Nicholas Cage

Wyrmwood

Those looking for a Mad Max hit whilst they wait for Fury Road’s home release, could do themselves a massive favour by throwing their peepers in the direction of Wyrmwood. Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner, the film follows Barry and Brooke; siblings caught up in a zombie apocalypse. Brooke has been captured by a mysterious dancing doctor in a biohazard suit , whilst Barry hooks up with a bunch of blokes who have found a new use for zombie blood. Exhilarating, violent and with a decent splash of claret, action and horror fans will lap this up.

VHS Viral

After two solid entries in the franchise, Viral struggles to match the pace of its predecessors. Entries hardly engage, with one even giving up the the whole premise of being found footage. That’s never a good sign is it? Equally frustrating is the film’s desire to eat itself with a nonsensical segment wraparound that sees a man chasing after a haunted ice cream van. Pointless to the extreme, let’s hope things improve if there’s a fourth entry.

Drive Angry

Nicholas Cage stars in this 2011 supernatural road movie about a convict busting out Hell to rescue his granddaughter. Cage is that convict and along the way he’ll drink hard, enlist the help of Amber Heard, and kill seven men whilst having sex with a stripper. Yes, this overblown movie is transmitted directly from the brain of a teenage child, but by Christ, it’s a lot of fun.

When a family of cavemen, The Croods, are uprooted from their cave by seismic activity, they become involved in the machinations of Guy (Ryan Reynolds), the supposedly next stage of evolution who wants to climb to the highest point he can find, so he can ride the Sun to land in tomorrow before the apocalypse arrives.

The Croods feels like a human edition of the Ice Age movies, as our protagnists face off against the natural disaster we know will wipe them out at some point in history. Sounds depressing when we say it like that, doesn’t it? Well, thank heavens, we’re not making a kids film any time soon.

Whereas Ice Age was a victim of diminishing returns where jokes about the time period gave way to fucking pirates, The Croods tries to keep the humour about the charcters rather than any potential Flintstones – oh look the bird is a cement mixer – kind of shenanigans. When it does dip its toe into modern humour, it doesn’t feel too out of place.

Whereas most kids films promote the message that you should stay true to yourself and everything will be fine, The Croods bucks the trend with a heartwarming message of ideas are great, thinking is brilliant, always keep striving forward or you’ll just end up burning alive in lava. Again, we’ve made it sound more depressing than we meant to!

Overall, The Croods is a simple tale that isn’t going to threaten the likes of Pixar, but it provides solid laughs and maybe even the odd tear jerking scene. Good family fun.