Tag: Nicolas Cage
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Pig is an anti-noir. Writer and director Sarnoski sets it up as something of a neo-noir in the first act, with seemingly inscrutable modern-day hermit Nicolas Cage having to travel back to civilization and civilization being scared of him. And even though Cage’s adventure routes through shady settings, they’re just background to the actual journey…
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Halfway through Raising Arizona is this breathtaking chase sequence. Until this point in the film, while there’s been a lot of phenomenal direction, it’s all been brief. Raising Arizona starts in summary, with lead Nicolas Cage narrating, and it doesn’t start slowing down the narrative pace until just before the chase sequence. But then the…
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Kiss of Death takes place over four years, has eight to ten significant characters, and runs an hour and forty minutes. It skips ahead three years at the forty-five minute mark. And the last twenty minutes could have their own movie, as David Caruso returns to the city to face Nicolas Cage, who knows Caruso…
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Honeymoon in Vegas almost defies description. Bergman drags a sitcom out to ninety minutes. But he also makes his straight man—Nicolas Cage—act like a lunatic. Cage’s performance during the second act features him screaming the end of every sentence. Wait, I forgot about the utterly useless prologue (though it does give the chance for an…
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I’m loathe to say it, but The Rock isn’t bad. Its good qualities are questionable, but it’s not bad. Besides some of the acting, what’s best about the film is how it fuses the action and adventure genres. Bay does his action stuff in traditional adventure settings—there’s a setting straight out of Indiana Jones and…
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Drive Angry is T2 with a supernatural bent. It’s like Lussier wanted to make a 3D Terminator movie, couldn’t, and came found a way to make it possible to do most of the action scenes of one. Actually, Drive Angry isn’t just some supernatural movie. It’s all about Nicolas Cage breaking out of Hell (which…
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The problem with Amos & Andrew is the execution. Frye has a good concept—a black professional moves to an island community filled with guilty white liberals and suffers thanks to their community interest, finding he has more in common with a two bit criminal than his neighbors. And the stuff between Samuel L. Jackson and…
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I loathed Con Air back when I first saw it. I’ve only seen it that one time, opening night thirteen years ago. And many of my complaints at the time still hold true–Nicolas Cage is awful, John Cusack is awful (worse, his jokes fall flat), Simon West is a terrible director (but thirteen years later…
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A lot of Face/Off is okay. Nicolas Cage does a great job as the hero stuck with the villain’s face and makes it worth watching. The same can’t be said for John Travolta, who’s only a little better as the villain with the hero’s face than he was as the hero (the movie’s got a…
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Is Kick-Ass any good? Um. That question is somewhat complicated, because there are very good things about it–Chloë Grace Moretz’s fantastic as a foulmouthed twelve-year-old version of the Punisher, with some Jackie Chan thrown in, and so is “lead” Aaron Johnson, who manages not to look like he’s lost the movie he’s top-lining to every…
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At some point during this response, I’m going to say nice things about Eva Mendes. Just a warning. I used to hate on CG, starting in around 1996 and ending about six years later, when I just gave up caring. It wasn’t ever going to stop and it had gotten to a point where there…
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I’m not a fan of the popcorn movie argument–it’s the one where people tell you you’re just supposed to enjoy the movie and not think about it–Stephen Sommers uses it in his defense and so does, somewhat more interestingly, Cameron Crowe (I think he called it populist to prove he’d been to college). Except if…
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I’ve seen Moonstruck once before–though I’d forgotten the terrible opening titles–and I think (I repressed the experience) that time I had the same response I just had this time. Moonstruck makes me worried I have brain damage. The first three quarters of the film, roughly until the very good scene between John Mahoney and Olympia…
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Watching former–I don’t know, he wasn’t really an indie, so something like pre-hipster hipster–wunderkind Wes Bentley in material like this movie (where he finally finds his appropriate level, skill-wise) is kind of amusing. Is it amusing enough to get through the whole movie, especially since Bentley doesn’t show up until twenty-five minutes into it (remember,…
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Fairly terrible tale of arms dealer Nicolas Cage–set over twenty years–as he works with unreliable little brother Jared Leto, romances and marries Bridget Monyahan, and avoids hotshot Interpol agent Ethan Hawke. When the script’s not telling bad jokes, it’s just being bad; less a film than a collection of loosely related scenes connected with poorly…
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Pretty good car chase action movie with cops vs. car thieves in fast cars. Great cast (save Christopher Eccleston and Angelina Jolie). At least she’s more mediocre than bad. Lead Nicolas Cage never visibly counts the paycheck; Giovanni Ribisi’s great. Ostensible director’s cut adds little–certainly not where it needs help; instead, there’s some padding and…
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Singular motion picture recounting three nights of New York paramedic Nicolas Cage’s life and experiences on the job. Amazing on all counts–the lead performances from Cage and Patricia Arquette, the showy supporting ones from everyone else. Marc Anthony stands out as a frequent “customer.” Once frequent Scorsese scripter Paul Schrader adapted Joe Connelly’s novel, which…
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