Hiatus

I hope all is well with my readers! It has been a shaky few months on this blog as new beginnings have been on the horizon for a few months now. My schooling is almost complete, and I am about to transition from being a student to becoming an instructor! This has meant a lot of planning on my end having to take place - the interview process, the hiring/onboarding process, and the preparation of my class materials for the upcoming semester at a new University. I had hoped to have made some updates during the "summer break" that I had, but that did not seem to work out as planned. I had also projected that at the pace I was operating, I could have completed my project by now - how lofty a goal was this! 

Where does that leave the state of the blog? I will continue to post reviews as time permits, but gone are the days where I can wait until my deadlines to complete lesser assignments and use my time as I please. I have new responsibilities, new career trajectories, and new opportunities that require my full attention. but I am not forgetting this project. I will continue to review movies as I have spare moments - I have a review for Longlegs coming in the next few days. But life must take precedence over my spare projects. 

My support page is still available for those that want to use the power of the coin to encourage my next review, especially if the reviews trickle down and dry up like they have the past few months. I would like to continue this project, and your financial support would help guilt me into producing more content. I do not have recurring payments set up - I don't want to put anyone in the situation where they have the option of spending money with no return. This will be individual transactions either for a specific review, or just a tip of appreciation. However, I will continue to release reviews for free if no one pays me to do it. I started this project over one year ago for a personal goal, and it will remain a passion project. Never feel obligated to tip me.

That is probably too many disclaimers, but I will summarize: 

1. I will continue to review Nic Cage movies, the process may just be slow;
2. I will not charge for review access, ever;
3. But I do have an incentive process if you want more content.

The Wicker Man (2006) - Review

The Wicker Man (2006) is a remake of the 1973 movie of the same name. The 2006 release stars Nicolas Cage as California policeman Edward Malus, who travels to the fictional Washington state island of Summersisle to investigate the disappearance of his ex-fiancée's (Kate Beahan) daughter. Once he travels to the island, he is met by a predominantly female apicultural pagan society that is extremely hostile toward any outsiders.

This movie has been examined to death since its release because of the long-since memed performance by Cage as a policeman who is outside of his jurisdiction, but also in an environment that does not respect his authority as a concerned individual of someone he used to love deeply. Ever since stepping onto the island, he is embroiled in a larger conspiracy as the inhabitants of the island speak cryptically as to the subject of his investigation and the consequences of his continued involvement on the island. The conspiracy targets Edward at every corner, forcing himself to question everything about himself that has led him to that point. Even before setting foot onto the island, he is plagued by the failure to save a mother and child who were victims of a head-on collision. This loosening of his grip on reality is usually punctuated by seeing visions of the girl, who presumably perished in the wreck and accompanying explosion, being hit by the same semi-truck that struck the car. Those moments would be effective if they did not appear nearly six times throughout the runtime, dulling its poignance and turning it comical towards it final use. Twelve years ago, I sat in my living room with a group of friends working up a chant of "Truck, truck, truck, etc..." until the ghost truck struck the vision of the child. 

The comedic aspects of The Wicker Man do not seem to be intentional, and yet are back-loaded to the climax of the film. Everyone involved with the production or editing should have been aware of what the final product would have looked like or how it would have been perceived. Edward donning a bear suit to arrive incognito to the paganistic May Day celebration and subsequently punching a woman to save a child being sacrificed in the yearly blessing ritual to bring a good honey yield is perceived more comedic than an act of desperation. The infamous "Not the bees!" exclamation is still a source of humor instead of horror, and removes the tension intended to be conveyed in a single moment.

I became curious about the original film years ago and finally sought it out, especially after knowing that there was also a spiritual sequel in 2011 (The Wicker Tree) that was much more faithful to the spirit of the English film. Much like the brand of neo-paganism that the inhabitants of Summersile (2006) brought to their locale, the tone of the film does not translate the same feelings of doom and wonder that Christopher Lee delivered as the leader of his Summerisle. I do not want to discount the effort that the actors and crew put in trying to bring this movie to an American audience, but the reliance of conventional Hollywood story techniques dilutes the impact of the mystery surrounding the island and the society that inhabits it. The Wicker Man failed to understand the mystique of the original film and deserves the ridicule that it invites due to its callous disregard for nuance.

