SusannahFESTIVAL OF CRAZY CAGE
June 19th 2011 01:30
Festival of Crazy Cage
Nicolas Cage is known for his energetic, over-the-top performances, and, lately, terrible film choices. Here we take a look at some choice performances from Cage’s career so far. Starting with the original Crazy Cage film, Vampire’s Kiss, known for Cage’s eating the cockroach for real (for 3 takes!), followed by the much maligned remake of The Wicker Man, and concluding with the reimagining of Bad Lieutenant under the direction of notorious and obsessive director Werner Herzog. Here are my Crazy Cage film choices followed by a Crazy Cage rating. My rating goes all the way up to 11.
Vampire’s Kiss vs The Wicker Man vs Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Vampire’s Kiss (1988)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Maria Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Beals, Elizabeth Ashley.
Directed By: Joseph Minion
Although reasonably early on in Nicolas Cage’s career, this is Cage giving a spectacularly manic, over-the-top performance. He starts large in the film, and just when you think he could not possibly go bigger, he goes bigger. His performance is a captivating thing of crazy beauty. You are simply speechless at the things he gets away with on screen; such as: increasingly intensely shouting the entire alphabet at his therapist, Dr. Glaser (Elizabeth Ashley); his leaping onto the desk and chasing his secretary Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso) down the corridor; his hunched, rigid-postured interpretation of Nosferatu as he walks into a night-club, believing himself to be a vampire; his running down the street shouting: “I’m a vampire! I’m a vampire! I’m a vampire! The fake accent that he affects when his character is trying to impress people (and which I wonder if it was the inspiration for Ben Stiller’s voice for Derek Zoolander in Zoolander). Cage does not hold back one little bit in this film. He dials it all the way up to 11.
But why such mania? Well, Vampire’s Kiss is actually about a man going mad. Nicolas Cage plays Peter Loew, a literary agent, who, when the film opens, is having regular meetings with a psychiatrist. We do not learn why. After finding a bat in his apartment, he believes that a woman he has met in a club, Rachel (Jennifer Beals), is a vampire, and that she has turned him into one. Peter’s increasingly erratic behaviour is symptomatic of a man losing his grip on reality. He believes himself to have a vampire girlfriend (who clearly is not there), and he increasingly acts like he is a vampire, shying away from daylight, but, because of his delusional state, fails to notice that he does not in fact combust when standing in sunlight.
However, this film is not a tragedy. Marketed, rather misleadingly by the trailer as a comedy, it is actually very black in tone. Peter is incredibly cruel to his secretary, Alva, mentally torturing, humiliating, and belittling her because she has failed to find an old contract that he needs for a client. Peter is even told by this client that he is moving house, so there is no rush to find the contract. But Peter deliberately behaves towards Alva like it is the end of the world if the contract is not found. Eventually he chases her and rapes her. He increasingly loses his connections with reality, believing utterly that he is a vampire. Going into a nightclub behaving as Nosferatu, he bites a woman’s neck while wearing plastic vampire teeth, but causes her death. Despite Cage’s captivatingly crazy performance, Peter is very unsympathetic. You know he is delusional: he quite clearly is not a vampire, but you cannot feel sorry for him because he has been such a douche in his more lucid moments. It is a very blackly comic portrayal of a man’s descent into madness, but not a man you will miss.
Crazy Cage rating: 11/11
The Wicker Man (2006)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Beahan, Frances Conroy, Leelee Sobieski
Directed by: Neil Labute
One of the most maligned remakes of recent times, Neil Labute’s The Wicker Man at least features some crazy Cage action. Cage, although nowhere near as “on” as Vampire’s Kiss, still runs around in a bear suit, punching out, and roundhouse kicking every woman who gets in his way, until he comes face to face with the titular man.
Unfortunately not a patch on the original 1973 British horror, as directed by Robin Hardy, the remake is neither suspenseful, nor scary, and almost entirely devoid of atmosphere for something that is clearly aiming to create horror, suspense and dread. Gone is the sex, nudity and folk music of the pagan religion based original, to be replaced by a matriarchal society that mirrors that of the bees they so worship. Ellen Burstyn plays the Queen Bee, Sister Summersisle, and the other women are her workers; the men merely mute drones who do the women’s bidding. This metaphor is very unsubtly hammered home by Labute, who seems to assume that a matriarchal society would automatically be one where women treat men like dirt.
