Tag: Amber Heard

Justice League promised to be The Avengers, but for the DCEU. Obvious comparisons are obvious.

Unfortunately, unlike Marvel, most of the films that led up to Justice League were either shit or average. The only one to break the mold a bit was Wonder Woman, but it still couldn’t fully escape the terrible grasps of these franchises by having a completely shit and eye sore ending.

So I didn’t go out of my way to see Justice League. One of those fool me four times, shame on me sort of things. It didn’t help that it had behind the scenes director changes, a lot of issues with reshoots, and extreme studio interference. Clearly another great film to fit the theme week of ones I should have watched last year.

Is this the whole team? Eh, close enough.

Batman (Ben Affleck) really wants to bring all these super people together, to fight off giant threats that they cannot do on their own. Remember Superman (Henry Cavill)??? He totally died, but didn’t die as they made clear at the end of the last movie, so they gotta work together to beat future gods.

Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is generally on board. They just have to find more people. These people beings who will eventually go by their names of The Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fisher), and Aquaman (Jason Momoa).

Unfortunately, the next biggest threat is just some god dude from the Wonder Woman mythos. His name is Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds), who is maybe where the band got their name from. He was here a long time ago, got defeated by the races of men, Amazons, and the Merfolk. There were some power cubes that they all split up to defend, and now he is back, wanting all three cubes, to have so much power.

So their goal is to prevent him from getting all the cubes, and once he still gets them, then hopefully defeat them and split up the cubes. Pretty basic plot.

Also starring Amber Heard, Amy Adams, Joe Morton, Jeremy Irons, J.K. Simmons, Connie Nielsen, and Diane Lane.

It was hard to find a good picture of the villain. Clearly I still failed.

When it comes to Justice League, there are so many places you can point to in order to determine what went wrong. And you’d be right! All of those reasons are why this movie was so poor!

First of all, Steppenwolf. What a goddamn terrible villain for us care about. Some CGI’d dude who is just super strong, and oh no, he might destroy the world. He has no great backstory, and he doesn’t even feel threatening on any scale. Sure, they show he is strong, but also, he doesn’t feel like a real threat. Not one bigger than Ares in Wonder Woman at least.

The CGI is a travesty. And so much of the film is just drenched in it. From the terrible Amazon horse fight scene, to the climatic battles, this one just reeks of cheap graphics.

Our characters come together and never feel like a team. It is clunky. Aquaman is shown as badass and strong, but never really embraces the powers unique of Aquaman. I have no idea if I care about Cyborg still, which is less a human with powers and more a…robot. But then again, Batman is on this team, so whatever.

And fucking Superman is in this movie. Once he finally shows up, he basically does most of the work on his own. They point out that he is indeed faster than The Flash, and the strongest, and can do no wrong. Steppenwolf is a villain who can kick most of the Justice League’s ass. Unfortunately, the one he cannot can also do it on his own.

Justice League is just a farce of a great movie. It is amazing how the DCEU just hates its characters so much that it continuously pumps out these mediocre or worse films.

Adderall is a drug designed to help those with ADHD calm the fuck down and get their work done. That is how I understand it at least.

Adderall is also a drug that goes around college campuses or weird professions, where the user will take it in order to focus more on a task. The amount sold under the table on colleges increase more around final exam times. So yeah, people might use it to “study better” or finish an essay or stop looking at their facebook every few minutes. It has also been used by journalists and writers, I am sure.

Basically, the plot of Limitless is the guy takes Adderall5000 and his extreme focus lets him do a shit ton of things. What fun!

The Adderall Diaries, if anything, is a shitty title to a movie. Adding Diaries to something is just unoriginal. This one is based on a book, but the book came out in 2009, so it was already past the point when Diaries was a cool thing to add to a title. So I am going into this movie pretending it is just 1995 and the title was cutting edge.

Of course I was six then, so I probably thought this was how to ride a motorcycle.

Hans Reiser (Christian Slater) might have killed his wife. Who knows. That is what the trial is for.

For some reason, this case drives the interest of one Stephen Elliott (James Franco). He is a writer, who writes stories based on his life. He had a rough child hood, with a dad (Ed Harris), who was abusive, left him to make him homeless, and eventually died. He has a book deal, an advance from the publishing company and more thanks to his wonderful agent (Cynthia Nixon).

But he has writers block. So he wants to write about this case instead. It drives close to home. Not that anyone wants any of that True Crime shit right now. They want his personal stories. While watching the case, he meets Lana Edmond (Amber Heard), a journalist. They start doing stuff together.