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018) - Letterboxd Review

I have been trying to use my Letterboxd account for more reviews that didn't inspire me to spend too much effort into films that try and burn me out seriously and critically reviewing them. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is one of those movies that I spent the first 15 minutes wanting to walk away from. I mention in my Letterboxd review for this movie that I haven't been so affected by cringeworthy material since 2017 when I saw The Lego Ninjago Movie in theaters, yet could not bring myself to walk out because I paid for a full-price movie ticket. The hour-ish runtime remaining just doubled down on the tone-deaf references to popular culture that were in their prime decades before the target audience was either alive or semi-conscious. 

Next week's review will be picked from a list that I have compiled as "palate-cleansers" for when I am assaulted by movies that threaten burnout in this project.

Update and a Special Review

I just concluded the most intense semester in my academic career, but that meant that I had to shift my focus away from this blog and to completing the avalanche of coursework that was required. I was able to complete a review for Snake Eyes and publish last Tuesday for the first time in a month if you want to want to go back and see what a break does to my critical eye.

Despite catching up to my coursework and having a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders, I was only able to complete one review for the project before flying across the country for a week. In order to keep the blog current, even though I don't have access to my regular accounts, I decided to write a letter to the various people on the plane ride out west whose entertainment choices were, shall I say, interesting. If you enjoy that letter, please do consider subscribing to my Letterboxd for similarly written reviews for movies. I have one serious review on that account that was written 8 years ago, but have since made it lie dormant until a muse inspires me (see: The Country Bears). As you may surmise, that account is not my review priority as this blog exists and has a defined purpose.

I had high hopes that my course load would stay manageable enough for me to work on putting together a kindle book this summer with my Cage reviews and selected essays, but that has stalled for the reason mentioned above. I still intend to work on this project, but it no longer has a projected completion date. See my support page for more details. I do have some sort of roadmap for future reviews, but any support that you all kick in can help in my selection paralysis.

Have a great week! I hope to have a new Nic Cage review ready next Tuesday at the normal scheduled time!

Raising Arizona (1987) - Review

Raising Arizona is a crime/comedy film directed by Joel Coen starring Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, William Forsythe, and Frances McDormand. Nicolas Cage stars as H.I. McDunnough, a repeat convenience store robber, who falls in love with a police officer named Ed (Hunter) and attempts to live an honest life and start a family. The two are told that they are unable to have children and set out to kidnap one of a set of quintets that are made famous because of their association with a local businessman, Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson) and his wife (McDormand). The couple encounter setback after setback as reality crashes in around them as authorities seek the safe return of the lost Arizona baby.

Films from the same era usually fall victim to feeling dated because of the prominent use of current media and technology to appeal to the audience of that time. The focus of Raising Arizona is reliant on the situational comedy that H.I. and Ed find themselves in. The opening monologue establishes the unlikely couple, felon and police, and establishes that what you are going to see is due to the complexities of their different backgrounds. Despite their differences, the two characters work so well together as they try to navigate the consequences from illegally obtaining their new baby boy. Cage shines as he can be as zany as he can be while inhabiting this role, as being an oddball is a requirement to be a character in this movie; his command over the range of the extremes of the broad spectrum of emotions is a positive in Raising Arizona. John Goodman and William Forsythe as escaped convicts also have great chemistry with Cage and Hunter and, until later on in the movie, they seem to be neutral observers that do not threaten the constitution of the new family. The humor sprinkled throughout keeps the action moving at a great pace and obfuscates the timers running in the background of when the next thing is supposed to go wrong. The story the movie tells is incredibly tight; there is no superfluous action, and everything has a purpose. Even when there are quiet moments in the movie, the audience knows that there is something lurking around the corner due to the precarious situation H.I. and Ed find themselves in. Raising Arizona is a master class in storytelling and remains a classic piece of film history nearly 35 years later. This is a piece of Cage history that should not be missed by anyone, whether they are engaging in a similar project or not. 

It killed me to not write so much about the ins and outs of this movie - I just imagined someone clicking on this review hoping to get something more than what this review actually turned out to be. For someone who has not seen the movie, it is worth seeing even without knowing every little nuance of film-making and discovering the magic of the story for yourselves. I wanted this to be a record of the high praises that I have for this movie as I move through the project.

