Tag: Nick Cage

Left Behind is a serious of movies books that I remember hearing about when I was a kid. They were about The Rapture from the Christian Bible, where those who were judged holy enough got to go to Heaven, and the rest of the yokels on Earth had 7 years of destruction, sadness, whatever, before…I dunno, the apocalypse or something.

It shouldn’t be a big deal, one would imagine. At that point everyone would realize that Jesus was real, and start being super super religious and good. I couldn’t imagine any amount of chaos after like, a week, because people would generally prefer Heaven to Hell.

But it was a successful franchise, it had at least ten books and a couple movies that people enjoyed enough to enter our American conscious. And this…this is about the same thing? Maybe a reboot of some sort? Maybe a one off? Who knows.

Get on the phone and tell me all the information!

The Steele family is going through hard times. The dad, Rayford (Nick Cage), is a pilot and away from a home a lot because of it. A year ago, his wife found Jesus and got super awkward with the rest of her family. The daughter, Chloe (Nicky Whelan) is away from college and not home much. She is now! But her dad had a last minute flight thing, so she figured she’d see him in the airport before going home.

And look at that. He is fucking a flight attendant (Cassi Thomson). He even lied about the flight being last minute as he got concert tickets weeks ago for a concert in their location! He is avoiding the family. Must be from the weird mom.

Anyways, she also meets Buck Williams (Chad Michael Murray), a TV correspondent of something. They hit it off too, and he will spy on her dad when she goes home. OMG RAPTURE. Hey, all the kids are missing and super religious people. Stuff starts to crash, people loot, people freak out.

But more importantly, people take a very very long time to figure out what is going on.

Long enough for a quick fly and fuck though.

I didn’t find out til after watching the film, but not only is this is a reboot of the franchise, but it was done by the same people who did the other Left Behind movies. So hey, they are trying. I guess. At least someone is famous in it!

And let’s talk about how annoying this movie was. Very. First of all, it took too long for the characters on the screen to figure out what was happening. Even the strongest of Atheists would figure it out in a couple of minutes. Honestly. If things like that start to happen, things that are magical in nature, the human being will go to the explanation that can cause everything the simplest way. All of your Christian friends and kids missing kind of feels like a dead give away. They turned the movie into a lot of scene changes whenever someone would exclaim they figure it out, just for them to come back and be wrong. It was totally annoying.

Follow up, the rapture wouldn’t be that bad. After like, a day or two, people would stop looting and doing terrible shit. You know why? Because then there would be a proven God. At that point they know that if they sin they go to Hell, and they have seven years of pious ness or whatever before the final shit goes down. The bad people would be quickly wiped out and hey, everyone would be too scared to do anything outside of the Bible and it would be peaceful.

That is just general thoughts. The second one not really based on this movie, but maybe based on future ones. Either way. Acting in this one was shit, drama was stupid, and the plot felt like a lot of filler. Pass.

1 out of 4.

Rage starring Cage.

I think that was the reasoning behind this entire movie. It is a tagline that I don’t think anyone ended up using though. Come on guys, it was right in front of you.

Nick Cage has been in a lot of movies, always. He is the type of guy who never says no, going for the intense indie numbers like Joe, and for the straight to DVD shitty action movies like…well, a lot more of his recent stuff.

So why did I watch Rage? Well, I needed to watch a movie and wanted something about 90 minutes. One of the first random ones I saw on Netflix at all. Knew nothing about it outside of my fictional tag line, so I was ready to be surprised either way.

The good news is we still get some intense new CageFaces.

This story is about Paul Maguire (Cage), an honest business man who cares about an honest days of work. He earned an empire starting a construction business in Alabama and is pretty successful now. Good job! But of course he had mob help. He used to be in the mob with his buddies Danny (Michael McGrady) and Kane (Max Ryan). They got a lot of cash from the Russians, thanks to some thievery, and he used it to help finance his business a few years later.

Well, on a night out, a couple of thugs break into his house. His daughter Caitlin (Aubrey Peeples) is taken (not like the movie), and her two friends (Jack Falahee, Max Fowler) were beat up and left behind to tell the tale. Shit. Look’s like Paul’s past has caught up with him. Now he has to figure out if the Russians finally figured out what he did or not, before his daughter pays the price!

Just kidding, they later find his daughter dead. Too late. No, this is not a rescue mission like Taken. This is a revenge flick.

