#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!

#64 Vampire's Kiss

#64 Vampire's Kiss

Year: 1988

Director: Robert Bierman

MPAA Rating: R

Epic Co-stars: Jennifer Beals

Running Time: 103 mins
Cage Time: 99.5%
Cage Kills: 1
Cage Flip-outs: 8/infinity

Shauna's Review: 

Skyler and James have been creaming their pants to watch this movie for about 11 months (ever since they saw this video, which you may have already seen in the sidebar, to your right). Vampire's Kiss fills the first 49 seconds with some prime Cage-outs. Suffice it to say, you should obviously watch that video immediately, if you haven't, and get equally juiced up about watching this cinematic masterpiece.

Really sink your teeth into it. 

We open to an annoyingly long and misleadingly dull opening credits scene. Fortunately, the first voice you hear is Cage's dulcet timbre, complete with a wildly fake accent, 50% New England prep-schooler, 200% insane. He is lying on a leather couch, discussing his fear of commitment with his therapist in a stylish New York office. Cage describes how he brings home an endless string of women, immediately tiring of them in the morning, which means... he holds interest for about 8 hours longer than most men. He seems to think this means he needs therapy.

Cage goes to a jazz club and picks up a drunken floozy, bringing her back to his place for some fun, unfortunately interrupted by a bat loose in his apartment. Upon later returning to his apartment (sans floozy), Cage can't find the bat anywhere. The next night, Cage picks up a different woman (Jennifer Beals, aka that girl from Flashdance) who turns out to be a VAMPIRE! TERRIFYING! Cage goes to bring her coffee in bed in the morning, and she has suddenly DISAPPEARED!

Being a public figure tends to make one tense in a crowd. 

From the bite marks on his neck, Cage begins to suspect that he has become a vampire, and his behavior becomes increasingly erratic. He becomes obsessed with a document at work and harasses the shit out of some poor secretary because she is not able to find it. It becomes the focus of his therapy sessions and consumes, bizarrely, a great deal of his time and energy. It's pretty fucking hysterical.

There are just SO MANY SCENES I want to share with you from this movie, but I won't, because you really have to see them to appreciate it. I wouldn't want to steal any WTF moments from you. Let's just say... they could have put about 50% of this movie into that YouTube video without any problems. Some of my more favorite moments: Alva's mom, getting the cheap teeth, Cage in Tunnel, the sofa coffin (see below), Alva's "pep talk," and of course the pigeon. Don't miss the commentary-- highly recommend getting this on DVD so you can hear Cage and the director muse (maybe 20 years later) about what may or may not have happened on the set of this film.

In sum, a darkly hilarious Cage gem, reminiscent of American Psycho and Dracula, Dead and Loving It (although it pre-dated both of them). Absolutely not appropriate for the whole family, but you should definitely watch it with them anyway, because everyone should see this movie.

Movie quotability:

• "I was in mortal combat with a fucking bat, give me a break!"
• "Oh yes, ok I know. Uh, I guess I was pretty horny... pretty keyed up from being with a girl right before. I was drunk, too, that was it. I'd had a little to drink. I was drunk. Plus I was horny."
• "Fucking greasehole!"
• "WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME??"
• "How could somebody misfile something? It couldn't be easier, it's all alphabetical! (screams alphabet) I've never misfiled anything! Not once, not one time! I want to know, really, who did?!"
• "That mescaline, wow. Does strange stuff. I'll never do that again. Jeez."
• "There is no one else here who I could possibly ask to share such a terrible job."
• "Are you all right, Mr Loew?" "Shut up, bitch."
• "I'm a vampire!" (etc)
• "My girlfriend broke up with me! I'm a vampire! Kill me! Kill me!"
• "Christ! The tortures of the damned!"

Plot Holes:

• Self-professed commitment phobe ends up in two romantic relationships (floozy, Beals). 

	CAGEamatic	Cinematic
Skyler	Outstanding	Exceeds Expectations
Shauna
James	4.99/5	4.21/5
Martine	!Incredibly, fell asleep in the Cage!

#63 Time To Kill

#63 Time To Kill (Tempo di uccidere)

Year: 1989

Director: Giuliano Montaldo
MPAA Rating: R

Epic Co-stars: Giancarlo Giannini (James Bond's friend Rene)

Running Time: 110 mins
Cage Time: 
Cage Kills: 1
Cage Flip-outs: 3

Shauna's Review: 
OK so to understand the hilarity of this movie, I have to explain the experience of watching the copy we found on thepiratebay. This is a film about Italian soldiers invading Ethiopia in 1936. The cast are all Italian actors; the director is Italian; Nic Cage (Coppola) is an Italian-American, but the rest of them actually are Italian-Italians. However, this movie was filmed in English. But the version we found was DUBBED back into Italian. They then translated that dialogue into English, so the subtitles are a terrible translation of  a translation. Italian actors, speaking English, dubbed in Italian, subtitled in English. The upshot of all this is that A) it's hard to follow what the fuck is happening (something about a toothache?), and B) we are forced to hear some lame voice coming out of Nic Cage's beautiful face. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that a Nic Cage movie without that signature Cage-style delivery is no Cage movie at all.

Don't make me watch this movie again, goddammit! 

Lieutenant Silvestri suffers a toothache and decides to reach the nearest camp hospital. En route to the dentist his vehicle has an accident, and stops near a rock. Silvestri continues by walking. On his way, he meets and rapes a young Ethiopian woman. Despite this, he and the Ethiopian fall for each other. While taking refuge in a cave Silvestri shoots at a wild animal, but the bullet ricochets and hits the woman. Silvestri continues to the dentist. Upon reaching the hospital, he reads a medical book, leading him to believe he has leprosy. As he tries to escape from Ethiopia, Silvestri must evade his former comrades and reach his wife in Italy. 

But I am very handsome. 

The guys decided you should just watch this instead: 

Movie quotability:

• Huge space to fill with our silly greatness.
• How can lives one person... with a bullet in the abdomen.
• What did "go"?
• When I was putting the clock wrist, she looked at me.
• Why is your sister has a white turban? Because he is sick?
• I and I is not got.
• She was sick. [Actual translation: She was not sick]. This would seem more relevant if you had watched the movie, which let's face it... you didn't. 

Plot Holes:

• Subtitles executed too poorly to know.

	CAGEamatic	Cinematic
Skyler	Poor	Dreadful
Shauna
James	3.07/5.00	1.31/5.00
Martine	!Dozed off in the CAGE!