Jiu Jitsu (2020) - Review

Jiu Jitsu is a science fiction martial arts movie starring Alain Moussi as Jake Barnes a member of a paramilitary group that was formed to combat an extraterrestrial in ritualistic jiu jitsu combat. Starring alongside Moussi are familiar names such as Frank Grillo, Nicolas Cage and Tony Jaa. Some lower profile actors starring in this movie are JuJu Chan, Marie Avgeropoulos, and Eddie Steeples. 

I would be a liar if I told you I was looking forward to writing about this movie. I watched it late last year or earlier this year after my wife found it in a Redbox locally, and it broke my heart to watch the movie and stomp on the heartfelt sentiment of her supporting my Nic Cage completionist streak. The movie starts with Jake being assaulted by an unknown force and obtaining amnesia after jumping off of a cliff and hitting his head on rocks below the water surface. The exposition of the movie flows from this point, as after being reunited with his previous crew, it is learned that Jake was the one who came up with the plan to defeat the alien in combat, but has to be reintroduced to every facet of the previously established plan for his, no, our benefit. Each member in Jake's group is an experienced martial artist, which shows in the choreography throughout the entire movie. Indeed, the fight choreography happens to be the defining characteristic of what is good for the entire runtime. Despite having a multi-million dollar budget, the shortcuts that are made to make sure that the project became a finished product are glaringly obvious: there are filming sequences that are done early in the movie that are done from a first-person perspective. Great. That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that the filming for this scene is internally inconsistent; Jake is being escorted by Jaa's character out of a military installation where he has been held prisoner after recovering from his initial combat encounter at the beginning of the movie. Again, this would be fine if at one point Moussi didn't deliberately put down the camera that he has been carrying for the alternative perspective and fights several soldiers before coming back to the camera and picking it up, continuing the first-person perspective escape. Another glaring style choice is the use of comic book panel transitions to move between acts. The way in which they are used points to an uncertainty in the technical know-how to transition from one scene to another. The script could be a possible root cause of this problem. The writer may have been able to plan all the movie's setpieces, but lacked the foresight to allow scenes to go from Point A to Point B.

That's really more than what I wanted to say about this movie. I didn't have an outline to follow when starting this review, so I allowed myself to get to this point by happenstance. I even thought this was going to be more of a blog post than a review, much like what I did with Army of One. Before I end the review, I did want to comment on Cage's performance as the jiu jitsu master, Wiley. We learn that Wiley was the previous "chosen one" that the alien deemed fit for final combat, but failed six years prior. We meet him as the washed up chosen one, a familiar trope for Cage; I have reviewed a few movies so far where he has inhabited this role: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I would say that his performance in Jiu Jitsu is more reminiscent of Balthazar Blake in The Sorcerer's Apprentice than that of Ghost Rider, however. His character isn't this aloof idiot, but someone who is still capable of training those who are tasked with the completion of finishing the ritual combat conditions. Overall, I would not recommend this movie to anyone, not even to someone who enjoys the occasional bad movie - Jiu Jitsu is the Predator your mother promised that you had at home, and not even in any good way. However, if you are a glutton for punishment, as I have been in my quest to review the good and even the very bad Nic Cage movies, not even the opposite of a glowing recommendation will stop you from consuming this movie. 

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) - Review

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a crime drama starring Nic Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, and Alvin Joiner (Xzibit) and directed by Werner Herzog. The film follows the corrupt Lieutenant Terence McDonagh (Cage) who is hopelessly addicted to various narcotics to cope with the pain of an injury sustained while working during Hurricane Katrina. His corruption is enabled by his police partner Det. Stevie Pruit (Kilmer), who struggles with violent tendencies that get in the way of his own police work. Frankie (Mendes), is a sexworker and frequent fling for McDonagh who is an unstable supplier for his drug habits. McDonagh shows that he is a capable investigator as he is trying to manage his life seemingly crumbling around him due to his addictions as he is trying to solve the murder of a Senegalese family who have crossed the drug lord "Big Fate" (Xzibit).

