#38 Lord of War

#38 Lord of War

Year: 2005

Director: Andrew Niccol

MPAA Rating:

Epic Co-stars: Ethan Hawke, Jared Leto, Bridget Moynahan

Running Time: 122 minutes
Cage Time: 100%
Cage Kills/Deaths: 6 billion
Cage Flip-outs: 0

Special Guest Review By the Die Hard Cage fan simply known as "Steve": 

"Normally I don't bother to count the Cage flip-outs because I quickly run out of fingers to count on. This time I was easily able to keep track of them, there weren't any! He even manages to keep his cool after getting shot and even after his brother gets killed.

Just another day at the office for a typical business man.

There were plenty of plot holes to go around, such as stripping the plane down to its skeleton in one night, including removal of 4 massive engines and numerous gallons of jet fuel.  This movie was mildly entertaining and was supposed to have a message regarding governments supplying arms to various conflicts around the globe, but in the end is a fairly forgettable movie. I know, because it wasn't till there were about 30 minutes left in the movie that I realized I had seen it a couple years ago."

Unfortunately for us, Cage plays the most calm Ukrainian in the history of loud angry Ukrainians.

A few things you in for in the two hours after you push play are...

• Great opening sequence, life of a bullet including the ending when it hits a kid in the face. 

• Hot chick walking on jets at German defense show.  

• Nicolas Cage (Yuri Olav) scrapes cash up while children are being shot next to him with his guns.  

• A Badass office located in a shipping container.  

• Nic Cage lets his brother snort a kg of Coke.  

Cage figures out why you should never let your brother snort a kg of Coke.

• AK-47 is the best gun ever.  

• Ethan Hawke looks like Christian Bale in the Machinist.  But unlike Christian Bale, Ethan Hawke unfortunately looks like this all the time.

• A Free gun give-away from the back of a plane.  

• Cool shot with a plan being disassembled overnight.

• Snorts Coke mixed with gun powder.  Falls in to a drug induced haze and ends up hanging out with Hyenas in the desert.

• If you only have one phone call, call your lawyer not your wife.

• Cage is just a cog in a much larger arms dealing machine controlled by the US government.

• Nic Cage looks at the camera and talks.

Movie quotability:

• "The first time you sell a gun is like the first time having sex.  It's really exciting and somehow it's over way too fast."
• "This is shit.  This is shit."
• "Faster or I'll send your ASS! IN!"
• "I don't believe in fate..."
• "It's not 'lord of war,' it's 'warlord.'"
• "Any friend of my brother's is a... friend of my brother's."
• "The only problem with an honest buck is they're so hard to make - the margins are too low, too many people are doin' it."
• "At four and a half months old, a human fetus has a reptile's tail, a remnant of our evolution. And maybe that's what I can't escape. You can fight a lot of enemies and survive, but if you fight your own biology, you will always lose."

Plot Holes:

• Nicolas Cage talks on the phone to speed talkers.  Based on his replies nobody on earth could talk that fast.
• 30 minutes after being shot in the abdomen Nic Cage is seemingly unfazed for no other reason than that he is NIC CAGE!
• Simultaneously night time in both Ukraine and New York.
• Africans holding baskets can't hear airplanes 100 yards away.
• Ethan Hawke chases Nic Cage all over the world and continually lets him go on technicalities.
• [SPOILER] Nic Cage's wife thinks her husband is selling arms, so she brings her 4 year old son with her to trail him and discover his awesome shipping container lair.

	CAGEamatic	Cinamatic
Skyler	Acceptable	Exceeds Expectations
Shauna
James	3.57/5	3.98/5
Martine	!Put down her book for the last 30 minutes of the CAGE!

#13 The Weather Man

#13 The Weather Man

Year: 2005

Director: Gore Verbinski

MPAA Rating:  R 

Epic Co-stars: Michael Caine

Running Time: 101 mins.
Cage Time: ~95%
Cage Kills: 0
Cage Flip-outs: 6

Shauna's Review: In 2010, Roger Ebert wrote: "There are often lists of the great living male movie stars: De Niro, Nicholson and Pacino, usually. How often do you see the name of Nicolas Cage? He should always be up there. He's daring and fearless in his choice of roles, and unafraid to crawl out on a limb, saw it off and remain suspended in air. No one else can project inner trembling so effectively.... He always seems so earnest. However improbable his character, he never winks at the audience. He is committed to the character with every atom and plays him as if he were him."

What this means in practical terms is that, in most of his roles, Cage is unnervingly convincing as a megalomaniac. The Weather Man, by contrast, is a serious Film that allows us to see the fragile, sensitive, everyman Nic Cage. Or, as Skyler and James put it, "Finally, a Cage film with some nudity!"

"People don't throw things at me any more. Maybe because I carry a bow around."

Cage plays David Spritz, Chicago TV weatherman, divorced husband, father of two, and son of   a Nobel-award-winning writer, played by Michael Caine, who is awesome. Since this is an independent-type, dark comedy, his kids cuss and smoke and do edgy things like hang out with creepy perverts, his wife acts like a real bitch (not like Debra on Everybody Loves Raymond, but like, really annoying), and everyone says "fuck" frequently and with relish. The film follows Spritz's inner monologue as he tries, mostly ineffectively, to reconstruct his decaying personal life, even as his professional career moves forward. 

My name is Michael Caine, and I am awesome.
Also, if you haven't seen The Trip, watch this.

My brother once told me, "That movie is a real bummer." But I actually found it to be fairly hilarious. No, it's not upbeat. Spritz is an unhappy character out on a limb, feeling it crack under his weight yet paralyzed by doubt. Cage doesn't exaggerate these weaknesses for comedic purposes, and he doesn't need to; the writing is wittily sharp and self-deprecating. Instead he embodies this character earnestly and with real conviction, making this a solid entry in the Cage canon.

Movie quotability:

• "That was refreshing. I am refreshed. I am refreshing." 
• "People recognize me sometimes. Some are dicks." 
• "You ARE a dildo, pork fuck- fucker." 
• "Her colleagues call her camel toe.... It means the crease in her vagina that they can discern through her clothing." 
• "You know what, Dave. You want to know why my BJs lacked enthusiasm? I hated you. I hated your hair. I hated your ugly legs, your forearms. I hated kissing your lips, Dave. OK? And that's why I lacked enthusiasm when your cock was in my mouth." 
• "I don't know. It's a guess. It's wind. It blows all over the place." 
• "I'd like to put my face in there...tartar sauce...I like to eat pussy, tartar sauce...."
• "'When I think of my dad, I think of Bob Seger's Like a Rock.' And that's all I said at my father's living funeral." 
• "Always fast food.  Fast food.  Things that people would rather throw out than finish.  It's easy, it tastes all right, but it doesn't really provide you any nourishment.  I'm fast food." 

Plot Holes:

• None, except that $240k+ a year seems like a lot for a weatherman. 

	CAGEamatic	Cinematic
Skyler	Exceeds Expectations	Outstanding
Shauna
James	4.18/5	3.89/5
Martine	!Got teared up in the cage!