A sure-fire way to get my eyes to gloss over into abject boredom as my brain goes into low-battery sleep mode is to suggest I watch a political movie. Typically, I avoid political movies like the plague, especially slow-burning dramas that focus on some “issue” or element of current U.S. politics in particular. I’d just…

As a recently downsized 50 year old worker bee, I’ve been thinking about my career a lot these days. Asking these kinds of questions:  “What does it look like for me to have a meaningful career?”  “Do I really need to give my life to corporations who (I’ve now seen) will discard me in the…

As I sit down to write this post, I can almost hear Beavis and Butthead snickering to themselves.  “He said 69, huh-huh, huh-huh.”  This past week I submitted my 69th job application since being laid off in February. This past weekend I also watched the 69th movie in the Nicolas Cage WATC(H) marathon.  Coincidence?  No.…

Tom Brady didn’t always throw a touchdown. Tiger Woods missed some putts. Caitlin Clark has hurled up a brick more than few times on her path to greatness. Moral: Even the GOATs have an occasional off day now and then.  Outcast (2014) was Nicolas Cage’s off day. We’re going to give him a mulligan because…

Have you ever had a friend who tends to retell you the same story a short time after telling it the first time? It’s awkward, right? As the listener, you can make things slightly uncomfortable by reminding your friend that they just told you this story last week, or you can pretend it’s all new…

In the last post, I discussed the three different character / role type categories that Nicolas Cage films typically fall into. The best ones are typically the Dark Misfit Savior (DMS) where a morally-questionable or broken guy brings a unique set of skills / traits into play in order to save someone or something of…

In the TV series Community (S5, E2) the character Abed almost drives himself insane trying to answer what may seem to be a fairly simple question for a film class: “Is Nicolas Cage a good actor or a bad actor?”  Here’s a little scene from that episode (start it about 27 seconds in).  As funny…

So Nicolas Cage keeps making these animated movies which means I have to watch them. Sigh.  For context, I haven’t always been so anti-cartoons. I loved cartoons growing up. When I was a kid, way back in the last century, before cable television and on-demand everything, there was one particular day of the week (time…

Well, I have finally arrived at the last Nicolas Cage movie released in 2012, and this is an appropriate ending to an uncharacteristic lull in the WATC(H).  I’m not suggesting that this time period of 2011-2012 was the worst of Cage’s career, but representatively, the six movies that Cage released during this span were mostly…

In the first installment of Ghost Rider (2007), WATC(H) #47, I talked a bit about how the road to hell is paved with middle managers. In this Marvel sequel, Ghost Rider 2: The Spirit of Vengeance (2011) the motorhead demonic “retriever of contracts” gains a new skillset and gets promoted to: motorhead demonic retriever of…