Bad Lieutenant remains puzzling to me, even after rewatching it nearly ten years after my first exposure. There are elements of the movie that I really like, such as the sprawling corruption that McDonagh finds himself navigating not only to fuel his addictions to various narcotics, but his ongoing gambling debts as well. The portrayal of this addiction by Cage oscillates between larger than life and grounded deep in terra firma, and Cage is a man who is right for the job. There are a few sequences that border on the surreal that are explained by him being high at the time which are welcome to break up the harsh reality; these moments really act as a kind of black comedy, distracting even for a moment from the seriousness of the events of the film that come before them. I was not a fan of the way the movie started with what seemed a polished edit of the scene in the jail where McDonagh is deliberating whether to save an inmate from the rising flood waters of Hurricane Katrina, and shifting to almost a documentary style shooting. This seemingly drastic shift could be seen as anachronistic and jarring serving as a detriment to the quality of the movie, but as I sit with the movie more, I see it as an expression of Terence's state of mind as he becomes more encumbered by his drug use as time goes on; in other words, his perception of the world is unapologetically shown to the viewer as time progresses. 

But what is it that bugs me about the movie? I think it has to do with the lack of closure that it provides. At the end of the movie, McDonagh is at the same place ethically as he was at the beginning. I do not want to provide an edict that all movies must provide closure - some stories require that tension and ambiguity with the viewer to maintain its impact. It may just be my own personal sense of justice that gets in my way of sitting with the ending, as I chafe trying to prove why my sense of justice for this officer is better than the eventual portrayal on screen. Do I want him to be held accountable? Do I want him to become clean from his vices, like everyone around him? I certainly do. But I think the film achieves its goal of making the viewer uncomfortable by the continued promotion of corrupted individuals and how they are able to circumvent punishment by the law because of the positions they abuse. I think that this movie is required viewing for those who are interested in Nic Cage and his career, only because I think there is a greater need for discourse surrounding movies that leave the viewer unsatisfied. Take Inception as an example. Does the totem stop spinning at the end of the movie? Because it is not shown on screen, as Leonardo DiCaprio's Cobb walks away cutting the scene away from the conclusion of whether he remains in a dream. That isn't the point. The point is he is finally able to join and enjoy his children. What is the point of Bad Lieutenant? I think the point is that no matter what, some corrupt officials may never be found out, instead to be rewarded for their usefulness. Regardless, I believe that this movie can bring us into an aspect of human life that is challenging and unrewarding. And that is okay.

My Review Process

I didn't have a blog scheduled to run in August, so I wanted to slow my reviewing of movies down a tad this week to give myself time to think of something. I had initially thought of posting one review a week, save for the extra posts for when my wife wanted to watch something out of sequence on my list of "to-do" for this project or for when a movie comes out in theaters and I am able to to catch it in the midst of my busy-ish schedule. But the hope of one per week was dashed against the rocks when I realized that despite two titles I want to review at certain times, I would be reviewing movies for over two years. I like doing this project, don't get me wrong, but there are certain things that I would enjoy doing even one year into the future that this project would get in the way of: the start of my new career, potentially parenthood, among other things not even thought of quite yet.

I started this project during a month-long break from school earlier this summer, and I was watching movies at a fairly fast clip. I wouldn't even put words into a document until I had about three reviews waiting to be written. Oh, but never more than three. I never have even considered uploading information about four or more movies into my head and not reviewing them for this blog. Watch-Watch-Watch-Write 2 reviews -Watch-Watch-Write 3 reviews-Watch-Write 1 review, etc. The process is fairly inconsistent in that manner, but it helps me contextualize Nic Cage's movies with each other, even if they have no other connection (year, quality, etc.) than the actor himself. I also try to give a fairly short synopsis of the movie in question, followed by one or two sections that make up the subjective portion of the review. This helps me get the reader up to speed on the jist of the movie if they haven't seen it, explain what potentially drew me to this movie before, my feelings about it, and if those feelings have changed over time. I don't think I'll ever get to the level of professionalism of a Siskel and Ebert, as that is not where my passion in life lies, but I do want to produce a product that people can relate to themselves and maybe trust me to give them some decent movie recommendations. I even produce reviews, if I am so inclined, from movie recommendations from friends. 

I am writing this blog on July 14th, posting this Aug. 3rd, but I have scheduled reviews out until Oct. 31st at this point to make sure I can accomplish this task in a manner that satisfies my stated goal of doing this as quickly as possible. Just as I am zooming through my courses at school to become an authority on my studied subject, I aim to be some sort of authority on Nicolas Cage's filmography. I used to be self-conscious of my older brother making jabs at me for allowing myself to watch low quality movies so easily, but that doesn't matter to me as much anymore. I appreciate the wisdom that he was trying to teach me: not wasting my time with movies that have no meaning or bearing on how I view the world or that are hardly enjoyable. But I feel as though my niche has always been giving the lesser known and lesser quality a shot, knowing that I will rarely find the diamond still caked with dirt, but a diamond nonetheless.

