Tag Archives: Simone Levin

Drive Angry (Review)

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Drive Angry


2011
Directed by Patrick Lussier
Written by Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer

Get ready to Drive! Angry! 3D! Except I saw it in 2D because that’s how my TV works. And after testing a 3D TV at the store, we’ll continue to stay 2D forever. But enough of my complaining, let’s get to Drive Angry, a film that is totally awesome in a bad movie spectacular sort of way. Drive Angry knows that it is ridiculous, and it just goes with it.

When Drive Angry 3D was announced, the title alone was enough to say that the movie will be dumb fun, but the biggest concern was if the movie could live up to the dumb fun promised. There have been plenty of films that were built up and ended up being less than promised, and at this point as a jaded cult movie watcher, it takes more that a ridiculous title to impress me. That said, Drive Angry was entertaining and I quite enjoyed myself.

Milton (Nicolas Cage) – Milton throws down the gauntlet for reclaiming the name Milton as a badass and not a stapler-craving, squirrel-watching pyromaniac. Nic Cage doesn’t oversell this role, allowing the viewer to focus more on the action.
Piper (Amber Heard) – Piper is the unconventional tough female main character, who is more of a surrogate daughter than a love interest for Milton, thankfully making Drive Angry less creepy than your standard Woody Allen movie. That’s something we can all aspire to. Piper doesn’t take crap from nobody, even her cheating boyfriend or wacko cult leaders.
The Accountant (William Fichtner) – Who knew being an accountant was so exciting? It’s almost enough to make me want to delve deep into tax laws. Not really. William Fichtner is awesome and for a long time I thought he looked like the Muppet Digit from The Jim Henson Hour.
Jonah King (Billy Burke) – Creeper cult leader who has a thing for sacrificing babies to open portals to hell. Except this time he picked the wrong baby. A baby whose grandpappy is Nic Cage, and Nic Cage barely needs an excuse to bust outta Hell to kill cult leaders.


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Gryphon (Review)

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Gryphon

aka Attack of the Gryphon

2007
Directed by Andrew Prowse

SciFi Channel strikes again with another monster movie where CG runs amok and kills people, this time medieval people, and again their effort is less than stellar. At least it wasn’t painful. Parts of the film seem to be borrowed from many popular movies: the villain is Emperor Palpatine’s lame nephew, certain elements are directly culled from Lord of the Rings, and even parts reminding one of Braveheart are onscreen. The movie follows SciFi Channel’s Type A monster movie, where there is only one monster (or a small group) who is invincible.

The heroine is named Princess Amelia, which is also the name of the actress who played the princess in Dragon, another movie that Gryphon resembles. It’s low budget, has a single word title that is the monster, has a Princess Amelia (even if not by name), has a witch wife of the King who sees the future, and has bad CGI. It’s spooky how much Gryphon reminded me of Dragon. Princess Amelia actress Amber Benson played Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and as I have only seen one episode of that show I have no idea who she is. The hero is Prince Seth, played by Jonathan LaPaglia, from The District, another show I didn’t really watch (but I saw several episodes of it, I just don’t remember him, either.) Where is Coach? He should be playing one of the kings.

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