and CGI wise I loved what Zack Snyder has done. The cinematography was beautiful and he did have a number of his signature slow-mo scenes alla 300 but not to the same degree I’d have to say. It also doesn’t hold back on the violence. Believe me this is not a kids movie. With arms breaking, bodies exploding, hands cut off and multiple shootings this a graphic novel brought to a movie and I do mean graphic.

The movie does drag in parts and the back and forth flashbacks can be confusing to some but these were all minor details. To me this was what a super hero movie should be, fleshed out characters, a solid thought out and complex plot along with lots of kerpow and bang in the eye. Oh yeah spandex too. I give this a 9/10.

Raptor Finds a Dead Girl

I heard good things about the movie Dead Girl but I wasn’t convinced so when I sat down to watch it I was pretty much thinking this was going to be another crap fest. Well for the first 20 mins or so it didn’t do much for me. The slightly washed out colours looked cheap at first. The two mains we meet, Rickie played by Shiloh Fernandez and J.T played by Noah Segan both seemed pretty shallow and acted out like stereotypical high school students. This was all until they find the Dead Girl in a sealed off room of an abandoned medical facility. It’s then that the two personalities begin to polarise. The dead girl (sexy Jenny Spain. Yes even if she is dead) is a zombie but in quite good nick. How she got down there is never explained. The two friends panic and leave her but J.T. goes back and ends up killing her but she comes back to life so decides to use her as a sex toy while Rickie thinks he’s crazy. Rickie doesn’t want any part of it and guilt kicks in so he tries to free her but finds out she is quite feral and so splits.  There is a side story with Rickie and a Joann (Candice Accola) who he is infatuated with and eventually spirals into a kidnapping by J.T. and meeting with the dead girl.  It's always awkward when your living and dead girlfriends meet.

Yes, there was some dead action in the back section....ewwwww

The movie is tense and the lack of morality by J.T. is juxtaposed to Rickie who’s initial impotence do anything, possibly due to the friendship with J.T. and the fact the dead girl is well dead, fortifies into a resolve to act. It does pose the question that if somes dead or zombie do they have rights? Beats me. I just watch the film but and leave the philosophy to you.


There are some funny moments such as J.T and pal trying to kidnap a girl to make into a new dead girl only to be beaten up by the victim and there are also some huh? I don’t get what the fuck just happened moments too that just don’t click but overall barring the weakish start it ends with a strong performances and a pretty good story line. I give this one a 7.5/10

Raptor Reads a Bloody Book

I’m a big fan of Hell raiser and yes some of the sequels too so I thought of checking out Clive Barkers’ Book of Blood. Mary, a paranormal expert and comes across a Simon, a psychic sensitive and asks him to help her prove the exists of spirits in a house that’s had an unexplained and violent past. When messages start to appear on the walls and bad things like oh, say the stories of the dead being cut into Simons flesh I think you pretty much proved it.



I was just walking along when suddenly Clive barker Graffiti’s my back! Dam Asshole.

Book of Blood started off pretty good with a girl getting attacked by a ghost and ending up with her face being ripped off. Well, that came out of nowhere. Unfortunately it was a slow down hill run to mediocrity from there. There were attempts at scares with kids going all undead face and ghosts appearing from no where but it just didn’t seem to gel. Mary starts of being quite sympathetic to Simon and seems like quite the nice person. Fair enough but in the last 20 or so minutes of the movie when Simons skin is being written into by ghosts she goes all psycho or mad or something. Even asking for his skin. There really is no build up to it and her story is that the dead must tell there tales and she needs to tell the world. Right. What ever. Obviously it lost something in the translation from Clive Barkers’ story to the movie.

I really was hoping for better on this movie but alas I’m stuck with Hellraiser reruns. I wonder if can find my Nightbreed or Lords of Illusion DVDs? I give this movie a 5/10. Oh there was some boobage…I guess that’s something.