Ghost Rider (2007) - Review

I wanted to get it out at the top that I watched this movie with my wife and one of our closest friends. Their involvement in the process was mentioned further down in the review, but we could not help ourselves tearing this movie apart as we watched it. We watched the extended cut, which is supposed to give more insight into the movie than the theatrical, but boy oh boy did it just make us more upset that it was dragging this flaming bag of turds on longer than it should. I don't think that it is necessary to write a short blurb warning you about what you are about to read, but this movie just about broke my resolve to see this project until the end. Don't fear! I still have gas in the tank, I just need to watch some of Cage's better movies to give me a recharge. I hope you enjoy this review!

The Flash (2023) - Review

This is a different sort of post today. I know that by posting this on the blog already spoils the fact that Nic Cage stars in this movie in some capacity, despite marketing materials omitting the scope of his role. I wanted to give a few weeks after the release of the movie to give people opportunity to watch the movie and experience his cameo themselves. I will follow my typical format - summarizing the premise of the movie and then providing some commentary about my experience with the movie - after which I will give a more in-depth spoiler experience.

The Streaming Convenience

A few weeks ago I posted about the dying of DVD sections/bins in gas stations and how searching those became a source of entertainment for my younger self. I started to think about how the rise in popularity of streaming may have led to a decline in interest for gas stations to keep physical media for sale. I certainly have noticed that for a significant portion of my reviews to date, they have come from me watching them from various streaming services. Do I own each movie that I have reviewed? Yes. But that didn't stop me from selecting which movies I wanted to review based on how convenient it was to access the movie - even though going to my office from any point in my house is by no means inconvenient.

There was one trend that I noticed while looking for movies to watch for this blog: most of the movies that are available for streaming (with my subscribed services) were inclusive of the past 20 years of Nic Cage's career. I think I remember seeing Peggy Sue got Married and Face/Off as the only two that bucked the trend. I will have to break out my physical media soon for some of the older titles that I want to review, and that will honestly be the encouragement needed to watch some of his less mainstream work of the 1980s to mid-1990s (pre-Leaving Las Vegas). I have seen a handful of titles, such as Vampire's Kiss,  Moonstruck, Deadfall, Zandalee (though with not much attention), but I am excited to gather exposure to the early Cage, even titles where he is still credited as Coppola!

There it is, short and sweet. I wanted to follow up on some thoughts that I had expressed in last month's blog post and examine some other things that showed themselves as possible avenues of exploration. I have a few reviews scheduled for the rest of the month so far, but feel free to give me recommendations for movies that I have yet to review. I'm terrible at making decisions and if nobody stops me, I'm going to be reviewing movies in order of increasing runtime.

Grindhouse Double Feature: Trailers (2007) - Blog

Double Feature Poster

The trailers included in the Grindhouse Double Feature collection (2007) are masterworks completed by directors that understand the genre well. Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the S.S. includes a stinger for Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu, the brief moments of his appearance show an unashamedly unhinged Nic Cage hamming it up for the audience. Don't is a simple short showcasing various horror cliches with the titular warning directed toward the characters and ultimately the audience. Thanksgiving is by far my favorite trailer in the collection, filled to the brim with slasher-related puns for the holiday themed slayings such as my favorite: "White meat, dark meat, all will be carved", which has permeated my family's Thanksgiving festivities for nearly 15 years.

Seeing the trailers for Machete and Hobo With a Shotgun, with the announcement earlier this year of Thanksgiving being fully produced, show audience engagement and the lasting power of their popularity 15 years later. I had lobbed criticism toward Drive Angry of the creative team behind it not understanding the allure of the grindhouse genre, and it was truly a testament as to how a movie evoking the same style can go so wrong if care isn't taken to preserve elements that audiences enjoy. I hope for the success of Thanksgiving and what it could possibly do in reviving production on Werewolf Women of the S.S.