Oh and hey. His dad isn’t dead. Stephen lied about that. This creates problems, as other big moments might be lies as well. Add to the fact that he isn’t writing, no one wants the new stuff, and more, his life might come crumbling down as well.

Also featuring Jim Parrack and Wilmer Valderrama.

A VHS tape? Man, getting my head set in the 1990’s is actually pretty easy.

Last year, Franco starred in True Story, where he played a guy who might have killed his wife and kids and a journalist, Jonah Hill, was trying to tell his story. And now he is a writer, trying to get the story of a guy who maybe killed his wife.

Similar? Yes. Annoyingly so? Still yes. Franco loves independent films. So much that he is more of these indie films than he is bigger well known films, and that includes the stoner ones. And for the most part, all of these films he is a part of just seem to be incredibly lacking. It might not all be Franco’s fault…it could also be his agent specifically picking lesser roles.

This film is dull, but in a slow burn way. Franco’s character is all over the place. There are quite a few sub plots and they don’t seem to mesh together fully. There are some tense moments. There is a lot of yelling. There is some classy text over the screen to make sure you are a paying attention. But overall it just feels like the entire story is pointless.

At least in True Story we had great cinematography and a better story. This one just doesn’t seem cohesive and I am left wondering why quite a few scenes even happened.

Eddie Redmayne, you son of a bitch. I feel like it was first announced before he even won his award for Best Actor for The Theory of Everything. You know, the news that he would be starring in a film next year called The Danish Girl.

The story for the first male to female transition. The first transgendered person to physically change their sex.

Holy fuck. What are you doing Redmayne? Are you that desperate for two acting awards? Or is this to make amends for Jupiter Ascending.

Either way, you should enjoy this Conan clip from awhile back about Redmayne and his history of playing women.

And this is where it all began.

Einar Wegener (Redmayne) is a young painter living in Copenhagen, Denmark in the 1920s. Life is wonderful. He lives with his wife, Gerda (Alicia Vikander), who is also a painter, but she mostly deals with portraits. Einar is successful at his landscapes and often has bidders. Gerda cannot get a show, because people don’t care about portraits, no matter how well done they are.

Their best friend is a dancer, Ulla (Amber Heard), who keeps flaking on their appointments, so Gerda uses Einar to finish the portrait. He just has to wear the tights and shoes and keep the same pose, no big deal. Either way, they all find it hysterical and they call this new persona Lili.

But it turns out Lili might not be something new. Maybe it goes way back in Einar’s wife when he was kid playing with one of his friends, Hans Axgil (Matthias Schoenaerts), a metal name if any. Either way, Einar doesn’t like public shows, but wants his wife to go to a big one to be scene for her art’s sake. And they agree that he should go in disguise, as Lily. It is very deceiving to everyone outside of their BFF. He is so good at being feminine!

Okay, I will stop beating around the bush. This act nor the first act made him realize he was a woman on the inside. But damn it, it certainly gets him on the path. The path that makes doctors think he should be locked up, to try radical treatments, and eventually, the right doctor who is willing to really listen to him and help. Also featuring Ben Whishaw, as a fellow Denmarkian who totally falls for Lili.

Yeah, I’d say he is a little bit convincing.

This rating is the same rating I gave to The Theory of Everything. I recognized how great Redmayne’s acting was, but the story just didn’t live up to his acting.

In this case, the story lived up to the acting, it just wasn’t as amazing as I had hoped.

Let’s be clear. Redmayne was beyond fantastic. At least a block or two past the word. His transition was incredibly believable. His mannerisms, his weight loss, his fucking everything. I can’t imagine a better person to do this role than him. A third of the way into it, I forgot it was Redmayne, and was so engrossed in the character.

I also need to talk about Vikander, who is having a killer year seemingly out of nowhere (See: Ex Machina, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.). Her character went through a lot as well, you know, having her husband lose attractiveness to her and come out as a woman. It was hard on her in real life, and you could see the pain in Vikander’s eyes, not sure what she should do or encourage. In fact, this film really should have been called The Danish Girls to a bit more accurate.

Some may say it is too much about the wife though. A lot of scenes from her point of view, keeping Lili a bit more of a mystery. It did a lot for the real Lili Elbe, but man, the filmmakers almost tried to make it about her wife and not her herself. (Is that grammatically correct? Screw it).

