The Carpenter's Son (2025)

Director: Lofty Nathan*

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Noah Jupe, Isla Johnston, FKA Twigs

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. This had not been on our schedule for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, but as we approached Predator: Badlands (2025), I got the sense that film was going to shape up to be more action than horror, I—and I fully admit this—pushed to make this our final film of the season. I got everyone’s approval, had them watch the trailer.

I thought it was going to be an absolutely batshit swing for the fences, featuring a Nicolas Cage past his tax troubles and doing precisely what he feels like at any given time.

Did I Like It: Boy, was I wrong.

Helpfully, I knew this film was going to be a chore within about 90 seconds of it beginning as Joseph (Cage, ultimately just playing Cage) gets just a taste of angels (as of treat) as his adoptive son is born.

And then we had to sit through 90 more minutes of an inexplicably bland film punctuated by a mostly reigned-in Cage. My expectations of the film, not unlike Joseph’s calm throughout the ordeal, is absolutely shattered.

Who the hell was the film for? Anybody (me, it’s me) who’s theology was largely formed by watching Dogma (1998) will walk away from the film feeling they were sold a false bill of goods, and that the film is oddly reverent and would actually fit in a double feature with The Passion of the Christ (2004), and desperately try to remind people that a film is not a sermon. Anybody deeply religious will likely turn their nose up at the film because on its face it looks like it is sacrilegious.

Nobody’s happy.

*What’s the over-under on the revelation (pun not intended, but accepted) that Lofty Nathan (who doesn’t appear to exist before this film) is actually just Cage wearing some kind of fun hat? Asking for a friend.

Face/Off (1997)

Director: John Woo

Cast: John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Gina Gershon

Have I Seen It Before: Never. I always suspected that there was a reason for that.

Did I Like It: The virtues of the film are encapsulated in its poster. Take two movie stars—and both Travolta and Cage were at the top of their star-power post Pulp Fiction (1994) and The Rock (1996)* and allow them to play both the virtuous (possibly to the point of insanity) hero and the scene-chewing villains. If only the Batman series could have offered Michael Keaton that same deal, he might never have hung up the cowl.

And then there’s two and a half hour beyond that pitch where you’ve got to fill. Perhaps the delineation between Sean Archer and Castor Troy isn’t all that well defined, ultimately. Both of the main characters seem to randomly find a moment or two in the course of day to have a complete emotional meltdown, and never quite for the reasons you might suspect. Or any reasons. At all.

This might be forgiven, if not completely ignored, if it weren’t for the fact that the action movie surrounding this conceit is a little pulse-less. It’s not even remotely as innovative as Woo’s efforts before being swallowed whole by Hollywood**. It’s not even the kind of guilty pleasure one might get from watching Michael Bay’s bloated music videos of the era. There are plenty of films that came to exist merely because it was a good business deal/ego-trip for the parties involved, but few that feel so obviously mired in that initial decision and no others.

*I am by no means equating these two films as a matter of quality, just in their collective ability to allow Cage and Travolta to make whatever film they wanted.

**We all—Woo included—could have enjoyed a lot less confusion over the next several years if he could have gone back to Hong Kong before Mission: Impossible II (2000).

The Death of 'Superman Lives': What Happened? (2015)

Director: Jon Schnepp

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Tim Burton, Kevin Smith, Jon Peters

Have I Seen it Before: I’ve heard Smith tell his small part of the story, and I patiently sat through the more esoteric part of the third act of The Flash (2023). What more is there?

Did I Like It: My largest complaint is that absolute beast of a title. Why “What Happened”? If we take the logic that added that subtitle, it should be on every documentary. Ken Burns’ The Civil War: What Happened? Capturing the Friedmans: What Happened? Hearts of Darkness: What Happened?

Utter madness.

To the film’s credit, there’s at least something more to it, and Schnepp finds that something more. Smith is here to tell his side of the story again, but we also get Jon Peters largely living up to that legend, while still managing to deny he ever insisted that Superman not fly in the film as he developed it.

I’m surprised they could get Burton on the record about the whole thing, but his insights are more fascinating than anything else. I’m surprised that the fate of the film still sort of bothers him, and that he was ever going to get talked into doing a superhero film for Warner Bros. again after the apathy they berated him with in the wake of Batman Returns (1992).

