Arcadian: Nic Cage’s Parenting Skills

If you think your dad is overprotective now, just imagine what he would be like after the monster-apocalypse. Paul’s two teenaged sons do not have to imagine. Thomas and Joseph have basically been grounded their entire lives. To be fair, there really are insectoid mutant creatures roaming around their farmhouse after dark. The tightly wound dad understands they grow up eventually, but when they show a little defiance, it leads to desperate peril in Benjamin Brewer’s Arcadian, which opens today in New York.

Judging from the prologue, there was some kind of war and now everyone fears the bug-monsters. The details are sketchy, but it can’t be helped, regardless. Paul has protected his sons with Papa-bear intensity, but they are teens now, which always means trouble. He does not have to worry so much about studious Joseph, the low-stress brother. On the other hand, brother Thomas acts like a character on Dawson’s Creek. He would rather be flirtatiously hanging with Charlotte, the only teen girl within miles. Her parents seem to like him, but the other residents of the compound are not as friendly.

One day, Thomas bails on his salvaging expedition with Joseph, jaunting off to visit Charlotte instead. When he fails to return that night, Paul goes out looking for him, leaving Joseph to defend the house against freaky big monsters.

Arcadian is the sort of film that is greater in the sum of its parts than its whole. There are a handful of brilliant scenes, including one showpiece that starts out as a War of the Worlds homage and turns into Home Alone. However, the story and characters are pretty thin. Weirdly, Arcadian shares some similarity with Sting, because the horrors of both films are largely made possible by conspicuously bad decisions made by minors.

Butcher’s Crossing, Starring a Bald Nic Cage

For the American Buffalo, Miller was a one-man extinction event. Somehow, the species survived him, but it was not for a lack of bloodlust. Not surprisingly, he finds the Great Western Plains increasingly sparse of prey, so he sets off on an ambitious hunting expedition. His party encounters some serious karma in Gabe Polsky’s Butcher’s Crossing, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Will Andrews is taking a break from his Harvard studies to find adventure on the Frontier. He has a particular bee in his bonnet spurring him to find a genuine buffalo hunt. This is a really bad idea, as J.D. McDonald, a crusty pelt dealer who once knew Andrews’ preacher father, emphasizes in no uncertain terms. Nevertheless, he has his heart set on it, so he unwisely funds the mysterious Miller’s proposed expedition to a hidden Colorado valley, where the you-know-what supposedly roam.

Miller is visibly erratic and he becomes borderline psychotic when discussing buffalo. Yet, Andrews is perversely drawn to him, partly because the dynamics of their party are so dysfunctional. Charley Hodge, Miller’s cook and wagon master is devout in a way that emphasizes divine retribution, which puts him at odds with the crude pelt-skinner, Fred Schneider, who goes out of his way to push and prod Andrews and Hodge. When the weather turns bitter, the tensions within the expedition steadily rise.

Polsky and Liam Satre-Meloy’s adaptation of the novel written by the late John Edward Williams (a longtime professor at the University of Denver, go Pioneers!), lacks the kind of incisive bite viewers will hope for. As a director, Polsky is not fully capable of corralling all the tension Nic Cage’s crazy behavior generates. However, if you have always wondered what it would be like to see Cage portray Col. Kurtz or Captain Ahab, this film will give viewers a pretty good idea.

Sympathy for the Devil (a.k.a. Nic Cage)

Let this film be a lesson. Keep your car doors locked and your windows rolled up. I have seen smart phones snatched out cars in traffic on the streets of Rio, but the prospect of getting carjacked by Nic Cage is even worse. At least it makes for an interesting ride in Yuval Adler’s Sympathy for the Devil, which opens in theaters this Friday, after world-premiering at this year’s Fantasia.

The driver just wants to park, so he can rush to join his wife, currently undergoing labor. Unfortunately, the armed “passenger” who jumps in his back seat has other ideas. Apparently, he wants to take the driver out to a remote desert air field for some sort of underworld reckoning. It is all totally baffling to the driver, who steadfastly insists his name is David Chamberlain, even though the Passenger is convinced he is someone else.

It will be a proverbially bumpy night, especially when the Passenger shows his willingness to kill anyone interrupting his cat-and-mouse game. The premise is fairly simple, but the absolutely maniacal Nic Cage elevates it to nearly the level of high art.

Indeed, Adler shrewdly showcases the Cage Rage, trusting in its inherent appeal. Wisely, Joel Kinnaman stays out of his way, opting for an understated slow burn opposite the deranged Cage. Of course, any savvy film patron can guess the answer to the is-he-or-isn’t-he “mystery,” but the gritty duo still keeps us hooked.

Renfield, Co-Starring Nic Cage & Shohreh Aghdashloo

You can't say Dracula’s familiar never got any recognition, because Alice Cooper wrote a ballad to Dwight Fry, who played the nervous bug-eater in the classic Bela Lugosi film. However, this will be the first time he carried his own film. Of course, the master does not take kindly to his attempts to assert his independence in Chris McKay’s Renfield, which opens today nationwide.

Having just survived another encounter with vampire hunters, Dracula is looking more like his old Max Schreck self, but worse. They have found a new lair in New Orleans, where Robert Montague Renfield is supposed to nurse him back to his full power, once again. However, he goes a bit off-script when he stumbles across a support group for people trapped in toxic co-dependent relationships. Renfield can definitely relate, so he starts preying on their manipulative narcissistic tormentors, instead of the innocents his master craves.