Despite the wonderful acting, there were slower moments. Sometimes they took too long to get to the next important scene. Some parts felt repetitive. But if Redmayne wins again (which I am not calling it yet, because there are some still great acting films coming out this year), it probably won’t feel repetitive, just awesome for a young great actor.

There comes a time in every reviewers life when they have to watch a movie about Male Strippers. It isn’t a common topic. We got The Full Monty in the 90s, and then Magic Mike a few years ago, so we all just assumed it would be another decade and a half before a new one came along.

But Magic Mike was certainly popular and certainly made a lot of bank. And for good reason! It was the beginning of the Matthew McConaughey road to greatness. And it was directed by Steven Soderbergh! And yes, sure, some good dancing.

That doesn’t mean I am not worried about the sequel, a continuation that is loosely inspired by Channing Tatum‘s real life story. No McConaughey for one. And instead of having the director of Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, and Ocean’s Thirteen, we are instead stuck with the ASSISTANT DIRECTOR of Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, and Ocean’s Thirteen.

And to top it all off, Soderbergh is only the Executive Producer, Cinematographer, and Editor of this movie.

Yep, clearly Magic Mike XXL is going to be a wildly different film.

This scene is like an even more male focused erotic 80’s metal music video.

Three years have passed since the dangerous and deadly events of the first film. Mike (Tatum) is no longer magical, after leaving the world of Male Entertainment behind and focusing on starting his own business, making things with wood. After these few years, he has one employee and times are still tough. But at least he gets to keep his clothes on, and only has to dance in his workhouse, alone, late at night.

But then the gang is stopping by the city. I’m talking Ken (Matt Bomer), Tito (Adam Rodriguez), Tarzan (Kevin Nash), Tobias (Gabriel Iglesias), and of course Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello). No, not Dallas or the other guy. They apparently closed shop and moved over seas for that foreign money, leaving the rest of the gang jobless and forced to find new passions in life.

However, before reality sets in, they are going to the Male Entertainment competition conference thing in Myrtle Beach, where groups of men dance and strip for hundreds of ladies. It is a big event and they want to go out with a bang. And you know, tons of dollar bills.

They just have to get there first. And this road trip will have them stop at a few different types of clubs, meeting new people for their crew/team, and maybe even having the men discover what they want to do after they are done male entertaining.

Also featuring Stephen Boss, Donald Glover, Amber Heard, Jada Pinkett Smith, Andie MacDowell, and Elizabeth Banks.

I didn’t actively avoid shirtless pics, but the one group shot the internet has sans shirts is terrible!

Let me start this out by saying that Magic Mike XXL is a better movie than Magic Mike. And I have quite a few reasons too!

1) The sequel has more dancing. That is fantastic news, because that is one of the main focuses of the film. The worse Step Up movies are the ones that try to have too much plot and not enough booty shaking. I want to see awesome dances to hot beats, damn it, and there is a whole lot of that in this movie.

2) There is no Cody Horn in this movie. None. Not even a picture. Just a few references. She is out of the picture and was by far the worst part of the first film. And the film elevates because of it.

3) The other dancers have personality. This could be partially true about the first film, but I don’t remember that much at all about our other male dancers. It was all about Magic Mike and that new guy. The other dancers all feel like real people, and it was fascinating seeing them all get their moments, have their own unique dances at the end, and really bond with them. The male bondage in this film is extraordinary. They all feel like real friends and they have great chemistry.

And really, that is all I need. Sure, some parts of the movie get really awkward, and maybe some of the dancers are far far too sexual for my tastes, but I am able to forgive most of that. The romance in this film was bad, but not as bad as the first.

This film actually left me wanting more from these dudes, seeing how their lives turn out since they are more than just background characters now. Especially Big Dick Richie, who had the best subplots in the film.

I think the thing that infuriates me the most about 3 Days To Kill is the trailer.

The trailer didn’t come out until late December, only a few months before the actual movie, but when it did it quickly oversaturated the movie going experience. I probably saw this trailer for at least 80% of the movies I watched in January and February before it came out.

The only reason why I am upset is because A) the trailer itself isn’t that good, which I will discuss further later, and B) they only had one trailer. Some films have as many as 4 trailers to help build up hype and showcase different elements. If you are going to flood me with trailers from one movie, they shouldn’t be the same thing every dang time.

You will hear a similar trailer based rant when his next movie Draft Day comes out.

Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) is a lifer for the CIA. He is an agent on the ground, never advancing up the ladder, but he is really efficient at killing people. During an attempt to capture The Wolf (Richard Sammel) and his main hit man The Albino (Tomas Lemarquis…sigh), a lot of factors go wrong, people die, and Ethan finds out he has cancer.

