#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!