Bringing Out the Dead

 Year:  1999

Director:  Martin Scorsese

Screenplay:  Paul Schrader, based on the novel Bringing Out the Dead by Joe Connelly

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore

Running Time:  121 minutes

Genre:  Drama

New York City, the early 1990s:  Burned-out paramedic Frank Pierce (Cage) works the night shift.  Depressed, unable to sleep, and wracked with guilt for those he has not been able to save, Frank begins to hallucinate the patients he has lost.  After responding to a call about a man suffering cardiac arrest, Frank forms a tentative friendship with the man's daughter Mary (Arquette).

On it's release in 1999, this bleak urban drama was seen as a follow-up to Taxi Driver (1976), another collaboration between director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader.  Both films tell the stories of nocturnal workers in a hellish urban environment, and have strong themes of guilt and redemption.  However, while Robert De Niro, as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, finds his salvation in violence, Frank Pierce is essentially a compassionate man, trying to do the right thing in a broken, fallen world.  The film take place over the course of a weekends Frank and his fellow paramedics make the rounds tending to the sick and wounded of night-time New York, and delivering them to the overcrowded, understaffed and under equipped hospital.  Nicolas Cage gives one of his best performances as the haunted Frank Pierce, deathly pale, with sunken red-rimmed eyes, he looks like someone who hasn't slept in weeks, his slow drawl fitting Frank's laconic narration, and even the scenes where Cage delivers some of his more trademark over the top moments, it fits with Frank's mania at that point in the film.  Patricia Arquette delivers a quietly powerful performance as compassionate drug addict Mary, who becomes Frank's angel of mercy.  Sharing Frank's season in hell are Larry (John Goodman), Frank's friend,  Marcus (Ving Rhames), an eccentric devoutly religious paramedic who enjoys flirting with the dispatcher and organises a prayer circle among clubbers while he and Frank try and save an overdose victim; and Tom (Tom Sizemore), a wild paramedic who enjoys beating people up when he's bored.  This is a violent, and dark film, which is sometimes hard to watch and often disturbing, but it is visually impressive, with the fast cutting between flashing ambulance lights, and the camera tearing down the streets of New York, it's also very funny, albeit with humour of the darkest variety, such as Frank begging his boss to fire him at the start ion every shift, and some surprisingly surreal imagery.  It is a tough watch, and failed at the box office when it was released, but it is one of Scorsese's most powerful and underrated works.

Nicolas Cage in Bringing Out the Dead
  

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

 Year:  2022

Director:  Tom Gormican

Screenplay:  Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Sharon Horgan, Tiffany Haddish, Ike Barinholtz, Alessandra Mastronardi, Jacob Scipio, Neil Patrick Harris

Running Time:  107 minutes

Genre:  Action, comedy

Hollywood actor Nicolas Cage is struggling with his career, and is becoming increasingly estranged from his ex-wife (Horgan) and teenage daughter (Lily Sheen).  Reluctantly he accepts a lucrative assignment to travel to an island off Mallorca and appear at the birthday party of a billionaire super-fan, Javi (Pascal).  Shortly after he arrives, however, Cage is contacted by CIA agents Vivian (Haddish) and Martin Etten (Barinholtz) who inform him that Javi is an international arms dealer, who is behind the kidnapping of the teenage daughter of a prominent politician.  The CIA want Cage to act as a spy for them.

Nicolas Cage has had a strange and eclectic career.  Making his name with such films as the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona (1987), Moonstruck (1987) opposite Cher, and David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990), to action hero turns in The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997) and Face/Off (1997), and an Oscar-nominated performances in Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and Adaptation. (2002), and after a series of small, straight-to-video films, he has had something of career resurgence in recent years with cult horror films such as Mandy (2018) and Color Out of Space (2019), and finding critical success with Pig (2021).  Cage has also had a strange form of cult celebrity appearing in numerous internet memes and his face appearing on things such as mugs, clothes and even cushions, due to his eclectic career choices, his often flamboyant style of acting (which Cage himself described as "nouveau shamanistic") and his distinctive look and drawling voice.  In this film Cage doesn't just play a version of himself but also an imaginary version of his younger self, digitally de-aged and credited under his birth name of "Nicolas Kim Coppola", who crops up to give the older Cage advice or insults. Here he reminds us once again that he can still deliver a great performance and has a real gift for comedy.  Here he pokes fun, not only at his own career, but at his public image and even his financial troubles.  Pedro Pascal is funny and charismatic as the possible arms-dealer and Nicolas Cage super-fan, with whom the actor bonds.  Great comedy actors such as Sharon Horgan and Tiffany Haddish are a little underused in the supporting cast, but it is really the Nicolas Cage show.  Neil Patrick Harris also appears in a small role as Cage's agent.  The story turns into a fairly average buddy action film and it runs out of steam a little by the end, but the action scenes are well staged and there are consistent laughs throughout.  The performances elevate the film, and the concept of Nicolas Cage playing himself gives the film an extra dimension of fun.  