But the thing that I’m most surprised to see is that there was at least a possibility, had Superman Lives been actually made, it might have actually worked. Simply put, despite teaser posters sent and test footage shot, this film was a very long way from coming to pass. Were they actually filming, Burton would have found some way to bring his vision to a project that never felt on spec like it was going to be a fit.

The studio would have hated it, and the McDonald’s high command would have a riot, but that’s when Burton can really start to cook.

Or he just would have made this instead of his Planet of the Apes (2001). That’s the thing about films that are never made. They can either be the greatest thing you will never see, or it can be so insanely bad that the human brain simply can’t process its dimensions.

Moonstruck (1987)

Director: Norman Jewison

Cast: Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis

Have I Seen It Before: Never! In one of those weird twists of fate for that particular evening, had I seen it before I might not have even seen it then. (This will mean nothing to you.)

Did I Like It: Is it weird to marvel that a film written by an Irish-American and directed by a English Canadian can make a film that feels so authentically Italian*? Brooklyn Heights feels so believably lived in as a neighborhood in this film, I’m more than a little surprised that Cage is the only Coppola involved in the proceedings.

Feeling as if one is spending time in Brooklyn Heights alone would probably be enough to recommend the film, but there is thankfully quite a lot else going on here, and it is all deceptively simple. The film would have been forgiven for giving into the impulse to make the third act nothing more than a farce. I might have even enjoyed it if it had, but to what some might seem an anti-climax instead becomes a symphony of believable and earned character work. The plot is moved along by facial expressions, not ornate turns of fate.

The performances are key here. The vagaries of the ensuing decades might make one (read: me) giggle a little inappropriately the moment Nicolas Cage shows up on screen, but for his presence and the ultimate truth that this is an ensemble piece, it can’t help but be Cher’s movie throughout. Is there another pop diva who has had a more consistently successful career as a film actress? You might be tempted to throw Barbara Streisand in my face, but Streisand has always played herself. I’d challenge you to find too much similarity between Cher’s character here and her work in either The Witches of Eastwick (1987), or Mermaids (1990). Hell, she doesn’t even have to sing at any point in the movie—or the end credits—to justify her presence here.

*Fair question: What the hell do I know about anything being authentically Italian?

Renfield (2023)

Director: Chris McKay

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz

Have I Seen it Before: Well, sure. Scenes of it have been pulled directly out of Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931), and Lammle knows I’ve see that one plenty of times.

Did I Like It: And that’s one of the points where I’m a bit stuck on the film. The original Dracula is a tragically… and it really pains me to say this… boring film. It’s not its fault, it;s barely a sound film, so can’t rise too far above a recorded stage performance. You can read all about my thoughts of that film in the review for it, but as charmed as I am by inserting Hoult and Cage into the scenes from that film, it is another example of a film lionized beyond what it had earned on its own merits.

The film’s other flaws to tend to be its most memorable parts, unfortunately. There are a number of pleasantly diverting jokes throughout, but as I type this, I am having pronounced difficulty coming up with any that weren’t already in the trailers you’ve already seen. Worse yet, those gags are about the only thing propping up. an organized crime subplot that exists only to make sure that the film fills a feature-length runtime.

And yet, there are a few things to make this a moderately worthy weekend diversion. Cage is having so much fun chewing—often literally—the scenery that it becomes even more of an unfortunate tragedy that he never ended up playing a Batman villain, and that the mere prospect of him playing Superman was doomed to fail before it ever began. Beyond that, the makeup work on Dracula himself is genuinely fun, taking him from an injured animal all the way through to his “full power” as it were.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

Director: Tom Gormican

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Sharon Horgan, Ike Barinholtz

Have I Seen it Before: Never! I know, it’s been a busy year.

Did I Like It: There are—generally—three types of Nicolas Cage movies. The first, like Face/Off (1997) and The Rock (1996) are big, blustery action movies. The second, are comprised of a series of roles which were available, and could help the actor pay off some of his mounting bills over the last twenty years. I’m chiefly looking in your direction, Left Behind (2014)*. The third are those films where Cage can let go of the ego that has to be an occupational hazard of being a movie star, and in the process become his most interesting work.