Raptor Stripps like a Zombie

I have a new favourite Zombie movie. Why is that? Two words. Zombies and strippers. In the same movie. Together. Not to mention that you also get Jenna Jameson as one of the strippers and she can act better than…ok with all the porn movies she’s done she’s a pro at faking it. The basic plot of Zombie strippers is that a group of Soldiers called Z Squad go to clean up a zombie outbreak at a lab owned by Gearge W Bush. Everyone know he owns weapons of mass destruction! Anyway one of the nooby soldiers gets bitten and rather than get his head blown off makes a runner and ends up at strip club owned by the sleazy Hypochondriac Ian played to expertly by Robert Englund (again Freddy yo!). At this point he turns full zombie and attacks Kat one of the strippers played by Jenna Jameson. As the soldier is stuffed downstairs Kat of course gets up and but now she wants to strip and turns out being undead makes you a real good stripper. Slowly the other girls begin to succumb to the lure of being a zombie stripper either through envy, jealousy, adoration or other. Ian sees this as a great opportunity to make money but of course as all zombie movies must go, the zombies cannot be contained and the patrons (dumb males) who the strippers keep lap dancing for (eating their bits) soon break loose.


Fairly new director/writer Jay Lee has done a pretty good job getting this movie together on a pretty low budget. He used a lot of the crew as the patrons and a few friends such as Calvin Green who plays the DJ Cole. The editing is tight and the comedic banter is works well between the actors although some of the joke verge on groan worthy. There are a lot of new faces here and other new bits. The strippers are Hawt! Barring Jenna Jameson we have her rival Jeannie played with bitchy flare by the sexy Shamron Moore. One of the strippers that doesn’t get her kit of is Berenge (Jeannette Sousa) a nihilist that doesn’t quite know if she should support or detest what the strippers have become. Then we have Lilith played by singer Roxy Saint, a gothic and pierced raven who is the first to join kats side. Now this leads me on to the music. It rocks. Roxy Saint actually sang one of the songs that Jenna first strips to as a Zombie called Smother and it got me grooving. In fact so much so that I’m actually looking for the sound track to the movie as we speak…right now like. 

To the special FXs! I have to say down and out these are some of the best zombie FX and gore gags hands down. They were created by Patrick Mcgee and considering the whole film had a budget of $1million that’s pretty impressive. Most of the FX were practical with CGI used sparingly and I’ll have to say my favourite zombie was Tongue guy who lost his jaw in a lap dance. Awww sad. The strippers had about 5 stages of zombiness, from just turned bloody but rare to well cooked black eyed, protruding eye sockets and decaying skin.

The extras on the DVD gave a bit of an insight. There is easily about 45 mins of deleted scenes that were edited to get the movie to a tight 90mins. Some of these I thought would have been great to add a little more to it but there were other scenes that were easy targets to be removed. The commentary with Robert Englund, Jenna Jameson, Jay Lee and Joey Medina is hilarious. We also find out that the movie is loosely based on the play by Eugene Lonescos’ allegorical play "Rhinoceros" with the names of the characters being derived from it including Jeannette Sousa character being the conclusion of it.

Some of the acting was at times a little off, mainly in the Z squad characters but this didn’t detract to much overall. I still thought this was one of the best zombie films I’ve seen in a long time. My score 8.5/10.

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.

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.

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.

Getting in with Leslie Vernon

Today I’m going to review a little movie called Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. I’m not a huge slasher movie fan, while I will watch them occasionally if they seem interesting they don’t usually yank my goat. I see them as to much ho and hum but this one piqued my curiosity. I’d heard some good things about it so I decided to check it out. Well I came away thinking, hey that was pretty good.

Your singing into your beer makes my ears hurt

The plot revolves around a small team of documentary film makers who are invited to follow Leslie Vernon who wants to give rise to a new horror legend such as Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees. Leslie is played quite well by Nathan Baesel and portrayed with a dual personality. Without the mask he eventually wears he is a likeable character who spouts Jim Carrey quotes and seems to be very disarming but his real motive is to find his heroin, the girl that will survive his slaughter to tell the world about him and the new legend. The film crew headed by Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals) unwittingly become part of his scheme and as they follow his setup of the perfect “teen massacre” they begin to realise that they may be in to deep with a guy who isn’t just a ineffectual wacko but might be the real thing. A quite amusing casting is Leslies nemesis in the legend, Robert Englund who plays Dr Halloran. I had to laugh.

Let me save you with these two meat hooks!...oh dear...

There are plot holes, I mean really are the documentary filmers  this stupid…well obviously yes  and the ending does seem to just all fall into place a little too neatly but hey I didn’t mind in the end. There are kills and then some nudity…score. I’m a simple man at heart with simple needs.

In the end I enjoyed this movie. I give it a solid 6.5 (7.5 or higher if your a fan of slasher movies)  and a possible rise of a new horror legend…well maybe.

Gutterballs

Purile, pathetic, poorly performed, pointless, ponderous garbage.This movie and everyone involved in it can go fuck themselves for wasting my night.

0/10