Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001) - Review

Christmas Carol: The Movie is an animated adaptation of the Charles Dickens short novel of the same name. It is the classic story of an individual, Ebenezer Scrooge, who has no regard for his fellow man, especially during the Christmas season, and is confronted by spirits who show him the effects of his life in the past, present, and potential future. The cast of this movie is star-studded, comprising of  Simon Callow (Scrooge), Kate Winslet - playing a nurse (Belle) previously romantically affiliated with Scrooge, Nicolas Cage - portraying the spirit of Jacob Marley, Scrooge's previous business partner, along with roles filled with Michael Gambon, Robert Llewellyn, and Rhys Ifans.

The movie is technically sound. The movie sits at 77 minutes, so not as long as what would be considered full-feature length, but that is not something to hold against the movie. The story that is told is fairly familiar, as it has been adapted in popular media countless times in the past century, but the non-familiar bits of the story were also interesting without wearing too thin. The performances given for this movie were great, however, they are overshadowed by a less than par animation quality. I hate to speculate as to if elements of an average movie were different if that would make it better, but I can only imagine if the animation for this adaptation were of better quality than it would be a product that cable channels would air during the Christmas season. Speaking about Nic Cage's performance in particular, I believe it is a waste of the range of emotion that he is known to be able to show on screen or by voice in other projects. His role in this movie is incredibly brief, and is only on screen to be wispy and supernatural. It was a shame to see such small roles for some big names, but I think that the movie struck a good balance between the portions that it did add to the story, especially the live action segments at the beginning and end of the movie. 

I would not really recommend this movie to watch during the holiday season, and not particularly valuable for those who are embarking on a similar project as me. As I have stated above, this movie is technically sound. It is fairly average, and really not worth many peoples' time. It is a good adaptation of a classic story, but even with the benefits of modern actors and storytelling media, Christmas Carol: The Movie is destined to remain such a niche product when there are countless other adaptations that have better viewing value.

Trapped in Paradise (1994) - Review

Trapped in Paradise is a 1994 comedy film starring Nicolas Cage, Jon Lovitz, and Dana Carvey. The three play brothers Bill, Dave, and Alvin Firpo. Dave (Lovitz), a con man, and Alvin (Carvey), a kleptomaniac, are recently released convicts remanded into the custody of their brother Bill (Cage), a restaurant manager who struggles to keep his own nose clean. After hearing about a bank with lax security in a rural Pennsylvania town, the three rob the bank only to start encountering trouble from trying to escape the town, aptly named Paradise, from state police, FBI, and a pair of locals. Over the course of Christmas Eve, the three each find themselves charmed by the small town and attempt to change their natures.

Trapped in Paradise is a finished product that is just a shame in its released state. How can a movie starring Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey be anything but funny? In fact, the movie tries at every point to be a comedy, but only elicited a couple small chuckles toward the end of the movie - with a runtime of nearly two hours, this made for a pretty bland experience. The interplay between the three protagonists was quite humorous, even if it didn't elicit any laughs, while capturing the brotherly spirit any dysfunctional family. What tanked my enjoyment of the movie ultimately was reducing Carvey down to a caricature of his comedic self. Lovitz playing the same comedic straight man that he always seems to play was not detrimental to my experience, but his character, much like Carvey's Alvin, stayed flat the entire time. Cage's Bill Firpo continues his streak in this time in his filmography as trying to establish himself as an everyman. In fact, Cage stands out in this movie for being as normal of a person as possible, even though Bill is still a more subdued version of his brothers. Sean McCann as the police chief of the idyllic town and Richard Jenkins as FBI agent Peyser were welcome faces to see throughout the movie, which the movie could have used more of, even if they were featured fairly prominently in the ending scenes of the movie. While Trapped in Paradise is full of raw acting talent, it really failed to come together. Trapped in Paradise is too focused on reducing the output of Lovitz and Carvey for both to shine as comedic roles, and while the performance by Cage was appropriately grounded, it does not save this movie from being in the pile of forgotten Christmas tales.

The Family Man (2000) - Review

The Family Man is a 2000 holiday-drama film starring Nicolas Cage and Téa Leoni, also starring Don Cheadle and Jeremy Piven in supporting roles. Nicolas Cage plays Jack Campbell, a Wall Street executive, whose relationship with his girlfriend Kate (Leoni) 13 years earlier ended with the extended time apart due to Jack's post-college internship in London. After encountering a man (Cheadle) trying to rob a convenience store, who sends Jack to an alternate timeline where he and Kate never ended their relationship. Navigating his new life with Kate, Jack must figure out what he really wants in life - a life filled with meaningful relationship, or his lifestyle of decadence.

