#65 The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans

#65 Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call- New Orleans

Year: 2009

Director: Werner Herzog

MPAA Rating: R

Epic Co-stars: Val Kilmer, Eva Mendes

Running Time: 122 mins
Cage Time: 
Cage Kills: 
Cage Flip-outs: 4

Shauna's Review: 

This movie is set in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina (text says). Cage and Kilmer are cops. Early in the film (I'm guessing this is immediately post-Katrina) Cage jumps into a submerged prison to save a trapped convict and injures his back-- mild to moderate pain for the rest of his life, the doctor says, and prescribes him Vicodin. Flash forward to six months later, Cage is snorting something in his police car before walking into a crime scene. He's a grumpy-ass, high strung lieutenant with a crazy-ass swagger and a gun perpetually stuck in the front of his pants. His girlfriend, Eva Mendes, appears to be a hooker. Oh, yep. She's a hooker.

Look, honey, there's a surprisingly bright future ahead of us! 

Cage's boss assigns him lead for the investigation into the murder of a Senegalese family. Turns out Cage has been stealing drugs from the property room with some help from a beat walker, Michael Shannon (aka Dave from Cage classic World Trade Center, if you're attentive). He also pulls over a couple of teenagers, ostensibly on suspicion of "passing drugs," and takes some drugs from the guy, takes some secondhand hits from a crack pipe via the mouth of the hot teenage girl, followed by a handjob.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Also cocaine makes you crazy in the brain. 

We're alternately impressed with the intensity of his drug use, the depth of his depravity, and his skill in conducting the murder investigation. Cage single-handedly finds and delivers most of the important people and clues, despite the fact that he is pretty much up to his eyeballs in drugs and gambling debt.  This movie might be more accurately titled "Irresponsible Lieutenant"-- given charge of his father's dog, he does everything in his power to pass that responsibility off onto his girlfriend; given charge of the young witness to the homicide, he quickly a) snorts coke in front of him, b) gives drugs to his hooker girlfriend, and c) loses the kid in a casino. Things start to unravel pretty quickly after that.

"What are those fucking iguanas doing on my coffee table?"

Cage is a fine actor here. He truly embodies this desperate, strung-out character with a touch of Cage-esque humor, a shuffling, hunched back posture and a nasally, mumbling version of his familiar drawl. Somehow you manage to feel bad for this poor son of a bitch, despite his fucking miserable life choices. The direction of the film is a bit rambly and has less momentum than I would like for this type of story. The director wastes a few minutes here and there with random artsy film bits (close-ups of a lizard or a crocodile dying on the street). But overall I would say this is a decent movie, and undoubtedly one of Cage's better recent acting gigs.

Movie quotability:

• "Please what, shitbird?"
• 'Hey, man, i got on Swiss cotton underpants. yeah, that's right. cost me $55 a pair. You think I want to get all this brown water and shit all over them?"
• "Don't move, you stay and watch! You watch her! You watch your fucking girlfriend!"
• "I need that coke back... I snorted what I thought was coke, turned out to be heroin. I need to be at work in an hour."
• "What are these fucking iguanas doing on my coffee table?"
• "It's amazing how much you can get done when you have a simple purpose in life."
• "Shoot him again!" "What for?" "His soul's still dancing!"
• "You don't have a lucky crack pipe?"
• "I'll kill all of you. To the break of dawn. To the break of dawn, baby."
• "Hey, did I ever tell you about the ni**er elk?"
• (to two elderly ladies) "Maybe you should die, you selfish cunt.... You fucks, I hate you, I hate you both.... You're the fucking reason this country's going down the drain."
• "Well, let her get cleaned up, put on something hot. She looks like shit right now."
• "A man without a gun isn't a man."

Plot Holes:

• All the other cops conveniently leave Cage in the room alone with bad guys often enough that he can smoke crack and make deals with them on a regular basis.

	CAGEamatic	Cinematic
Skyler	Outstanding	Outstanding
Shauna
James	4.38/5.00	4.04/5.00
Martine	!Enjoyed the Cage!