Pedro Pascal and Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Color Out of Space

 Year of Release:  2019

Director:  Richard Stanley

Screenplay:  Richard Stanley and Scarlett Amaris, based on the short story "The Colour Out of Space" by H. P. Lovecraft

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson, Elliot Knight, Madeleine Arthur, Q'orianka Kilcher, Tommy Chong

Running Time:  111 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction, horror

Nathan Gardner (Cage) and Theresa Gardner (Richardson) move with their three children:  Teenagers Lavinia (Arthur) and Benny (Brendan Meyer) and youngest son Jack (Julian Hilliard) to a remote farm in the middle of the New England woods.  One night a meteor crashes down near their home, releasing bizarre coloured lights and seeming to have a strange effect on anyone who comes near it.  Shortly afterwards the meteor seems to vanish.  Hydrologist Ward Phillips (Knight), who is surveying the area for a dam development discovers that something strange seems to have contaminated the water.  As strange events happen around the Gardner family, local animals and people begin to undergo nightmarish transformations.

American writer Howard Philips Lovecraft is one of the most influential and problematic horror and science-fiction authors of all time.  His work is challenging for filmmakers is difficult not only for the horrific racism, sexism and anti-semitism that blights his life and writing, but also Lovecraft's writings tended to be about dimensions and creatures so terrible that the very sight of them would drive a human insane, which is very difficult to realise on screen.  Lovecraft has been adapted to the screen before, perhaps most notably in Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986), but this is one of the best depictions of Lovecraftian horror that I have seen.  Cult film director Richard Stanley and co-writer Scarlett Amaris update the film enough to be acceptable to modern audiences, while still keeping the cosmic horror feel of the story.  Stanley creates beautifully artistic images, with special effects which range from the subtle to the completely psychedelic, alongside gruesome 1980s style pulp horror.  In the lead role Nicolas Cage goes from quiet and subdued, to his trademark full-on manic frenzy.  The film is overly long and it takes a while to get going, also Cage's over the top performance in the final third of the film becomes almost funny.  It is a good film, not without it's flaws, but is one of the most successful H.P. Lovecraft adaptations, and is full of striking, memorable imagery.

Nicolas Cage sees the Color Out of Space

Mandy

Year of Release:  2018
Director:  Panos Cosmatos
Screenplay:  Panos Cosmatos and Aaron Stewart-Ahn, story by Panos Cosmatos
Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Ned Dennehy, Olwen Fouere, Richard Brake, Bill Duke
Running Time:  121 minutes
Genre:  Horror, action

Nicolas Cage has had a curious career.  A respected, Oscar-winning actor, he has become something of a cult figure due to his prolific appearances and over the top performances, often in very bad movies.  However, when he is in a film that seems to interest him, with a director who knows how to use him, Cage can show what a great actor he is.  Mandy is one such film.  Cage does not have to worry about going over the top here, because the entire film starts over the top and ends up somewhere in the stratosphere.  It is one of the most striking films that I have seen in a long time.

The film is set in 1983, somewhere near the Shadow Mountains in California.  Red Miller (Cage) is a logger who lives with his girlfriend, Mandy Bloom (Riseborough), a talented fantasy artist who works as a cashier at a gas station.  One day, Mandy is unlucky enough to catch the eye of Jeremiah Sand (Roache) leader of the depraved Children of the New Dawn cult.  Infatuated with Mandy, Sand orders the cult to kidnap her with the help of a demonic biker gang known as the Black Skulls, who have a taste for human flesh and a highly potent strain of LSD.  As things go from bad to worse, Red sets out on a quest for violent revenge.