Crud. He gets dismissed by the CIA, and he attempts to live out his remaining time with his ex-wife (Connie Nielsen) and daughter Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld).

But when he only has a few months left to live (5? 3? 1/10th?), Vivi Delay (Amber Heard) walks into his life, needing him to re-enlist, as the only person alive who has probably seen The Wolf’s face. She will give him a big bonus to his family, huge life insurance policy, and an experimental cure to maybe save his life. You know, if he works for her to bring down The Wolf once and for all.

But…but…family!

But…but…cure!

Holy fuck, Lady Gaga is in this movie?

Alright, let’s go back to the trailer. It is bad for one HUGE reason. The trailer is super deceptive in its showcasing of the film. Not only does it mash up multiple scenes and dialogue constantly to tell a false narrative in the trailer (making it seem a bit hokey in my mind), but it also doesn’t match the pace or style of the movie at all. If you like the trailer for 3 Days To Kill, you might still hate the movie because they are so damn different.

Argh, bad and deceptive trailers are the worst! Trailers are usually made by advertising companies, not the people who made the movie, and sometimes they do a really shitty job. The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty had an amazing trailer, partially because it was made by Ben Stiller himself.

The actual movie is also a mess. I blame most of it on timing and pacing issues. We are told he has about 5 months to live after his first faint, so he goes home a day or two later to see the wife and kids. All of the sudden, without an explanation (like his cancer being much worse? or anything?) he only has a few days left. There was no montage, there was no large passing of time, nothing.

I can’t tell if the script is horribly written, if they accidentally cut out transition scenes, or they just didn’t care.

It wasn’t just that issue. Pacing was bad all over the place, as they tried to put in the family plot that not only slowed it all down, but never felt real. There was an extremely awkward “club” scene about halfway through, and it wasn’t really brought up afterwards. The ending itself would bring up a lot of problems that they also choose to ignore.

After more research, I found out that Luc Beeson wrote a lot of this movie, and now it all makes perfect sense. All of the issues, being so euro-centric, crime plus family, all of it.

Avoid 3 Days To Kill or else you might start questioning time as you know it.

Machete started out as a fake trailer in front of the Grindhouse movies, Death Proof and Planet Terror. Robert Rodriguez decided that the fake trailer needed to be made into a real movie and Machete was born! A movie that was made on purpose to be bad, it had plenty of potential, but to me just felt boring. I wasn’t impressed.

I basically forgot about the franchise until they announced both a sequel and a third film coming down the pipelines. The sequel, Machete Kills just hit theaters, but the third film really caught my eye thanks to its title of  Machete Kills Again…In Space. With a name like that, this franchise can’t be that bad!

Yeah, it looks like he is about to kill it here.

After the death of his partner (Jessica Alba), Machete (Danny Trejo) finds himself at the wrong end of the law, blamed again for a murder he did not commit. To get out of the jam, the President of the United States (Charlie Sheen / Carlos Estivez) has asked him to go on a suicide mission into Mexico. His mission? To stop revolutionary/mad man Mendez (Academy Award Nominated Demian Bichir) from sending a nuke straight to Washington DC.

Sure, a simple enough mission, but there are a lot of factors that stand in his way. Million dollar bounties, crazed heart monitors, multiple personality disorders, priests seeking redemption, a hitman called El Camaleon, brothels, space scientists that know the future, a madam with a grudge, former friends, and clones stand between him and his goal.

There are so many celebrities, trying to list them all would be insane, but I will do it anyways. Telling you their role in the film almost seems like a disservice, and plus, you probably wouldn’t believe me. The movie includes Mel Gibson, Amber Heard, Michelle Rodriguez, Sofia Vergara, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Alexa Vega, and Vanessa Hudgens!

One of the best “jokes” in this movie is having Alexa Vega in close to nothing. Since he worked with her on Spy Kids 12 years ago.

As I mentioned before, Machete was trying to make a good/entertaining “bad movie,” in honor of all the poor quality B-movies of the 70s/80s. It is pretty hard film type to make correctly, the last one I really enjoyed being Black Dynamite. The first film had a lot of appropriate jokes for genre, but the overall plot and tone bored the crap out of me.

