I used to like his work and looked forward to his upcoming movies. But there was a turning point where I thought they became crap.
Raising Arizona
Wild At Heart
Honeymoon In Vegas
Leaving Las Vegas
The RocK
Con Air
Face/Off
I liked all these but then it seemed to go downhill from there starting maybe with
Snake Eyes
or
8MM
I lost interest at that point.
I like Nicolas Cage fairly well, I’ve enjoyed ConAir, and Face/Off, and Matchstick Men, and even City of Angels.
However! I feel it is my duty to caution you all to never ever watch “Next”, which stars Nicolas Cage AND his hair, possibly in two separate roles. No, seriously, it was that bad. Not enough to distract you from the suckitude of the movie overall, mind.
Another vote for Leaving Las Vegas. One of those utterly depressing films you find yourself enjoying anyway.
Nicholas Cage made quite a few good films:
Peggy Sue Got Married
Raising Arizona
Moonstruck
Honeymoon in Vegas
It Could Happen to You.
Leaving Las Vegas
The Rock
Adaptation
Matchstick Men
National Treasure while not a great film, is entertaining.
Cage made a conscious decision after years of getting good reviews on films with poor box office to start taking on action hero roles. Many of these are just terrible. He’s much better in his lower profile roles.
How could I forget this one? Such a great performance… he carried this movie, in spite of Cher. Two of my favorite scenes:
Con Air is fantastic. I used to drop everything to watch it whenever it showed on TV.
The problem with Ghost Rider isn’t that he’s necessarily a bad actor. It’s that he’s a huge comic book geek. I mean, huge. He was a celebrity DJ for a while on an XM radio station to promote the movie and was geeking out all over the place. While that does a lot to ensure faithfulness in plot and details, as Peter Jackson did with Lord of the Rings, it meant that the lead role was being played by a fanboy, and Cage didn’t do a good job of hiding it. He just marked out through the whole movie.
Valley Girl! his role as Randy is pretty amazing. and Raising Arizona is another good film of his
There’s always one
What the hell? People, people…a little film called Fast Times at Ridgemont High, maybe?
Sheesh…
Make that two.
I loved in him the Family Man
That’s about the only movie I liked with him in it other than The Weather Man.
And don’t forget Olympia Dukakis, she was also great:
“Old man, you give those dogs another piece of my food and I’m gonna kick you 'til you’re dead!”
“Do you love him, Loretta?” “Aw, ma, I love him awful.” “Oh, God, that’s too bad.”
Cage’s was an overwrought role, but he was great in it.
City of Angels is one of my favorites.
Nobody is going to bring up Lord of War? It’s one of the best movies ever made. If I went to grad school in film, I’d want to write my thesus about it.
For pure so-stupid-it’s-great it’s hard to beat Con Air and National Treasure.
A few weeks ago I was in Yaounde, our national capitol. As I as drinking my beer (trente trois bien glace) one of the people selling pirate VCDs came around. On top was the Nicolas Cage Collection. I coughed up the two dollars and bought it, even though it was in French, my linguistic enemy. Then I got home and discovered it was in English! Maybe the best day ever.
Cage movies I dig:
raising arizona
birdie
the rock
moonstruck
redrock west
honeymoon in vegas
amos and andrew
firebirds (hangs head, it’s really tommy lee jones that I dig in that movie)
leaving las vegas? gag, don’t know if it’s just me, but as an actual alcoholic is just don’t ring true to me.
me, post 17
I think we need a new law, along the lines of “If you say ‘why has nobody mentioned X?’, X will always be mentioned a few posts above.”
Cage is often very good when he’s in something “unexpected”. If it’s a “name” movie, it will probably suck.
Since Raising Arizona is a movie that shines with gemlike perfection, it cannot be that Nicolas Cage completely sucks. He’s not a great actor, but he can be extremely effective in certain roles.
I agree I haven’t seen him in anything good in the last decade, though.
You mean, I’m really the only one who liked Ghost Rider?
I mean, it’s a silly movie, sure, but c’mon - it’s Ghost Rider. One of the dumbest comic book heroes of all time. There was absolutely no way it was going to be a good movie - nohow nuh uh, not gonna happen. Consider that most motorcycle movies are about the same level as Torque (which I would nominate as the worst movie of all time.) Then add in ‘really dumb superhero idea’. Then you’re doing a ‘motorcycle movie with a dumb superhero’ and you really should already know it’s a stinker.
Despite that, Ghost Rider is a fun movie all the way through. In terms of context, I’d say that’s a heck of an accomplishment.
