Proof That Uncaged Nick Is The Best

BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
(Dir: Werner Herzog, Scr: William M. Finkelstein)

Nicholas Cage may well be the most frustrating actor ever to have worked in film. The ultimate Jekyll & Hyde performer, think of his best work - Raising Arizona, Wild At Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation & Matchstick Men to name the cream of the crop - all of these are master classes on how to act on the edge of your emotions, full of wild (sometimes insane) energy and conviction in your ability to end up with something spectacular when the film wraps. For these aforementioned films Nicholas Cage is quite possibly the only actor capable of this brand of performing. However he also has a fondness for crushing the life out of those fine performances by appearing in a mix of ill judged films (8mm, The Family Man, National Treasure) or in quite a few cases pure drivel (The Wicker Man remake being Crime #1). Obviously a man still needs to earn his money but when you see him performing to such a phenomenal degree in his latest film, Bad Lieutenant, you can’t help but feel a pang of regret that he chooses to do some many films that are in all honesty beneath a man of his calibre.
The film revolves (and lives off) Cage’s turn as Lt Terence McDonagh, a cop trying to solve a grisly murder case in post Katrina New Orleans. The main obstacle in his pursuit of the bad guys is not a lack of evidence or witnesses but himself, as he has descended into a grim world of multiple drug addiction, gambling and general all round badness. He uses bribery to get sex, steals drugs meant as evidence and, in quite possibly the acting scene of the year, threatens two elderly patients at gunpoint to find out where a key witness is. It is a decadent whirlwind that has little moral fibre to it but it is blisteringly fast paced and ridiculously entertaining. Veteran German Director Werner Herzog gets something out of Cage that has not been seen since Wild At Heart. You can see he feels comfortable enough with Herzog to go completely off the leash and deliver a truly ingenious performance that will go down as his career best, and is helped by Herzog’s brilliantly constructed direction. Herzog has an eye for the intense, but he also knows how to throw in something completely absurd and make it work well within the narrative of the film, which is why we end up seeing Soul’s Dancing, Iguanas singing and a POV from an Alligator.
The film has some fine supporting turns, including Eva Mendes showing a real appetite for the dark side again (stay away from chick-flicks) but it is easily the Nick Cage show. From his hunchbacked gait to his ability to be such an inherently immoral character whilst still maintaining the semblance of a human he has reached a level that may well be set as a future benchmark in acting. When you see the final scenes you will feel deeply for McDonagh. The movie is very good, Cage is at his blistering best. Just try your best to ignore The Sorceror's Apprentice when it comes out.

Film: 4/5
Cage: 5/5

Best Scene: Has to be the second trip to the Nursing Home ("Nobody saw me come in").
Spellbinding.

