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

y’all just namechecking palahniuk just because there’s an brief underground fight club scene in the movie? idk, think better

tbf in addition to the underground fight club scene (which even in the pulpy world of the movie is completely out of nowhere and obviously a reference to palahniuk), a major scene is basically lifted from fight club, where the avatar of authenticity who Sees Through All The Bullshit chastises someone for giving up on their youthful dreams and becoming a part of The System. but like palahniuk's cheapest instincts, its a cheat because all it does is flatter the audience for hating a caricature.

There’s plenty of PNW film that deals with the impoverishment endemic to the area without using it for fantasy. Happy to pass on some of my favorites! Kelly reichardt’s earlier work is the obvious touchstone but even 80s van sant or, like, leave no trace was pretty widely seen.

― Clay,

I like most of those films.

yeah those scenes function very differently in their respective movies you uncharitable dicks

i don’t remember any “phones” shit in this movie literally at all

i also feel like that’s an incorrect reading of fight club on top of it. nothing tyler says is meant to be taken at face value

the supposed caricature in pig is a very real person in my experience lol

i mean obviously the movies have different plots, but just saying its a fair point of reference imo

Also, it's clear we're not supposed to identify with Cage.

I think I'm going to retract what I wrote a little while ago. What's wrong with didacticism in movies? You can reject the message or not; it still doesn't impair the movie.

i identify with the cage character but the movie is not wholly on his side, no

thanks Alfred, I will emphasize again that my relationship with this movie is always going to be complicated by my lifelong residence in portland and where and how I’ve worked here. It does not strike true for me, but it probably isn’t supposed to! I’ve heard positive and negative things from local friends, so my judgement is personal! I should start a thread for, like, living on the edge in the northwest woods films, as I could live the rest of my life doing and watching nothing else

can we come up for truffles

i run through the woods* 3 miles a day, if you can keep up I’ll show you the way!

*(its 90% asphalt streets but buddy, the trees are so huge everywhere)

I'll fess to having a somewhat rose tinted view because it was one of my best Back To The Cinema experiences, but I fucking loved Prisoners Of Ghostland. "Couple of nice sets" is I think somewhat misleading when the sets are so much of what it's about, and you're unlikely to get the same kind of charge anywhere much in modern cinema; that and the film's use of extras really made it shine as a spectacle for me. And I mean yeah there's not much in it for you if you don't like spaghetti westerns or samurai flicks or the tradition of grindhouse cinema, but hell, how can you hate on a movie that ends with the line "I think Samurai Town is going to be a beautiful place someday"?

For a movie that tried to do the same thing but actually sucks see Sukiyaki Western Django.

i identify with the cage character but the movie is not wholly on his side, no

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Wednesday, December 1, 2021 7:22 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otherwise there would be no reason for him to develop such an intimate relationship with the alex wolff character. his singlemindedness which causes him to go off the grid in the first place is something the movie gradually undoes even though he does get to lecture a former orderly whose impersonal pretensions have led him astray etc. again, i have no knowledge of the food scene but this was very easy to layer over my experience as a writer

fair if ppl in the pnw found this hollow i guess, i’ve only visited

fwiw I was lukewarm on Pig but also agree you're not supposed to see it through Cage's eyes - like part of the film is about uncovering how that dude got to where he was by the beginning, the character is difficult and frustrating and totally incapable of functioning in normal society, yes said society is mostly portrayed as rotten but I don't think the character's alternative of a unabomber type existence is shown to be particularly attractive either?

otm, albeit a misanthrope and outcast who knows from good wine.

i also understand objecting to genre subversion on the face of it, i just thought this movie did it really well, balancing a total ridiculousness with a weary low-key wisdom, which made it very much more than a revenge-movie-with-the-revenge-subtracted for me. i did see promising young woman a few weeks beforehand so maybe i had an object lesson in How Not To Do It in mind as well

i also now wholly cop to it being similar to fight club bc the message of both movies seems to be that there are all kinds of bullshit in the world that you can use to fill the void or assemble your personality around but the only thing that's mostly not bullshit is genuine human connection

Cage’s character in Pig knows that his entire shtick is incompatible with society and isn’t telling anyone to go live in a shack with a pig and no shower

imo the film makes it clear his ideals were untenable in the long term. he had success, an amazing restaurant, and ended up ditching society completely when he lost his wife because he wasn’t getting anything out of life anymore and decided everything is fake. despite the fact he’s able to break down his antagonist with a sublime meal in moments in the last act!
he breaks down the chef/former employee about “realness” but imo it’s partially a reaction to “oh, I didn’t recognize you, the greatest chef ever!”

all he has at the beginning of the film is a recording of his dead wife’s voice and a pig. and at the end it seems like maybe he’s willing to let the former go

Just watched Pig last night, found it odd and enjoyable. During the middle section, when it still seems like it might go full revenge film, I said to my wife that it was like a Safdie Brothers film directed by Kelly Reichardt. (Alternatively, Oldboy meets Old Joy.)

But then it didn’t go that direction at all, and turned into something more minor key, and a bit pat. That both the protagonist and antagonist are mourning lost spouses was very tidy, and Cage’s apparent total-recall thing was sort of gimmicky. Still, I liked that it never quite went where I thought it would. And Cage’s restraint was a nice gimmick of its own, because of what we have been conditioned to expect from him.