So Cage is mad, and he won’t let anything stop him from getting revenge. Not his wife (Rachel Nichols), not his former boss (Peter Stormare), not the Russian mob boss (Pasha D. Lychnikoff), and not even Danny “Getting Too Old For This Shit 27 years ago” Glover.

His face just looks like an angry plastic mask the entire film.

Ah, see. This isn’t just an action shoot em up revenge movie. There is a some drama/thriller stuff too. And twists and turns! And mob warfare.

And it is still incredibly boring. The plot twists I couldn’t see coming, mostly because they were pretty fucking stupid. Strong words, strong opinions. All true.

Man, was this movie stupid. I couldn’t believe how much of a waste of time this 90 minutes felt to me. It offered nothing new and had some shitty action. It also had some shitty backstory plots.

So why not a 0? Because of one dang scene. Cage was yelling at a friend and being all intense about things. I felt real emotion from Cage during this one scene and thought it would have taken a lot of takes to get that sort of intensity. That one scene saved this boring as fuck movie.

1 out of 4.

I decided to watch Stolen because sometimes I hate my life.

Also, an editor friend told me he heard that it was advertised as “Taken, but with Nicolas Cage!” That seems like a stretch. So then I had to watch it just to be sure. Because surely it wouldn’t be the same plot as Taken, with a title that basically means the same thing. They wouldn’t do that.

Taken, but with a stuffed animal instead of a daughter. Will Montgomery (Cage) is a big time criminal, and he is going to rob a bank at night. Oh yeah. So hot. Too bad the FBI (Danny Huston) are on his trail, and staked out outside of a jewelry store to catch them. Also because they think he is going to rob a jewelry store, not the bank. Clever Montgomery.

So he is off stealing cash with his team Vincent and Hoyt (Josh Lucas, M.C. Gainey) and even a girl, Riley (Malin Akerman).

Well, things go badly. Montgomery gets caught, but he burns the money so they have nothing to pen on him. Eight years later, he is out of prison on parole!

Turns out some of his former team mates are a little upset. So is his daughter, Alison (Sami Gayle). She thinks her dad is an asshole who left her for prison. Whatever that means.

Long story short, one of his former buddies is pissed off that he never got paid that day. So he kidnaps the daughter, has a big plot to get the money back, or you know, he will kill the kid.

Hooray blackmail! Of course that means Montgomery will have to find the money, within half a day, while also avoiding the cops and other people who want him dead.

They are going to have to do a cavity search for that bear. [Holy shit, I didn’t finish this review. I really think I typed it up, but apparently it got lost. Whoops. Here is a quick analysis because I don’t give a fuck anymore.]

Either way, this movie was not entertaining. Yes, another action movie that has fighting, chasing, explosions, and guns. But fails to entertain.

The story is bad, the acting is whatever, and the plot twists are also bad.

My goodness, that man was hideous.

This is nothing like Taken, that is a fact. But maybe if they make a ridiculous sequel to Stolen it will accidentally be good?

1 out of 4.

Huh, a Dreamworks movie about cavemen. That is what The Croods is about. Get it? They are simpletons, they are ‘crude’. I get it.

So now we all know that Dreamworks is still in business! Not enough failures, I see.

But give it enough time…

Cave men live in caves! Caves are safe (if not dark), because they protect from all sides, especially if you have a nice door rock. New things are bad, because new things can kill. Just ask all the other families who used to live nearby. Nope, just ignore that shit, and get your food, then go back to the gave.

Eep (Emma Stone) is going through your typical teenage girl emotional roller coaster. She hates the cave, wants her own space, but can’t leave. Grug (Nick Cage), her father, has basically forbidden it. Must. Stay. Together.

But she has a younger dumber brother, Thunk (Clark Duke), a baby sister, her mother, Ugga (Catherine Keener), and grandmother (Cloris Leachman)!

Unfortunately, food is getting scarce. Not only that, but Eep sees the sun, in the middle of the night. Fire? What is going on! Oh look, a new boy, Guy (Ryan Reynolds) who controls the miniature sun. Hell yeah. In fact, he might even have a brain. Maybe he has some ideas in there and other inventions. Well, there is his weird sloth named Belt (Chris Sanders).

Too bad he is talking about the end of the world. Seas of lava. Mountains breaking down. I wonder if that has anything to do with Pangaea breaking apart? You know, an event 200,000 years ago, and cave men were like, 20k. Oh well. I guess this will be as scientifically accurate as Ice Age 4.

