Nicolas Cage

I like comedies, and I love Cage, Hunter and Goodman, but for some reason this movie didn't work for me. It has nice story, great tempo, it's full of good jokes, but simply something was wrong with it. It wasn't funny enough for comedy, and it was too silly for any other genre. Although it has some really unforgettable scenes. Is it me or move... I honestly don't know.

7/10

!!! SPOILER ALERT !!!

This movie is rated rather low, but not because it's bad, but because it's misunderstood. For a start, whoever classified it as horror comedy is either stupid or didn't see this gem at all. This movie has absolutely nothing to do with horror genre, and although many see it as a black comedy, I really don't understand why. Also, the short description of the film, as well as the genre classification, misleads to totally wrong expectations, which will lead more superficial viewer to disappointment and accordingly to low ratings.

This is neither a comedy nor vampire horror. Vampire's Kiss is drama, somewhat freakish and bizarre, maybe even black humorous a bit, but nonetheless a drama. A drama about a man whom the vanity and loneliness of one's own life leads to the escape from reality, first into drinking and one night stands, then into hallucinations and suicidal madness. Except for totally unconvincing scene of bat attack, this movie has practically no weak spots. Screenplay, scenery, directing, and almost every support role in this movie are great. Maria Conchita Alonso deserved at least some awards, and Nicolas Cage played one of the best roles in his career, a performance that barely lags behind his role in Leaving Las Vegas.

9/10

Story and its linearity are not quite typical for Lynch, but his directing is obvious from the first scene. At times I wanted to pause the movie just to go to IMDb and give it pure ten and then at times I was at the edge to give up on this crap. That kind of conflicted reactions only Lynch can cause. Movie reminds me quite a lot of Natural Born Killers, or should I reverse it considering this one is older. And Laura Dern reminds me of Juliette Lewis too, mostly by acting, but facially in some cadres too. I think Dern and Cage are ugliest movie couple i ever saw and still they have such magical charisma together. Angelo Badalamenti did excellent job with music once again and Cage is surprisingly good in his numbers. Movie is over two hours long and, although it has lots of legendary scenes I will never forget, it has some completely redundant and even cheesy scenes in typically Lynch manner. If he could just cut off those few scenes to bring movie down to more compact shape and size it would be, if not ten, at least strong nine. But in shape it is now I can not give it more than

7,5/10

I was blown away by scene when Willem Dafoe comes over Laura Dern i motel room. Although this movie is full of awesome scenes, this one left the strongest impression on me.

Fun fact - Diane Ladd i Laura Dern, who play roles of mother and daughter, are in fact mother an d daughter in real life. :D

Counterweight to feel-good romances

An extreme alcoholic, who no longer remembers whether he started drinking because his wife left him or his wife left him because of alcoholism, sinks deeper into delirium, loses his job, sells all property, and goes to Vegas to drink himself to death. There he meets a prostitute and an unusual love story is born.

The two enter into a relationship and start living together, fully accepting each other and their partner's life choices. He is not trying to get her out of prostitution, she is not asking him to give up drinking. They love each other as they are and live life from day to day, using that little time they have the best they can.

As sad, depressing, and sick as it is, this love drama is at the same time very tender and warm, even romantic. Elisabeth Shue's quiet suffering only intensifies her sensuality, while balancing between a mentally unstable pimp (standardly good and a bit creepy Julian Sands) and perseverance to stay with Cage until the very end, without sinking with him.

The opinions are very divided around Nicolas Cage. People either love him or find him very irritating. Some consider him a bad actor, while others see his qualities and attribute his bad reputation to a clumsy (or perhaps brave) choice of roles. Personally, I liked his performances even in his worst movies. But, no matter what you think of him, it is indisputable that Cage presented his life role here and, with his masterful performance, fully deserved his only Oscar.

It is interesting that during the entire movie, our heroes do not have sex. Their relationship is almost platonic, which further intensifies one of, at the same time, the most morbid and the most emotionally powerful endings in the history of cinema.

9/10

John Travolta & Nicolas Cage... enough for me

FBI veteran Archer is finally catching his sworn enemy, Castor. He learns that this powerful criminal has set up a bomb that will blow up the whole city, but since Castor is in a coma there is no way to question him. So he decides to do a face transplant and posing as Castor tries to find out the location of the bomb. Meanwhile, Castor wakes up without a face, forces the surgeon to transplant Archer's face to him and takes over his identity, both in the FBI and in private life, making Archer's life a total mess.

This action thriller with a sci-fi premise is full of plot twists and represents a wild ride from start to finish. Travolta and Cage thoroughly studied each other and nailed their roles. Recommendation.

8/10

"I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss of her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it. One."