Machete Kills corrects these mistakes and more. First off, it was actually entertaining. Over the top action from start to finish and nonsensical plot lines that will cause you to stare at the screen in confusion. Normally that would sound terrible, unless terrible was the goal, in which case it sounds great! Machete Kills put a lot more detail into purposefully editing the film in a sloppy way to increase its humor potential. The film has a rampant disrespect for obeying the natural laws of our reality: where a broken car can drift 500 miles in mere hours, and where several days can pass in only 20 minutes.

Most of the jokes are smaller references or in the background, outside of the absurd characters themselves. Despite how outrageous everything is, the characters themselves for the most part are incredibly serious. After all, their lives are on the line. The movie sports a lot of death and violence, which is all packaged in creative ways.

Machete Kills improved a lot from the first film, but I think it still has a lot of untapped potential that it just hasn’t reached yet. Assuming the third film actually gets made, it might finally cross into the “So Bad, It’s Amazing!” territory that the series is striving for. As for now, it is not a must watch, but more of a watch eventually (maybe) type of movie.

I didn’t know a lot about Paranoia before viewing it. Outside of the trailer, it didn’t have any advertising from what I could tell.

But it did have two great actors in head roles, so there is some amount of hope that it is surprisingly decent.

Hey. That guy looks like a thinner, less strong, less manly, Thor. How weird.

The story centers on Adam (Liam Hemsworth), who works for a big phone company lead by Nicolas Wyatt (Gary Oldman). Adam is leading a small team to help develop a tool for their new phone model, but Wyatt ignores him, causing Adam to lose his temper. Needless to say, Wyatt does not choose their project and fires the whole team.

Adam, despite being in debt with his sick dad (Richard Dreyfuss), decides to use the company expense card to live it up with his former coworkers in a moment of mutiny.

Well, now Wyatt has him on credit fraud. Adam doesn’t want to go to prison, so he will do anything Wyatt asks of him. Even if it means stealing.

Wyatt and his associate Judith (Embeth Davidtz) hook Adam up with a fancy new wardrobe, apartment, and personality, so he can get a job as an executive for Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford), who happens to run the biggest phone company. They are working on a sleek new phone that is said to revolutionize the world, and Wyatt wants a prototype. If he succeeds, he will get his friends (mostly Lucas Till) their jobs back, have money for his dad, and will have job security for the rest of his life.

We also have Amber Heard as a marketing direct and main love interest forAdam, Julian McMahon as a lackie of Wyatt, and Josh Holloway as an FBI detective.

These two are juggernauts in the acting world. I have now used ‘juggernaut’ in a review.

If you watch the trailer, you really don’t have to see the movie. They tell you the entire main plot while also spoiling the main twists as well! Seriously, something is given away in the trailer that doesn’t happen until the final twenty minutes, a major plot point.

Unfortunately, the plot itself is predictable (even without the trailer). Having a predictable plot is bad if you are trying to make a crime/thriller. The acting is also not really anything special. The side plot with the friends who lost their job is nothing more than cringe worthy and a distraction.

But the so-so acting and bad plot are not the worse parts. The worse part comes from the tiny details they did not care about.

These two men are the heads of the two biggest mobile phone makers in the world/country. They have their own unique names and everything. Yet they and their heads of staff are using iPhones. I might have seen a Galaxy S3 in there as well. That is just pure laziness. I wouldn’t have noticed if they didn’t constantly show the phones up close.

It almost seems like they are taunting the viewer. They are taunting us by showing how little they cared about the final product of this movie and it showed.

Zombies!

And lawls?

Alright. It has been done before. But by the British, and no one likes the British. So an American version might be more crude, or at the very least, better graphics. I’m talking 3D stuff. Or at least flashy lights. It is a Zombieland after all.

Consider my dreams reached.

How did the zombie outbreak happen? Some bad meat or something, but it spread quickly like all zombie out breaks. And these get to be the weird ass fast zombies. Thankfully our hero, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has a list of rules to keep him alive. Work out his cardio, be afraid of bathrooms, always wear a seatbelt, double tap to assure death, etc. Definitely don’t be a hero. This is a war! Because he was a nerdy shut in, he missed out a lot on the initial craziness, when his neighbor from 406 (Amber Heard) attacked him. Sucks, because she was hot too.

He meets Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a middle aged man who wasn’t good at much, but turns out is very good at killing zombies. They have code name in order to not get close to each other. Such as where they are from or where they are heading. He is a simple man, who just wants to survive, and really find a twinkie to eat.

They meet Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), who con them out of their vehicle and weapons. Shit is serious. Very rude. The rest of the movie involves them working to get their car back, possibly trusting strangers, and maybe even breaking a rule or two.

