I love Nicolas Cage. He’s my favorite actor. I’m not fucking kidding and I’m certainly not being “ironic.” I’m sure many people share my feelings (he can be quite the box office draw), but I haven’t met many of them. Typically, when I profess my love for One Of Planet Earth’s Greatest Screen Presences, I get a mixture of honest incredulity and outright hostility. This is sometimes followed by mock-puking gestures.
A third common reaction is the “I only like him in…” argument. Predictably, the films proffered are almost always Raising Arizona, Vampire’s Kiss, Wild at Heart or Adaptation. These are very fine films, yet none are my favorites. Many of my cinephile friends have heaped bucketloads of film geek jizz upon Werner Herzog’z bizarro-world “remake” of Bad Lieutenant. While it did contain some amaaaaaaaazing Cagey goodness (see below) it still fails to make my top Slick Nick Picks.
I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t always loved The Cage with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. When I was a younger man, his over-the-top scenery-chewing performances in action-thrillers like Snake Eyes and Face-Off made my brain hurt. In fact, it wasn’t until 2004’s National Treasure that I began to “see the light” as it were. As if the Non-Partisan-Generic-Patriotism + Dumbed-Down-Da-Vinci-Code-But-It’s-About-American-History Plot weren’t enough to make me cum in my popcorn bucket, the casting of Cage Against The Machine is equivalent to… well nothing, really. It’s honestly, tongue nowhere near cheek, one of the greatest American movies of the past decade. The real joy comes in watching Cage’s Benjamin Franklin Gates “put together the clues” mostly by improv-y free association. I tried to find a suitable YouTube clip of one of these moments, but hit a wall o’ FAIL (or licensing). You’ll just have to watch the whole movie (you won’t be sorry you did!).
I’m afraid it’s a little difficult to describe quite exactly what it is that I love so much about his performances. But if you can watch this clip from Ghost Rider (2007) and not dig, then I don’t know how else I can convince you (it starts to get really good around 0:37):
Fire up that Netflix account! Here’s my top five Cage-Rage-A-Thons:
1. National Treasure
2. Con Air
3. Ghost Rider
4. Gone in 60 Seconds
5. Tie between National Treasure 2 & Those Japanese Pachinko Commercials:
Cage is a stone fox. You don’t want to admit it at first, as he can come across as a slack-jawed goombah, but the fact remains that he’s a big manly hirsute guy with big soulful brown eyes, and he’s funny. Aside from critical favorites, he is unilaterally entertaining and diverse. Moonstruck remains one of the classics of the often cloying rom-com genre, and I will readily rewind and re-watch Nicholas do his wounded poet-bear schtick in a tank top ad nauseum. Rwow!
Arthur, if you haven’t seen the Wicker Man remake, do it now. So much Cagey awesomeness. NOT THE BEES!
[...] you, Disney. I take back my effusive praise for National Treasure. Well the parts that don’t have Nic Cage in it, anyway. Share and [...]
[...] video of my hero, Nicolas Fucking Cage, shows him doing what he does best: screaming brilliant nonsense at the top of his lungs with such [...]
Ah, finally. Someone who truly appreciates my favorite actor.
but….
Whatabout Lord of War? So different and so beautifully Cage-y, and Family Man (!) which brought tears to my eyes as no other Nicholas Cage performance has.
He’s okay, but he’ll never be as great as Nicholas Coppola.