The Family Man is a great modern remix of classic holiday stories, namely A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life. Jack Campbell is the Ebenezer Scrooge of this story, a man who is consumed by greed and sees the Christmas holiday as an impediment to the function of his business, and also a man who sees all of his personal relationships as transactional. Jack must be shown what his alternate self found of value in order to reevaluate his life decisions once he comes back to his point of origin. I make a comparison to It's a Wonderful Life in the opposite sense: Jack's glimpse into the other reality is not a glimpse of the lives of others around him ever without his presence, but it is a reflection of what his life is if he chased what he should value in life more so than his current shallow life. Usually when Nic Cage plays an "every man" type of character, he is wildly out of place. His predicament in this movie is what subverts that for Cage; he is still an every man, but he is so wildly out of his environment, literally and figuratively, that it plays to his advantage. The shock to Jack's system makes him the oddball in a situation where this is the normal. I thought that the daughter of Jack and Kate figuring out that he is not the Jack that everyone else knows was a great touch as children are incredibly perceptive to changes in their environment. Her helping Jack reorient his life so that he can be a functioning adult was not only charming, but funny. The infrequent visits by what is seemingly a supernatural being portrayed by Cheadle are always filled with humor, which plays on Jack's initial anger about his relocation, but later is still angry to see Cheadle, this time not wanting to go back to his empty life. Jeremy Piven is a good every man and confidant to the alternate Jack, and is someone who always tries to keep his best friend on the right track. Last, but not least, we have Téa Leoni's performance as Kate. Whatever relationship that Jack and Kate had in this reality was the best relationship that anyone could ask for, and it really shows in her performance once Jack is planted in the middle of her life. In my eyes, Leoni steals the show as she makes the audience able to forget that we are viewing a movie and lets us get lost in the story. 

I have seen The Family Man years ago when I picked up the BluRay and quite enjoyed it. I knew that the movie dealt with finding the joy and meaning in the relationships that you have, but I didn't imagine that it was going to give me such a reaction as it did. I think the older that I get, the closer I get to the ages and life circumstances of Jack and Kate in the glimpse of reality, the more I relate to the message of the movie. Even though this movie spans more than just the Christmas holiday - the movie actually spends as little time possible on the actual holiday - the film now hold a place on my shelf for a Christmas movie. It's not the best choice for a Christmas movie, but it is another choice in the sea of tried and tested, and frankly overplayed staples. It also sits at the height of Cage's ascent to stardom and is a nice gem out of the rough that is to follow in later years. I would definitely recommend cozying up on the couch with a blanket and spending some time getting lost in this fantasy story, a story that takes what works with older stories and making a charming modern twist on those revered and dominant holiday stories.

Bringing Out the Dead (1999) - Review

Bringing Out the Dead is a 1999 psychological drama directed by Martin Scorsese starring Nicolas Cage as Frank Pierce, a burnt-out paramedic in New York City, Patricia Arquette as Mary Burke, the daughter of a man who Frank and his ambulance partner saved from death, and John Goodman, Ving Rhames, and Tom Sizemore as his successive partners as the story unfolds. Frank is haunted by the frequent hallucination of a teen who he failed to save some months prior, while trying day by day to hold onto his sanity. 

I didn't think that watching this movie would constitute as studying going into my viewing, but it activated all of my attention. I was utterly captivated by this movie the entire runtime due to its relevance to my current studies. I frequently read about the secondary trauma response that builds up in medical professionals that leads to occupational burnout, and this film does an expert job at portraying the response through Nic Cage. It truly hit me hard when early on in the movie, his boss receives news from higher up in the chain that he needs to be fired because of his being late, not showing up for a shift, among other deserved reasons, however it does not reach that point of termination due to the lack of paramedics this person has to work NYC on a daily basis. Even when Frank is begging to be fired, he isn't because of the shortage of paramedics; Frank can't even quit because of the guilt that he has of not being able to save people for months on end. Another sad depiction of the healthcare industry, especially in a high-crime density area such as New York City, is the apathy that the staff in this small critical access community hospital have toward the patients that come in due to drugs and alcohol. The portrayal is a deep exaggeration of this apathy, but the attitudes shown in these small vignettes throughout the film are still present in healthcare, even decades later. There has been a push toward "compassionate care", or trying to remove the stigma of drug and alcohol use (illicit or otherwise) to give patients the dignity that they deserve in improving the patient's health. Not ever being present in the clinical hospital environment, but present in other healthcare environments, the dialogue throughout the was corny and over the top, but it spoke to the real life situations that healthcare workers of all kinds are faced with 24/7 and interested my academic side as the working conditions that we in my field and as society are trying to fix have always been present. 

I would expect nothing less of a great movie by a director with such a pedigree as Scorsese, but Bringing Out the Dead falls into Cage's filmography in a time where he has experienced a meteoric rise in success. Being familiar with Nic Cage's filmography for almost 12 years now, I never investigated this movie; I didn't even have an idea what this movie was about until I pulled it up on the streaming service. Nic Cage is not alien to portraying characters that suffer real life syndromes, and at the height of his action star popularity, he continued to involve himself in projects that show extremes of human emotions and experiences. He shows in Bringing Out the Dead that humanity is present in someone, even in the most broken of people. It is an important movie to watch if one wants to get a wide view of the human condition in film, and is a performance that those interested in Nicolas Cage as an actor would be remiss to leave out of their viewing.