 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 357: 06.08.2021 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 10. The last ~20 minutes of this was among the most insane and insanely stupid filmmaking I've ever seen. I don't think I can do it justice with words or select clips and I'm tempted to simply upload the whole sequence unedited. There were times during it where I was literally howling at the screen. Was I howling in pain or delight? I’m not sure, but I believe the latter. 2018 was an interesting year for Cage. His first feature released that year was perhaps his most beloved recent performance (Mandy), and he bookended things with this: the best BAD movie of his I’ve seen yet. In between, he voiced both Superman and Spiderman, made a real SHIT bad movie, a Canadian science fiction thriller and an American thriller-style thriller, both of which I haven’t seen yet. I'm exhausted just reading that. |
For example, the movie begins with two teen girls stuck beneath some frozen water, drowning. Why are there two girls? One dies and the other one survives. The one who dies doesn't serve any tactical purpose in the story. The one who lives (played by Run Lola Run's Franka Potente, whom I will refer to as Lola here for the sake of simplicity) is granted the mystical ability to see/talk to/control (?) dead or dying spirits in the "Between World" world. She just needs to pay strangers to choke her in gas station restrooms to do so. Excuse me? Watch out for mangators...
"My daughter's out of the coma but it's still touch and go." "What?" The beauty of this (and all GMBs™, to a degree) is how they throw you into the batshit world and just GO WITH IT. The less explaining the better! This allows the audience to take ALL choices at face value and enjoy the ride.
Cage plays a character named Joe, a down on his luck trucker whose wife and child have died. How do we know this about Joe? Let me show, not tell...
This to me is a perfect GBM™ opening sequence. It is so painfully bad and hilarious. The script + the line reads of said script = gold. They just get right into it. This chick can leave her body and she hired a random guy to choke her and she decided to do this in a convenience store bathroom because why and oh yeah she's doing it to save her daughter who is in coma from a motorcycle crash and Cage's family is dead!
The writer-director of this is a lady named Maria Pulera whose only other credit is a 2016 movie called Falsely Accused, which looks like any other dime-a-dozen VOD schlock. She's clearly inspired by Twin Peaks/Lynch, though, and she was actually able to nab the one and only Angelo Badalamenti to write the "theme" for this (not the entire score). This "theme" sounds exactly like some original Twin Peaks music and it pops up a handful times...
The Lynchian comparisons are apt, in a sense. It's exactly like a David Lynch movie if you removed all style, nuance, heart, technical ability, pretty much anything involving any type of talent on any level whatsoever.
So these two become fast "friends" (with benefits *wink wink*), but not before Cage agrees to choke her out in the hospital stairwell so she can soul-communicate with her dying daughter stuck in a coma. It's going to be pretty awkward when people want to hear their "how we met" story! Lola isn't sure she can access the spirit world twice in the same day – she's never done it before – but, no worries, she gets there and somehow communicates to her daughter's soul something like "do not die, soul." While she's in there she also has visions of Cage having sex with her daughter; I'm sure that's nothing though, don't worry about that either. We're also briefly introduced to a nurse at the hospital who is also a soul-traveler (?) and she can tell Lola is one just by looking at her? Seems pretty convenient that she wound up as your daughter's nurse, but hey who cares! ...
Cage and Lola go to her house for a weirdly violent sex scene with a "bra on, then off" continuity error straight into an awkward "3 days later" title card hard cut...
That's filmmaking, baby! Cage has just totally ditched his job as a truck driver at this point (he was due back in Biloxi days ago!) to help out Lola and her daughter. We learn fairly quickly that his dead wife Mary's soul has come back from the dead and is now inhabiting the daughter's body, but we get some fun/confusing scenes in the ramp-up; this one feels especially "Lynchian"...
Cage has literally just met this Flatliners freak and her equally strange daughter and yet he is acting like they've been a couple for months if not years. After swigging some of the daughter's painkiller juice, he finally goes back to work and, yup, they're pretty pissed at him for just going AWOL for awhile and his ass gets fired on the spot...
This is only the 10th movie I've watched in my alphabetical watch/rewatch of the Cage filmography and it's at least the 3rd where the city of Biloxi, Mississippi is a crucial setting and maybe the 2nd or 3rd time he's played a character named Joe (we haven't gotten to the movie Joe yet either). I need to create a spreadsheet tabulating the prevalence of these seemingly strange similarities. Maybe not. Probably a dumb idea. You know what's not a dumb idea? The concept that "a man without a truck isn't a man." Words to live by...
There's just a constant stream of quality moments in this thing. It barely lags. Like this Cage entrance...
...or this The Exorcist-themed sex role-playing while the daughter watches (?!)...
...or this SHEET METAL COCK "joke"...
Meanwhile Mary, the soul of Cage's dead wife trapped in the body of his new girlfriend's daughter is getting hornier and hornier for Cage and that's a problem with mom around. Like, you just can't start jerking him off while mom is making dinner. Moms are the worst! ...
The actress (Penelope Mitchell) was at least 25 at the time of this filming but it's sorta insinuated that she's maybe in high school? Either way, she's too young for Cage but dead wife souls trapped in teens are gonna do what dead wife souls trapped in teens wanna do. C'est la vie.