#56 G-Force

#56 G-Force

Year: 2009

Director: Hoyt Yeatman
MPAA Rating: PG

Epic Co-stars: Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Sam Rockwell, Tracy Morgan, Penelope Cruz, Jon Favreau, Steve Buschemi

Running Time: 88 mins
Cage Time: 5%
Cage Kills: 0
Cage Flip-outs: 0

Shauna's Review: 

As you may have noticed on the Epic Co-Stars list, there are a lot of freaking famous people in this kid's movie. Most of them are rodents. Dr Cage is a star-nosed mole, featuring his voice from Peggy Sue, in case you were missing it. Zach Galifianakis is probably the most humorous (not saying much) as a human person who talks to guinea pigs. Will Arnett's innate awesomeness is unfortunately subdued to a dull roar, but Penelope Cruz is still pretty goddamn sexy as a guinea pig, go figure.

The mole is the mole! Oh, spoiler alert.

Zach Galifianakis runs a Homeland Security special unit comprised of 3 guinea pigs, a mole (Nic Cage) a fly, and some cockroaches. On the eve of a crucial performance review, they run an op and retrieve a secret file from the computer of an evil bad guy (Bill Nighy, of course). When the big boss (Will Arnett) shows up for the review, the stolen file turns out to be the plans for an espresso maker, and their unit is canned. The animals are taken to a pet shop and must escape to meet back up with Zach. Hilarious pet-related hijinks ensue. It turns out that the espresso maker (and all of the other appliances in the world) is some kind of transformer robot weapon, so the guinea pigs have to save the world from the evil bad guy.

Zach Galifiankis: "This is actually preferable to Hangover 2."

This was actually... not terrible. Not great, certainly, but not terrible. I mean, it's not like this has any real character development or plot interest, but I appreciate the Jerry Bruckheimer style (The Rock, Con Air) in a kid's movie, what can I say? Unfortunately, the soundtrack is 100% Black Eyed Peas, and Cage time is limited.

Movie quotability:

• "I'm a mole, I've got a thing for worms."
• "No escape! I repeat, no escape!"
• "No, not the cage! I don't do cages!"
• "C'mon Specks, act cute." "I don't have that kind of range."
• "I wanted you to think of yourselves as more than just balls of fur, waiting for your next pellet."
• "You ever google the word 'mole'?... Three million entries on how to exterminate them!"

Plot Holes:

• In a movie where guinea pigs are superspies... what plots holes could there be?

	CAGEamatic	Cinematic
Skyler	Acceptable	Poor
Shauna
James	3.14159/5	2.19/5
Martine	Pacified the baby in the Cage.

#53 Astro Boy

#53  Astro Boy

Year: 2009

Director: David Bowers

MPAA Rating: PG

Epic Co-stars: Donald Sutherland, Nathan Lane

Running Time: 94 minutes
Cage Time: 15%
Cage Kills: 0
Cage Flip-outs: 0

Skyler's Review: 
Nicolas Cage is cutting-edge scientist, Dr. Tenma, in the futuristic Metro City. This futuristic city is a Wall-E type oasis, complete with robot slaves, floating above a Wall-E type destroyed Earth surface. Tenma's son, Toby, is a real smart-alec know-it-all who sneaks into his dad's secret lab, full of new government weapons, and gets himself killed within the first 15 minutes. This, of course fills Tenma with regret, since we was always too busy for Toby: a real "cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon" situation.

Dr. Tenma only hangs out with his son in hologram form.

Tenma, stricken with grief, uses a newly discovered, powerfully "good" blue core of a star to power a Toby-lookalike robot. Although this robot Toby has meat Toby's memories (how?), it isn't as nerdy as meat Toby and Tenma kicks him/it out of the house. Meanwhile, the President wants to use the star cores to jumpstart a war that will win him the election, and he chases robot Toby off Metro City to the surface, where he becomes "Astro" and masquerades as a real boy. Astro robot meets a gang of Oliver Twist-esque kids on the surface. There is an epic battle, miraculous ending, etc.

This is not his son sleeping. It is a robot. His son is dead.

In the end this story is about good v. evil and equal treatment and respect for all self-aware and intelligent beings (robots or otherwise). This is all fine and all, but I can't get over the fact that they gloss right over the fact that Dr. Tenma's son, who seemed like a great kid, was laser blasted into dust without warning. It was almost a footnote, a preface. They did not delve into the fact that Dr. Tenma is facing a very real delusion leaving him very compromised. He builds Astro, but keep in mind that he hastily made a self-aware robot with the emotional intelligence of a grade-schooler, yet gave it laser cannons, machine guns,  rocket feet, and put a star's core (whatever that means) inside it. What if this robot threw a tantrum and shot up the town, lasered some grandmas, and detonated himself?