The Gas Station Movie Section

There is nothing that I miss more about movies than being able to peruse the selection of movies that gas stations have failed to sell over the years. I went out of town with my wife recently and she asked me what took me so long buying a few drinks for the road. After buying everything we needed for the drive, I took a moment to scope the entire floor and felt a tinge of sadness that this gas station showed no trace of any movies. I briefly considered going to the manager, who had just checked out my items, and sheepishly asking why there weren't any DVDs being sold, but my anxiety whispered in my ear and told me the truth, "That man doesn't care about stocking DVDs".

I used to drive across the United States to visit friends quite a bit in my early twenties. As a result, I spent quite a bit of time needing to stretch my legs after locked into place for hours on end. These movie sections were a source of entertainment for me as I compared the titles remaining on the shelves, seeing if I recognized anything. I never intended on purchasing any, but I remember seeing The Convoy Collection on the shelf and feeling a compulsion to indulge in this bootleg experience - I did a lot of things as a joke, and this was one of those situations.

I have spent a lot of money on movies and hate the fact that I haven't invested equal energy to watch them. I mentioned in my last post that I lost my last database created to catalogue my movies and TV shows, as I have lost many more, but it wasn't until my latest venture that I became serious about using collection management software. The software is very much a godsend! The developers include the ability to search various databases for information to include with the movie in the database and this functionality showed me that these movies included with the Convoy Collection are mislabeled. The misattribution is ever so slight, but slight enough that I was forced to do some detective work.

Trucker's Women is actually Trucker's Woman, but more confusingly has also been released as Truckin' Man. Moonfire Trucker is Moonfire [sic], a movie with a delightful sounding premise of truck drivers fighting Nazis in Mexico. The Concrete Cowboy  is simply Concrete Cowboys, aka Highway Action, aka Nashville Detective, aka Ramblin' Man - a Tom Selleck & Jerry Reed movie that seems fairly decent from what little I can gather.

I truly do miss the loss of the gas station movie section, but I do recognize the unattractiveness of items that do not sell to individuals responsible for financial success of a business already operating at paper-thin margins. Realizing the loss of the DVD bins/shelves at my local gas stations gave me a tinge of sadness, giving me a sense of melancholy as I remember VHS phasing out early in my childhood, the rise of the DVD and the supremacy of Blu-Ray over HD DVDs. I don't know if I'll ever watch these movies, but I do appreciate them being bundled together if not for the rabbit hole that properly tagging them in my current database sent me down and the recollection of memories that I had purchasing them. Time does march on, maybe a little faster than I would like.

Rage (2014) - Republish

This post is going to be different than reviews that I plan on posting later on this site. I helped run a movie podcast in 2014-2016 with my brother and a couple of friends from school, and this was a review that I had carte blanche in writing and posting with little guidance in how that process works. This is a product of a 20-year old that had a different take on movies that others doing the show, and that mostly was a product of being let loose onto the world as an adult no longer relying on an older brother to drip-feed wonderful movie experiences to my impressionable mind.

It pains me to read this review. I can remember the process of waiting for "Tokarev", as was marketed in the U.S. pre-release, and can conjure the joyous experience of watching "Rage" VOD. I say it pains me to read this review because I can remember being naïve and being borderline obsessed with Nicolas Cage instead of what has become fostering an appreciation for an oddball who has been so since before I was born. I want to go back and watch Rage with fresh eyes. It truly has been almost 10 years since I watched this movie and put my overeager thoughts onto the internet, and I want to write a new review with a fresh perspective. I'm curious to see what they look like side by side. Very little editing has been done to this review. I took out a reference to the podcast/website that I helped run, but that did not interrupt anything about the review. Other than that, this is an honest to god review that I cannot believe made its way to public eyes.

7-21-2014

In Rage, Nicolas Cage plays a protective father, Paul McGuire, who has been out of the criminal lifestyle since his wife passed away, and completely falls apart when his daughter, Caitlin, is kidnapped. Paul has to go back to his criminal lifestyle in order to solve the mystery of Caitlin's disappearance. Paul tears through the streets of Mobile, Alabama, and as a consequence, his past begins to catch up to him.