Renfield really goes rogue when he crosses paths with Rebecca Quincy, one of the few honest cops in New Orleans. Using the super strength and agility he gains from eating bugs (one of the few benefits of being a familiar) saves Quincy from a hit squad dispatched by the Lobo crime family. At first, she considers Renfield a hero, but then she connects him to Dracula’s victims. Despite her reservations, Renfield and Quincy will have to work together when Dracula forges a self-serving alliance with the Lobos.

Despite a considerable amount of gore, Renfield is definitely played for laughs, but its blood spurting gags are usually pretty funny. Yet, McKay and screenwriter Ryan Ridley (working off Robert Kirkman’s concept) show a lot of affinity and affection for the classic Universal Dracula films. The early flashbacks superimpose Nic Cage’s Dracula and Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield over scenes from the 1931 Lugosi classic. The score also incorporates excerpts of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, just like Tod Browning’s film. Plus, what look like snippets of deleted scenes are recycled and given an early silent cinema look for Renfield’s closing credits.

Surely, Cage appreciated those touches. According to The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is his favorite film—and everyone that meta-comedy is more truth than fiction. Renfield is also set in his hometown of New Orleans, but viewers should understand they cannot just assume there will be open tables at Café du Monde, like Quincy does.

Pig: Nic Cage Cooks Truffles

Seattle has coffee and Oregon has truffles, but don’t call them white truffles. Oregon truffles are their own thing. Robert Feld has a pig with a nose for finding them. She is so good at sniffing out the delicacy, she gets pignapped. Feld deliberately turned his back on human society, but he dives back into the seamy Kitchen Confidential-side of Portland’s fine dining scene to find her in Michael Sarnoski’s Pig, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Feld is shaggy looking, but gentle in demeanor, at least when left to his own devices. He was once culinary figure of great local renown, but he now ekes out all the living he needs selling truffles to Amir, a young fine-food dealer trying to follow his father’s footsteps. When junkies steal Feld’s pig at the behest of a mystery villain, Amir gets to be his driver and wingman. It turns out the grizzled hermit knows more of the city’s dirty restaurant secrets than he does.

Pig has been likened to a “John Wick with a pig,” but it is far different tonally and stylistically. Like Oregon truffles, Pig is its own thing, in a refreshingly distinctive way. In place of action set pieces, Sarnoski explores the ways in which foods are tied to memory and emotional responses. It all builds to a third act climax that was definitely a bit of a gamble, but Sarnoski and his small cast pull it off nicely.

As Feld, Nic Cage looks like a wild man, but he is in nearly-silent mode this time around. He still broods harder than ever and goes all in during scenes depicting physical extremes. However, Cage forgoes the raging and snorting we have come to expect from him, in favor of quiet sheer power-emoting. This is restrained work from the master of mayhem, but Cage is genuinely magnetic on-screen.

Sundance ’21: Prisoners of the Ghostland

Westerns have been taking inspiration from Samurai films—and vice versa—for years, so why not put them together? And who better to do it than a master of chaos like Sion Sono, in his first English language production? In terms of cinematic firsts, Sono in English is up there with “Garbo Talks” for fans of hyper-kinetic genre films. An anti-hero known only as “Hero” is in for a wild ride in Sono’s Prisoners of the Ghostland, which premiered as part of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

Hero is an outlaw, but he is not evil. Unfortunately, he was teamed-up with the aptly named “Psycho,” who suddenly started blowing away customers in the bank they try to rob in the prologue. Eventually, the law caught up with him, but the sinister “Governor” of a weirdly undefined Wild West Japanese town offers him a deal he has to accept. Hero must “rescue” the Governor’s adopted granddaughter, Bernice, who ran off into the dreaded “Ghostland.” It is sort of a radioactive wasteland, in the Mad Max tradition, but with more radiation and more ghosts.

There will be a few complicating factors for Hero, like the booby-trapped leather jumpsuit the Governor straps him into. The whole thing will self-destruct if he is not back with Bernice in five days. There also happen to be strategically located explosives to regulate his behavior—very strategically, if you follow. He will need her voice to forestall an explosion, but she has been struck dumb by the supernatural power of the Ghostland.

If you know the recent work of Sono and Nic Cage than no review will dissuade you from watching Ghostland. Happily, their first collaboration lives up to its billing. Honestly, Cage gets his most mime-able rant perhaps ever, which he totally knocks out of the park. Oh, you will know it when you hear it.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Cotton Club Encore

When it was originally released, it nearly killed Francis Ford Coppola’s career—yet again, even though it was sufficiently well-received in the jazz world to win a Grammy for its soundtrack. Most frustratingly, the filmmaker knew it could have been great if the studio and producer Robert Evans hadn’t done so much to kill. Like the opposite of George Lucas, Coppola went back and fixed a lot of the problems (much like he recently did with The Godfather III), resulting in the director’s cut known as The Cotton Club Encore, which airs on Bounce TV.

In the late 1920s, Harlem’s Cotton Club featured African American talent on stage, but they are not allowed to enter the club as paying guests. This fact comes through loud and clear in the Encore cut. Delbert “Sandman” Owens and his brother Clay (clearly inspired by the Nicholas Brothers) have just been hired there as featured tap-dancers. Recently back in town, the scuffling white cornet player Michael “Dixie” Dwyer is naturally drawn there, but he will wish he had steered clear.

Dwyer has the questionable fortune of saving Dutch Schultz’s life. Regrettably, the gangster’s subsequent patronage quickly becomes controlling and emasculating. It is especially awkward when he orders the musician to accompany Vera Cicero, his not-so-secret mistress. The sexual tension between them is obvious and therefore quite dangerous. Meanwhile, Sandman Owens’ attempts to romance vocalist Lila Rose Oliver have been nearly as rocky. As a source of tension, the Cotton Club performer has been trying to pass for white, so she can accept more profitable work in downtown clubs.

