Drive Angry

All the boys love Mandy Lane IN HELL.

"One hell of a ride."

Howdy y'all welcome back to Thursday's thrilling edition of The Tagline. There's a lull in my movie-going schedule, so I needed some garbage to fill it with. Then, While I was flipping through channels I came across the truly lamentable Drive Angry. Those of you who've been following my posts for a while will probably remember me talking briefly about this movie when I reviewed Nick Cage's 5 Worst Films. I was initially content to leave it at that, but then I saw it again and I just felt like "wow this is really spectacular garbage, I should give my readers the benefit of experiencing this." To that end, today I will regale you once again with the tale of a man who escaped from hell, with the sole purpose of killing some guy who was going to use his granddaughter in a satanic ritual. Also in what I'm sure the writer thought was really clever, this guy's name is John Milton. That's not clever scriptwriter, it is shameful. You should feel ashamed, but I know you don't, obviously anyone with a sense of shame could not have made this movie. Anyway Nick stars as John Milton, a man who has returned from hell with the stolen gun of the devil (called Godkiller, it destroys the target's soul apparently) so that he can take bloody vengeance for the murder of his daughter, and also so he can rescue his baby granddaughter as mentioned above. In the process of tracking down the complete nutball coocoo who's planning to do this ritual (his name is Jonah King, and he's portrayed by the world's best mustache dad Billy Burke) Milton runs into Piper (Amber Heard) who works at a diner as a waitress and has a boyfriend who is a scumbag. Fortunately Milton is an undead scumbag, so he fits right in, and sabotages Piper's car so he can then proceed to FIX it, and get a ride. I think maybe stealing a car would have been more expedient if you already are from hell, but that's just me nitpicking I guess.

The Frozen Ground

Look at those heads starin'

"The hunter becomes the hunted."

Hello everyone, welcome back to another gripping, touching, murdering in the woods edition of The Tagline! Today, with the weather constantly warming up I figured that it would be nice to cool down, and take a trip up to the frosty north, where young girls go missing and wind up as frozen, desiccated corpses in the Alaskan tundra after being tortured and hunted for sport. If that sounds like your kind of thing, well then I have to please ask you to leave, and I'm calling the cops. If it sounds like the plot of a movie you might watch, well then congratulations, I'm bringing the goods today. Today I'm going to be talking about The Frozen Ground, a film released to limited theatrical and on-demand availability in August 2013, based on the real life hunt in the 1980s for Alaskan serial killer Robert Hansen, who was a real life person, who killed other real life people, in Alaska. Unlike in real life, the guy who is desperately trying to find him despite little in the way of manpower and resources, is Nicholas Cage (his character's name is Jack Halcombe, because I guess that sounds cooler than the real investigator's name Glenn Flothe, which is admittedly not a super cool sounding name). Unfortunately the search becomes less of a police fueled manhunt and more of a Nicholas Cage fueled manhunt, as Jack has virtually no one offering help or leads, except for 17 year old prostitot Cindy Paulson, who is incidentally portrayed by Vanessa Hudgens. Was that weird? Yeah, it was pretty weird, we'll get a little more on that later, but anyway, I guess the question you have left about casting is who's playing Robert Hansen, the twisted killer extraordinaire? Why none other than JOHN CUSACK OH YEAH BABY. Bringing back the dream team from Con Air, this film pits Cusack against Cage in a WINNER TAKES ALL FIGHT TO VANESSA HUDGEN'S DEATH.

Next

Look at this thrilling cover.

"If you can see the future, you can save it."

Can you though? It can be really hard to save the future when you are Nicholas Cage, and you are being hindered by your insanity. I mean I guess he sort of did in the Sorcerer's Apprentice, but really he needed Jay Baruchel to help him and that's kinda sad. Anyway, welcome back to The Tagline! Today I'm attempting to bridge the movie desert that has been Q1 2014. This lack of interesting new releases, combined with my difficulty getting time to go to the movies is slowly killing me and my website, so I'll fall back onto a reliable source of entertainment: mediocre Nicholas Cage movies with supernatural elements that involve driving in some way! To that end, I watched Next, a film that was released in 2007. It is really, really, REALLY loosely based on a Philip K. Dick short story called "The Golden Man", only that story involved things like a weird future with mutants who are being sterilized by a government agency, and one of them is literally gold and can see into his future. Of those elements, Next preserves exactly one, a guy who can see into his future. Cris can see exactly two minutes into the future, which is really helpful in evading authorities, not getting beat up, and winning in casinos. He has a small magic act in Las Vegas, also easy to perform when you can see into the future no doubt. Cris has this obsession with this lady that he saw in a dream once, but he can't be sure when he'll meet her, he just knows what time was on the diner's clock in his vision, and so he goes there at that time twice a day, hoping to run into her. 

Seeking Justice

Remember: always either whispering or shouting

"Would you cross the line for vengeance?"

Hey gang, you're most of the way to the exits for the week, and I'm here with the Tagline to ease the transition with a movie where Nicholas Cage seeks revenge etc. etc. you've heard this story before. Mr. Cage is a high school English teacher in New Orleans named Will Gerard whose wife is brutally raped by a stranger on the way home one night. Will is then approached by a man named Simon, claiming to represent a group of 'concerned citizens' willing to 'take care' of the man who raped Will's wife, by 'murdering him' with a 'gun' (they're a shadowy group of vigilantes okay?). After waffling over it for a little while, Will agrees to make a deal with this suspicious man he has never met who works for a group of shadowy criminal murderers. This seems like a good idea for exactly 0 seconds. It isn't long before Simon is back, looking to have Will do some favors for him. For starters its just dropping off a letter, and other cryptic instructions, but soon after he asks Will to push a guy off a bridge into traffic.