Drive Angry (2011) - Review

Escaped from Hell, John Milton (Nicolas Cage) is back in the land of the living on a mission to save his
grandchild from being sacrificed by a Satanist cult led by Jonah King (Billy Burke) while eluding The Accountant (William Ficthner) - Satan's assistant tasked with brining Milton back to the underworld. The movie tries to convince the viewer that there is just a fount of charisma emanating from Cage's Milton; at various points in the film Milton is either being hit on or having sex with almost every woman that has speaking roles. Milton has a dry, repulsive personality throughout the entire runtime yet delivers one-liners that still make me laugh out of embarrassment like, "I never disrobe before a gunfight" as he is having sex with a waitress fully clothed before the cultists burst through his motel door to engage in a shootout to kill him (again). Piper (Amber Heard) is his companion in this film and acts as the audience cipher as she cooperates with Milton as she experiences being dragged along to drop Milton off to his final destination on her own escape journey. It is sad when all other characters have more presence than the anti-hero driving the plot, yet this is what happens when production doesn't push for more compelling activity.

Drive Angry is an homage to the grindhouse genre, trying to capitalize on the trilogy of action movie success of Nicolas Cage from the late 1990s. On merit, it fails to remain relevant to its own context - 2011 was full of action movies, remarkably more memorable than Drive Angry. Especially since the 3D format that the movie was shot and released has since become a novelty technology, used since the introduction of these movies to film as a way to draw moviegoers to higher priced tickets. The 3D shots are evident and do not serve to capture the attention of the audience at any point, especially when viewed without the requisite tools - a 2D cut of this film might not have solved this problem but may have allowed the filmmakers to find more creative ways for the audience enjoy the gore that the genre celebrates. Largely, the movie is a victim of an inflated budget and overproduction. The substitution of practical effects for green screened activities fails to live up to the spirit of the genre Cage's failed attempt at being convincingly hard-boiled or even charismatic damns this movie to deeper levels of Hell than from which John Milton escaped.

Willy's Wonderland (2021) - Review

Theatrical Poster

The premise for Willy's Wonderland is apparent less than 10 minutes from the start and is about as much as you are going to get out of the movie. Nicolas Cage plays a Drifter character, a "Man with no Name", and indeed no dialogue. His task is to clean an abandoned arcade/party center in order to pay for the repairs of his otherwise well maintained sports car. The Janitor, as he is referred to in the credits, does not know what awaits him lurking in the shadows of the decrepit building but is prepared nonetheless. Nothing will stand in his way to put his elbow grease into the task at hand, not even a handful of malevolent animatronics will deter him to again feel the joy of being out on the open road. The B plot, which eventually catches up with The Janitor, focuses on a group of teenagers, some of whom are more determined to burn Willy's Wonderland to the ground than others. This group of characters drives the narrative portion of the movie, and serves as the only source of exposition in stark contrast to The Janitor's simple expression of either stoicism or annoyance.

As of 2021, Cage has been a professional actor for almost 40 years - and those 40 years were chock full of the full range of his acting. But there is something in the portrayal of The Janitor that brings fresh air with the familiarity of Cage's acting - his motivation is clear without him having to remove his sunglass. The setting of Willy's Wonderland brings a tinge of nostalgia for those who were blessed with the wonderment of wandering a fully packed arcade with the occasional performance by a menagerie of musically talented animals, but also hopes to bring the dread of other experiences in media and art into one night instead of five. 

Willy's Wonderland is an example of the ethos "Less is More". Despite having a paper thin story and being filled with clichés attempting to parody traditional horror stories, nothing in this movie hits harder than The Janitor move with calculated precision to dispatch the antagonists, especially while acting out his indifference to all other elements of the movie. The moments where characters were filling their world with a rich tapestry of context seemed the least interesting and did little to motivate me to press on.

The movie is a fun romp into camp, and is all that should be expected. Following Nicolas Cage and his acting endeavors for almost 15 years, I am glad that he is able to still choose smaller projects, embrace his zaniness, and have fun in the midst.

Rage (2014) - Republish

This post is going to be different than reviews that I plan on posting later on this site. I helped run a movie podcast in 2014-2016 with my brother and a couple of friends from school, and this was a review that I had carte blanche in writing and posting with little guidance in how that process works. This is a product of a 20-year old that had a different take on movies that others doing the show, and that mostly was a product of being let loose onto the world as an adult no longer relying on an older brother to drip-feed wonderful movie experiences to my impressionable mind.

It pains me to read this review. I can remember the process of waiting for "Tokarev", as was marketed in the U.S. pre-release, and can conjure the joyous experience of watching "Rage" VOD. I say it pains me to read this review because I can remember being naïve and being borderline obsessed with Nicolas Cage instead of what has become fostering an appreciation for an oddball who has been so since before I was born. I want to go back and watch Rage with fresh eyes. It truly has been almost 10 years since I watched this movie and put my overeager thoughts onto the internet, and I want to write a new review with a fresh perspective. I'm curious to see what they look like side by side. Very little editing has been done to this review. I took out a reference to the podcast/website that I helped run, but that did not interrupt anything about the review. Other than that, this is an honest to god review that I cannot believe made its way to public eyes.

