Screw Art, Let's Drive Angry

While I had a day off from work, I figured I'd brave the bad weather and check out Nicolas Cage's new movie, Drive Angry. I think I might have been one of the only people to have seen it because the movie bombed. But that isn't important right now, because it's an awesome movie. Screw all those negative reviews; Drive Angry is a badass flick.

Okay, it's not a great movie. But it's a hell of a lot of fun, no doubt about it. It's loud and stupid and completely insane, but that's what's so cool about it. Drive Angry is what happens when a movie throws up its hands and says "screw art, let's party." And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I know Nicolas Cage gets a lot of crap for the quality of both his movies and his performances in them. But I really enjoyed his work in Drive Angry a lot. He plays the role like he was one of those grizzled heroes from the grindhouse action movies from the '70s. That pretty much sums up the whole movie: it's an awesome throwback to those old grindhouse flicks. If it were released during the '70s or '80s, it probably would have had the Cannon Films logo in front of it and been produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. While it sadly doesn't have those, it's still pretty awesome. It's exciting, entertaining, and just plain fun. And thanks to that, I'm going to give Drive Angry four stars on my usual scale. Go see it while you have the chance, because it tanked so badly that I'd be surprised if it's still in theaters by this time next week. And that's a shame, really.

Making Up For Lost Time

It just hit me that I've only posted here once this month. That's unacceptable. I can do better than that. So for now, this post is going to make up for lost time and cover all the blog-worthy stuff I just plain didn't write about this month.

A few weeks back, my dad and I headed out to see Jason Statham's latest flick, The Mechanic. I still have yet to see the Charles Bronson flick that this movie was remaking, but I'm a sucker for a Statham action movie and Ben Foster's in it too, so seeing it felt like a good idea at the time. Thanks to me and my dad's apparent inability to check facts, we ended up buying our tickets and sitting down in the theater 45 minutes early. Because we apparently couldn't tell the difference between 4:15 and 4:45. It was the first showing of the day, so we were obviously the first ones there. But what we weren't expecting was that we were the only ones there. Besides the employees, I think we were the only ones in the building. I've been the only one to see a movie before, but to be the only one to see any movie at a given time is weird.

Anyway, about The Mechanic. There really isn't much of a plot at all, so if you see it, be warned that The Mechanic is very light on story. But that doesn't mean it's not a bad movie. It's entertaining enough, with quite a few exciting action scenes and some fine acting from Statham and Foster to boot. The thing is, though, that this isn't anything new for Statham. He's always playing assassins or mercenaries or something similar in his movies, and he always plays them the same way. I enjoy his flicks a lot; I think they're a ton of fun. But while I can't fault him for sticking with what he's good at, I want to see him try something different. Maybe he can be the villain for a change.

But anyway, I did enjoy The Mechanic. It isn't perfect, but it's definitely worth a watch. I'll give it three stars on the scale and a recommendation to see it if it's still playing anywhere near you.

About a week after seeing The Mechanic, I attended yet another midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show up in Lexington. Yes, again. I was afraid I wouldn't make it on time, considering that I got there with maybe one minute to spare. But I got there on time, and as I've said every time I've been there, I had an absolute blast. I kinda wish I wasn't always going alone, that I had friends to go with me, but I'm still having fun regardless. The best part of this month's show, though, was the male members (and one female member) of the shadowcast getting up on stage before the show and doing a dance routine to "Macho Man" by the Village People. Outside of having zombies dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" before the Halloween show, this was the first time I'd seen them do something like this. I thought it was a really cool way for them to start the show too, and if they did something like that every month, I wouldn't complain one bit.

And let's wrap this post up by talking about my trip to the movies yesterday. This trip took me to see Liam Neeson's Unknown, which I didn't really have any expectations for going in. I'd just seen the ads and thought a new action-thriller starring Liam Neeson could be pretty cool. And you know what? It is pretty cool. I dug it a lot. It starts running off the rails during the last half-hour or so, but it's still a really entertaining movie. It moves along a rather quick pace, never letting itself get boring or uninteresting. The movie's twist seems ludicrous when you think about it, but you don't really doubt it while you're watching the movie. It's just one of those things where you don't question it when you're in the moment.

I unfortunately can't say Unknown is as good as Taken, but it's still an exciting movie that I didn't have any real problems with. So I'll give it three and a half stars and a recommendation as well.

And that's about it for this post. There's not really a whole lot left for me to add to it, unless you want me to start linking you to all the reviews I've written at the S@TM blog since December. I haven't done a post like that lately, to my own personal shock. But hopefully you've been keeping up with that blog too, so you wouldn't need to come here to go there. However, just so we don't have to worry about it, here's the reviews I've done since the last S@TM update...

• The Little Shop of Horrors - the 1960 version
• Little Shop of Horrors - the 1986 musical
• Gremlins
• Gremlins 2: The New Batch
• Private Parts
• The Meteor Man
• Blankman
• The Green Hornet
• Defendor
• SpiderBabe
• Clue
• Buried
• The Descent: Part 2

That should wrap things up. And here's hoping it won't be another three weeks before I can come up with something else to write about.

Road Trippin'

I usually spend my free time doing the same ol' things. Either I'm sitting around the house doing nothing, going to see a movie, or writing for my other blog. But this past Monday I did something a wee bit different: I went on a road trip. One of my co-workers was going to drive up to Columbus, Ohio to see his favorite band, Hawthorne Heights, in concert and invited me to come along. Now being only vaguely familiar with the band - I'd heard their name, and that's about it - I wasn't 100% sure if I really wanted to go. But I didn't want the guy to go by himself and end up stranded across state lines by himself. So I figured what the heck, I'd go anyway.

We arrived in Columbus at about 6:30, roughly four hours or so after we'd left. There was plenty of time to kill, since the guys running the door said that Hawthorne Heights wouldn't take the stage until about 10:00. Turns out they didn't even get to do their sound check until 10:30, since a couple of the opening acts ran long. So imagine sitting around in a strange place, stuck listening to mediocre local bands you've never heard of and will never hear of again, waiting to see a band whose songs I'd never heard.

But you know what? I still had a great time. It was a lot of fun, and Hawthorne Heights themselves put on a great show even though their set was kinda short. I don't know if I personally would have driven to the middle of Ohio to see it, but at least the trip didn't suck. Will I ever do something like that again? If it was a band that I'd actually heard of and liked... maybe. We'll just have to see.