An angel, who leads souls of the deceased to the other side, comes to a hospital to pick up a patient, but falls in love with patient's young doctor. For her, he sacrifices eternity and becomes mortal, and with her he discovers the true meaning of being human.

Although tragic, this drama is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful and most powerful love stories ever filmed. Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan are excellent in leading roles and they have fantastic chemistry together. To me, this movie is the perfection of its genre.

10/10

There's really not much to say. One more in endless line of Hollywood Christmas manipulations of audience emotions. Neither idea nor realization are original or impressive. Movie has depth and message, but it's seen so many times before that it stopped to be interesting long time ago. As much as I love Cage, I must say that he mostly makes mediocre movies far below his level. Beside Leaving Las Vegas, City of Angels and Gone in 60 Seconds, I really can not recall anything else that is even slightly above average.

6/10

This movie kicks ass

This is one of the most entertaining movies I ever watched, and I saw over a thousand in the last few years. Action is not set in some superhero universe, it's in our world where heroes are just comic-book characters. A kid who is completely into superhero stuff decides to become one, although he has no powers and, even worse, he is a clumsy nerd. And then he realizes that he is not the only one who came to that idea.

The movie is extremely funny, has Nicolas Cage in one of leading roles, 12 years old Chloë Grace Moretz nailed one of her first serious roles, and music is awesome with The Prodigy, The Pretty Reckless, Sparks, and many other great bands.

9/10

"When I die, bury me deep, lay two speakers at my feet, put some headphones on my head and rock and roll me when I'm dead."

As a great fan of Nicolas Cage, I could not resist seeing this achievement, although I knew that he's only shooting nonsense lately. But this nonsense has overcome all that precede it. As if David Lynch on hallucinogenic drugs has tried to shoot slasher horror. The originality, imagination, interesting cinematographic solutions and good acting are wasted on the film dull and boring that it's barely watchable. These two hours of life I can't ever get back, and therefore I do not want to spend a minute more on writing a more detailed review.

2/10

It's not good, but it's not that bad either

Both "Ghost Rider" movies are grossly underrated, but while the first one is one of Marvel's best achievements, the second one is mediocre at best. Virtually every aspect of this film is weaker than in the first one - half the budget, bad story, lack of characterization, sloppy action - but the effects definitely took the victory. The effects and animation are so poor that it's fun to laugh at them. However, I think a good deal has been deliberately done in such a way, so that the "Spirit of Vengeance" would be more similar to a comic book than to a Hollywood blockbuster. But whatever their intention was, if it wasn't so funny it would be pathetic. The film attempts to substantially copy the first one and be a credible sequel, and at the same time to completely change the visual and directional style, and in this gap, it tripped and fell. Still, it is far from being a disaster as it is represented. If you do not take it too seriously, you'll have fun.

5/10

"See ya tomorrow night, Eleanor, with your fine ass." 28 November 2019

To save his brother's life, a retired car thief has to steal fifty rare vehicles in one night. He brings together an old crew and the madness begins. The film has no particular artistic value, nor does it carry deep messages, but this is not expected from an action film anyway. This is a movie based on awesome cars and adrenaline car chases. And when the lead roles are interpreted by one of my favorite actors and one of my favorite cars, the enjoyment is guaranteed. Angelina Jolie and the great soundtrack only complement the experience. If you are not a grumpy devotee of artistic movies, take a look, you won't regret it.

7/10

"Umro je drug Tito"

One of the most original films I've ever seen is composed entirely of scenes stolen from other films. Hungarian director György Pálfi has made a universal romantic drama, skillfully and humorously combining clips from several hundred films, so black and white and color scenes, different genres and shooting techniques, actors, locations and epochs, rapidly alternate before our eyes, all followed by nicely blended music, also borrowed from other films and series. Clips were reportedly downloaded from torrent sites and, in order to avoid copyright lawsuits, the film was published as educational material by the Hungarian University of Film and Theater. It may seem confusing and even unwatchable at first, but do not let it deter you, because you will get used to it very quickly and after a few minutes you will no longer need extra concentration. The idea is ingenious, a realization hypnotizing, and I am afraid to even speculate how extensive his knowledge of world cinema is, as well as how much time and patience it took to assemble and edit this madness. Even if we disregard all the other qualities, the effort itself deserves a maximum rating. Bravo!

10/10

Terribly underrated

"Ghost Rider" has very low ratings and reputation of one of the worst Marvel movies, and it slowly starts to worry me that this is an increasingly common case with my favorite movies. I'm watching Marvel chronologically, and of the 24 films and series I've seen so far, this one is in my top 5. I can not say I'm amazed, but it was close enough.