But why the crazy Cage? Nicolas Cage plays a cop, Edward, who, after witnessing an horrific accident, is then asked by his ex-girlfriend to journey to Summersisle Island to search for her daughter, who has gone missing. This is a closed off community of unhelpful women who do nothing but refuse to answer Cage’s questions. His ex-girlfriend Willow, played somnabulistically by Kate Beahan, is the worst one of all. She appears to know nothing about the island, despite having grown up there, and nothing about her daughter’s disappearance, who, (surprise!) turns out to be his daughter too. All the twists are telegraphed in this way, especially the epilogue. The tragedy at the start, despite having zero to do with the plot, is repeatedly brought back in tedious flashback. The women on the island are worried because their community relies on the honey they produce, but their honey crop is failing, and Edward is afraid they will sacrifice his daughter in some ancient pagan fertility rite. Interestingly, they appear to have no farm animals for a self-sufficient community; or flowers for the bees to get nectar from. Hey, maybe that’s the real reason the honey crop is failing...
Eventually Cage gets fed up and snaps! He steals the bear suit by punching out a woman, and then steals the bike off another at gunpoint. He roundhouse kicks Leelee Sobieski, and punches out another lady in order to grab his kid and set her free. But Cage acting-out comes too little too late to save this film. His sarcasm is entertaining beforehand, but the rest of it is all a bit pedestrian really. As the tagline says: “Some Sacrifices must be made.” They just don’t specify that it must be made by the audience.
Crazy Cage rating: 7 / 11
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Xzibit, Tom Bower, Jennifer Coolidge.
Directed By: Werner Hertzog
No good deed goes unpunished, nor does a bad deed go unrewarded in Herzog’s morally grey take on the Bad Lieutenant mythos. Not a remake of the Harvey Kietel starring Bad Lieutenant by Abel Ferrara, but more of a reimagining of a similar character in a different city, and in different circumstances.
Nicolas Cage plays the titular character, with all the requisite drug, gambling and sex vices. His girlfriend is a prostitute (Eva Mendes), and he has issues with his alcoholic dad (Tom Bower). However, his problems really start when he does something good. The film opens right after Hurricane Katrina, when Cage’s Lieutenant Terence McDonagh, and Val Kilmer’s police officer Stevie Pruit, go down to the police cells to see if anyone is trapped there in the floodwaters. There is one prisoner locked in a cell with rising floodwaters around him. McDonagh and Pruit take a bet to see what his time of death will be. Pruit is all set to leave, leaving the time of death up to the autopsy. McDonagh can’t leave him like that, and so dives into the flood waters from the upper level. His rescue causes lasting damage to his back, and lingering pain, which he self medicates with heroin, cocaine and whatever else.
So how crazy is Cage? He is not the super-bug-eyed ranting crazy of Vampire’s Kiss, but he is more inspired than in The Wicker Man. The drug-taking and illegal drug acquiring lead McDonagh into all kinds of shady areas of the law. He sees iguanas, which are not there (and which give an amazing performance by the way) and does a fixed, crazy-eyed stare, after some thugs who have been pursuing him get shot. Sample dialogue:
McDonagh: “Shoot him again!”
Big Fate: “What for?”
McDonagh: “His soul is still dancing.”
And, according to McDonagh’s perspective, it is break dancing on the floor.
McDonagh is supposed to be investigating the murder of a Senegalese family of five. But his only witness to the crime flees, and the drug baron who is supposed to have committed the crime is proving difficult to capture. This drives McDonagh to threaten old ladies (by cutting off one’s air supply), while facing pressure from mounting gambling debts, being perused by the thugs of an aggrieved punter of his girlfriend, and to join forces with the very drug baron he wants to convict, Big Fate. All while blackmailing sports stars, watching his father’s dog, shaking down couples for drugs and sexual favours, stealing drugs from the police properties room – and doing all of this while wired on cocaine. Cage gives an energetic, intense, and sympathetic performance, fed with all the crazy we know, love, and expect. It is almost a fated union that one of the cinemas most infamous and exacting auteurs, Herzog, would eventually join forces with one of cinemas most out-there actors.
Herzog gives considered and intimate direction. The cinematography, as expressed in the extra features, relies a lot on incidental lighting. Mendes gives good support, and even (shudder) Val Kilmer is okay as a cop who is actually more bad than the Bad Lieutenant. Parts of the film are downright hilarious. You could even say it was an extremely black comedy. This is actually a Bad Lieutenant for the new millennium. Rather than a black and white morality of good and bad, where good deeds get rewarded and bad deeds get what is coming to them, this is a film where bad deeds can be done, short cuts can be taken, and you may not get caught, you may not get punished, your schemes may work out and you may even get promoted because of it. It is not what Hollywood usually says about life, but often that is how the world really works.
Crazy Cage rating: 10/11
This is a link to the best scenes from The Wicker Man on Youtube.
If you like this review thenTweet it!
