The Return of Space Raiders

The last time I tried Space Raiders it didn't work out so well. I always found the beef ones harder to find than the pickled onion ones and when I found them, they were past their date and didn't taste so good.

They really are lovely though. They always have been and they come in these cute little bags and nearly always sold for a really good price.

I've been seeing them make a nice comeback lately. They're made by KP and the ones I've been seeing in shops are distributed by Tayto, so good on them for bringing these back.

The ones I've been seeing are in multipacks of 6 cute little 13g packs. They come in pickled onion and beef flavours.

The pickled onion ones are loved by all. Meanies are stronger, Monster Munch are bigger of course, but the pickled onion Space Raiders are still a really nice mild pickled onion corn snack. We're spoiled for choice with this flavour.

The beef ones are a rarer treat and I was delighted to see these on sale too. I had a much better experience with them than I did last time. This time the freshness and mild beef flavour were really nice. Occasionally you get a Space Raider that's a little darker than the others and it's a nice boost of flavour as well. Could do with more brands of beefy flavour crisps!

These Space Raiders keep their tradition of having fun little illustrations and profiles on the packaging. They tell you about their species, home planet and favourite snack. The pickled onion green Sectoids have that stereotype bulbous alien head and skinny body, whereas the beefier Giant Grubers still have the bulbous heads but they're big, red and hairy like Gossamer from Looney Tunes.

Society with Bootleg Friday

Bootleg Friday is a watch party similar to Beyond Friday, but it's an opportunity to watch movies together more often!

Now that I've seen Society in full, the earlier parts of the movie are still weirder to me than the body horror craziness of the climax. There's this disturbing tension between family members; that moment where the main character's sister asks him to zip up her dress in front of their piano is a bit too romantic. You just know something's very wrong.

Someone said the main character was like a pound shop Michael J. Fox and I have to agree! I was expecting him to break out into Johnny B. Goode at times when he was on stage. Despite being from a very rich family he suffers from sweaty disturbances. Since we, the audience are already feeling disturbed with the way his family behaves it makes him a good relatable main character. He seems just as lost as we do in this enormous house with weird décor.

There are many other signs that things aren't right. The ladies occasionally twist into different shapes, the therapist says the title "Society" so he's not to be trusted, there are mysterious deaths and this weird platter full of slugs, one of which appeared to scream when the camera zoomed in on it. This was my first time watching the movie, so when I said "slugs don't scream" I swear I had no idea the body horror stuff was going to get so crazy.

We get this beach scene with beach outfits, making me look forward to the Greta Gerwig Barbie movie even more. I thought the big lady was pretty cute, as she reminded me of the wonderful Madame Flurrie from Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door and she was the least mischievous. It's great later on when she joins in on the butt kicking.

The mysterious deaths start rolling in. I thought it was really weird at that car accident scene, where the main character just walks up to the wreck and stands in the blood in his pure white shoes. That was kinda crazy.

There's a party scene and it was pointed out there was a guy in the background who looked like he didn't know what he was doing. I didn't see him but he sounded relatable.

The main character eventually gets on everyone's nerves. Well, to be fair he got on my nerves too when he took a bite straight out of an apple and then put it back, but he pushes the weirdos and bullies in this film too far and they strike back. Those creepy grinning cops going right up in his face made me feel like throwing holy water and chanting "ACAB!" at them.

He gets taken away to a hospital when he gets too close to solving the mystery. It was a cool effect when he saw the silhouette of his friend getting surrounded like he did and he pulls the curtain back to find nothing there. The feeling of wondering if it's all in his head is still there.

Then the climax comes and yikes. All the authoritarian figures and rich people, all the weirdos and bullies in his life snare him like an animal and he sees them becoming slimy and monstrous and devour another guy who got too close to solving the mystery. Now I could see why fellow bootleggers in the watch party who had seen the movie before were excited to share this moment with us and it was amazing.

Everything gets gooey and messy and deformed and bloody, yet the rich keep talking about their rich people ambitions to leech off of the poor. The reason why the family stuff from earlier looks weirder to me is because it looks so unreal, whereas now we have rich people eating poor people, which we see everyday in the real world. Maybe not with goo but it's just as slimy.

There is a happy ending, to this story at least, but wow it gets you good and riled up about the bigshots who make life miserable for everyone. One of the others said to eat the rich before the rich eat you and I suggest throwing a bit of salt on them first. 