The story is one of the most powerful in the Marvel universe, and a dark and fairly serious atmosphere is more in the spirit of DC than Marvel. Considering one of the lowest budgets in the genre, the film is very well done and I have no objections from the technical side. An excellent balance of action, drama and humor, which is rare in Marvel films, keeps the attention from start to finish and, if you are a more careful observer or you watch it several times, you will notice a lot of interesting details. There are Bible quotes, characters borrowed from other Marvel stories, references to "Apocalypse Now" (a film directed by Nikoilas' uncle), scenes made as a homage to painters and all sorts of interesting stuff.

It is interesting fact that Nicolas Cage is a big fan of comics, especially this one, so he fought tooth and nail to get this role, and even has a tattoo of Ghost Rider that they had to hide when shooting. He is such a fan(atic) that he took his stage name from comic character Luke Cage, and he named his son Kal-El after Superman. Director does not fall far behind Cage, because he gave money from his pocket for shooting some of the scenes that the studio didn't approve. All in all, this is the movie that true lovers of comics made from the heart, and it's really sad that it is so badly (un)accepted by the audience and criticism. I rate it strong eight.

8/10

"For the most part it's Neanderthal compared to the Pixar stable." - James Mottram, Total Film

The Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year and sound names such as DreamWorks, Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, and Ryan Reynolds, lead to expectations that this film does not meet. It is visually beautiful and quite entertaining, but the silly caricatured fairy-tale creatures and slapstick comedy cannot compensate for the unoriginality, simplicity, and linearity of the story and characters and the emotional clichés with which it tries to mask the essential shallowness. If you choose it for a movie night with a child, you will not regret it, and if you skip it, you will not miss anything special.

6/10

Spiderwolfs, chickenseals, land-sharks...

A bit of "The Flinstones", a bit of the "Ice Age", hints at original ideas and a mountain of Hollywood clichés. Everything I said about the first applies to this one as well. However, the sequel is a bit more complex, diverse, faster, and more fun, and some intelligent humor has been added to the slapstick on which the first part was based.

7/10

"My role was less about saving lives than about bearing witness"

Nicolas Cage is an ambulance paramedic who has not saved a single life for months. People have been dying in his arms for too long, one after the other, and his psyche can no longer bear it. He no longer feels like a hero who saves lives, but like a helpless witness to death. As he sinks into alcoholism, the voices and faces of "victims" appear more and more often. He is mostly haunted by Rose, a seventeen-year-old girl for whose death he feels personally responsible, and guilt drives him to madness.

"Bringing Out the Dead" takes us through several painful nights of an ambulance cruising the streets of New York. We will meet several paramedics, who approach this job very differently and try to cope with the stress and transience of life in various ways. While one experiences the whole thing as an adrenaline roller coaster, the other turns to religion, and our hero seeks salvation in alcohol. In the filth of the metropolis, we meet a variety of interesting and crazy characters, who at the same time provide this drama with comic relief and instill chill in the bones. And there is also Patricia Arquette, a former drug addict, the daughter of one of the victims, who slips into an unusual symbiosis with our hero.

What to expect from Scorsese's film, which is almost independently presented by Nicolas Cage ... "Bringing Out the Dead" is a rather harrowing drama, spiced with a dose of black humor, which combines the surreal and eccentric story and atmosphere of Scorsese's "After Hours" with the emotion, energy, and performance of Cage's "Leaving Las Vegas". A very unusual achievement that, I believe, many will not like, but if you like at least one of these two movie legends, don't skip it.

7,5/10

“A messenger from realms whose existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the gulfs that it throws open before our frenzied eyes.”

On IMDb, I came across a superbly written review that almost perfectly coincides with my view of the film, and I am transcribing it in its entirety, because it makes no sense to write the same, and probably worse, in my own words.

"Written and directed by Richard Stanley (his first film in 25 years, after he was infamously fired three days into production on his long-gestating dream project, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)), Colour Out of Space is a modernised adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's 1927 short story "The Colour Out of Space", and takes a good stab at depicting one of Lovecraft's most oblique entities. Mixing humour and body horror (perhaps weighed a little too much towards humour), the film gives Nicolas Cage another opportunity to go full-Cage, and boy does he lean into it - this is the most ludicrous, histrionic, and borderline farcical performance he's given since Vampire's Kiss (1988), and how much latitude you give him may well determine your opinion of the movie.