I will say, while the three leads here are giving it their all and their performances – given the material – are largely why this worked for me. The supporting cast, on the other hand, provides blips of some of the worst acting you'll ever see. And it's kind of a nice counterpoint. Like the cashier at the convenience store or the guys at Cage's trucking company or these friends of Lola's daughters...
But the real star of the show is Cage and his many freakouts and mind-bending outfit choices...
One of the dumber subplots involves a box full of photographs and keepsakes that Cage left in the truck which his employers took away. They are holding this box ransom for $500 (a sum of money) for no discernible reason. Lola sneaks off to buy it back for Cage as he fixes her daughter's wrecked motorcycle. Cage's laughter here is a choice and I am still pondering it many days later....
Cage and the daughter screw after she convinces him that she is 100% the spirit of his dead wife Mary. This is just such a straight-faced explanation of the plot and I love it...
Cage barely gets his pants on before Lola returns home with the box. Awkward! Maybe this would be less awkward if soundtracked to some shitty Marilyn Manson?...
Nope! They carry on an affair pretty much right under Lola's nose. This entails Cage getting sprayed with a hose as the audience is further subjected to Marilyn Manson's version of "I Put a Spell on You"...
Folks, this is a real scene in a real movie. Parental discretion is advised...
We're almost an hour into this 90-minute movie now and we get one of the most insane moments in film history. A montage containing various sex scenes with Cage and the daughter/Mary + sex scene flashbacks with the actual Mary + some exposition dump as Lola meets the spirit world nurse. That's all well and good and weird enough on its own, but it's not what makes it special. Please, just watch...
"Read to me from Memories, Joe." Six words that will live in infamy. Memories, in this case, being the fake book by someone named Nicolas Cage. I want you to please stare at the book design that they cobbled together for this movie...
What. The. Fuck. I went digging online for why/how this incredibly out-of-place meta moment made it's way into the film, but I didn't find any real satisfying answer. When directly asked about it via Collider in a 2018 interview, Cage had this to say...
I'm including that lengthy quote not because it answers the question in the slightest (I don't think this qualifies as 4th-wall breaking?), but because it potentially reveals something about Cage's brain and process. He's such an impulsive actor and he seems to function on a whim in all aspects of his life. I could be wrong, but it feels authentic. As to why this is in here or who thought of it, maybe we'll never know, maybe there's no answer to begin with, but – either way – it serves as an amazing kickoff to the insane final act of this thing, which – as previously mentioned – was a howling delight.
Lost in the shuffle of the Memories book fiasco, perhaps you missed the expo dump from the completely random nurse character? She basically explains what the hell is going on to Lola, but Lola is nevertheless shocked to come to find Joe and her daughter fucking...
Then Mary (I'm just gonna call her Mary from now on) smashes her mother (not her mother) over the head with a motorcycle helmet as she's trying to explain how Cage can fix this mess...
So, basically, at this point, EVERYTHING unravels. I'll do my best picking out the best bits but I recommend checking this out for yourself in full. It's truly a GBM™ Hall of Famer. Mary persuades Cage to go rob her old stoner boyfriend and his idiot friend and they accidentally end up killing the friend guy. Whoops!...
The stoner boyfriend goes to Lola's house with a gun demanding answers...
Meanwhile, Mary and Cage go to their old house – which never fully burnt down (?) – and he starts having visions of his dead daughter. It's all terribly disorienting with an emphasis on the terrible part! ...
It's unclear how much of this a hallucination or whatever and I don't think it really matters. It's attempt at high art and subsequent incredible failure is stunning. Also, that last bit with the gun to Cage's head??? I think that just might be an editing/timeline error? LoL.
Back at Lola's, the stoner boyfriend explains the plot in the funniest way imaginable...
I am going to make those five seconds an NFT and sell it for a billion dollars. Then Lola explains to him what's up and he delivers the second banger one-liner in a row...
Back at the burned-down house, there's trouble in paradise, which seeing how this a burned-down house where a child died, yeah I get it...
Cage isn't sure how this happening and that's a big "You and me both, man"...
An increasingly drunk Mary and Cage get ambushed by Lola and the stoner boyfriend. Hijinks and the big plot twist ensue...
Look, we've reached the end so I might as well let the movie play us out. My words can't do it any justice. It's bliss. Take it away, guys...
But wait! THAT'S. NOT. ALL. FOLKS. There is a final scene featuring Cage as a child deciding to kill his dad with a shotgun?! Did Cage's spirit travel back in time to that moment and make this decision? Does it matter? No. Nothing matters!!! Life is meaningless!!!....
Brilliant. I had a funny feeling about this one and it delivered. This is why I started this project and it has given me hope to keep going. Next week? A legitimate honest-to-god Good Good Nicolas Cage Movie??? Perhaps. I will rewatch a film I loved as a teen, Birdy (1984), for the first time in well over a decade, maybe even two. See ya then.
THE VERDICT: 9 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 356 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 358 ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 356 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 358 ⫸
0 comments:
Post a Comment