I can see why they want each other. They are the only two in their age group.

Ughh. Ooogah ugh. That isn’t cave man noises, it is just me being discouraged. Basically, The Croods is about one thing and one thing only. Pretty color and cavemen joke. The plot isn’t ever really explained or talked about much. They just know they have to move, “or else”, trying to find a new cave or whatever. Learning about the world. When Grug finally accepts Guy, it is from a pathetic sob story that comes out no where. They talk about how everything can kill them, yet they survive basically every thing possible.

I think every character falls from huge heights and just tumbles and is fine, despite them being afraid of height for that reason. There i really no consistency with anything in this film. I know that it isn’t accurate, none of the animals or geology makes sense, so it is clearly another world. Basically, it is just traveling plus weird new pants/animals/colors to just go crazy with CGI. That is all it is.

Other inconsistencies bug me too. Like when they hunt in the early movie, they are running like crazy anime characters, dust clouds, even the grandma! But when they actually journey, it is a slow crawl. Alright, sure, run for your lives, but not too hard. This isn’t an inconsistency, but I hated the voice acting in this movie. Great cave people. Oh, they sound like Nick Cage and Emma Stone. Another factor taking me out of the movie, I don’t believe the characters at all because their voices don’t match.

This better not fucking sequel.

1 out of 4.

Generally, most people will tell you they were disappointed with the original Ghost Rider movie. Ghost Rider himself is a cool concept, and a bad ass character, but for people to go home feeling bored? That isn’t good at all.

With most of the Marvel movie characters that they no longer own, such as Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Ghost Rider, there are contract stipulations that state they must use their movie rights or else they will go back to Marvel. From the looks at it, it looked like there wouldn’t be another Ghost Rider movie, and Marvel would actually get a character back! Hooray, even if its one they can’t use that much.

Then there was news that they wanted to do another movie anyways, regardless of how bad the first one was. A RUSHED movie. Well, no way Nick Cage could be involved. Wait what? Nick Cage signed on too?

That is pretty much the only constant between Ghost Rider and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, so the outcome should be different, right?

These eyes. Cry out every night. For you.

This film takes place in Romania, and yo\u do not need to see the first one to see the second. Every character is different, even kind of changed how he turned into Ghost Rider. Instead of Mephistopheles, it is Roarke (Ciarán Hinds), but still a generic Satan/Devil, just played by a different guy.

Moreau (Idris Elba), a drunken French priest is seen trying to warn a clergy that the Devil has sent men to capture a woman and a boy they are hiding, but they don’t believe him. And then they get fucked up, but thankfully the woman (Violante Placido) and the boy Danny (Fergus Riordan) get to escape, with Moreau’s help, but he loses them. So he finds out Johnny Blaze and asks for his help. He doesn’t want to, he just wants to be left alone. After all, he only hurts people anyways. But if he helps him, he is promised that they can undo his fiery curse. Sounds good.

So he catches up, right before the mercenaries lead by Ray (Johnny Whitworth) are capturing them. After killing a few he gets distracted, and wants to kill the kid sensing a great evil, but it is knocked unconscious and stopped. After escaping a hospital, he finds the woman and Moreau again, and they device a plan to find the kid and get him back. Eventually the find out the kid is actually the son of the devil, and Roarke is hoping on unlocking his full power (and those deep dark eyes!). Moreau wants to take him back to his church, lead by Methodius (Christopher Lambert) and freeing Blaze of his Rider curse.

But when everything inevitably goes wrong, can Johnny Blaze free the kid from his fate, after he has freed himself from his curse? Also, angels and spirits of justice?

Don’t even ask me about this moment.

Blahhh. Honestly, the plot doesn’t sound that bad on paper. Especially if I fully explain more of the curse, as it is figured out in the story. I am even fine with where the film ends. It just would be a much better ending for the first film, and not the second film.

He turns into Ghost Rider three times in the movie, and none of them really seem that important. The fact that in his first encounter he gets knocked out from a blast just seems silly, after what we see of him in the first encounter and first movie. The second fight is way too long, and the character does many pointless things when his goal should be to kill them all as quickly as possible. The third fight is more of the same, but with a powerful enemy to fight, who actually turns out to not be that special.

When you have a character who really can’t be stopped / killed, there is no fear for survival or suspense. Just kind of lame. Action was boring. Plot was confusing in that it made it seem like the first film never happened, despite maintaining the same main actor for the character. That is some shit. I hate ret-cons. Also lots of unexplained plot directions. Give it a pass, but the third film might be better.