7-21-2014

In Rage, Nicolas Cage plays a protective father, Paul McGuire, who has been out of the criminal lifestyle since his wife passed away, and completely falls apart when his daughter, Caitlin, is kidnapped. Paul has to go back to his criminal lifestyle in order to solve the mystery of Caitlin's disappearance. Paul tears through the streets of Mobile, Alabama, and as a consequence, his past begins to catch up to him.

Nic Cage pulls out all of the stops for Paul McGuire in Rage. His Cage-isms, as I call his larger than life outbursts, are still present, but they are within the context of his character losing his mind as a desperate father; there were many times in the movie where my mouth was agape, mostly because if I were to watch Wicker Man and see this type of freak out, I would be on the floor laughing until I couldn't breath. That is not the case in this movie. The emotional response from Cage is the appropriate amount that his character is feeling; the bond that McGuire has with his former partners in crime is laughable at first, but after another second of the portrayal on screen, I was invested one-hundred percent. The action sequences in this movie are fast-paced and they aren't dragged out; they are as quick as McGuire wants them to be. He goes into a place knowing his plan of attack and is calculating every move he makes that interferes with his plan so that he doesn't run into too many snags. This movie doesn't just capture emotion, but appropriate emotion, something that the next person you see on the street would say that Cage has been lacking for ages.

Danny Glover's character, Detective Peter St. John, has one of the more important side roles in the film, trying to steer McGuire back from his destructive tendencies. Glover shows St. John's willingness to let a few things slide for McGuire, based not only on the fact that he is going through a crime boss' operation and doing his job for him, but the fact that he doesn't want to get caught in the crossfire of a man on a mission. As (Glover) has said in a past role, his character was oozing throughout the entire film, "I'm too old for this shit!"

Everyone else gives a stellar performance, which from the trailer you cannot tell at all. The dialogue is pretty cliché at times, and it is pretty noticeable when it gets too clunky. Although it may seem a little cliché, the dialogue is genuine. Every character, including Cage, is grounded in the universe that this takes place and nobody steals the show more than another person. I understand the criticisms of this movie by other people who say that the ending was not what they expected (in a negative manner), but I did not think of the ending having any issues until I had read those criticisms. I feel that the ending is appropriate to the themes presented throughout the movie and does not betray the viewer through cheap tricks. I went into this movie thinking that it would be a Trespass-esque Cage movie with the ironic hilarity of Wicker Man, and I couldn't be more happy to be disappointed.

Verdict: This movie is a must watch for those who need proof that Nic Cage can act effectively. This movie will receive a glowing recommendation from me to those who haven't seen it by Oscar season.

Hello, World!

My name is Allen and I wanted to catalogue my journey of collecting every single Nicolas Cage movie released. Gosh, that sounds like I am in a support group needing intervention. Anyways, I want to start out by talking a little about what has led to this project and what I hope to get out of doing this.

I remember one of the first paychecks I received from my first job and I remember it well. I remember it because I spent it all in a week. I was still in high school and living at home, so this was warranted in my mind. One of the items I spent that paycheck on was The Wicker Man (2006). I had decided shortly after starting my job that I wanted to collect the entire filmography of an actor - this would be the measure of success that I would attain in life! Nicolas Cage was memed heavily online, and the task of choosing his career to follow seemed like an easy one at the time, there were only 63 credits to his name at the time, so that was a slam dunk... or so I thought. Very soon I learned the reality of saving money for college, so the collection idea progressed at a more glacial pace than anticipated. But I persisted in the effort, nonetheless. I would have friends over for "Cage-a-thons", thinking that I had limitless potential for entertainment, but as more people moved away for college or other pursuits, that tradition has since passed.

An example of the chaos, slightly shifted 
to be photographed easier

Many years later... I recently decided to clean up my office, which after two years of owning my home, still wasn't clean enough for me to do my work. I have had many attempts over the years of making some sort of inventory of the movies and TV shows that I owned, but none of those attempts were backed up thoroughly on various platforms and a very rigorous search on my local and cloud storage locations turned up zilch. Nada. Nothing. All of that "hard work" over the years? Gone. As a distraction to the mounting stress that my work was providing me, I decided to wrest some control in my life back into my hands and clean a significant portion of the mess at the same time. I took a picture of every movie spine on my tiny bookshelf and went to work typing each name into a spreadsheet. After the work was completed, 348 different titles sat on my shelf (not including television seasons).

Nic Cage movies removed
from general population

The game was afoot! I had a more manageable task to accomplish, and the act of doing something for myself helped me get past the wall in completing looming deadlines.. I would work on something small every day, giving myself motivation to be in my office and making sure that school was taken care of and feeling less burdened about the mounting piles of neglect that seemed to confine me before. I separated the Nic Cage movies that had been haphazardly profaned by the common films for years into their own sort and threatened a group of friends with a good time over text, stating that they were going to experience wonderful things in the future.