Step Aside Mark Morrison, it's the Return Of The Cack

No posts in three months is a terrible thing, even if I am writing to an audience that consists of myself and my glove puppet foxy (he’s a tickler) so I am returning to blogland with a super duper bumper blog™ to catch up on all thats been going down in my world of cinephilia, probably the most friendly form of -philia. Well the Oscars were indeed awesome for once with the fantastic Hurt Locker sweeping up both Best Picture and Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow’s ballsy direction. Re-watching the film recently just proved to me how an action film can still be a real spectacle with top suspense and drama without having to stand in front of blue screens swinging at imaginary enemies. Another quality Iraq war film was Green Zone. Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon managed to bring the same level of intensity as their two Bourne outings, and although at times the film was limited by the subject it still featured some excellent action scenes and left its audience with some real thinking to do about how the origins of a war sometimes can be more blurred than they should be.
Another great director/actor duo to re-appear in the cinema this year was Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio in the twisted thriller Shutter Island. The film moved along with gusto and there were some truly excellent moments contained within but the twists can be easily spotted from the outset and the ending is slightly annoying because of this. If this can be ignored however you are in for a real treat as Scorsese shows off his best directing since Casino and coaxes yet another top notch performance from DiCaprio. Shutter Island arrived too late for any chance of even a sniff at an award but one film that landed in plenty of time and got criminally ignored was Duncan Jones’ remarkable debut feature Moon. The film revolves around Sam Bell (played with devastating poignancy by Sam Rockwell), an astronaut sent to the Moon in a three year contract to mine the Moon’s resources to provide the earth with energy. As the end of the contract returns and his return to Earth looms things start taking a turn for the disturbing when he has an accident in his moon buggy and wakes up in the infirmary to find an exact clone who claims to be the real Sam Bell. This is the sort of Sci-Fi movie that harks back to the classic age of cinema and Rockwell’s double performance is completely engaging from start to finish and quite often will leave you emotionally drained. Moon is one of those rare films that will leave you feeling rewarded for investing your time in it.
Another film that will leave you rewarded but for different reasons is Kick-Ass. Seeing it at the cinema was brilliant as an entire room were caught in two hours of synchronised hysterics. The plot is simple; Young nerd decides to become a superhero only to find a few better one’s exist, as well as a few bad guys but it is the script (co-written by director Matthew Vaughan & Jane Goldman) that cracks with hilarious set ups and one liners perfectly delivered by the cast. Some parts will shock, others will make you split yourself in two laughing but all together it is easily the best alternative superhero film ever made; even though its crackling originality will probably be sullied in light of a franchise opportunity.
Other films that have been pretty darn enjoyable to watch include The Joneses, a half satire, half family drama about how consumerism is reaching in to every aspect of everyday life, featuring likeable performances from Striptease and Mulder, er I mean Demi Moore and Californication (dammit, David Duchovny!). Super fun will be had if you watch Hot Tub Time Machine. Any ill feeling towards the plot's possible flimsiness (see title) instantly disappears with the guaranteed seal of a watchable film, John Cusack. He heads up a brilliant foursome that includes the scene stealing Rob Corddry, US Office alumni Craig Robinson (excellent) and a gladly welcomed larger part for Clark Duke. Don’t worry about the plot, just sit back and prepare for a lot of lol-ing (Oh how I hate myself right now). Last year had The Hangover, HTTM is even better in my opinion.
Next up are two 80’s set rom-com’s, Adventureland and 500 Days Of Summer. Adventureland see’s Greg Mottola taking a softer approach after the sex obsessed bromance that was Superbad. This is a much softer film featuring the wonderful Jesse Eisenberg as James, a teen forced to work in a theme park over a summertime to afford college funds. He falls madly in love with Em (Twilight Highlight Kristen Stewart), a super cool co-worker that is secretly having an affair with guitar playing handyman played by Ryan Reynolds (who once again proves that when he steers away from flat out comedy he can turn in affecting performances). The love triangle is played out with real feeling and subtlety by the three protagonists and a quality script that balances the tender with the hilarious coupled with a great supporting cast including Bill Hader ensure you are left smiling from cheek to cheek after this lovable film ends. (500) Days Of Summer (Director: Marc Webb) is a much more introspective story, right from the start where the voiceover proclaims “this is not a love story but it is a story about love.” The voiceover is provided by greeting card writer Tom (played with bang on accuracy by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who falls head over heels for new co-worker Summer (the spellbindingly aloof Zooey Deschanel). The course of the love affair is told with a distorted narrative, the titular 500 days jumping from different periods throughout, no better illustrated than the jump between day 34 where Tom enters the lift euphoric after a successful night with Summer to day 303 where he leaves the lift completely broken hearted. This simple twist in convention makes the film that much more special, and the two central performances ensure it will be a minor classic in years to come. Neither Tom nor Summer are faultless, the former being too in love with the romantic notion of love and the latter slightly too fickle and immature but they both show off those traits we all can relate to when it comes to falling in (and out) of love with someone. Adventureland may well be the more entertaining of the two but in my mind (500) Days Of Summer is the better picture. Watch both though!
To finish up I will talk about two dramas, the first being A Single Man, fashion designer Tom Ford’s debut about a gay college lecturer trying to cope with the heart breaking loss of his partner. The film is an almost ritualistic take on what could potentially be a devastated man’s last day alive and it is treated with real dignity and cinematic beauty. Some may find Ford’s use of colour saturation to denote his mood a cheap gimmick but I feel it is an effective visual tool. However the film would be absolutely nothing without the career best performance given by Colin Firth. He dominates nearly every second of the film and with it delivers one of the most stunning performances I’ve ever seen from start to finish as he slowly starts to fade away to the brink of complete detachment only to find some salvation to be had in the fleeting beauty of the world. The film itself is visually good but could have been missable if not for the power and pathos Firth brings to the table. A supreme performance that will go down among the greatest ever. The second Drama is a war film with a twist, The Messenger. Starring Ben Foster (best known for Six Feet Under) and Woody Harrelson it centres on a war hero Sgt. Will Montgomery (Foster) who gets reassigned for his final months of service to become a messenger to family’s of killed soldiers. His commanding officer is Captain Tony Stone (Harrison) who teaches Will the script he must stick to and deliver to each and every family member as stated in the deceased soldiers form. Will soon realises what a horrific task this is to do, and especially to do whilst keeping a professional level of deatchment from the recipient of bad news and it creates inner turmoil for him, and in turn starts affecting Tony too. This is an exceptional take on the much worn out War genre with two stunning performances by Foster and Harrelson. You see the pain and aggravation etched as much on Harrelson’s face as he tries to keep his feelings from bubbling up as you see them it in the newbie Foster for being treated undeservedly, in his opinion, as a war hero. Such a film lives in the memory long after the credits roll and deserve a bigger audience on DVD than it received in the Cinema. It treated it’s topic with amazing grace and dignity for an American production and called to my mind the wonderful Japanese film Departures.
Phew, so there you go, suitably caught up I hope my non existent fans. Up next for me will be the hopping mad Bad Lieutenant and the Swedish insta-classic The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, both of which I have the highest of hopes for so I shall yak about them at a soonish date. Oh God, I almost forgot - I also had the pleasure of watching the delightfully shite Trees: The Movie courtesy of Zone Horror on Sky. In a league of its own for so-bad-it-makes-you-cry-but-so-watchable-that-you-must-bear-with-it-anyway entertainment. Oh yes, that tasty subgenre. Laters.

Green Zone: 3.5/5
Shutter Island: 4/5
Moon: 5/5
Kick Ass: 4/5
The Joneses: 3/5
Hot Tub Time Machine: 3.5/5
Adventureland: 4/5
(500) Days Of Summer: 4.5/5
A Single Man: 4/5 (one extra solely for Firth)
The Messenger: 4/5
Trees: The Movie: -/+ 5/5

Top Scene: Sam Rockwell’s heartbreaking ‘I Just wanna go home’ moment in Moon
Top Acting: Sam Rockwell in Moon & Colin Firth in A Single Man
Best Film Synopsis: Trees: The Movie - Barking (eh) mad horror about a homicidal tree that starts sapping (eh eh?) the life out of locals. Can a botanist, a park ranger and a grizzled lumberjack cut it down to size?…….Genius, and also ten times better than the film itself.