The plot itself comes as no surprise from any number of horror, action, revenge films, and you'll be able to tell right from the start how it's all going to end up.  That is not the point of the film, though.  The point is to bombard the senses with surreal, psychedelic sights and sounds.  The film uses pretty much every cinematic trick in the book, and it makes for quite an overwhelming experience.  The film is very violent, and very gruesome, the action scenes however are handled with flair and genuinely exciting.  The constant, droning soundtrack was one of the last works by acclaimed Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson.  Nicolas Cage gives a powerful performance and ends up at his most unhinged, although he looks positively restrained compared to the rest of the film.  The film gets a lot of mileage from Andrea Riseborough's ethereal looks, and she gives a striking, sympathetic performance in the title role.

This film is an instant cult film.  This is a film that should really only be seen with a like-minded crowd on the biggest screen you can find with the soundtrack cranked all the way up to maximum.  Some viewers may be put off by the film's weirdness and violence, but if you can go along with it, it's a unique experience and well worth checking out.   

Nicolas Cage in Mandy

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Year:  2012
Director:   Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor
Screenplay:  Scott Gimple, Seth Hoffman and David Goyer, from a story by David Goyer, based on the comic book character Ghost Rider created by Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich and Mike Ploog
Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Fergus Riordan, Ciaran Hinds, Violante Placido, Johnny Whitworth, Idris Elba, Christopher Lambert
Running Time:  95 minutes
Genre:  Horror, fantasy, action, supernatural, superhero

Here we go with the not so eagerly awaited sequel to the superhero clunker Ghost Rider (2007), based on the Marvel Comics character.  The film tells the story of Johnny Blaze (Cage) a motorcycle stunt rider who makes a deal with the Devil (Hinds) in order to save the life of his father.  However, the deal means that whenever Blaze is in the presence of any kind of wrongdoer he transforms into the "Ghost Rider", a demonic creature with a flaming skull for a head riding a tricked out motorcycle (anything that he happens to be riding on when he transforms is transformed as well).  In order to escape the curse, Blaze moves to a remote area somewhere in Eastern Europe, where he is found by alcoholic monk Moreau (Elba).  Apparently, the Devil has sent his minons out after a mother, Nadya (Placido), and her thirteen year old son, Danny (Riordan).  The Devil, it soon turns out, is the boy's father.  If Blaze can foil the Devil and keep Nadya and Danny safe, Moreau promises to lift the Ghost Rider curse.  Blaze reluctantly agrees and they soon set off on a run around through Eastern Europe, pursued by the Devil's henchman Carrigan (Whitworth).

This film, which is released in 3D, is a mess.  It never seems to know how seriously to take itself and the cast seem to come from different movies.  Placido and Riordan play it as a drama, Elba plays it as a alight-hearted action movie, Hinds plays the Devil like a gangster, and Nicolas Cage is so over the top he appears to have gone off over the Moon somewhere.  This provides for some hysterical scenes.  In one scene Cage is interrogating a bad guy while trying to keep his Ghost Rider side repressed bellowing that the demon is "ScratchIINNNGG... at... the... DOOORRRR!!!"  There are also irritating comic interludes which distract  from the story (the scene with the Ghost Rider peeing fire while nodding at the camera and chuckling does a lot to rob the character of any mystique or tension he might have once had).  The 3D is serviceable and does provide some entertainment when they are barrelling along the roads.  The computer effects are serviceable but little more, which isn't really good enough for a movie with such a heavy reliance on visual effects.  There are also bizarre animated interludes in order to explain the plot and provide some exposition.  The story itself, with it's liberal borrowings from other religious themed movies, is nothing that has not been done before and done better.

Fans of the original, if any, might enjoy the film, but otherwise it just provides still more proof that Nicolas Cage's career is on a sad downward trajectory, which is a real pity because he has done such great work in the past. 

The dangers of smoking in Ghost Rider:  Spirit of Vengeance


            

Wild at Heart

Year:  1990
Director:  David Lynch
Screenplay:  David Lynch, based on the novel Wild at Heart:  The Story of Sailor and Lula by Barry Gifford
Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Willem Dafoe, Harry Dean Stanton, J.E. Freeman, Isabella Rossellini
Running Time:  120 minutes
Genre:  Road movie, drama, comedy, romance

This startling film plays like a surreal homage to The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Elvis Presley.  Sailor Ripley (Cage) and Lula Pace Fortune (Dern) are a young couple deeply in love.  However Lula's deranged mother, Marietta (Ladd), is determined to keep them apart.  After Sailor is released following a prison sentence for killing a man in self-defense, he and Lula decide to run off to California.  However, Marietta is determined to get Lula back and sends her private detective boyfriend, Johnnie Farrgut (Stanton), to track the couple down.  To make sure that Sailor is kept away permanently, Marietta contacts her other boyfriend, the murderous gangster Marcello Santos (Freeman), to send a hitman after the couple.  Meanwhile, Sailor and Lula find themselves trapped in a dangerous and very strange world, as they travel through a twisted, nightmarish version of the southern US.

