Aubrey Peeples

Nicolas Cage acts his socks off in this thinly plotted thriller, which is set in the same moral universe as the Taken movies, where mass murder is excusable if your daughter's been kidnapped. Despite a low-budget aesthetic, director Paco Cabezas invests each scene with straight-faced emotion, never acknowledging the general implausibility and irresponsibility of the story itself. But with Cage's rampant performance and Cabezas' visual style, the film almost works as melodramatic escapism.

Cage plays slick businessman Paul, who has finally put his criminal past behind him. But when his over-protected 16-year-old daughter (Aubrey Peeples) is kidnapped, he digs out his old leather jacket and turns to his boyhood partners in crime (Max Ryan and Michael McGrady) for help. While Paul's new young wife (Rachel Nichols) urges him to sort out this mess, his old police detective pal (Danny Glover) warns Paul against taking the law into his own hands. But he can't help it. Especially when it becomes clear that the Russian mobster (Pasha D. Lynchikoff) he clashed with nearly 20 years earlier might be involved in an attempt to get revenge.

While the plot itself doesn't have any real surprises, it at least tries to twist and turn its way through the story. And along the way, Paul's experience gets increasingly emotional, giving Cage the chance to indulge in everything from slow-burn frustration to tear-stained grief to full-on mad-dog violence. Rage indeed! Cage explodes with fury so many times that he seems in danger of transforming into the Hulk at any moment. And the actors around him wisely back up and let him have the stage to himself. Otherwise, there isn't much to the film, with a series of average car chases and fist-fights that are brutal but forgettable.

Continue reading: Rage Review

You couldn't even say this movie is so bad that it's good, because it's seriously terrible, but it's also hilariously entertaining. Sometimes it means to be idiotic, but more often we are laughing because the effects are so appalling, the script is nonsensical and the cast look like they got lost and wandered onto the set by accident. Fans of awful movies won't want to miss it.

The premise is simply ridiculous: Los Angeles is in the grip of a shark infestation, as swimmers in about four inches of water are being gobbled up by Great Whites. Just then, a freak hurricane arrives from Mexico carrying water-spouts packed with sharks that are dropped into the city streets. Our hero is Fin (Ziering), a surfer dude who's worried about his estranged wife April (Reid) and their two grown children (Peeples and Hittinger). So he grabs his best buddy Baz (Simmons), the tough-girl barmaid Nova (Scerbo) and a local drunk (Heard) and they charge to the rescue. After a series of outrageous adventures, they come up with a crazy plan to save the city.

Mashing together every disaster movie cliche imaginable, along with nonstop amusing Jaws references and L.A. in-jokes, the film isn't nearly as stupid as it looks. And it looks really stupid. There isn't a single sequence that makes a bit of logical sense due to the dirt-cheap production values and clunky digital effects. Every now and then, the filmmakers edit in a documentary shot of actual sharks swimming just to remind us what they look like, as opposed to the clumsy rubber and digital variety that fills the screen.

Continue reading: Sharknado Review