Evans should have been ashamed of himself, because Coppola’s recut Cotton Club is a great film. It definitely provides more balance to both sides of the Club’s color line, which is clearly significant. It also fully restores entire musical numbers, which are terrific. (If you don’t see Lonette McKee’s rendition of “Stormy Weather,” as Oliver, you’re watching the wrong cut.) Their inclusion makes Encore a musical in the fullest sense. A number like Ellington’s “Creole Love Call,” performed by Priscilla Baskerville, expresses so much about the club’s place in Harlem. Likewise, McKee’s “Ill Wind” and “Stormy Weather” establish Oliver’s character far more than any dialogue.

Anyone who isn’t grinning from ear to ear after watching Gregory Hines lead a one-upping tap contest at the Hoofer’s Club needs serious anti-depressants. The closing fantasia of “Daybreak Express” is also a nifty piece of throwback movie musical magic. Perhaps the exception that proves the rule is the dramatic cross-cutting between Hines’ solo tap “improvography” [as the credits refer to it] and a climatic gangland hit.

Gregory and Maurice Hines were always the show-stoppers on-stage, but now their conflicted sibling relationship comes to satisfying fruition in Encore. In a deliberate irony, Dixie Dwyer and his wannabe gangster brother Vincent are denied that opportunity by their underworld entanglements. Yet, it is a lot of fun to see the crazy Nic Cage we know so well bubbling out of the manic Vincent (we can imagine his Uncle Francis begging him not to yell “top of the world, Mom!”). It is also good to see Richard Gere in the sort of matinee idol role he was meant to play, since his support for Tibet and the Dalai Lama has gotten him blacklisted from studio tent-poles (seriously Hollywood, he was in Chicago, Pretty Woman, and An Officer and a Gentleman). It should also be noted Larry Marshall is an absolutely spooky dead-ringer for Cab Calloway.

Jiu Jitsu: Nic Cage, Tony Jaa, and Juju Chan Fight an Alien

You probably thought Jiu-jitsu originated in Japan, influenced, by Buddhist, Taoist, and Shinto teachings, later developing a Brazilian offshoot in the 1920s. Well, how wrong you were. Actually, an alien brought it to earth through a Stargate-like portal in Burma, where he taught it to humans, so he could fight a worthy champion when he returns every six years. If no champion presents himself, the alien just starts killing people until one presents themselves. Jake, a member of the chosen brotherhood used to know that secret history, until he was stricken with amnesia in Dmitri Logothetis’s Jiu Jitsu, which releases tomorrow on DVD.

Jake nearly died fleeing the alien, but an old fishing couple patched him up and dumped him at the American military outpost. Bet you didn’t know we had troops in Burma either. The local Army Intelligence officer is suspicious, but she can’t get anything out of him, because he truly lost his memory. Nevertheless, Kueng comes to break him out, Jake instinctively goes with him.

It is hard to enjoy the first forty minutes or so of Jiu Jitsu, because Jake and his comrades of the Jiu Jitsu Brotherhood spend most of their time fighting and possibly killing American servicemen. The Yanks aren’t even supposed to be the bad guys. It is just sloppy writing from Logothetis and James McGrath (who originally conceived the story as a graphic novel). Heck, the only officer aware of the extraterrestrial goings-on, Captain Sand played by Rick Yune, emerges as a sort of martyr figure, which just proves how confused the script gets.

Of course, it blatantly “borrows” elements from Predator, Mortal Kombat, and Beyond Skyline (which also co-starred Frank Grillo, but was much better in nearly every respect). However, Logothetis (who produced the Kickboxer reboots) fully stocks the film with talented marital arts performers. As a result, the final hour is pretty entertaining, because it gives just about everyone a chance to go toe-to-toe with “Brax,” the alien warrior.

Frankly, this a better showcase for Tony Jaa than he has had in a while. (Too often, he has just appeared as a guest star in a cool fight, only to get killed off or written out of the rest of the film, as in Paradox). At least, he figures prominently in the third act here. Likewise, Juju Chan gets a chance to show off her chops. Technically, she also provides a love interest for Jake, but that is not really developed until the third act either. Unfortunately, Grillo’s big solo fight is surprisingly short, but up-and-coming martial arts thesp Marrese Crump makes the most of his duel with Brax—it is impressive work, probably making him the biggest winner of the film (if not his ill-fated character, Forbes).

Lovecraft’s Color Out of Space

Like it or not, you will see a lot of this movie in the future. The GIF appeal of Nic Cage covered in blood yelling crazy things like “could I get a little cooperation here” is just too meme-perfect. People will inevitably lose sight of the original context, but it was all done in service of a pretty good H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. It also represents Richard Stanley’s first full-length narrative feature directorial job since the Island of Dr. Moreau debacle in 1996. Stanley and his star Nicolas Cage capture the madness and dread of Lovecraft’s source material in Color Out of Space, a SpectreVision production, which opens this Friday in New York.

While Ward Phillips is out conducting a survey of the water table outside Lovecraft’s fictional Arkham, Massachusetts, he happens across Lavinia Gardner conducting a wiccan ritual. He is quite struck by her, so is keen to see again when the municipal government calls him to inspect a meteor that landed on the Gardener farm (they raise alpacas, which sounds very Nic Cage). Weirdly, the meteor disappears by the time the media arrives.