The film opens with a match striking and then billowing clouds of flame filling the screen, and it doesn't let up from there.  There is never a dull moment in this hilarious, romantic, shockingly violent and deeply weird movie.  One of director David Lynch's trademarks is his mixing of extreme violence, disturbing surrealism, with often genuinely touching sentiment.  Lynch described this film as being "about finding love in Hell".  A long time fan of The Wizard of Oz, Lynch made the film one of the touchstones for the Wild at Heart script, and the film's sense of hope comes from Sailor and Lula's conviction that there is something better over the rainbow and at the end of the yellow brick road.  Lynch also saw Sailor as an Elvis Presley figure and Lula as Marilyn Monroe, and Nicolas Cage does perform two Elvis songs in the film.   Nicolas Cage turns in a superb perfomance as the snakeskin jacket clad Sailor (which in the film he claims "represents a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom"), and is perfectly complemented by Laura Dern as the tough and sexy Lula.  The love story between the two is genuinely affecting.  They make love, dance and have long rambling conversations about pretty much anything that happens to cross their minds.  Laura Dern's real-life mother Diane Ladd is memorable as the insane Marietta, for which she was Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

The film is very different from Barry Gifford's mostly dialogue driven novel.  Although the film is far more graphically violent than the book, the book is in it's own way darker, with quite a bleak conclusion.  Despite winning the Palme d'Or for Best Film at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, the movie was heavily criticised on it's release for the violence and weirdness, but in my opinion, the fact that this tender love story is set amongst all this horror, darkness and violence makes it shine all the more brighter.  Personally I love this film, it's sexy, romantic, violent, tender, funny and bizarre, and is probably David Lynch's most thoroughly entertaining movie.  The film's ultimate message appears to be that in an insane, twisted, nightmare world, the only hope for survival is love.


"This whole world's wild at heart and weird on top."
- It's hard to disagree with Lula (Laura Dern)

Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage hit the road in Wild at Heart           

              

Raising Arizona

Year: 1987
Director: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (uncredited)
Screenplay: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, Trey Wilson, John Goodman, William Forsythe, Sam McMurray, Frances McDormand, Randall "Tex" Cobb
Running Time: 94 minutes
Genre: Comedy, action,

Summary: H. I. "Hi" McDunnough (Cage) is a career criminal, with a penchant for robbing convenience stores, however he is so bad at it that he constantly gets caught. As time goes on he falls for the officer who processes him each time, Edwina "Ed" (Hunter), and they get married. Vowing to go straight, Hi embraces married life. However Ed is desperate to have a baby, but she is infertile and they are unable to adopt due to Hi's criminal past.
When they learn that local businessman Nathan Arizona (Wilson) has just become a father to quintuplets, Hi and Ed decide to steal one of the five babies to raise as their own.
They successfully kidnap one of the babies, but their new found family life is thrown into jeopardy when two of Hi's old friends from prison (Goodman and Forsythe) break out of jail and arrive at the McDunnough's home, as well as a deranged biker bounty hunter (Cobb) who is determined to find the missing baby.

Opinions: Child abduction is not exactly the most obvious theme for a light hearted knockabout comedy, especially one in which the abductors are actually the heroes, but the Coen brothers make it work.
The film is hyper-stylised and almost cartoonish, featuring sweeping camera movements, surreal moments and plenty of the Coens' trademark dialogue.
Nicolas Cage does some great work in the film. He is an actor who can be really good when he is in the right film and has a character that fits his over-the-top, manic style. He fits right in to the frenetic, bizarre world of this movie. However the film belongs to Holly Hunter who provides the film with it's heart. Genuinely well-meaning, if misguided, her character, which was written specifically for Hunter, anchors the whole movie.
The film is visually impressive, consistently entertaining, and very funny. The darker aspects of the premise are hinted at, but not really explored. Despite not being particularly successful when it was first released it has become something of a cult movie now.
The film gets a lot of comedy mileage out of the character's dialect (which was written as a blending of the local dialect and the character's assumed reading material - namely the Bible and magazines). As happens a lot with Coen brothers films, it's difficult to tell if they are celebrating or mocking the South, or maybe both at the same time.
The movie runs the risk at times of being too quirky for it's own good, but it gets by on sheer energy and the fact that it is always enjoyable and frequently genuinely charming. This was the Coens' second film and was written deliberately to be the polar opposite of their debut, the hard-edged, stripped down noir thriller Blood Simple (1984), and fans will be able to spot many of their tradmarks.
Over the top, exuberant fun, but with genuine heart, this is worth checking out.