Real life Nicolas Cage is the best father.

In conclusion, this animated film was cute enough and fun enough, and Nicolas Cage delivered an excellent voice over performance. The writing left something to be desired. They missed a big opportunity to explain death and the 5 stages of grief to the 4 year olds in the audience. Instead the lesson is, don't worry about death, your dad will rebuild you as a robot with rocket boots.

Movie quotability:

• "It's called adaptive technology: it can absorb and control anything."
• "It's going to make him perfect, PERFECT!"
• "I like his boots" -Henry
• "I'm Mike the fridge. I'm the...fridge"
• "It's official. Henry loves Nicolas Cage movies." -James
• "Zog's awesome. I want a Zog!" -Skyler
• "What? I got machine guns... in my butt?" 
• "If you want the core, you're going to have to kill me."
• "He has to put it deep within the boy's Ass...tro." -James
• "IT'S NOT TIME FOR CHANGE" -President Stone's campaign banner
• "We're trying to live more naturally. You know, like real birds." -Robot spray and squeegee
• "A squeezee bottle's gotta do what a squeezee bottle's gotta do."
• "Love will be able to charge his battery!" -Skyler

Plot Holes:

• A "small fragment of a star" was collected. False. The whole planet is a "small fragment of a star." Stars are just atoms.
• Robot scientist uploads Toby's' memories into a robot Toby. How? From the one hair that he found?
• 4th dimensional calculus is just called "calculus"
• Astro Boy flies through the earth and solid rock but he doesn't melt from friction.

	CAGEamatic	Cinematic
Skyler	Poor	Exceeds Expectations
Shauna
James	2.00/5	3.33/5
Martine	!Stayed in the Cage!

#10 Knowing

#10 Knowing

Year: 2009

Director: Alex Proyas

MPAA Rating:  PG-13 

Epic Co-stars: None

Running Time: 121 mins.
Cage Time: ~95%
Cage Kills: 0
Cage Flip-outs: 5

James' Review:  As the movie opens Cage plays a genius professor and loving single father, but over the next two hours this character slowly transforms into the half cocked, moderately insane, and partially psychotic person that is in every great Cage character.  The fun begins when Cage receivers a page full of rambling numbers that has recently been unearthed from a time capsule at his sons school.  He applies his genius to this page and can suddenly predict every major natural disaster including the biggest/worst one ever that is coincidentally coming in rather short period of time.  

Nouveau Shamonic + Total Destruction = Classic cage goodness.

In addition to a decently solid Nouveau Shamanic performance, Knowing contains several pretty awesome action / destruction sequences.  One of which has an impressive series of helpless people suffering as they burn to death.  In the end, the plot-line goes a bit flat as it tires  (and fails) to tie up some loose ends, but this is all forgiven with the onset of one of the coolest end-of-days sequences I've seen in quite a long time.  

Even Nic Cage himself is shocked by the beauty of his own hair in this film.

In addition to the epic destruction, Nic Cage's hair borderlines on perfection during almost every second of the film.  Sporting one of the deepest, most puffy hairlines in all of show business,  his hair often resembles a beautiful and majestic bird with light weightless feathers.  This hair, coupled with some of the most intensely concerned facial expression around, allows Nicolas Cage to easily be mistaken for a god on the big screen.  But after several minutes of reflection one will come to the realization that this is not a case of mistaken identity, that your eyes haven't deceived you, that Nicolas Cage TRULY IS GOD.

Movie quotability: 2/5

• "I think that shit just happens.  But that's just me..."
• "You stay away from us you hear?  You want some of this?" (hits tree with bat)
• "How am I supposed to stop the end of the world" (Diana gasps...

Plot Holes:

• Kid decides his hearing aid sucks and can suddenly hear without having his hearing aid in.  (Nonsense disability)
• Supposedly "good mom" puts her daughter in the front seat of her car and races away like a maniac in her Mazda 3.  Leaves children in car multiple times.
• "micro-teslas" are not a unit of solar radiation.  And even if it was, it'd be totally insignificant to any other  magnetic field in our daily lives.
• A pay phone still exists in a gas station parking lot, and the 9 year old carries plenty of change.
• Black rocks?  WTF?

	CAGEamatic	Cinematic
Skyler	Exceeds Expectations	Poor
Shauna
James	3.71/5	3.29/5
Martine	!Stayed in the Cage!