1 out of 4.

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.

0 out of 4.

I am starting to think that Nick Cage puts out about thirty movies a year. Dude is in everything. All of which seem to have a lot of CGI elements too. Intersting Cage, Interesting indeed.

Maybe he knows something? Or maybe he just likes money. Either way, I don’t think he cares about the plots anymore. Kinda like Samuel L Jackson. People just give him money to yell and demean other humans, pretty awesome lifestyle. Just not as CGI’d up as Nick Cage movies.

Except for the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, that was all real magic.

Fifty years before the majority of events in Knowing take place, it stats with a school full of young impressionable (white) kids. They are doing a time capsule! Some girl wins the contest to decide what they do, and she says pictures of what the future looks like. But she doesn’t do pictures. She writes a whole bunch of numbers and that is it. Doesn’t get to finish her numbers, just most of the way!

NOW ITS THE FUTURE. Nick Cage’s son, smart Chandler Canterbury, ends up getting that letter and is confused. But he thinks they mean something. Thanks to an accident, Cage also thinks the numbers mean something. He accidentally sees 0911012819, which is a date and number of people killed in 9/11 attacks. He thinks this is odd, but tries some more numbers and they all match up! Sure there are random numbers in between that he doesn’t understand, but this shit is scary.

But after the next thing that it predicted comes true too, and he figures out what the in between numbers are, he flips a shit and tries to stop the next few “disasters”. He also meets Rose Byrne, daughter of the crazy chick, who also has a daughter.

Then you know, other stuff happens. The end of the world. Men in suits. Disasters. People Panicking. The missing numbers. Etc.

The first half of the movie was more interesting than I thought it would be. I was like “Oh man, this shit is crazy!”. And I was having a good time. The last hour, however, took away all of it. After the wicked cool train scene, it went downhill, both in terms of plot and caring. Rose was a pretty bad actress in this movie. Her irrational fears got annoying, and I didn’t believe any of her actions.

I also think for the ending they tried to see how long they could make it last. The last 25-30 minutes would be the slowest ending ever, if NBA games and LOTR3 didn’t already exist.

“Okay, hold it in. Can’t pee now. No way this movie has another five minutes in it…” – Doomed watcher.

Besides feeling drawn out, I personally hated the explanations given for all the events, and the results of those explanations. The final “field” picture just didn’t look good to end the film. Once you also find out that this “renown” astrophysicist professor’s dad was a priest, you can also guess where one of the final plot points will go. Blah. If you want to be built up for something awesome, then sorely disappointed, then this movie is for you.

1 out of 4.

When I heard the title, Season of the Witch, a naturally assumed some fantasy based film: knights, witches, magic, what not. I didn’t know it would try to be a “fictional historic movie”. I do love me some Ancient History too, but not that Medieval crap, so that wasn’t a good start.

The “Main Star” choice was also a bad start.

Nick Cage and Ron Perlman are Crusaders! Rawr! The beginning opens with them kicking ass seemingly all over Europe (thanks to different weather types and, you know, subtitles telling me place names). They are so bad ass, they can even make jokes during their melee-tastic frays! But once they end up having to kill innocent people and women, they leave the order, turning their back on the Crusades and Jesus.

Later, in another part of Europe, they are discovered to be deserters! So they are imprisoned. The local king though is all kinds of dying, thanks to that Plague thing. They think they found the witch that started it all (Claire Foy), so they need someone to take her to a Monastery far away,so they can determine if she is a witch and get rid of the plague. Also joining them? Head knight Ulrich Thomsen, Alter boy Robert Sheehan, Priest dude Stephen Campbell Moore, and criminal who knows the way Stephen Graham.

Yep. So they journey, and try to determine if she started the plague or not, if she is a witch or not, and you know, try not to die themselves. Also, figure out why God would do all this.

Oh what shenanigans is God up to now!?

Personally, I thought the movie really dragged. It was hard enough to accept the ending, but also I am expected to believe that Nick Cage is more bad ass than Ron Perlman? Never! Impossible! I definitely believe that people back then may have blamed witchcraft on something as horrible and deadful as the Plague.

But the movie went pretty much as expected. A twist near the end wasn’t really that much of a twist at all. The sometimes obvious fake scenery that a few scenes have also seemed to bug me. Fights / action sequences were okay. But most involved either dark scenes making them hard to understand, or felt way too long (the last one). It can be an okay film, I guess, if you just want some Medieval action, but found it pretty lacking in enjoyment.