Holly Hunter and Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona

Season of the Witch

Year: 2010
Director: Dominic Sena
Screenplay: Bragi F. Schut
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Stephen Campbell Moore, Claire Foy, Robert Sheehan, Ulrich Thomsen, Stephen Graham, Christopher Lee
Running Time: 98 minutes
Genre: Period, action, adventure, horror

Summary: In the 14th Century, two knights fighting in the Crusades, Behman (Cage) and Felson (Perlman), are sickened by the slaughter of innocent people, including women and children, and so decide to leave. Returning home to Europe as deserters, they find their homeland ravaged by the Black Death. Arriving in a town, they are soon arrested, but are offered a pardon if they agree to help transport a young woman (Foy) accused of witchcraft, and who the town's priests believe caused the Black Death by sorcery. The knights are to take her on a dangerous six day journey to a remote monastery where she is to be put on trial and where it is believed the monks will be able to undo her magic. They are accompanied by a third knight (Thomsen), a priest (Moore), an altar boy who wants to become a knight (Sheehan) and a convicted swindler (Graham) who is to serve as a guide. As they embark on their already perilous journey, they soon disover that, despite being bound in chains and held in a cage, their prisoner is not as defenceless as she appears.

Opinions: This movie blends road movie, buddy movie, supernatural horror and medieval action-adventure. However, it is less than successful. Nicolas Cage is not a bad actor at all, he can be very good, but he is annoyingly inconsistent, and it is fair to say that he has made more than his share of turkeys. Certainly he does not convince as a fourteenth century knight. Ron Perlman, however, is impressive as his fellow knight, who provides the film with much needed screen presence and intentional humour. Claire Foy, best known from the BBC television version of Little Dorrit (2008), is impressive as the accused woman, managing to appear both innocent and sinister. In fact, it is a real pity that she is not given more to do.
Visually, it ranges from beign quite good, to some truly horrendous special effects. The producton design is quite effective though and the senes shot on location look good.
The script is very silly in places, and it is not particularly scary. However, there is enough action, and both intentional and unintentional humour, to keep up the interest. The movie will probably become a cult film in the future and is probably best checked out when it is shown on late night TV.


Nicolas Cage in Season of the Witch

Kick-Ass

Year: 2010
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Screenplay: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, based on the comic-book by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.
Starring: Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Nicolas Cage, Mark Strong
Running Time: 117 minutes
Genre: Superhero, action, comedy

Summary: New York City, the present: Dave Lizewski (Johnson) is a teenage comic-book fan, who dreams of becoming a superhero. Despite having no training and no superpowers, he decides to turn his dreams into reality and, with a costume fashioned from a scuba diving suit, he dubs himself "Kick-Ass" and sets out to become a real-life superhero. However, his first attempts just result in him getting badly beaten up. However, one night his successful intervention in an assault is filmed and put on the YouTube site. Dave discovers that Kick-Ass is an internet celebrity. Then he meets fellow costumed hero Big Daddy (Cage) who, with the help of his violent, foul-mouthed eleven year old daughter, Hit Girl (Moretz), is fighting to bring down the city's most powerful organised crime ring.

Opinions: This movie is a lot of fun. It is packed with action and humour, and there are plenty of references to the world of comic-books and superheroes. The film, which is almost a parody of Batman and Spider-Man is very sympathetic with the costumed vigilantes but also features the dark and dangerous side as Kick-Ass very quickly finds himself way over his head. The film's storyline is not particularly unique with the idea of untrained superhero wannabes having been done several times before, but the film is stylish and entertaining enough that this doesn't matter. The film features some great performances in particular from Chloe Moretz turning in a startling performance as the ruthless Hit Girl who manages to be both likeable and terrifying. In the film's lead Johnson delivers a great comic peformance. The film is full of exagerrated comic-book style violence, which won't be to everyone's taste. The film knows it's target audience and fans of comic-book movies and action films are sure t find something to entertain them. As an unashamed comic book fan myself, I loved it.



Aaron Johnson and Chloe Grace Moretz in Kick-Ass