This film manages to be about the second Cage, wrapped in the trappings of the first, and ultimately winds up being a pretty good example of the third type. At first, I thought a slight tilt away from the cartoonish action movie might have helped the whole thing land a little bit more effectively, but if that had been the order of the day, all we would have gotten for our trouble was a—rather pointed—rehash of Adaptation (2002)**. Who needed that?

And there’s another layer here that Cage had yet to explore in any of his other work. In letting his ego go specifically when it pertains to himself. It may not be my favorite film of the year (or even my favorite film to have Cage get enveloped in a meta narrative), but as long as his Left Behind days are over, I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

*A film I’m mortified to admit that morbid curiosity forced me to watch at one point (thankfully before I started writing these reviews), and even more horrified to learn that Kevin Sorbo is currently hard at work directing and starring in a sequel.

**I was not prepared for that film to be twenty years old. Am I old now?

The Rock (1996)

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, Michael Biehn

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. It’s never been a very important movie in my pantheon.

Did I Like It: There’s always a hard, impenetrable crust of Michael Bayness to any Michael Bay film which make it hard to truly love. He—being the pinnacle of those music video crafters that ended up getting handed the keys to a feature film—can’t quite help himself. Every movie since Bad Boys (1995) always simmers at the wrong end of too-much, and the less said about his later Transformers sequels, the better off we all are.

But it isn’t like the film is unenjoyable, though. I’m struck here by the fact that, for all his failings, Bay has a willingness to cast good people. From John Spencer through Raymond Cruz, not fifteen minutes of the film goes by where I was not pleasantly surprised by a performer’s appearance which I had apparently forgotten since the last time I watched the film.

If you embrace the notion—I dare not say turn off your brain—that it is too much and ride the wave safely to shore, there are worse ways to spend a few hours, especially in those days before he became an action figure salesman*. He set out to make a big, dumb action movie, and that’s what we got…

But, if you take the film on the notion that one James Bond, 007 of MI6 is a codename which several individuals had filled over the years**, and that one of those men were named John Patrick Mason, then this film can transcend it’s dumb roots and become something quite special, indeed.

It does take some mental gymnastics to get there. Best you don’t turn your brain off for the movie.

*To be fair, plenty of very fine filmmakers ended up as action figure salesman. I’m looking in your direction, Mr. Lucas.

**A conclusion which that film series can somewhat support, if you ignore the fact that Lazenby, Moore, and Dalton’s version of the character all apparently were married to a woman named Teresa, now dead. It’s only really difficult to get over during the opening scene of For Your Eyes Only (1981). Ignore it and the Bond universe can become far richer, indeed.

National Treasure (2004)

Director: Jon Turteltaub

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Harvey Keitel, Jon Voight, Diane Kruger

Have I Seen it Before: Yes…

I think.

Did I Like It: This movie has a certain place in the mythology of my house. My wife (then girlfriend) and I were on a road-trip to Washington DC to attend the Rally To Restore Sanity/Fear in 2010. It was a miserable trip, packed for days into a bus filled with other Oklahomans who apparently could only subsist on a diet of all-you-can-eat buffets. What’s more, we missed the Rally. My intention was to propose to Lora as close as possible to the command module Columbia, but an absolutely packed National Mall made that impossible.

So, I proposed in front of the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives.

That’s it. That’s the whole anecdote, and the primary reason why everyone in my family gets a wry smile on their face whenever the subject of the film comes out.

And so, I’m watching it like it’s been a family tradition to watch it repeatedly. And I’m not remembering much of it. Like, I kept expecting Christopher Plummer to show up again. I even remembered him showing up again in the movie, but he doesn’t show up.

Why is that? Could it be that it’s a pretty forgettable movie? A smoothed-out Disneyfied heist movie that would feel inaccurate to anyone who had so much as heard of American History? A weird commercial for the Freemasons? Could it feature a weirdly sedated Nicolas Cage, the one film actor in all of cinema who you bring on to add an undercurrent of crazy to the proceedings? Is it possible the score is a weird mish-mash of high-action epic and forensic procedural?

No, it’s probably none of those things. Ultimately, it’s probably the fact that the rotunda at the National Archives are nowhere near that brightly lit, because I’ve been there.