The Gardners (and the alpacas) also start acting strangely, presumably under the meteor’s evil influence. Lavinia’s little brother Jack Gardner is more distracted and absent minded than ever. Her mother Theresa gets so spacey, she accidentally chops off her own fingers. Her father Nathan freaks out spectacularly, screaming and raging against everything he resents in life. (Yes, he is played by Nic Cage). Only she and her middle brother Benny seem relatively unaffected, at least for now.

Initially, Color feels a lot like the original Invaders from Mars in terms of its almost pastoral tone, but it slowly evolves into Mandy on PCP. Frankly, it is pretty impressive how smoothly and steadily Stanley manages the descent into utter bedlam. Of course, Nathan Gardner is the sort of role Cage was born to play. He dives in with both feet, but in this case, his acting methods perfectly suit the film. In fact, this is the best case of Cage being Cage since Mandy and Mom and Dad.

Primal: Hunting Big Game with Nic Cage

Nic Cage famously bought two albino king cobras, a Mongolian dinosaur skull, and the reportedly haunted LaLaurie mansion in New Orleans, so it figures he would have an affinity for a hunter who bags a rare white jaguar. However, this hunter-trapper is motivated by mercenary motive rather than a collector’s impulse. Yet, he is not the worst passenger on this slow boat to danger in Nick Powell’s Primal, which releases today on DVD.

Frank Walsh briefly worked at ten zoos before finding his calling as a freelance trapper and seller of rare computer-generated beasts. When he bags the fabled white jag, he sees nothing but dollar signs, but getting it to his transfer point in Mexico will require some off-the-books transit. The dodgy freighter, the Mimer, is his paperwork-free ship of choice, but this time he will have company. The U.S. Marshall Service must transport an apprehended cartel assassin out of Brazil fast, before the government reverts back old 1970s methods of criminal justice. Uncle Sam wants to try Richard Loffler legally, but he has a rare neurologically condition that precludes air-flight.

Naturally, Loffler soon escapes and turns loose Walsh’s beasts to distract his former captors. The white jag is the deadliest of the menagerie, but there are also two venomous snakes unaccounted for. Right, Primal is a lot like Snakes on a Plane on a boat, with Nic Cage thrown in for extra irony. That could be decently entertaining, but screenwriter Richard Leder goes out of its way to tell us the U.S. military trained Loffler to kill, offering him up as a simple-minded microcosm of American foreign policy. Inevitably, the secret bad guy turns out to be an NSA agent, which makes no sense, since the NSA specializes in electronic intel rather than field work. Seriously, if you’re going to slander than American intelligence community, you should at least take the trouble to slime the right agency.

Grand Isle: The Latest Nic Cage Movie of the Week

In the movies, impending storms usually accompany simmering sexual tension, possibly laced with violence. That is true in spades for this soon-to-be water-logged Louisiana Barrier Island burg. Crazy Walter would rather bat down his handyman than batten down the hatches in Stephen S. Campanelli’s Grand Isle, which opens tomorrow in New York.

With tons of debt, a new born daughter, and a frail wife perhaps suffering from a mild form of postpartum depression, Buddy needs money, so takes an odd job fixing Walter’s fence. For some reason, the swaggering alcoholic insists he must complete the job that day or no dough, but the poor handyman cannot finish before the gale-force storm rolls in. (Seriously, it is only eight or ten white pickets.)

Reluctantly accepting the shelter Walter grudgingly offers, Buddy finds himself in the middle of a very dysfunctional marital dynamic. Before long, Walter’s Maggie-the-Cat-like wife Fancy starts coming on to Buddy in such an unsubtle manner, even Walter notices. Of course, that just makes him angrier and more unstable. Yet, he also has an offer to make Buddy. It is not exactly the “indecent” kind, but it will definitely be criminal. Regardless, Buddy will rue the day he walked into their home, especially during Detective Jones’ in media res interrogation sessions.

This is Nic Cage’s fifth film released in theaters this year, with another due January, so we have to admire his work ethic. He clearly has a keen affinity for Louisiana noir (after all, you can see his future pyramid-shaped crypt in St Louis Cemetery #1). As Walter, he snarls with all the wild abandon you would hope for. Nevertheless, it is still disappointing to see him help resurrect the hurtful stereotype of the crazy Vietnam veteran. In fact, screenwriters Iver William Jallah and Rich Ronat go out of their way to portray the Vietnam Vet as a monstrous caricature, setting the film in the year 1989, for no discernible reason except for making the raging Walter age-appropriate for his supposed service record.

Running with the Devil—and Nic Cage

If you have ever wondered about the mark-up on premium cocaine, this film explains it all. A lot of people in the smuggling chain touch each shipment, so that necessarily escalates the price. It also means a lot of low-level drug-runners have an opportunity to cut and siphon off the product. “The Boss’s” semi-retired lieutenant, known simply as “The Cook,” gets pulled back into service to investigate their network in screenwriter-director Jason Cabell’s Running with the Devil, which opens this Friday in New York.

The Boss is not pleased about the adulterated junk his outfit has inadvertently put on the street, but his minimal concern comes too late for “The Agent in Charge,” whose sister and brother-in-law overdose from its toxicity. It will be personal for her as she pursues the far-flung drug operation, but it is just another day at the office for the Cook when he arrives in Colombia, even though he was hoping to mostly handle his work via telecommuting.

Starting with “The Farmer,” the Cook and his colleague, “The Executioner” (his role is pretty clear), follow and test the shipment as it makes its way from “The Farmer” up through Mexico. However, it turns out the creep lethally cutting the cocaine is the Cook’s old crony in the States, known only as “The Man” (but he really isn’t).