1 out of 4

Sometimes movie titles like to lie to you. Sometimes they just note a cheesy line said in the movie. And sometimes they just describe the movie. Kick-Ass happens to be the third option (okay, the second one too. But still)

It is a good strategy too. Movies should just come out with titles like EXHILARATING and BEST MOVIE EVER.

I know you won’t believe me, but I assure you this scene is not a weird sex scene.

Aaron Johnson is just a nerdy kid. Women, like Lyndsy Fonseca, ignore him. He loves comics, but you knew that already because I said he was a nerdy kid. He thinks it is impossible that no one has ever tried to be a superhero, based on probability alone. So he buys a scuba outfit, modifies it a bit, and begins to walk the night! Then he gets stabbed. And hit by a car. Super hero-ing is hard stuff guys. Thankfully in his main painful months of recovery and post surgery, a whole bunch of metal plates are put into his body, so his ability to feel pain has greatly reduced. People also think he is cool now, cause they think he is gay.

OH WELL. BACK TO THE STREETS WHERE KICK-ASS CAN FIGHT CRIME MAYBE A BIT BETTER NOW!

Or just like, you know, in his room with some sticks.

At the same time we have Nicholas Cage (Big Daddy) and Chloe Grace Moretz (Hit Girl) are trying to take down a drug lord (Mark Strong) because he both killed their wife/mother, and got Cage wrongfully imprisoned as a cop because he wouldn’t go on his payroll. Pretty small world right? Big Daddy trained his girl from a young age to make her a fighting machine, great with weapons and guns and the ability to not freak out in a tense situation.

Anyone I miss? Oh yeah. Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Red Mist, the son of the crime lord, yet also nerdy super hero. But is he good or bad?

To me, this movie is fan-freaking-tastic. I laughed a lot and thought all of the action scenes were well done. I felt most of the basic emotions too while watching the film. In the “Kick-Ass unmasked” scene, when Big Daddy is yelling out different tactical commands to his daughter, despite his own excrutiating pain, just to save her. I was almost crying at that scene. In his first big moment, when Kick-Ass is explaining why he is not giving up, it is a very powerful and believable moment.

Not to mention right after this scene was a big costumed underage orgy.

I normally don’t compare things to their original books, but I think the movie is better than the graphic novel. In the graphic novel, a few more people end up dying. Also, certain characters reasonings for their actions turn out to be lies. And yeah. It is just more depressing and lamer. Stick with the movie, and have a fantastic time.

4 out of 4

I didn’t think I’d ever watch The Sorcerer’s Apprentice when it came out. And by never watch, I mean watch eventually, because I watch everything eventually (I hope). All I knew about it is that it had Nick Cage, some dude, some other dude, and had maybe a magic card game reference or two. Realizing it was definitely a Disney movie meant it couldn’t be the level of badassery that I wanted.

This is the expected level. SLJ in Samurai garb with a ScarJo on the side.

Oh what? The main dude is Jay Baruchel? The Canadian? Well that is cool. I have always been a kind of fan of his since I saw Undeclared, despite now just always playing a sort of awkward nerd. The beginning of this movie was horribly cheesy. To me it looked like no one cared so I figured I’d mock the movie in my head the whole time. Not to mention the first time they are in NYC, it begins in 2000. It scared me, because I thought the main dude was supposed to be at least a teenager, not some kid. But thankfully there was a fight scene soon and then he got older.

What I appreciate out of this film is that there was an attempt to bring science into it. It is not the first movie to say science and magic are similar, but I always seem to prefer that instead of an entirely magical route. After all, who doesnt want the main characters in their movies to always be nerds? The effects in the movie are pretty good, which is another reason I wanted to watch it on Blu-Ray.

The plot falls where a lot of movies fall though. Spend the whole movie trying to lead up to this big encounter with the main character and the meanest super villain ever (not to be confused with the main villain throughout the movie) and the fight doesn’t last that long. I think it would be a lot scary if the big villain in these movies happened earlier, so at least then there isn’t all of this buildup that turns into a, “oh they used a cheap trick somewhat talked about earlier in the movie to win kind of easily after all”. This of course happens a lot. Tis a Cop Out.

It is like the opposite of Dragon Ball “bosses”.

2 out of 4.