City of Angels (1998)
Director: Brad Silberling
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Meg Ryan, Andre Braugher
Full disclosure, I was dreading this one, didn't expect to enjoy it. It was not at all the movie I expected it to be. Do not be fooled by the presence of Meg Ryan, do not be fooled by the poster, do not be fooled by anyone's attempts to lie to you and tag Romance on this movie, it is not. Seth (Cage) is an angel roaming Earth. Angels, in this movie's mythology, are teleporting ghosts that can read minds and escort the dead to the afterlife. Dr. Maggie Rice (Ryan) is a surgeon. She loses a patient on the operating table and has a crisis of confidence and purpose. This parallels Seth's developing crisis; he wants to feel like humans do, taste like humans can. He emphathises with her and begins to befriend stalk her. Seth comes off as a creep at best and a threat by any fair standard but this is presumably where the romance happens. I buy that Seth falls in love here as he explores what it would be like to be human, but she really just movies her way into being in love with this guy. In either case that's not even the focus of the plot, it turns out, because the real point of the movie here is her other patient, Nathaniel Messinger (Dennis Franz). In the hospital because of his gluttonous eating habits, he reveals to Seth that he himself was once an Angel who chose to become human, to love and to eat and to feel. This is the real thesis of the movie, what it is to be human, what it is to live life. Love is a part of that, but it's so hard to say that romance is. I've got stronger feelings about Dennis Franz in this movie than anyone else. I watched Wild At Heart later that night, now that's a fucking romance.
Sympathy for the Devil (2023)
Director: Yuval Adler
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Joel Kinnaman, Alexis Zollicoffer
This is the year of defining different granularities of mediocre. In this volume of mediocre movie you don't need to spend your time on, we have a low budget thriller with a plot that is transparent and a milquetoast protagonist. What elevates this over something like a Seeking Justice or a Pay The Ghost is that this movie is 90% just Nicolas Cage being an unhinged criminal. Now, this is not for the casual Cage fan, you need to really appreciate the variety of his work and his approach to acting as an artform. If, and only if, you have let that permeate you can you pull entertainment out of this mercifully short 1h30 movie. Nothing against her as an actress but it's kind of astounding IMDB saw fit to put Alexis Zollicoffer as a "star" of this movie, she's in maybe 6 minutes of it. To be fair, that does make her, by volume, the third largest presence in the movie. Synopsis: Dad man (Kinnaman) is driving to the hospital because his wife is delivering a baby. When he gets there he is hijacked by a man in a ridiculous red lounge suit and red hair (Cage) who demands that he drive him out of town. The main plot here doesn't matter is told by Cage mostly via menacing. He believes the man is someone he insists he's not, someone who has a much seedier past than he will admit. Menacing, murders, fires, car chases, you know the deal. The ending of this review sucks in homage to the ending of the movie.
Matchstick Men (2003)
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Alison Lohman, Sam Rockwell
This is one of those movie titles that I know for a movie I'd never seen and never heard anyone talk about. It's great! Cage plays a veteran con artist confronted with a daughter (Allison Lohman) he never knew he had. He struggles with the responsibility of being a parent, the joy that it brings him, the negative influence of his chosen profession, and just the fundamental social interaction of being genuine with someone. Sam Rockwell's character is grating but tolerable, it really shows the movie's age. Didn't much care for the ending. It was maybe one step too twisty for my tastes. It was already a good interesting story on route to a dramatic but satisfying conclusion, didn't need the extra pepper. Otherwise I had a good time with this one both as a movie and for Cage's dynamic performances.
Vampire's Kiss (1988)
Director: Robert Bierman
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Maria Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Beals
All time movie. Peter Loew (Cage) is a new york publishing executive with, through fault of his own, and not realizing it, an unfulfilling romantic life. After a chance encounter with a bat in the throes of passion, he comes to believe that he's turning into a vampire. His existing relationship falls apart as he falls into the thrall of the bat, now revealed as an erotic vampire (Beals). By day, he harasses one of the company's secretaries, Alva (Alonso), berating her, chasing her, goading her into trying to kill him. With the shield of irony, these sequences are read as comedic, but they're genuinely menacing. You'll often see discussion of this movie across the board centered around Cage's over the top performance, and to be sure, he reaches in every direction here, but I'd recommend you watch it leaving that shield at the door. It's fun, for sure, but you're robbing yourself if you don't meet it.