Nicolas Cage is a national treasure. At this point there’s no debating it for me. But did we need a movie with the title National Treasure (2004) to prove that already established fact? (For that matter, did we need two of them?) Probably not.   My expectations were perhaps too high for this movie which I…

What do you get when you cross an OCD private detective like Adrian Monk with a prolific con artist like Frank Abagnale, from Catch Me If You Can? The answer: the obsessive compulsive grifter, Roy Waller, played enthusiastically and brilliantly (once again) by Nicolas Cage in the superbly paced and highly entertaining Ridley Scott-directed film,…

Nothing quite stirs up the literary artist’s sense of existential dread, self-loathing, and self-doubt like sitting down with your keyboard to the abyss of the blank page. Yet there is always the underlying if futile hope of creating something new and original. In all that intimidating white space, one is confronted with one’s true core.…

It took 38 tries, but I have finally discovered Nicolas Cage’s kryptonite. I didn’t think it was possible that anything could bring down the man of steel, but he has a weakness after all, and it’s directing.  He has only one directing film to his credit, and there is a good reason for that; and…

War?!? What is it good for? Absolutely, nu– Well, war is good for maybe one thing. It’s “good” for providing Nicolas Cage the backdrop he deserves for UNLOADING a whole can of whoop-ass and explosive violence on an entire battalion of enemy soldiers.   Whether he’s raining down machine gun fire, chucking hand grenades, dodging mortar…

In the early days of the new millennium, if Nicolas Cage wasn’t making Christmas movies, it seems he was making war movies. In 2001, the first of these war films (and his fifth book-to-film adaptation) is the World War Two dramatic romance Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. The film, directed by John Madden, and based on the…

When I set out to watch every Nicolas Cage movie ever made, I had a disclaimer that stated I could choose to skip animated movies where he doesn’t physically show up on screen. But now I’ve decided to change my stance on this weak-sauce cop-out. No skips, no buts, no excuses. I’m watching them all…

And you may ask yourself, “How do I work this?”And you may ask yourself, “Where is that large automobile?”And you may tell yourself, “This is not my beautiful house”And you may tell yourself, “This is not my beautiful wife” The Talking Heads / Once in a Lifetime Have you ever wondered what your life would…

Gone in Sixty Seconds Well, this is the 33rd movie in the WATC(H), and it marks a new millennium for Master Cage. Looking in the rearview, I am almost a third of the way through the experiment, and have seen some exceptional films, some horrible films, some pretty good films, and some truly weird films. …

Saving someone’s life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world.” “I’d always had nightmares, but now the ghosts didn’t wait for me to sleep. I drank every day. Help others and you help yourself, that was my motto, but I hadn’t saved anyone in months. It seemed all my patients were…