nicolas cage, the greatest entertainer of our - or perhaps any - generation (a POLL)

yessss Bad Lieutenant definitely deserves a 5/5. his performance gets so intense and off-the-rails that it's actually kind of harrowing to watch. even if he's just playing a crazy clown cop

amazing that Cage has two classic pharmacy scenes. the other one being in Matchstick Men of course

MANDY ruled. I loved a lot of things about it.

I feel like that was the movie that all those phony grindhouse-aping filmmakers from the mid-00s thought they were making, or wished they could.

I suspect MANDY is also the closest thing Cage has made to the Ghost Rider movie he used to imagine in his head.

I feel like that was the movie that all those phony grindhouse-aping filmmakers from the mid-00s thought they were making, or wished they could.

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), Tuesday, September 18, 2018 7:58 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the exact review i want to hear

all impressions i've read of this movie suggest that *i* personally made it

also, i am in the home stretch -- 8 of 88 movies left (unless one unexpectedly gets a release i can watch)

the blog is a bit behind that, because i am terrible at remembering to take the photos! if i can find something resembling a big fuzzy grey hat today i'll post #72

trying to watch dog eat dog at work today and realizing it is maybe incredibly nsfw

have to say, the blog has been a very entertaining journey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_WDLsLnOSM

this is pretty great. talking bout his love of the german expressionist style and mimicking it at points. his personal fave is vampire's kiss!

^^that rules, thank you

thanks foir posting that! someone sent it to me yesterday (i now get sent all of the cage stuff by everyone i know, haha) but forgot to watch. meant to watch the first 5 mins and grab lunch, got sucked in and watched the whole thing!

also glad you like the blog outic (and others)! i thought it was just a really dumb thing that nobody would like so it's pleasing to hear i'm not literally only doing it for myself

Mandy was pretty good!

SPOILERS

SO MANY SPOILERS

SERIOUSLY

a couple of things I really appreciated about Mandy

Mandy (the character) was easily the most fleshed-out person in the entire movie - we get to know her tastes, a bit of her work, a bit about her past, and a lot about her personality from how she handles Jeremiah. so when she dies it feels like a real loss that alters the fabric of reality, not just a cheap bit of character motivation - so much so that all that's left for Red is revenge-movie, horror, and fantasy tropes to process his grief (see also the animated sequences). I also thought the explicit 80s setting was interesting - all of the music and fantasy references felt much more 70s, and Jeremiah's pop single was obvious Summer of Love era pastiche, so even older. it felt like a movie about different approaches to cocooning yourself away from the world coming into disastrous conflict with one another.

agreed on all of those points! that's honestly why i was wishing that the part that happens around the hour never happened -- the movie up until that point is a completely different movie, and it's a movie i really, desperately wanna watch!

really enjoying cage's impression of herzog in that gq video

the california klaus kinski

the NY Times' Glenn Kenny gave it a near-rave today (I thought it had opened already)

"The movie’s imagery is consistently unearthly; its pacing has a magisterial weight. Call it pulp Tarkovsky, maybe."

not a bad description.

Some close friends of mine hated this lol

Nick Wrigley called it "Golan-Globus Sokurov"

"pulp Tarkovsky"

again, i personally made this movie

I liked this a lot.

Simon H.’s assessment upthread OTM

Also, Cheddar Goblin

fun fact ... the Cheddar Goblin video was directed by Casper Kelly, of Too Many Cooks fame

https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/mandy-movie-cheddar-goblin-too-many-cooks

whoa damn

& yea mandy was good/crazy

https://assets3.thrillist.com/v1/image/2786834/size/tmg-article_tall.jpg

I had no idea about Arsenal - to tell the truth I don't know much about his movies of the last 7-8 years, other than the fact that there are a lot of them. I'm watching the trailer, what the hell are with these wigs and fake moustaches? It looks like a high school play!

btw doesn't his character die halfway through Deadfall? makes this even better I guess

― frogbs, Wednesday, August 15, 2018 4:27 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It'll probably be about a week before I post my Arsenal review but I said I'd follow up so here's a quick update: it is very bad, but also, incredibly curious, and if you watched Deadfall at any point, I'd argue this is required viewing (particularly if you can enjoy a very bad film ironically). Cage is at his Cage-iest here -- sadly isn't in the movie enough, but he does beat Christopher Coppola to death (his real-life brother, playing his in-movie brother) in one of the most perfect/bizarre Cage scenes in history. I just wrote over 800 words on it, which is my second-longest review (after my second-to-second recap of his 45 second cameo in Never on Tuesday). Of all of the VERY bad movies I've had to watch during this stretch in his career, this is definitely the one I am thinking about the most.

incredibly curious? that is not the word I meant to use, and I'm not sure what word I meant. Hilarious, maybe?

mandy kicked goddamn hella ass

I also thought the explicit 80s setting was interesting - all of the music and fantasy references felt much more 70s, and Jeremiah's pop single was obvious Summer of Love era pastiche, so even older.

it shares this with beyond the black rainbow which... both movies talk to each other, if you liked mandy you should loop back around to it imo

man

rarely have a watched a movie more on my wavelength

I was all in for Beyond the Black Rainbow until like the last 20 minutes

the last twenty minutes are the best part

omg will you're so close to mandy

v glad this appears to have gone wider. reports of local screenings selling out!

omg will you're so close to mandy

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Thursday, October 4, 2018 8:05 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

more importantly, i'm so close to The Humanity Bureau, which, spoiler alert, I loved -- it is the next The Room to me, maybe, as far as "wtf they thought this is how movies are supposed to be made?" (post on Saturday if I don't miss a day)

oh shit

v glad [Mandy] appears to have gone wider. reports of local screenings selling out!

got extended by a week here, playing daily at 9pm on the biggest screen in a 3-screen theatre

i watched Mandy last night (iTunes rental) and really liked a lot of things about it! the scene with the guy playing ocarina of time to summon the ATV gang, especially

I'm considering going to a screening at AFI Silver of this tonight. Right now my most probable alternative is to go home, drink too much, and fart around on the Internet. Recommendations one way or the other?

combo: go see the screening, with a flask. when nic cage drinks, you drink

don't worry, you only have to drink during one scene. but you also have to bring LSD

The theater does have booze at the concession stand....

(Several weeks ago my officemate showed me a Facebook page for a purse containing a pouch big enough to hold a bottle of wine. My first reaction is that I should have filled said flask with whiskey and taken it into the theater for Capitolfest.)

combo: go see the screening, with a flask. when nic cage drinks drinks or takes a drug, you drink

― Karl Malone, Friday, October 5, 2018 1:16 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fixed, RIP

do whippets right when he does the drug imo

imo only do whippets when the guy rolls the window up or down

i watched while maturely sipping a single glass of wine, but it is destined to become a cult classic drug film

spoilers for j.lu who should totally go see this but Cage only does five drugs in the movie counting nicotine and alcohol and griefrage

i was out-of-this-world stoned when i saw it which i v much recommend if that's your kind of vibe

I have opinions about this movie.

also see it in a theater if you can

i also thought Andrea Riseborough was really good as Mandy, and it was nice to see a familiar kind of person - heavy metal, dark fantasy loving young woman - that isn't often represented on the screen

otm