#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!

#46 Zandalee

#46 Zandalee

Year: 1991

Director: Sam Pillsbury
MPAA Rating: NC-17

Epic Co-stars: Judge Reinhold, Steve Buschemi, Aaron Neville

Running Time: 100 mins
Cage Time: 80%
Cage Kills: 0
Cage Flip-outs: 3

Shauna's Review:  Hold on to your butts, boys and girls; this movie is NC-17. Yes, I realize that if you had known Nic Cage was in an NC-17 movie, that would have been on the top of your list from the beginning.  About thirty seconds in, we're looking at a very nice-looking naked chick and Judge Reinhold with a mustache. Already Skyler and James are considering this movie for the Best Nic Cage Movie of All Time.

In a way, this is Cage playing himself.  An introspective artist who is such a genius  that not even he can  understand  his infinite wisdom.

Zandalee is a young woman married to Thierry (Reinhold), a poet and professor who quits to run his father's business after his father's death. Consumed with new stresses and responsibilities, Thierry pulls away from Zandalee, emotionally and physically (that means sex). Thierry's childhood friend Johnny (Dr Cage), a painter, enters the picture. Although he has long, greasy hair and weird glasses, he is Nicolas Cage and thus pulsing with raw magnetism, so we can guess what happens next. That's right, sweaty paint sex.

Cage embraces the NC-17 rating of this film and even provokes it with an open display  his perfectly chiseled manhood.

Turns out they're not very good at being subtle. Everybody knows about their little "liason," including Thierry's mom, who actually approves because she's been having an affair of her own for some-odd decades. They get a little carried away--doing it on the washing machine while Thierry is in the next room--and Thierry figures it out. Meanwhile things get to start weird with Johnny, like rape-in-a-confessional weird. Things pretty much unravel from there.

Best. Freakout. Ever.

Gotta say, this movie is more melodrama than erotic thriller. Feels like a little bit of a cop-out when you just kill people instead of coming up with a better way of resolving their problems. BUT: this movie is ripe for Cage quotes and has a few great Cage moments, including Nic Cage smoking a cigarette in church, and THE. Most amazing Nic Cage freak out. Period. Just fantastic. One other thing: I highly recommend watching this via Netflix-- our disc was a ripped Chinese copy, no joke, and our subtitles were hilariously bad. Really added a new layer to this movie.

Movie quotability:

• "Well, this is first-class accommodations."
• "But if I can't paint, everything just turns to shit."
• "I want to shake you naked and eat you alive, Zandalee."
• "Why is it that the Baptists have all the women and no booze and the Catholics have all the booze and no women?"
• "Without art, without life, you can't climb up the devil's ass and look him in the eye and smile without blinking."
• "You wanna share my peach?"
• "Take me. Take my dumb coon-ass prick inside of you with your husband in the next room."
• "Uh-oh. I don't like Nicolas Cage the rapist. Everything was going just fine until then." -James
• "You speak it once and it's there. A religious heart-ifact." -Steve Buschemi
• "When I go into the kitchen and make toast, I smell your skin. I can't get you out of me."
• "I like how, even when she's dead, she's still trying to pull her skirt up." -James

Plot Holes:

	CAGEamatic	Cinematic
Skyler	Exceeds Expectations	Poor
Shauna
James	3.21	2.37
Martine	!Christmas cards in the Cage!

#36 Fast Times at Ridgemont High

#36 Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Year: 1982

Director: Amy Heckerling

MPAA Rating:

Epic Co-stars: Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold

Running Time: 90 mins
Cage Time: 60 seconds
Cage Kills: 0 
Cage Flip-outs: 0

James' Review:
Ah, nostalgia for the days when smoking in movie theaters was permitted, "upstairs to the left." The IMDB summary of Fast Times pretty much says it all: "A story of a group of California teenagers who enjoy the mall, sex and rock n' roll."  Really it's just a perfect storm for lots of boobs, 80's butts and teenagers in precarious situations.  The only thing missing was a lot more action from a hot young Nicolas Cage.  

I could go into the specific plot happenings of this movie, but since none of it involves Nicolas Cage it would be worthless for me to waste my precious time typing it, and for you to read it.  The critical error for this film was actually committed before shooting ever even started.  Nicolas Cage was originally considered for the role of Brad Hamilton (one of the "lead roles" in the film), but after his audition the studio thought his performance was too dark, and the role went instead to Judge Reinhold.  In addition, Cage was 17 at the time and could not work as many hours as the actors over 18.  It seems as though in 1982 the world (or at least Amy Heckerling) wasn't ready for the art of Nouveau Shamanic acting.  This is unfortunate because the part of Brad Hamilton turned out to be the most dull character in the film (and I would have loved to see Nic Cage get caught masturbating by a hot girl in a bikini.)  

Even without words Cage can convey the angst and misery of a typical high school guy working a crappy fast food job.  Congratulations, you've now see about 50% of the Cage footage in this film.

Alas, it seems that this film was Cage's proverbial burger flipping job in the acting world (and literally on the screen).  It was needed for him to put in his time as little more than a glorified extra while watching assholes like Sean Penn rake in tons of money and fame for little more than doing a mediocre Keanu Reeves impression (yes, I know this was before Keanu had reached his full terrible potential.)  "Wait, leave Sean Penn out of this!" you might say.  "What did Sean Penn do to Nicolas Cage or anybody else?"  I'll tell you what he did...  He had a couple of mildly entertaining movies in the first two decades of his career and then finally went "full retard" in 2001's I am Sam.  This lead him to believe that his shit don't stink and he could go around saying things like "Nic Cage is no longer an actor" and "He could be again, but now he's more like a... performer."  Fuck you Sean Penn.  And while we're at it, Nic Nolte and Stephen Baldwin can piss off too (see the link above for why).  

The three least classy actors of all time.

As actors these people should understand that art can't be defined by rules given to you in a class somewhere.  You need to put every bit of your heart and soul into every character you play while choosing a wide variety of roles to constantly test and expand your acting range.  These are things that Nic Cage does every day while other "actors" phone it in and collect a paycheck.

Movie quotability:

• "No shirt, no shoes, no dice. Learn it, love it, live it."
• "Everybody's listening to Tom Petty; that's fucking cool."-James
• "Nice. Butts." -James
• "This is US History, I see the globe right there."
• "Look at you- Honor Roll, Assistant to the Assistant Manager of the movie theater..."
• "You are a wuss. Part wimp, and part pussy."
• "When a guy has an orgasm, how much comes out?" "A quart or so."
• "Mister, if you don't shut up, I'm gonna kick 100% of your ass!"
• "I'm sorry someone broke in and stole your tape deck." 
• "Make up your mind, dude. Is he going to shit, or is he going to kill us?"

Plot Holes:

• There is a live MONKEY in their biology class. What kind of public school is this?
• Bunch of 12-year-olds dropping (what I assume is) lots of money (for the 80s) on rock concert tickets.
• Fieldtrip to the morgue to look at a corpse's insides.
• Burgers caught on fire (Skyler says this is a plot hole).  Meat on a griddle doesn't suddenly catch file.

	CAGEamatic	Cinematic
Skyler	Troll	Poor
Shauna
James	0.11/5	3.44/5
Martine	!Stayed in the CAGE!