Safdie/Reichardt is good comp. yeah, I think the landing could have been stuck better but overall the performances were great. Really liked the first face to face between Cage and Arkin.

Cage gave one of 2021's best perfs.

I encourage viewers to watch Nic Cage in PIG ❣️

— Sharon Stone (@sharonstone) January 8, 2022

I thought it was great, spellbinding, beautifully paced and knowing without quite crossing into arch, and so generous

apropos of nothing I just remembered this SNL clip in which he appears next to Andy Samburg who is playing a Nic Cage clone. the fact that Cage doesn't smirk even a little through any of this is incredible. I'm not saying it's particularly funny (I mean, I like it) but idk if any other actor could do a live comedy skit like this without cracking once

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMol8x9aUj8

Pig ain't great but was a huge surprise.

Just watched it last night, it’s slow paced and a bit hard to follow (thanks to a protagonist who mumbles everything) but by the end I was pretty emotionally wrapped up in it. I’ll give it points for subverting expectations, both in this type of “gruff stoic older man tries to take back what’s his” film and what you expect out of Cage, who you can forget sometimes is a damn good actor when he wants to be.

One thing that did bother me though - Cages character doesn’t take a shower, doesn’t change clothes, was (until recently) hanging around with a pig all day….wouldn’t he smell fucking awful? Like bad enough that it would’ve bothered everyone he came in contact with?

i think you just have to ride your suspension of disbelief there along with "he looks like shit, shouldn't he go to the hospital"

film seemed to delight in the absurdity of never addressing either of these things afaict

Maybe there are a lot of infrequent bathers in Portland and he didn’t stand out

How did "Leaving Las Vegas" get no votes???

Someone in the underground restaurant worker fight club should have said something at least.

timely thread bump as i'll be seeing the unbearable weight of massive talent tonight. hope it's fun

Pig was a sweet movie that went in unusual directions, though as someone who'd be fine never going into a restaurant again, I struggled with the concept of "magical chef who remembers every meal he makes" and "diner whose heart can be unlocked by dinner nostalgia".

Two points:

- There's a dark irony in the scene where Amir is in a loading bay trying to get a reservation to the fancy restaurant... and there's multiple pigs (?) hanging on hooks, unloved and unsearched for.
- I was startled to do the math that this guy living in the woods for 15 years would have retreated from society... in about 2005! I've got a fixed idea that everyone who goes Unabomber did it by 1979.

The more I think about it the more I think of it as being like a parable - like one major lynchpin of the plot is the guy cooking a meal so great that it becomes the best moment of someone’s life!

Pig was a sweet movie that went in unusual directions, though as someone who'd be fine never going into a restaurant again, I struggled with the concept of "magical chef who remembers every meal he makes" and "diner whose heart can be unlocked by dinner nostalgia".

I liked Pig in part because it excited me about eating in restaurants again.

I struggled with the concept of "magical chef who remembers every meal he makes"

ok, think of an artist instead

Treating it as a parable makes sense.

about the pig thing:

Nicolas Cage says “I would love to be in a Muppet movie. I think Kermit and I can be best friends and I've always had a crush on Miss Piggy.”

(Source: @TwitterMovies) pic.twitter.com/ts0KkujRkH

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) April 16, 2022

<3

I will say the pig itself was really cute. I had no idea they looked like that.

I watched Pig last night with my wife. It 'worked' for me in spite of what I considered to be a weak, barely adequate, and often ludicrous script. A lot of loving care was lavished on this film. The temptation to play the script for its comedic potential must have been powerful. Playing it straight-faced and making it work anyway was damn near a miracle.

I credit a big part of it's fascination to the audacious choice to keep Cage's derelict-who-slept-under-a-bridge appearance unchanged throughout, except for the addition of caked-on blood in his hair and beard after the assault, while never treating any of this as worthy of comment by other characters. Cage's acting was excellent, but it often consisted of looking stolid while his appearance did most of the work.

That's often all I want from actors.

wanted to look something up at will m's blog but it seems to be dead now? :(

was reminded of depalma's snake eyes and was wondering if it's worth watching.

Sad that it went offline before Massive Talent, seems like the perfect way to wrap that up

what the heck, i have no idea why it's down. i will try to figure out why

i do plan on going back at some point and playing some catch up, i wanna say maybe around november but no promises! i had a few more written up after mandy but it's been so long! last i checked i have between 15 and 20 movies to do again damn

first 20 minutes of Snake Eyes is one of DePalma’s best movies, and a jaw-dropping piece of technical work by Cage. He leads the choreo, never stops moving, presumably had the script letter-perfect to coordinate with the motion, and always, always finds his light and makes sure the camera has him without appearing to see it.

site's back up, after puzzling over its disappearance and finally contacting support

i watched snake eyes and... it certainly was a depalma movie, but not a very good one. but yeah cage is fantastic throughout that intro.

I just watched Pig, and did not expect to be this emotionally affected by it. Was kind of blindsided by the fact it was a) good and b) so very sad

lmao what is this

DEAD BY DAYLIGHT - NICOLAS CAGE

Official Gameplay Trailer pic.twitter.com/sVOluyKrzL

— ❦ (@dvveet) June 8, 2023