#47 The Family Man

#47 The Family Man

Year: 2000

Director: Brett Ratner
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Epic Co-stars: Tea Leoni, Don Cheadle, Robert Downey Sr.

Running Time: 125 mins
Cage Time: 95%
Cage Kills: 0
Cage Flip-outs: 5

James' Review: You may be thinking to yourself "Sure, Mr. Cage can nail high flying action, insane criminals, art-house trash, and even a grind house style hero.  But can he really play a down to earth guy who you root for because you really like him?"  Well wonder no more...  The answer is a firm YES.  And in true Cage fashion he while also wearing a $1,000 suit and driving a Ferrari.  

If Dr. Cage ever decides he's tired of being the wold's #1 actor he can easily switch over to being the world's #1 topless opera singer.

Jack (Nic Cage) is a successful, narcissistic Wall Street broker. He lives in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, enjoys casual sex with model-esque strangers, and drives an amazing Ferrari (you'll recall his stipulation about driving awesome cars in all of his movies). After working late on Christmas Eve, he intervenes in a convenience store stick-up and finds himself telling Don Cheadle that, although "everybody needs something," he has everything he needs. Turns out Don Cheadle is an angel or something, and he takes this as a challenge to show Jack  a glimpse of what he's missing-- namely, an alternate life where he marries his college girlfriend, Kate, and raises kids with her in New Jersey.  Finally an answer to the question of what to get the guy who seemingly has everything.

Yet another unsuspecting and helpless victim.

The Family Man is an instant Christmas classic.  It draws themes from both A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life (Cage is even a bit Jimmy Stewart-esque at times).  All of the classic Christmas fodder is there: Christmas parties, cute kids, a guy who doesn't know what he's missing, a guy who finally figures out what he's missing, and asshole being told off, and more feel good family love than you would care to have crammed into two glorious Cage enriched hours.  Really all that is missing is a talking snowman and an elf who desperately wants to become a dentist.

It's a treat for any small child to get the chance to encounter pure excellence at such an early stage in life.

In all, The Family Man sets the stage for Dr. Cage to once again establish himself as a well rounded actor that can make a strong human connection.  It's easy to peg Cage as an over the top action hero who does nothing but kick ass and take names.  But when he needs to (and the script calls for it), The Family Man shows that he can easily put on the charm and pull on your heart strings.  He reminds us here that although money and prestige are very alluring, they are really just a temporary plug for the void left by the absence of true love from family and friends.  This serves as a nice parallel to his acting career; so many high flying roles dazzle us in the moment but ultimately leave us wanting more from the characters he plays.  But once in a while when you really need it Cage fills your soul with his all powerful and unbounded love to once again show you what really matters in life.

This sums up the true divine spirit and nature of Dr. Cage better than any number of words ever could.

Movie quotability:

• "You're a credit to capitalism, Jack."
• "Old flames are like old tax returns. Put 'em in the filing cabinet for three years, then cut 'em loose."
• "Not cute. Not cute!"
• "You mean because you thought I was cocky, I am now on a PERMANENT! ACID TRIP!?" 
• "I'm sorry I was such a saint before, and I'm such a PRICK! NOW!"
• "Forget it. We'll get a funnel cake. It'll be the highlight of my week."
• "This is New York, this is like the needy people capital of the world. Your Jersey clients aren't a tenth as needy as the clients you'll have here."

Plot Holes:

• This is a stupid plot hole, but everyone wants me to point out that someone who was going to have triple bypass surgery the following day would already be in the hospital, not at a party.

	CAGEamatic	Cinematic
Skyler	Exceeds Expectations	Outstanding
Shauna
James	3.37/5	3.37/5
Martine	!Teared up in 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!

#45 Adaptation.

#45 Adaptation

Year: 2002

Director: Spike Jonze
MPAA Rating: R

Epic Co-stars: Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, that guy from Office Space

Running Time: 114 min
Cage Time: 
Cage Kills: 
Cage Flip-outs: 1

Skyler's Review: 

Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is writing a screenplay about the Orchid Thief and wants to stay true to the book and not snesationalize it with sex, action, love, just for the sake of Hollywood.

I'm already ruining this review. I can't spell. Without those red squiggles, I can't spell a thing. I'm so pathetic. No one will want to read this review. But maybe that is OK, since I am keeping with the movie. Who cares about the audience. If the audience doesn't like it they can read some other blog. It's not my responsibility to write garbage just because the average internet user has the equivalent of a 2nd grade education. I do want them to like me, though.

This movie is worth watching if just for seeing TWO Nicolas Cages on screen.

Dr. Cage also plays Charlie Kaufman's fictional twin brother, Donald. Donald lays around all the time on the ground, and wants to also become a screenwriter, but wants to go to a costly seminar about screenwriting that almost sounds like a scam. Charlie says this is stupid, because a seminar will never help you write something new, which should be the goal for all writers.

 This isn't going well. This isn't interesting at all. I wanted to write something interesting and original, and I'm just sitting here and can't even think about how to recap this movie. I can't find an anmiated gif for this review. I'm terrible.

The story Charlie is writing is about a man (named Laroche) who goes into the swamps in Florida and poaches orchids. He takes Seminole tribe members with him to try and avoid the law, saying that the natives are allowed to poach plants. The goal for Laroche is to poach the 'ghost orchid', which is very rare. Then he plans to cultivate them and sell them for a bunch of money. Then if people can buy the ghost orchid in stores, the flower would be better protected from poachers by decreasing its rarity. Also, you can make drugs.

Why don't girls look at me the way they look at Nicolas Cage. Is it because I'm bald? Women just like confidence; how can I have confidence if I am bald? Maybe I can grow a mustache. I think women like mustaches, or at least a certain kind of woman. I wonder if I would know what to do with the kind of woman that likes mustaches. What if I can't grow a mustache?

The meta-Cage of this movie is amazing. Not only is there Nicolas Cage playing two people (Charlie and Donald), but at one point you get to see Nicolas Cage play Donald acting as Charlie. Good stuff.

Laroche is all about passion and collecting. All he wants is orchids. Before that, he was obsessed with other things. At 10 years old he collected turtles  until he gave up on them and trashed his collection. Then at 17 he collected fish, then one morning woke up and said "fuck fish" and now won't step foot in the ocean. Then he moved on to collecting something else.

If I can just end this review with an exciting animated gif, people will still like it. It doesn't even need to fit with the rest of the review. The audience won't care. I'll find a gif. That's what this needs.

As some point in the movie, we realize that the movie is a meta-movie, because the movie that is playing out is the screenplay that Charlie is currently writing. This becomes clear when Charlie has a breakthrough about how to start the movie. He repeats an echo of what we actually see as at the start of the movie. Toward the end, Charlie writes something and then we see it happen on screen.

This is obviously not from the movie, but is pretty awesome.

Movie quotability:

• Maybe if I were happier my hair wouldn't be falling out?
• You are what you love, not what loves you.
• I can't believe I got shot.  Isn't that fucked up?

Plot Holes:

• None.

	CAGEamatic	Cinematic
Skyler	Exceeds Expectations	Exceeds Expectations
Shauna
James	4.80/5	4.50/5
Martine	!Stayed in the CAGE!