For snacks I had packet of Monster Munch Giants and they left giant crumbs, but they were big and satisfying and the pickled onion flavour was really good. Everyone seems to be great at making pickled onion corn snacks. I also had a pouch of Maltesers to keep me going.

M3GAN at the Cinema with Friends and White Chocolate Cadbury Creme Eggs

My friend and I went to see this movie. We had to take the bus to a different part of town to watch it, because the cinema there was showing it in the afternoon. Our regular cinema wasn't showing it until later. By pure chance we ended up bumping into another friend of ours who had the exact same idea as us and we were delighted to go see this together.

M3GAN was a great time. It had just come out and there were a good few people there in the cinema with us, but thankfully we were able to get good seats. The staff had to calm some people down and ask them to put away their phones. The people were here for a good time and who could blame them as there were lots of ads for this movie.

This is a very entertaining movie with lots of laughs and audience satisfying moments. There are horror elements but it's more of an action movie. It's got cool and interesting sci-fi ideas but it's also ridiculous and silly. M3GAN is a monster girl who kicks butt where it's needed. There are nasty characters here who deserve to have their butt kicked and it's very satisfying when they do. You know them when you see them.

Eventually, M3GAN herself, who is programmed to learn from people, learns bad things. Poisonous things. She has to be stopped because she is getting too dangerous. This is highlighted cleverly in a scene involving actual poison and reinforces the point that she is going too far and becoming too much of a monster.

She continues to kick butt and the movie goes along at a great pace to the confrontations and conclusion, while at the same time teasing the possibility of more M3GAN to come.

I just loved how entertaining this movie was and how much it made us laugh. There was a scene where a group of people were brought in to hype the M3GAN event. They were instructed to give big reactions. Then M3GAN comes along on her rampage and they suddenly come alive with big screaming reactions indeed!

The image of M3GAN, a beautiful doll with long flowing hair and big bright eyes, while at the same time, moving menacingly with weapons is instantly appealing. It's similar to many robot girl characters from anime like Blue Sonnet, Battle Angel Alita, Dr Slump and many more. I've been told she looks like Una Healy and she does! 

There wasn't an after credits scene. We asked the staff before thanking them.

After the movie we all went for something to eat in a place nearby before getting the bus home. It wasn't like our usual haunts but I'm glad we got to try it out. It had lovely booth seating. I realised there were free drink refills after a while. We enjoyed discussing the movie while it rained outside and thankfully it cleared by the time we headed for home.

While out and about we picked up some snacks. I got an ETi puf, a marshmallow biscuit with strawberry sprinkles from the Polish shop. It comes in its own little individual packaging and it's a cute and tasty little biscuit. I also bought the new white chocolate Cadbury Creme Eggs. I was very excited to try these and I love white chocolate, but they were much sweeter than I was expecting.

Robowar with Beyond Friday

Hello and welcome to the blog! I decided to start the new year with a new blog and talk about Robowar, the first movie of the year I enjoyed as part of Beyond Friday, a watch party I take part in with other movie fans on Twitter.

Robowar was a lot of fun. It features a group of soldiers going up against a humanoid robot in the jungle hunting them all down. It's very much a tasty combination of what Predator was like as well as other 80s movies like Robocop. There's a guy who looks a lot like Chuck Norris along with a bunch of other stereotypes in the group.

Some of the others were laughing at how the guy with the glasses was useless and a buffoon but I thought he was the coolest because he had the coolest hat, like you know one of those bucket hats with a wide brim for the sun? I love those hats. I admit it's not the best kind of hat to wear in a combat situation.

Anyway there's a lot of fun with guns and some of the scenes look really silly and entertaining, like there's this one part where one of the guys looks like he's been hiding his huge gun with a big jungle leaf and it's pretty funny.

The robot menace hunting them down makes these cool weird talking computer voice noises and turns its victims into cooked skeletal corpses. Some have jokingly remarked they looked like they were ready to eat. I kept comparing this robot to other 80s robots like Metal Gear from Snatcher or the Talking Computer toy many of us grew up with. 

The musical score was really cool but it also stayed fun and even got a bit silly with an 80s rock concert music track. It felt like a fun roller coaster thrill ride rather than something with the tension and horror of Predator. 

This movie was a lot of fun and everyone seemed to have a great time with it. It was fun comparing this movie to Tropic Thunder and Hot Shots Part Deux. It was directed by Bruno Mattei, a name I'm still getting to know but I have seen his movie about the rats, which was part of another watch party we had. I'll have to check out more of his stuff.