Tag Archives: Nicolas Cage

GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE (2012)

Who would have thought that Ed Wood  ((With sincere apologies to the late Ed. You were never this dull and, at least, everything you did was stamped with your quirky personality and offered some fun by way of camp value.)) was:

1. Alive and Well?

2.Working for Marvel Comics?

3. Making a 3-D movie with a mega-budget?

Only Ed himself could have produced such trailer trash cinema out of the pages of a comic book character; he seems to be doing just that in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012).

Forget the period nostalgia of Captain America (2011) or Robert Downey’s inimitable personality underneath the armor of Iron Man (2008); the future of superhero movies may well just degenerate into the guttural hodgepodge found in this un-stylish, witless follow up to 2007’s Ghost Rider.

It is little wonder that the indie movie scene, more often than not, offers nothing more than the most execrable rubbish that would make anyone either throw up or roll onto the floor laughing. Because it is Hollywood’s taste, class, and professional entertainment standards that offer them their role model.

The directing/writing team of  Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor have a resume straight from the Jerry Springer school of film (or, more aptly, music videos with bad music). Crank (2006), Gamer (2009), and Jonah Hex (2010) should have been warning enough. But, it does to go to show that with the right background and connections, together with the right deal, the most talentless, juvenile hacks can shmooze and ink their way into the latest Hollywood fads.

Still from Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)The Ghost Rider character, for those who care, is a sort of the Exorcist meets Evel Knieval. He’s a bottom-of-the-barrel superhero from Marvel Comics. The superhero tag is somewhat questionable—from what I recall of the 70’s comic, he was merely a leather clad flaming skull who rode a chopper from hell and hung out with Spiderman and the X-Men. Apart from his appearance, he fit right in with the rest of the tight-wearing crowd and battled super-villains. That’s not exactly fodder for a unique character, but a matter-of-fact demon as superhero, Continue reading GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE (2012)

LIST CANDIDATE: THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (2009)

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Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans has been promoted onto the Apocryphal List of the Best Weird Movies Ever Made. Please read the official Apocrypha entry.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Werner Herzog

FEATURING: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes,

Still from Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

PLOT: While investigating the slaughter of an immigrant family, a pill-popping and coke-sniffing New Orleans cop’s penchant for gambling and for rolling his escort girlfriend’s clients gets him into deep trouble with his department and with dangerous men; to save his life, clear his name, and crack the case, he must pull off several double crosses while strung out and sleep deprived.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Watched with a doggedly literal mind, this version of Bad Lieutenant could almost be seen as a straightforward thriller/police procedural, but most who check out this flick will come away with the nagging feeling that there’s something exceptionally strange afoot in NOLA these days.  Less than a handful of hallucinations dog our drug-soaked antihero through the port, but the visions that do appear pack one hell of  a wallop.  Cage’s jittery, over-the-top performance and the enigmatic, dreamlike ending Herzog supplies notch two more points in the “weird” column.

COMMENTS: In 1992 underground auteur Abel Ferrara made a notorious movie about a corrupt New York City cop who shoots heroin, smokes crack, molests teenage girls, shakes down criminals for bribes, and tries to solve a case involving a raped nun while hallucinating and dodging a bookie he owes an unpayable debt.  Bad Lieutenant was an overwrought, magnificent Christian parable that sought to demonstrate God’s infinite capacity for forgiveness by presenting a character that audiences couldn’t forgive.

In 2009 renowned German auteur Werned Herzog made a movie about a corrupt New Orleans cop who snorts heroin, smokes crack, molests young women over the age of 21, rolls johns for drugs and money, and tries to solve a case involving a murdered family while hallucinating and dodging a mobster he owes an unpayable debt.  Herzog defiantly claimed never to have heard of Ferrara or the first Bad Lieutenant movie, but screenwriter William M. Finkelstein notably kept his mouth shut.

It’s a good thing that Herzog, who apparently wanted to title the film Port of Call New Orleans, Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (2009)

CAPSULE: ADAPTATION (2002)

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Spike Jonze

FEATURING: , , Chris Columbus

PLOTAdaptation tells two stories: in one, a “New Yorker” journalist (Meryl Streep) becomes obsessed with the subject of her nonfiction book, a trashy but passionate collector of orchids (Chris Cooper); in the other, a depressed screenwriter (Nicolas Cage) struggles to adapt her book “The Orchid Thief” into a movie, while fending off his chipper and vapid twin brother (also played by Cage), himself an ersatz screenwriter.

adaptation

WHY IT’S ON THE BORDERLINEAdaptation is a metamovie, the filmed equivalent of metafiction (a literary style where the real subject of the work is not the ostensible plot, but the process of creating of the work itself).  In Adaptation, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich) inserts a fictionalized version of himself into the script, writing and rewriting the story as the movie progresses.  Adaptation may appear unusual, and even weird to those who aren’t used to this kind of recursive style, but it’s a purely intellectual exercise about the creative process, and the mysteries presented in the movie have a purely logical explanation when considered in their literary context.

COMMENTSAdaptation sports perhaps the smartest script written in this young millennium, a story which twists and turns back upon itself with sly wit and playful intelligence.  (The screenplay was nominated by the Academy for “Best Adapted Screenplay”; maybe it would have won if it had been properly nominated in the “Best Original Screenplay” category).  In addition, the acting by the three principals—toothless and trashy Chris Cooper as the orchid thief, Meryl Streep as a jaded, intellectual journalist drained of passion, and Nick Cage as the twins, Charlie and Donald Kaufman—shows three veterans at the very peak of their games.   All three were nominated for Oscars, and Cooper won for “Best Supporting Actor.”   As good as Cooper was, it’s Cage’s magical performance as the writer paralyzed by artistic ambition and self-doubt, and also as his clueless doppelganger with a maddening Midas touch, that carries the film.  This is easily Cage’s best performance in an uneven career.

Despite the superlative script and performances, Adaptation falls just short of being an unqualified classic.  The problem is that the secondary plot—despite such welcome spectacles as Meryl Streep trying to imitate a dial tone while tripping balls—pales beside the more intriguing internal struggle of poor Charlie Kaufman.  When Streep and Cooper are on screen, we are always anxious to get back to Cage throwing barbs at himself.  Adaptation is geared towards a specialized audience—mainly writers, movie reviewers and other highly creative types—but will also appeal to fanatical film fans and industry insiders and would-be insiders who want to have a good wicked laugh at the cutthroat compromises required to bring a screenplay to life in Hollywood.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an occasionally maddening and sometimes brilliant motion picture that varies between being insightfully sharp and insufferably self-indulgent…  I can’t imagine Adaptation having much mainstream appeal, but, for those who look for something genuinely off-the-wall in a motion picture, this will unquestionably strike a nerve.”  -James Berardinelli, Reel Views