Despite what we have been conditioned to expect, Running is far more ambitious than most Nic Cage VOD movies-of-the-week (unlike 211 or Looking Glass). Presumably, that is why he signed on, even though he does not have much opportunities for his patented raging and roaring. The Cook is calm and reserved. That is why he is effective. Instead, it is Laurence Fishburne who gets to careen from meltdown to meltdown as the Man. He is a complete bug-eyed, profusely sweating, out-of-control mess as the Man. This could very well be his most in-your-face, let-it-all-hang-out performance since What’s Love Got to Do with It. Awkwardly, he is also involved in all the film’s dirty parts, some of which are pretty gross.

Believe it or not, Cage does world-weary resignation pretty well as the Cook. Barry Pepper and Cole Hauser both project menacing professionalism in spades, as the Boss and the Executioner. However, Adam Goldberg’s “Snitch” is a little too schticky to be credible.

Initially, Running feels like Cabell is stringing together random scenes and hoping a narrative will emerge, but it should be readily conceded, he really does tie everything together. So, if you start the film, stick with it. It lacks the bluesy tragedy of Eastwood’s The Mule, but it is cold, bracing corrective to the cartel-porn Netflix produces. It has merit, but anyone intrigued can safely wait until it streams for free on Netflix or Prime. In the very short term, Running with the Devil opens this Friday (9/20) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

A Score to Settle, with Nic Cage

Who knew being a hoodlum could have a negative impact on your family life? Evidently, not Nic Cage, here playing recently released convict Frank Carver. He agreed to do the time for his boss’s crime, but it turned out to be a much longer stretch than he was promised. Now that he has been paroled for health reasons, he wants a little payback before its too late in Shawn Ku’s A Score to Settle, which opens today in New York.

Carver is getting released because he has been diagnosed with sporadic terminal insomnia. Unfortunately, he cannot watch his own film as a method of treatment. Although the promised payoff came through, Carver is a little put off by the way his former friends just abandoned and forgot about him. He wants vengeance, but he also wants to repair his relationship with his semi-estranged son Joey. Rather problematically, almost the entire first half of the film is dedicated to their pere-fils drama. As a result, we have a chance to watch a version of Cage we rarely get to see: his boring side.

Honestly, this film just takes forever to get going. Yet, when it finally gets down to business, it quickly runs off the rails with a series of crazy-as-a-loon revelations. Of course, Cage is in his element at that point, especially when he inexplicably launches into a loopy rendition of “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.”

Frankly, there is not enough Cage being Cage in Score to Settle. When it comes to ripping off famous films, Utilitarian screenwriter John Stuart Newman makes some bold choices, but it still doesn’t amount to much. The supporting cast does not provide Cage much support either, especially the bland Noah Le Gros and blander Karolina Wydra as Carver’s son and the high-class call-girl he takes a shine to. However, it is sort of interesting to watch Benjamin Bratt portraying Carver’s old and grizzled former colleague Q.

It hard to fathom this is Ku’s next and latest film after Beautiful Boy, released way back in 2011. His previous film had a great deal of merit, even though it was as serious as a heart attack and depressing as a Democratic Presidential Candidates’ debate. In contrast, Score to Settle is a tonal mishmash that largely flubs its big twists. Not recommended (and remember, we recommended Cage vehicles like Mandy, Mom and Dad, U.S.S. Indianapolis: Men of Courage, Dog Eat Dog, The Trust, and Pay the Ghost), A Score to Settle opens today (8/2) in New York, at the Village East.

Between Worlds: Get Your Nic Cage On

Nature abhors a vacuum and so does the spirit world. A tough single mom tries to use her John Edward-Crossing Over-style powers to save her daughter, but her body is left vacant far too long in Maria Pulera’s Between Worlds (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Poor Joe Majors thinks he is a good Samaritan when he saves Julie from strangulation in a truck stop bathroom, but she is rather annoyed by his intervention. However, she starts to appreciate him when he drives her to the hospital and keeps her company while she waits for her teen daughter Billie to recover consciousness. It turns out Julie can visit the spirit realm, or whatever the heck, while in the throes of a near death experience. She was trying to guide Billie back to her body, but she will need another throttling from Majors when Billie takes another turn for the worse.

Julie is grateful to the down-on-his-luck trucker and they have good chemistry, so he more or less moves in on Billie’s first day home. It is a good arrangement for Majors, but he is freaked out by Billie, who seems convinced she and Majors share some long intimate history together. In fact, she is alarmingly forward with him, but maybe it isn’t so creepy, since she is possessed by the spirit of his late wife. No, it is definitely still creepy, in an especially sleazy kind of way.

Forget about the supernatural and sexual content here. The real attraction here is a massive Nic Cage nostril-flaring freak-out. Think Mandy crossed with Wicker Man, raised to the power of ten. There is even a little sad-eyed Hubert McDunnough from Raising Arizona thrown in for good measure.

Franka Potente (from Run Lola Run) is surprisingly down-to-earth and engaging as Mother Julie, but Penelope Mitchell is uncomfortably Lolita-ish as Billie. Seriously, it is just wrong. Having Nic Cage doing his thing as Majors just adds to the awkwardness. There simply are no words to adequately describe the ickiness of Majors’ make-out sessions with Billie (or rather his wife, in Billie’s body). Honestly, it will also make you rather queasy to watch his sex scenes with her mom as well.