Nic Cage pulls out all of the stops for Paul McGuire in Rage. His Cage-isms, as I call his larger than life outbursts, are still present, but they are within the context of his character losing his mind as a desperate father; there were many times in the movie where my mouth was agape, mostly because if I were to watch Wicker Man and see this type of freak out, I would be on the floor laughing until I couldn't breath. That is not the case in this movie. The emotional response from Cage is the appropriate amount that his character is feeling; the bond that McGuire has with his former partners in crime is laughable at first, but after another second of the portrayal on screen, I was invested one-hundred percent. The action sequences in this movie are fast-paced and they aren't dragged out; they are as quick as McGuire wants them to be. He goes into a place knowing his plan of attack and is calculating every move he makes that interferes with his plan so that he doesn't run into too many snags. This movie doesn't just capture emotion, but appropriate emotion, something that the next person you see on the street would say that Cage has been lacking for ages.

Danny Glover's character, Detective Peter St. John, has one of the more important side roles in the film, trying to steer McGuire back from his destructive tendencies. Glover shows St. John's willingness to let a few things slide for McGuire, based not only on the fact that he is going through a crime boss' operation and doing his job for him, but the fact that he doesn't want to get caught in the crossfire of a man on a mission. As (Glover) has said in a past role, his character was oozing throughout the entire film, "I'm too old for this shit!"

Everyone else gives a stellar performance, which from the trailer you cannot tell at all. The dialogue is pretty cliché at times, and it is pretty noticeable when it gets too clunky. Although it may seem a little cliché, the dialogue is genuine. Every character, including Cage, is grounded in the universe that this takes place and nobody steals the show more than another person. I understand the criticisms of this movie by other people who say that the ending was not what they expected (in a negative manner), but I did not think of the ending having any issues until I had read those criticisms. I feel that the ending is appropriate to the themes presented throughout the movie and does not betray the viewer through cheap tricks. I went into this movie thinking that it would be a Trespass-esque Cage movie with the ironic hilarity of Wicker Man, and I couldn't be more happy to be disappointed.

Verdict: This movie is a must watch for those who need proof that Nic Cage can act effectively. This movie will receive a glowing recommendation from me to those who haven't seen it by Oscar season.

Hello, World!

My name is Allen and I wanted to catalogue my journey of collecting every single Nicolas Cage movie released. Gosh, that sounds like I am in a support group needing intervention. Anyways, I want to start out by talking a little about what has led to this project and what I hope to get out of doing this.

I remember one of the first paychecks I received from my first job and I remember it well. I remember it because I spent it all in a week. I was still in high school and living at home, so this was warranted in my mind. One of the items I spent that paycheck on was The Wicker Man (2006). I had decided shortly after starting my job that I wanted to collect the entire filmography of an actor - this would be the measure of success that I would attain in life! Nicolas Cage was memed heavily online, and the task of choosing his career to follow seemed like an easy one at the time, there were only 63 credits to his name at the time, so that was a slam dunk... or so I thought. Very soon I learned the reality of saving money for college, so the collection idea progressed at a more glacial pace than anticipated. But I persisted in the effort, nonetheless. I would have friends over for "Cage-a-thons", thinking that I had limitless potential for entertainment, but as more people moved away for college or other pursuits, that tradition has since passed.

An example of the chaos, slightly shifted 
to be photographed easier

Many years later... I recently decided to clean up my office, which after two years of owning my home, still wasn't clean enough for me to do my work. I have had many attempts over the years of making some sort of inventory of the movies and TV shows that I owned, but none of those attempts were backed up thoroughly on various platforms and a very rigorous search on my local and cloud storage locations turned up zilch. Nada. Nothing. All of that "hard work" over the years? Gone. As a distraction to the mounting stress that my work was providing me, I decided to wrest some control in my life back into my hands and clean a significant portion of the mess at the same time. I took a picture of every movie spine on my tiny bookshelf and went to work typing each name into a spreadsheet. After the work was completed, 348 different titles sat on my shelf (not including television seasons).

Nic Cage movies removed
from general population

The game was afoot! I had a more manageable task to accomplish, and the act of doing something for myself helped me get past the wall in completing looming deadlines.. I would work on something small every day, giving myself motivation to be in my office and making sure that school was taken care of and feeling less burdened about the mounting piles of neglect that seemed to confine me before. I separated the Nic Cage movies that had been haphazardly profaned by the common films for years into their own sort and threatened a group of friends with a good time over text, stating that they were going to experience wonderful things in the future.