Nicolas Cage is known for his energetic, over-the-top performances, and, lately, terrible film choices. Here we take a look at some choice performances from Cage’s career so far. Starting with the original Crazy Cage film, Vampire’s Kiss, known for Cage’s eating the cockroach for real (for 3 takes!), followed by the much maligned remake of The Wicker Man, and concluding with the reimagining of Bad Lieutenant under the direction of notorious and obsessive director Werner Herzog. Here are my Crazy Cage film choices followed by a Crazy Cage rating. My rating goes all the way up to 11.
Nicolas Cage in Vampire's Kiss
Vampire’s Kiss vs The Wicker Man vs Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Vampire’s Kiss (1988)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Maria Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Beals, Elizabeth Ashley.
Directed By: Joseph Minion
Although reasonably early on in Nicolas Cage’s career, this is Cage giving a spectacularly manic, over-the-top performance. He starts large in the film, and just when you think he could not possibly go bigger, he goes bigger. His performance is a captivating thing of crazy beauty. You are simply speechless at the things he gets away with on screen; such as: increasingly intensely shouting the entire alphabet at his therapist, Dr. Glaser (Elizabeth Ashley); his leaping onto the desk and chasing his secretary Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso) down the corridor; his hunched, rigid-postured interpretation of Nosferatu as he walks into a night-club, believing himself to be a vampire; his running down the street shouting: “I’m a vampire! I’m a vampire! I’m a vampire! The fake accent that he affects when his character is trying to impress people (and which I wonder if it was the inspiration for Ben Stiller’s voice for Derek Zoolander in Zoolander). Cage does not hold back one little bit in this film. He dials it all the way up to 11.
Nicolas Cage gives good crazy
But why such mania? Well, Vampire’s Kiss is actually about a man going mad. Nicolas Cage plays Peter Loew, a literary agent, who, when the film opens, is having regular meetings with a psychiatrist. We do not learn why. After finding a bat in his apartment, he believes that a woman he has met in a club, Rachel (Jennifer Beals), is a vampire, and that she has turned him into one. Peter’s increasingly erratic behaviour is symptomatic of a man losing his grip on reality. He believes himself to have a vampire girlfriend (who clearly is not there), and he increasingly acts like he is a vampire, shying away from daylight, but, because of his delusional state, fails to notice that he does not in fact combust when standing in sunlight.
Nicolas Cage with his imaginary girlfriend
However, this film is not a tragedy. Marketed, rather misleadingly by the trailer as a comedy, it is actually very black in tone. Peter is incredibly cruel to his secretary, Alva, mentally torturing, humiliating, and belittling her because she has failed to find an old contract that he needs for a client. Peter is even told by this client that he is moving house, so there is no rush to find the contract. But Peter deliberately behaves towards Alva like it is the end of the world if the contract is not found. Eventually he chases her and rapes her. He increasingly loses his connections with reality, believing utterly that he is a vampire. Going into a nightclub behaving as Nosferatu, he bites a woman’s neck while wearing plastic vampire teeth, but causes her death. Despite Cage’s captivatingly crazy performance, Peter is very unsympathetic. You know he is delusional: he quite clearly is not a vampire, but you cannot feel sorry for him because he has been such a douche in his more lucid moments. It is a very blackly comic portrayal of a man’s descent into madness, but not a man you will miss.
Crazy Cage rating: 11/11
Nicolas Cage as Nosferatu
The Wicker Man (2006)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Beahan, Frances Conroy, Leelee Sobieski
Directed by: Neil Labute
One of the most maligned remakes of recent times, Neil Labute’s The Wicker Man at least features some crazy Cage action. Cage, although nowhere near as “on” as Vampire’s Kiss, still runs around in a bear suit, punching out, and roundhouse kicking every woman who gets in his way, until he comes face to face with the titular man.
Cage could not believe the plot ideas for The Wicker Man either!
Unfortunately not a patch on the original 1973 British horror, as directed by Robin Hardy, the remake is neither suspenseful, nor scary, and almost entirely devoid of atmosphere for something that is clearly aiming to create horror, suspense and dread. Gone is the sex, nudity and folk music of the pagan religion based original, to be replaced by a matriarchal society that mirrors that of the bees they so worship. Ellen Burstyn plays the Queen Bee, Sister Summersisle, and the other women are her workers; the men merely mute drones who do the women’s bidding. This metaphor is very unsubtly hammered home by Labute, who seems to assume that a matriarchal society would automatically be one where women treat men like dirt.