Let’s face it, you should just fast-forward to the Cage meltdown (which is what everyone wants to see in the first place), or forget this film entirely. He implodes with a bang, but as a work of cinema, Between Worlds is no Mandy. For Nic Cage, the adventure continues, but halfway serious horror fans can safely skip Between Worlds when it opens this Friday (12/21) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse—Marvel Animated

You have to give Marvel credit for not playing it safe with their first theatrical animated feature. For starters, they revisit the “Ultimate Marvel” continuity universe that they essentially put on indefinite hiatus in 2015. It also prominently features Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham (he’s a pig, get it?), whom Time magazine dubbed one of the “Ten Oddest Marvel Characters,” not without justification. Yet, all the unlikely elements combine into a rather inspired whole: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (trailer here), which opens this Friday nationwide.

Miles Morales is a bright prep school scholarship kid from Brooklyn, who is pushed hard by his police officer father. Most of the time, he feels like his black sheep Uncle Aaron understands him better, especially when it comes to his passion for graffiti art. Then one day, he is bitten by a radioactive spider. You know how that works. In fact, screenwriter Phil Lord frequently revisits that familiar origin story throughout Spider-Verse, for sly comedic effect.

Young Morales has trouble mastering his new powers, but he soon comes mask-to-mask with a potential tutor. That would be Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man. Thanks to a rift in the multiverse caused by the recklessness of Wilson Fisk (a.k.a. The Kingpin), several more alternate Spider-Beings cross over. Most of Morales’ lessons will come from Peter B. Parker, who is a lot like the Parker we know, but slightly schlubbier. He is not perfect, but the black-and-white, tough-talking Spider-Man Noir is not exactly the mentoring type and it would be embarrassing to get schooled by Spider-Ham.

It is usually a bad sign when comic book companies resort to reboots and alternate continuities, but Marvel has repurposed the Ultimate experiment quite shrewdly. Waste not, want not. Visually, Spider-Verse is a trip and a half, incorporating elements of the entire history of comic books, including manga—as represented by Peni Parker—all of which is rendered in a unique style of CGI animation, with traditional hand-drawn elements layered on-top.

Spider-Verse looks terrific, but what really distinguishes the film is the quality of the writing. Morales and his family are all fully developed characters, who have very real issues to deal with. Morales also has a smartly developed relationship with an alternate Gwen Stacy, a.k.a. Spider-Woman, a.k.a. Spider-Gwen (not to be confused with the deceased and resurrected Jessica Drew Spider-Woman). Frankly, there are some shockingly poignant moments in Spider-Verse, especially for viewers who are or ever have been Marvel fans.

Marvel really tempted the fates by enlisting Nic Cage, who nearly played Superman in Tim Burton’s never-realized Superman Lives, to give voice to Spider-Man Noir, but once again their gamble paid off with some fantastic hardboiled voice-over work. The rest of the voice cast is quite strong as well, particularly Hailee Steinfeld as Spider-Woman and Brian Tyree Henry as Morales’ father, Jefferson Davis (is that irony intentional?).

Regardless, all superhero movies should be as well-written as Spider-Verse. The animators produced some striking cityscapes and a truly dynamic sense of motion. Watching their work recaptures the feeling of seeing the first two Sam Raimi live-action Spider-Man movies and being blown away by how good the web-slinging looked. Even if you love GKIDS and Studio Ghibli, you will be impressed by what the filmmakers have done here. Very highly recommended, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse opens this Friday (12/14) across the country, including the AMC Empire in New York.

211: Nic Cage Under Fire

It is based on the 1997 North Hollywood shootout, possibly the most notorious bank robbery in American history not perpetrated by John Dillinger or John Wojtowicz, the Dog Day Afternoon dude. Or so we are told. In addition to changing the names of the guilty and innocent alike, this heist movie almost completely alters the surrounding circumstances. Of course, it hardly matters, because this is a Nic Cage movie. In between flying bullets, viewers can enjoy a lecture on bullying in York Alec Shackleton’s 211 (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Los Angles.

Over in Iraq, a group of mercs are about to whack a scumbag development executive, who plundered reconstruction funds and then stiffed the hired help. They arrive seconds too late, because his finance guru is able to disperse all the funds into anonymous small dollar accounts, tucked away in modest, unassuming provincial banks. Feeling rather put-out, they induce their former employer to name one of the banks before capping him. They then set off from the war zone to Somewhere, Pennsyltucky to rob it blind.

Of course, this plan makes no sense. The bank was not party to any of these nefarious deeds and according to the film’s own set-up, there is only a fraction of the take squirreled away there. It is like the entire film is based around a rash temper tantrum.

Mike Chandler, ominously due to retire, just so happens to be cruising around the 1^st National Bank of Squaresville, with his partner and son-in-law, Steve MacAvoy. Poor Chandler is on the outs with his daughter, because he did not properly emote during his late wife’s demise. For extra added manipulativeness, Chandler has a ride-along, Kenny the pre-teen, who was nearly expelled for decking his bully. Things are about to get bloody when the bank robber detonate a bomb at a diner to distract the cops, but Chandler is too intuitive for that kind of ploy. Unfortunately, he is still drastically out-gunned.

Shackleton’s screenplay simply makes no sense whatsoever. Even more problematically, the villains are about as bland and colorless as they can possibly be, without completely evaporating into the atmosphere. These two considerable drawbacks are actually quite a shame, because Shackleton’s execution as a director isn’t bad at all. There are some pretty tense shootouts in this film, but the extraneous stuff surrounding them is all very ridiculous.

It definitely feels strange to describe Cage as a stabilizing presence, but that is about the size of this film. It is also fun to watch Albanian pop star Bleona make deductive leaps out of nothing as Christine, the Interpol agent. Granted, Interpol does not function that way. It is more of a clearing house for information, but whatever. The rest of the cast is either immediately forgettable or gratingly annoying.

