Pig (2021)

I appreciate people who avoid trailers or reading reviews (and can easily skip reading this); the idea of taking a movie in without preconceptions, expectations or spoilers is like the pure film viewing experience. But I can’t help myself – I like watching trailers, I like reading advance reviews, probably to my detriment. So it was with Pig (2021). I loved the trailer – the set-up of a crusty Nicolas Cage (who I love as an actor) on the pursuit of a truffle-hunting pig that was stolen from him – and how the trailer didn’t exactly spell out if this was a revenge movie or a horror movie somehow. If you read enough about it (like this very review), you’ll know that it subverts expectations and promises genre thrills, but is a bait and switch in terms of what type of movie it is. I liked Pig and Cage is great, responding to the material and direction by giving a restrained performance that is all about stillness and stoicism, mainly letting the blood and bruises on his face do the work (which the character has no desire to clean up). In the end, I felt the movie was a bit prescriptive; I know the writing intentionally leaves things open and not everything is explained, but it still felt a bit thin. I wanted a bit more depth or just messiness, something along the lines of David Gordon Green’s indie film with Cage, Joe. There’s a great scene in a nouveau restaurant that feels like an inverse of the diner scene in Mulholland Drive, a scene that develops into a dream or a nightmare, that’s just rightly played and delivered. I wish the film had developed more in that vein or was a bit thornier and either even more grounded and realistic or stranger and surreal in its eventual theme. Feels like it takes it down the middle of the road tonally. Supporting actors Alex Wolff, Adam Arkin and David Knell are all good. Anyway, Pig is out in cinemas now. Second best movie where Cage lives out in the woods after Mandy (which is one of my all time favourite movies) – hopefully he can add a few more entries to this sub-sub-genre. Recommended, if slightly underwhelming to me.

Snake Eyes (1998)

I saw Snake Eyes (1998) at the cinema when I was a teenager and enjoyed it then. Over time my love for it has grown alongside my appreciation for both Nicolas Cage as an actor and Brian De Palma as a filmmaker, and I truly think it’s an underrated collaboration. While in contrast to De Palma’s earlier classic paranoid thriller Blow Out, this film might seem a bit like a cartoon, it still dazzles with its showmanship: the lengthy opening ‘one take’ shot following dirty cop Rick Santoro (Cage), the Rashomon repetition of what happened at the championship boxing match when an assassination goes down, the overhead journey across all the hotel rooms, the god’s eye nature of the chaotic climax, etc. i love it all, particularly De Palma riding high on the box office success of Mission Impossible and going full bells and whistles with the Hollywood train set. Cage also gets to do his thing, shifting from over the top showboating to intense investigation and finally to resigned heroism in the face of defeat, all of which is gifted with high emotion by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s gorgeous score. Carla Gugino is also stellar as the target of the crossfire conspiracy. Gary Sinise is good, though it might have been more interesting for that character to be a trusted charismatic friend rather than a clipped, precise soldier from the get go. Great character actors in support including Kevin Dunn, Luis Guzman, Michael Rispoli, Mike Starr, Tamara Tunie and Stan Shaw. Love the lengthy closing credit shot (not so much a fan of the song). Recommended.

Color Out Of Space (2019)

The final film I saw at this year’s MonsterFest was Color Out Of Space (2019), which I was very keen to see as a new adaptation of the HP Lovecraft story by cult director Richard Stanley (Hardware), his first film in many years after being booted off the 1996 flop, Island Of Dr Moreau. More intriguing was the casting of Nicolas Cage in the lead and it being another SpectreVision production (Elijah Wood’s company), which produced the modern Cage classic, Mandy. Here, it’s about a family living in a property out in the forrests of Massachussetts who are caught up in the aftermath of an alien meteorite crashing into their land, causing havoc in the way it infects surrounding nature and influences those in close proximity into behaving strangely. The first half is a slow burn, and appealing actors make up the wholesome family unit (including Joely Richardson, Madeleine Arthur, Brendan Meyer), though the family drama isn’t as richer as something like Hereditary. I loved the cinematography and setting, which along with Colin Stetson’s throbbing soundtrack, help coat everything with a curdled, foggy atmosphere. Once things kick off with mesmerising light shows, strange mutations, unpleasant body horror and multiple voices by Cage’s character going off the rails (indulging his Vampire’s Kiss/Bad Lieutenant altered vocal technique once again), I was wrapped up in its escalating tension and horror, all of it conveyed in a rather stately, psychedelic style. Lovecraft’s story is definitely a rosetta stone to the horror genre as several aspects adapted here recall other movies influenced by its imagery (Carpenter’s The Thing, the work of Stephen King, the Netflix film Annihilation, etc). Elliott Knight is good as the surveyor who bears witness to the unfolding terror and its great to see Tommy Chong turn up as a pot-smoking hermit. Recommended; hope it gets a wider release soon!

The Trust (2016)

Among the half dozen movies Nicolas Cage releases every year, there’s always a stray diamond in the direct-to-digital-TV rubble. Well, maybe diamond is pushing it but The Trust (2016) is still a good movie. Elijah Wood and Cage play a pair of Las Vegas cops who work in evidence collection. When paperwork leads Cage to the existence of a secret vault for criminal money collection, they start to plan a heist. There’s a good double act here with Wood’s concerned slacker and Cage’s goofball eccentric (Cage particularly puts a lot of trademark relish on his lines and gestures). What starts as an Elmore Leonard caper turns into a George V. Higgins type of statement on the American Dream as the stakes get raised and things turn serious in the third act heist. Some great nifty sequences and turns in the script. It’s now available to watch on Netflix and is only 90 minutes long.

Mandy (2018)

I was really primed with anticipation for Mandy (2028) and yeah, no surprises, but I loved it. Definitely a case of style over substance or that style is the substance here, but I fully bought into director Panos Cosmatos’ desire to create a “1983 A.D.” where lumberjacks, religious cults, biker gangs were all subsumed in a high fantasy world. It’s a slow, psychedelic, horror revenge thriller that is awash with Kubrickan/Lynchian atmospherics but in service of genre kicks. Nicolas Cage is great here, allowed to swing for the fences in key scenes, but also a reigned-in blood-stained avatar in all of the visual deliriousness. Andrea Riseborough creates a haunting presence as the title character and the spirit that runs throughout the narrative even when she isn’t in a scene. Johann Johannsson’s score might be my favourite of that year, particularly the melancholy underpinning all of this “crazy evil”. Can’t wait to watch it again.