Cage gives more good crazy
But why the crazy Cage? Nicolas Cage plays a cop, Edward, who, after witnessing an horrific accident, is then asked by his ex-girlfriend to journey to Summersisle Island to search for her daughter, who has gone missing. This is a closed off community of unhelpful women who do nothing but refuse to answer Cage’s questions. His ex-girlfriend Willow, played somnabulistically by Kate Beahan, is the worst one of all. She appears to know nothing about the island, despite having grown up there, and nothing about her daughter’s disappearance, who, (surprise!) turns out to be his daughter too. All the twists are telegraphed in this way, especially the epilogue. The tragedy at the start, despite having zero to do with the plot, is repeatedly brought back in tedious flashback. The women on the island are worried because their community relies on the honey they produce, but their honey crop is failing, and Edward is afraid they will sacrifice his daughter in some ancient pagan fertility rite. Interestingly, they appear to have no farm animals for a self-sufficient community; or flowers for the bees to get nectar from. Hey, maybe that’s the real reason the honey crop is failing...
Cage asks the hard questions
Eventually Cage gets fed up and snaps! He steals the bear suit by punching out a woman, and then steals the bike off another at gunpoint. He roundhouse kicks Leelee Sobieski, and punches out another lady in order to grab his kid and set her free. But Cage acting-out comes too little too late to save this film. His sarcasm is entertaining beforehand, but the rest of it is all a bit pedestrian really. As the tagline says: “Some Sacrifices must be made.” They just don’t specify that it must be made by the audience.
Crazy Cage rating: 7 / 11
Not the bees!
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Xzibit, Tom Bower, Jennifer Coolidge.
Directed By: Werner Hertzog
No good deed goes unpunished, nor does a bad deed go unrewarded in Herzog’s morally grey take on the Bad Lieutenant mythos. Not a remake of the Harvey Kietel starring Bad Lieutenant by Abel Ferrara, but more of a reimagining of a similar character in a different city, and in different circumstances.
Cage gives some more crazy eyes.
Nicolas Cage plays the titular character, with all the requisite drug, gambling and sex vices. His girlfriend is a prostitute (Eva Mendes), and he has issues with his alcoholic dad (Tom Bower). However, his problems really start when he does something good. The film opens right after Hurricane Katrina, when Cage’s Lieutenant Terence McDonagh, and Val Kilmer’s police officer Stevie Pruit, go down to the police cells to see if anyone is trapped there in the floodwaters. There is one prisoner locked in a cell with rising floodwaters around him. McDonagh and Pruit take a bet to see what his time of death will be. Pruit is all set to leave, leaving the time of death up to the autopsy. McDonagh can’t leave him like that, and so dives into the flood waters from the upper level. His rescue causes lasting damage to his back, and lingering pain, which he self medicates with heroin, cocaine and whatever else.
Cage threatens old ladies.
So how crazy is Cage? He is not the super-bug-eyed ranting crazy of Vampire’s Kiss, but he is more inspired than in The Wicker Man. The drug-taking and illegal drug acquiring lead McDonagh into all kinds of shady areas of the law. He sees iguanas, which are not there (and which give an amazing performance by the way) and does a fixed, crazy-eyed stare, after some thugs who have been pursuing him get shot. Sample dialogue:
McDonagh: “Shoot him again!”
Big Fate: “What for?”
McDonagh: “His soul is still dancing.”
And, according to McDonagh’s perspective, it is break dancing on the floor.
Cage tries to prevent Eva Mendes from watching The Wicker Man
McDonagh is supposed to be investigating the murder of a Senegalese family of five. But his only witness to the crime flees, and the drug baron who is supposed to have committed the crime is proving difficult to capture. This drives McDonagh to threaten old ladies (by cutting off one’s air supply), while facing pressure from mounting gambling debts, being perused by the thugs of an aggrieved punter of his girlfriend, and to join forces with the very drug baron he wants to convict, Big Fate. All while blackmailing sports stars, watching his father’s dog, shaking down couples for drugs and sexual favours, stealing drugs from the police properties room – and doing all of this while wired on cocaine. Cage gives an energetic, intense, and sympathetic performance, fed with all the crazy we know, love, and expect. It is almost a fated union that one of the cinemas most infamous and exacting auteurs, Herzog, would eventually join forces with one of cinemas most out-there actors.
Cage was as surprised as anyone to find out that Val Kilmer was also in this movie.
Herzog gives considered and intimate direction. The cinematography, as expressed in the extra features, relies a lot on incidental lighting. Mendes gives good support, and even (shudder) Val Kilmer is okay as a cop who is actually more bad than the Bad Lieutenant. Parts of the film are downright hilarious. You could even say it was an extremely black comedy. This is actually a Bad Lieutenant for the new millennium. Rather than a black and white morality of good and bad, where good deeds get rewarded and bad deeds get what is coming to them, this is a film where bad deeds can be done, short cuts can be taken, and you may not get caught, you may not get punished, your schemes may work out and you may even get promoted because of it. It is not what Hollywood usually says about life, but often that is how the world really works.
Crazy Cage rating: 10/11
This is a link to the best scenes from The Wicker Man on Youtube.
If you like this review thenTweet it!
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