Tag Archives: Nicolas Cage

Oct 27 2025
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Art, Cinema, Film

Renfield (2023).

Cage arrives with the back catalogue assuring us of the inevitability that he would one day be a batshit Count Dracula. No one does barking like Cage

It’s a clever basis for a movie – Dracula and Renfield clocking up the decades, adjusting to the beguiling cultures. Beyond the premise, it’s tiresome, a monster of the week flavour to it, a weak episode of Buffy.

I wasn’t expecting anything remarkable; it’s fun enough as a hybrid of genres, even if Nicholas Hoult is content doing his best version of a Hugh Grant impersonation, having kept all his mannerisms from their time together many years ago.

Master Cage? He’s not in it enough. Maybe just make another Cage-led Dracula movie that’s about Dracula?

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Aug 07 2025
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Surfer (2024).

The opening credits reminded me of Big Wednesday (1978). This is no mere surfer gig, though, but a psychological thriller with style, visuals which have purpose. The director understands the primacy of the image, the importance of framing and when to hold a shot.

This narrative engrossed me from the start as I was thoroughly vexed from the first exchange our lad has with the macho beach posse. I wanted him to fuck them up and hated seeing Cage disrespected, manipulated, losing his shit.

An unhinged work, and another belter for the Annals of Cage.

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Jul 14 2025
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Matchstick Men (2003).

I was dreading this movie would be too reliant on the standard As Good as It Gets (1997) OCD schtick to drive the narrative but it smartly sidestepped all the easy mechanisms. A highly entertaining dramedy with two plots going on seamlessly, a con and a character study intertwined, this is another solid entry in the Cage compendium.

One wishes Ridley Scott would make inconsequential but breezy fare like this rather than all his insipid train wrecks of late, which are too numerous.

And Bruce McGill is in it, showing once again that he’s in everything. 

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Jul 04 2024
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Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Uncategorized

Kiss of Death (1995).

Disregard the generic story and workmanlike direction as this isn’t worthy of recommendation aside from one factor: the ever perplexing, permanently dazzling presence that is Nicolas Cage. Star (or feature attraction) of what must be 4,000 movies, he transforms the mediocre into the mediocre … with a cherry (Cage) on the top.

And David Caruso appears in a leading role. He lost his way in that regard but he’s okay in this.

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Jul 30 2022
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The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022).

Even operatic in moments, this is beyond the ridiculous and enters into the realm of the post-surreal. I suppose one could call it a treatise on acting. Or just a Cage-Fest.

It’s simply … the most Cage that Cage has ever been. 

Which is a good thing. 

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Apr 09 2022
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Nicolas Cage went full meta years ago but now it’s official.

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Jan 13 2022
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Nicolas Cage and a pig ….

I was never sceptical that Nicolas Cage couldn’t do it, but when you hear ominous rumours swirling about of a movie consisting of Nicolas Cage trying to find his stolen truffle pig, I was a wee bit … concerned. But I shouldn’t have been.

Cage pulls it off with aplomb (of course he would have). He excels at normal-weird, if this makes sense. I define it as weirdness with an explanation. He’s a rather unorthodox actor, to say the least, but even in flicks ripe for garbage disposal, he’s always interesting.

Pig (2021) did surprise me. It wasn’t shit or pretentious or boring. It’s a curious wee arthouse number with Cage at the centre, occasionally losing his shit as Cage does, but ultimately all in service of the character. It’s no masterpiece but feels like it should be.

He just wants his pig back.

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Jul 02 2021
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

For one extended moment in time Nicolas Cage was some kind of god.

It happened somehow – Cage became the best action movie star ever.

He, or a group of wise men, created the Cage Blockbuster Event. Name me a better trilogy than The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997), and Face/Off (1997). He is pure charisma, 100% mental, and in desperate need of a decent bout of hair surgery. These are extraordinary action pictures, repeat viewings, … action art. It’s the Golden Age of Cage.

He makes so many stinkers these days, the same shit over and over again. But just when you think he’s consigned himself forever to the straight-to-video dungeon, he pops up in something like Mandy (2018), away with the fairies, off his tits, barking mad, Extreme Cage. It has to be method. But it probably isn’t.

“In Cage’s hands, cartoonish moments are imbued with real emotion and real emotions become cartoons. Everything – from individual scenes down to single lines of dialogue – feel like they have been embraced as opportunities for creation. Cage is usually interesting even when his films are not. He is erratic and unpredictable; he is captivating and he is capricious. He is a performer. He is a troubadour. He is a jazz musician.” – Luke Buckmaster in The Guardian.

Indeed.

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Apr 25 2019
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Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized, United States

Bringing Out the Dead (1999).

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Scorsese’s last movie of the ’90s is curiously his weakest work. It’s a lazy narrative that seems enamoured with MTV standards/trends of cinematography. It also suffers from ‘The Affliction’: the liberal use of popular music tracks to paper over deficiencies in the script.

It’s a promising concept: Nicolas Cage’s paramedic, physically and emotionally drained, drives around an early ’90s Manhattan – by all accounts a crack-strewn cesspit at that time – in search of the high of saving a life, and a broader redemption as he’s haunted by those he couldn’t save.

By the one-hour mark the picture sadly has nowhere to go. There are a few moments of transcendence, particularly the final shot, but it’s all rather boring, from the cartoon character supporting roles to Cage’s … bored performance. One suspects it could have worked better as a small-scale picture, Mean Streets (1973) with a defibrillator.

The life of an ambulance driver has never looked so torporific. One of the very few Scorsese pictures I’ll pass on should it ever crop up again.

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