Just outside the city of Arkham, MA (the fictitious setting of many Lovecraftian stories), Nathan Gardner (Cage), his wife Theresa (Joely Richardson), and their children Benny (Brendan Meyer), Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), and Jack (Julian Hilliard) have moved into Nathan's deceased father's property, with Nathan embracing rural life by raising alpacas on the property's farm. On an otherwise normal night, the sky fills with pulsating light and a meteorite crashes onto the Gardners' land, and as time passes, the Gardners start to experience ever-more bizarre events - unnaturally localised lightning storms that seem to come from nowhere; huge fuchsia-like plants that seem to grow overnight; a horrific odour that only Nathan can smell; a gigantic purple mantis flying around; radios and the internet cutting out more than normal; the water turning strange colours; the family's dog, Lavinia's horse, and Nathan's alpacas starting to act strangely; even time itself appears to be corrupted. And soon enough, the family members themselves begin to show signs of unnatural change.

After some basic narrative preamble and a contemplative sub-Terrence Malick-style voiceover, the film features one of the most inorganic expositionary scenes I've ever seen, as Nathan and Theresa stand on the porch, and spend a good five minutes telling each other things that they both already know. Thankfully though, the clunkiness of this opening isn't a sign of things to come, and one of the film's most consistent elements is the subtlety with which Stanley depicts the entity, or rather, doesn't depict it. Lovecraft felt that if humanity were ever to encounter real cosmic beings, they could be so unlike anything in our experience as to be impossible to describe, or even process in our minds, and one of his aims with "Colour" was to create an entity that doesn't conform to human understanding - hence the only description is by analogy, and even then, only in relation to colour beyond the visual spectrum. With this in mind, Stanley wisely keeps everything as vague as possible - vibrant, modulating pulses of light that seem to be emanating from somewhere just outside the frame, vaguely-defined spatial distortions, colour manipulations with no obvious source, etc.

Important here is the colour itself, and instead of attempting to create the indescribable colour featured in the story, director of photography Steve Annis chooses to go the route of not settling for any one stable colour - every time we see the effects of the meteorite, the hue appears to be in a state of flux - so although we can say the colours are recognisable, they're never identifiable as any one specific colour, which, is probably the best choice the filmmakers could have made.

As we get into the third act, the film abandons all sense of restraint and goes completely insane, with the body horror which has threatened to break through from the earliest moments finally unleashed, foregrounding the exceptional work of special effects supervisor/creature designer Dan Martin. These scenes are heavily indebted to David Cronenberg, especially his earlier work such as Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977), and The Brood (1979), although the most obvious touchstone is Chris Walas's work on Cronenberg's masterpiece, The Fly (1986). A lot of Martin's creature design also seems inspired by the legendary work of Rob Bottin, and there's a direct visual quote of one of the best moments in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982).

It's also in the last act where Cage is turned loose, signalled by an epic meltdown when he discovers Benny hasn't closed the barn door and the alpacas have gotten out. From there, it's Nicolas Cage unrestrained. There is a problem with this, however. Full-Cage has been seen in films such as Vampire's Kiss, Face/Off (1997), The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009), Mom and Dad (2017), and Mandy (2018), but each performance has felt fairly organic, never becoming self-conscious. In Colour, however, to an even greater extent than in the virtually unwatchable The Wicker Man (2006), Cage crosses into self-parody, with his performance having as much to do with people's preconceived notions of a Nicholas Cage performance as it does with finding the character. There are a couple of scenes here that seem to have little to do with legitimate character beats and more to do with Cage winking at the audience.

Which might be entertaining and all, but which doesn't serve the film especially well. For all its insanity, this is a relatively serious movie, but Cage's performance is so manic, that it affects everything around it. For example, after the aforementioned meltdown ("Don't you know how expensive those alpacas were"), which just about fits with what we know of the character, as Nathan is walking away from Benny and Lavinia, he stops, turns, pauses, shouts "ALPACAS", pauses again, and then walks away. This got a huge laugh at the screening I attended, and it was undoubtedly funny. But does self-reflexive humour by the leading man help tell the story or even create the right tone? No, not in the slightest. In essence, this scene marks the point where the character ceases to be Nathan Gardner and becomes a version of Nicolas Cage.

The other characters all have a kind of internal logic to their crumbling sanity; the meteorite affects each of them differently, with their minds disintegrating in different, but consistent ways. With Nathan, however, Stanley seems unwilling, or unable, to establish the parameters by which his mind is breaking down, seemingly going for laughs rather than something more cogent.

This issue notwithstanding, I enjoyed Colour Out of Space a great deal. Stanley's return to the director's chair is to be admired for its restraint and how faithful it remains to the very tricky Lovecraftian original. The body-horror in the film's last act will appeal to fans of the grotesque, whilst others will take great pleasure from Cage's insanity, as narratively unjustified as it is. The film is ridiculous on many levels, but it's extremely well realised and well-made, and is to be applauded for not trying to attach an explicit meaning to a story that avoids any kind of thematic specificity." - Bertaut

7,5/10