Oh, and there is a cameo by Bill Murray, which is great. Especially since I only like Murray when he is in cameo form.

\
Home run right there.

Good things tend to happen when you take an already outrageous accepted genre and do outrageous things during it. Most of the jokes don’t come from dialogue, they come from the few actors in this movie behaving to real zombie situations. Turns out it can be amusing to watch a bunch of fat zombies in a grocery store getting their heads knocked off with a bat. Or riding in a roller coaster with a shotgun. Or hitting a zombie by driving by with the door open, for shits and giggles.

The plot of the movie pretty much boils down to “The world has zombie now, it sucks, try to survive”. Really the only plot I could give was just back story that we learn throughout the movie, since I don’t want to actually say the entire story. That’d be bad for the four of you who haven’t seen Zombieland.

Its a very enjoyable movie with a budget big enough to put on some pretty over the top awesome scenes.

Ah ha! A Johnny Depp movie! Not only that, The Rum Diary is the kind of prequel to everyone’s favorite movie from 1997, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That movie and this one were both written by the same guy, and both kind of about his life. The Rum Diary was written in the 60s or something, but not published until after the FaLiLV movie came out.

So unofficially it is a prequel, but stars the same character 10 years before the events in FaLiLV, and has the same actor playing that character. Yes, 14 years later, he is playing the same role, but supposed to be 10 years younger. Go with it.

What a great way to open a movie.

Lets see what I can figure out of the plot. Depp’s character is mad at the US journalism, so he leaves the country and goes to work in Puerto Rico. He finds a PR newspaper, lead by Richard Jenkins, and eventually gets a job. Then he has to do dumb tourist stories.

Eventually he finds Amber Heard and wants her. He also drinks a lot of rum. Unfortunately the woman is married to a shady business man, played by Aaron Eckhart, a real estate guy. He ends up getting mixed in their business and other journalist stuff, that leads to crazy drunken adventures around Puerto Rico. Also maybe some lessons learned about journalism. Not sure.

Puerto Rico has got style, yo.

It is amazing how little I cared for this movie as I watched it. I kept trying to figure out the point of the whole thing. It is in no way at all similar to Fear and Loathing, a movie that I personally didn’t like much, but appreciated how much effort went into it and how great the acting of Depp was. But this didn’t give me that latter satisfaction. Apparently this movie took about 10 or so years to make, after initial rights and development, first with Depp, then someone else, then Depp again. Now I know why it kept sputtering out of control.

Not sure how different it is from the book, or if the book is way better, but this movie on its own is just dumb.

I think Drive Angry is the last Nick Cage movie in the last few years (outside of Bangkok Dangerous) that I have not yet reviewed. I have come to expect a certain amount of apathy from some of his movies, but not all of them. For every Knowing, there is a Kick-Ass. For every Season of the Witch there is a Sorcerer’s Apprentice. So who knows what the next movie will be like? He forces you to watch them all, damn it.

Cage: The human embodiment of an enigma.

This review probably has some spoilers, but I doubt those reading it will care. The movie stars Cage as a man who has escaped from Hell. His daughter was killed by cultists, and they took his granddaughter, a baby, to be sacrificed in three days in order to bring Hell on Earth. Satanists! Also an enigmatic group of people. So he, along with his Godslayer (a gun that can remove a soul from existence, stolen from Satan) are on a quest to catch up with the cultists and end them completely. Or at least just Billy Burke, the head guy.

He meets up with Amber Heard and borrows her car / helps her out quickly on the journey. There is also The Accountant, played by William Fichtner, a mysterious suited man following Cage and trying to bring him back to Hell.

This movie is a grindhouse-like movie. It is gritty, over the top action, bad effects, all on purpose. But what made the other “Grindhouse” movies entertaining was that besides all of that, the plot was decent and the action was awesome. This isn’t true for Drive Angry. It had all of the right parts, but the plot and action I found to be pretty boring. As you would guess, there is a lot of driving and chasing too, and even that seemed lackluster.

When you take the words “Hell”, “Driving”, and “Nick Cage” together, most people are going to expect Ghost Rider, another bad movie, and not this. This is accidentally too close to Ghost Rider (not in plot, just in keywords). That seems like another mistake on Cage’s part.

Wait, is that him with a badass gun in Ghost Rider too? What the hell?

It is obvious what kind of movie they were going for. They definitely succeeded in that. But Drive Angry just is not as entertaining as the other films of that genre. Probably the real reason Cage has been in a lot of movies since this one, to cover it up.