Although it was probably always destined to be a B-movie, 211 still should have been better than it is. Shackleton’s pacing is tight, but his plotting and characterization are weak. This is the sort of film that proves the advantages of the division of labor. Only for diehard fans of Nic Cage and explosive mayhem, 211 opens this Friday (6/8) in Los Angeles, at the Arena Cinelounge and also releases day-and-date on iTunes.

Looking Glass: Nic Cage’s No-Tell Motel

The Motor Way Motel is just as cheap and seedy on either side of the two-way mirrors the previous manager installed. It just depends on whether you are an active participant or a voyeur. With respects to the lesbian dominatrix who often stays in room #10, Ray will have to be the latter. However, peeping can get you a troublesome eyeful in Tim Hunter’s Looking Glass (trailer here), which opens this Friday in select theaters.

For reasons that never make any sense, Ray and his wife Maggie decide buying a roadside motel will cure what ails their souls after the death of their young daughter and the near collapse of their marriage due to his infidelity and her substance abuse. Old Ben, the previous owner was eager to sell and once they completed the handover, he made himself scarce. At least business is steady, especially the more secluded room #10, which is the favorite of the dominatrix and a hooker-hiring long-haul driver.

While cleaning out the utility shed, Ray stumbles across Ben’s peeping tunnels and finds them quite interesting, especially on nights the dominatrix books #10. Needless to say, relations are still pretty strained between him and his wife. However, things get real when a recent guest turns up dead in the desert. It has happened before they are unhelpful told. “Fortunately,” Howard, the coffee-mooching sheriff’s deputy is always popping around to make things awkward.

Looking Glass isn’t much of a mystery, but it gives Nic Cage an opportunity to bulge his eyeballs out like a cartoon character. Still, by his standards, this is quite a restrained, simmering-on-the-inside kind of performance. Regardless, the moteliers’ relationship dynamics are surprisingly down-to-earth and believable, even if the basic premise—that they would try to work through their grief by buying the Bates Motel—is not.

There are absolutely no surprises in this film. Seriously, we know who the bad guy is as soon as Suspect X struts into the picture. However, it is entertaining to watch Cage chew the scenery, along with the colorful supporting cast, including Marc Blucas, Bill Bolender, and Ernie Lively, as the deputy, the former owner, and the trucker, respectively.

In many ways, Looking Glass is a throwback to those 1980s cable-ready erotic thrillers that often had the words “bedroom” and “eyes” in the title. That makes it super-fitting to have Nic Cage peering beady-eyed through the mirror. Hunter certainly keeps it chugging along briskly. Since the 1990s, he has mostly directed for television (including the TV movie The Lies of the Twins, based on the same pseudonymous Joyce Carol Oates novel as Double Lover), but his first film was the rapturously received S.E. Hinton adaptation, Tex. He has had an interesting career. The gleefully lurid Looking Glass makes it even more so. It is not really recommended, but if you want to see it, we wouldn’t dissuade you, because it’s exactly what you’re expecting. It opens this Friday (2/16) in limited markets and also releases on iTunes.

Sundance ’18: Mandy

Which is deadlier, a drug-running hippie death cult or two lovers who dig their comic books and sf? Tragic history says the dirty smelly hippies, but the only caveat is the fannish logger husband will be played by Nic Cage. He will have a chance for a full freak out when the cult leader abducts his wife in Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy, which screens during the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

Red and Mandy Miller live happily in a remote cabin nestled in the Shadow Mountains. It is an Eden-like existence, until Mandy attracts the attention of Jeremiah Sand, a hippy cult leader most likely inspired by Manson, right down the failed release of hippy-dippy rock album. With the help of the vaguely supernatural Black Skulls biker gang, Sand and his brotherhood stage one of the most vicious home invasions you could imagine.

Initially, Sand tries to brainwash her with a special cocktail of mind-control drugs, but when Mandy resists their influence, he brutally murders her before Red’s eyes, leaving him for dead. That would be the cult’s only mistake and it might be enough to bring them down. Still, Miller’s crusty old trailer-dwelling crony warns him this vendetta could cost him his life, but Red is in no mood for such talk.

Essentially, Mandy is the male version of I Spit on Your Grave, as re-envisioned by Boris Vallejo, featuring fantastical matte paintings and brief animated cosmic interludes. Cosmatos doubles down on all the hazy neon visuals and synth-heavy proggish 1980s soundtrack music (think Tangerine Dream warmed up in Hell) that made less discerning cult movie fans flip for his first film, Beyond the Black Rainbow. However, this time around, he is also working with a narrative.

So, yes, this film is completely bonkers, but Nic Cage is right there with it, every step of the way. Forget about Leaving Las Vegas. This will be the film he will be remembered for forty years from now. He unleashes the Cage of Wicker Man and Mom and Dad for full effect. He is not quite Isabelle Adjani walking through the subway tunnel in Possession, but he is in the same gated community. Despite their classy pedigrees, Linus Roache and Andrea Riseborough keep in the spirit of the proceedings, as Sand and the title character. Plus, for an extra dose of hardnosed badassery, Bill Duke appears briefly but memorably as Miller’s old Jedi Master.

Just so you know, there is a chainsaw duel in Mandy. At one hundred-twenty-one minutes, it is shamelessly self-indulgent in just about every way possible, but you cannot accuse of getting stingy with the madness. Frankly, it over-delivers on the promised lunacy. Highly recommended for midnight movie regulars who fully understand what they are getting into, Mandy screens again Wednesday (1/24) and Saturday (1/27) in Park City and this afternoon (1/21) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance.

Mom and Dad: Filicide with Nic Cage

This film is like a poisoned slice of apple pie. Somehow, motherhood has been corrupted, as has fatherhood, right along with it. The how’s and why’s are a mystery, but for whatever reason, parents are caught up in a psychotic urge to murder their children. It is probably Trump’s fault, or maybe Brexit is to blame. Regardless, if you see your parents, run like mad in screenwriter-director Brian Taylor’s Mom and Dad (trailer here) which opens this Friday in New York.

We can infer that staticky white noise infecting broadcast signals is to blame, but whether it is supernatural or terrorism—whose to say? It started while most kids were at school or sitting for their SATs, but it eventually exploded into a full-scale crisis. It only applies to parents and their direct spawn, so teachers and emergency personnel will do their best to protect the future generations, but it is hard to convince all those dumb kids to avoid the very people who have nurtured them all their lives.

The Ryans’ teen daughter Carly has been a bit of a pill lately, so she stands a good chance of being the final girl. Seeing the phenomenon affecting her friends’ parents, she scrambles home to protect her little brother Josh. Presumably, their dad Brent is still at work and their mother Kendall (man, are these ever some white names) is at the hospital with her mega-pregnant sister (that situation gets extremely messed up), but both will come racing home with murderous intentions.

Probably the evilest and most effective aspect of M&D is the way Taylor slyly hints that the sinister whatsit only amplifies dark urges that were already buried deep within every over-worked, under-appreciated parent. He doesn’t spend any time on the mayhem device, because he doesn’t need to. It is just the push the Ryans have been waiting for.

Finally, M&D is the film that fully and necessarily capitalizes on Nic Cage’s bat-scat crazy acting style. He shows Brent Ryan’s dark side, in all its twitchy, seething fury. While Cage goes up, over, and out, Selma Blair is severely restrained, repressed, and resentfully self-denying as Ms. Ryan. When they get together and go crazy, they make quite a pair. However, all bets are off when the great Lance Henriksen shows up as Grandpa Ryan.

M&D is unrepentantly violent and subversive, to its unending credit. Frustratingly, Taylor leaves a few obvious avenues unexplored, like what happens to parents who adopted? Maybe that will be grist for a sequel. Regardless, the film is way more psychologically believable and compelling than a lot of folks will want to admit. Highly recommended for fans of horror films and Nic Cage tantrums, Mom and Dad opens this Friday (1/19) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

For Veteran’s Day: USS Indianapolis—Men of Honor

There have been a lot of posthumous service medals bestowed in recent years, which maybe isn’t a bad thing, but the Navy has made it pretty dishearteningly clear one of them will absolutely not be the Navy Cross for chaplain Lt. Thomas Conway. According to survivors, he tirelessly swam through shark-infested waters administering spiritual comfort and last rites to the men of the USS Indianapolis. However, the bureaucrats were able to reject a recent petition on technical grounds, allowing them to add further insult to the injury of the 880 fatalities, many of whom possibly could have survived were it not for procedural snafus. The horrific, heroic stories of the heavy cruiser’s captain and crew are told in Mario Van Peebles’ USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (trailer here), which opens this Friday (Veteran’s Day) in New York.

Technically, the Indianapolis’s final mission was an unqualified success. They were delivering parts and uranium for what would be the Little Boy atomic bomb to Tinian in the Marianas. It was a highly classified mission, so they were not allowed destroyer escorts. They made it to their destination safely, but they were forced to fatally push their luck on the unescorted return trip. To make matters exponentially worse, since their mission was off the books, nobody noticed when the Indianapolis failed to arrive home on schedule.

The gist of what happened after the cruiser was struck by multiple torpedoes will be familiar to many from either Doug Stanton’s bestselling nonfiction account or Quint’s monologue in Jaws. Captain Charles Butler McVay would have preferred to go down with his ship, but through a perverse twist of fate, he survived to become the scapegoat. Historians and screenwriters Cam Cannon & Richard Riondo Del Castro agree it was a dubious court martial, especially when some future presidents received medals for losing PT-boats under roughly analogous circumstances.

The Nic Cage renaissance continues with another surprisingly restrained yet deeply tormented performance as CAPT. McVay. Tom Sizemore does his thing as crusty Chief Petty Officer McWhorter and Thomas Jane channels his dashing inner Errol Flynn as seaplane pilot Lt. Adrian Marks. Awkwardly, the two blandly played Seamen rivals competing for the same girl adds a distracting and unnecessary soap opera side show. However, the unexpected soul of the film comes from terrific character actor Yutaka Takeuchi as Mochitsura Hashimoto the future Shinto priest, who (reluctantly) commanded the submarine that sunk the Indianapolis.

Thanks to the humanistic portrayal of Hashimoto, USS Indianapolis celebrates the courage of the officers and crew, while reproaching the injustices done to McVay without demonizing the Japanese people. However, the dehumanizing aspects of the Imperial war machine, particularly the manned Kaiten suicide torpedoes (so rarely seen in cinema), is depicted in no uncertain terms.

Van Peebles marshals the large-scale battle sequences, multiple sub-plots, and fleet of supporting characters fairly effectively. He also manages to racially integrate the Navy three years before Executive Order 9981, which is quite a feat. Still, he conveys a good sense of the realities of service during wartime and the military mindset. Recommended as a cautionary yet patriotic examination of one of the worst Naval tragedies in American history, USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage opens this Friday (11/11) in New York, at the AMC Empire.