Weekly Trailer Round-Up: Beautiful Boy, Mile 22, Juliet Naked, The Equalizer 2, The House With A Clock In Its Walls, King of Thieves, Assassination Nation, Mandy

Posted on July 1, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

Lisa already wrote about the new trailers for The Predator and Zoe. Here are some of the other trailers that were released last week.

First up, there’s Beautiful Boy. Based on the memoirs of both David Sheff and his son, Nic, this movie is based on the true story of David’s struggle to understand and deal with his son’s drug addiction. It stars Oscar nominees Steve Carell, Timothee Chalamet, and Amy Ryan. It will be released on October 12th by Amazon Studios, who are hoping that they’ll have the same success with this film that they had with Manchester By The Sea.

And now, to quote the poet Python, for something completely different. Mile 22 is the latest action film from star Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg. Mile 22 is due to be released on August 17th.

Also due to be released on August 17th is Juliet, Naked. This Nick Hornby adaptation is about a rock star (Ethan Hawke) and the couple (Rose Byrne and Chris O’Dowd) who are obsessed with his music. We can expect this one to inspire many comparisons to High Fidelity.

On July 20th, Denzel Washington returns as retired CIA assassin Robert McCall in The Equalizer 2. In the sequel, he’s investigating the death of a friend from the first film.

The House With A Clock In Its Walls is the latest fantasy film to be based on a children’s book. It looks like a change of pace for director Eli Roth, if not star Jack Black, and is set to be released on September 21st.

Also based on a young adult novel is The Hate U Give. Amanda Stenberg plays Starr, a young African-American woman who finds herself at the center of protest and controversy after she witnesses the fatal police shooting of her best friend. The Hate U Give will be released on October 19th.

King of Thieves is the latest film from The Theory of Everything‘s director, James Marsh. Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Jim Broadbent, Michael Gambon, and Ray Winstone are over-the-hill thieves. (Didn’t Caine already do this in Going In Style?) This British film does not yet have an American release date.

In Assassination Nation, the citizens of suburbia become outraged and violent when a data hack leads to all of their darkest secrets being exposed. (This would never have happened if they had just taken part in the Annual Purge like they were supposed to.) Assassination Nation will be released on September 21st.

Finally, in Mandy, Nicolas Cage plays a man who seeks revenge on the cultists and demons that killed the woman he loved. Mandy will be released on September 14th.

New Orleans Film Review: Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans (dir by Werner Herzog)

Posted on February 13, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Do you think fish dream?”

— Terrence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

Happy Mardi Gras!

Since today is not only Fat Tuesday but also rapidly coming to a close, I think it’s time for me to share one final New Orleans film review. Admittedly, though this film takes place and was filmed in New Orleans, it doesn’t feature any Mardi Gras scenes. However, it does feature a lead performance that is perhaps as bizarre as anything that you’re likely to see in the French Quarter tonight. Of course, I’m talking about Werner Herzog’s 2009 film, Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans.

Whenever I mention this movie to anyone, it only takes a few minutes before they get around to saying, “What was the deal with the iguanas?” Everyone remembers the two iguanas who would randomly show up throughout the movie. At one point, they were sitting in a coffee table while Lt. Terrence McDonagh (Nicholas Cage) and Sgt. Stevie Pruit (Val Kilmer) were watching a house across the street. When McDonagh demanded to know why the iguanas were on his coffee table, Pruit replied, “There ain’t no iguanas.” McDonagh looked down at them and grinned. This was followed by several hand-held close-ups of the iguanas, looking around inquisitively while McDonagh kept giving them the side eye.

The iguanas show up a second time, after McDonagh has tricked one gangster into killing another gangster. “Shoot him again,” McDonagh demands, “his soul’s still dancing!” Herzog pans over to show us that, indeed, the man’s soul is still dancing next to his corpse. After the soul gets shot down, an iguana wanders across the floor.

What do the iguanas represent? Some people think that they actually are meant to be hallucinations. As the result of a back injury that he received saving a prisoner during Hurricane Katrina, McDonagh has permanent back problems and this has led to him getting hooked on drugs. The perpetually high McDonagh sees and does a lot of bizarre things over the course of this movie. Perhaps the iguanas are just a part of his addiction.

Myself, I think the iguanas represent the fact that, no matter what McDonagh and anyone else in New Orleans does over the course of the film, the randomness of nature is going win out in the end. After all, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans opens with Katrina, which is perhaps the ultimate example of how helpless modern society is in the face of nature’s whims. The film takes places in neighborhoods that have yet to recover from the flooding. Every corner of the film is full of physical, emotional, and mental debris. McDonagh pops pills and snorts cocaine in an attempt to maintain some semblance of control but ultimately, the iguanas are going to show up regardless of how much control he thinks he has. Just as how Klaus Kinski, at the end of Aguirre, The Wrath Of God, couldn’t keep the monkeys off of his raft, Terrence McDonagh can’t keep the iguanas off of his coffee table.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans apparently started life as a reboot of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film, Bad Lieutenant. The script (which was credited to William M. Finkelstein) is full of moments that mirror scenes from Ferrara’s film. Once again, the protagonist is a corrupt police lieutenant who spends almost the entire film fucked up on drugs and whose only friend is a prostitute. Again, there’s a disturbing scene in which the lieutenant harasses a young woman in a parking lot. Again, the lieutenant has gambling debts and again, the lieutenant has to solve a horrifying crime.

While promoting his film, Herzog always said that 1) he had never seen Bad Lieutenant and 2) he didn’t even know who Abel Ferrara was. Judging from the way Herzog directs the film, which is the complete opposite of the approach that Ferrara took to similar material, I’m inclined to believe Herzog. Whereas Ferrara’s film was a grim and humorless plunge into the depths of Hell, Herzog takes an almost satirical approach to the story. The running joke throughout Herzog’s film is that the bad lieutenant gets results precisely because he is so thoroughly messed up and incompetent. The final part of Herzog’s film features so many sudden twists and turns that it’s hard not to conclude that Herzog is poking fun at how American crime films always have to wrap everything up within the final fifteen minutes, regardless of how messy or convoluted their plots may be. Whereas Ferrara’s film featured Harvey Keitel naked and bellowing in soul-searing pain, Herzog gives us Nicolas Cage grinning, laughing, and apparently having a ball.

This has got to be one of Nicolas Cage’s wildest performances. He yells. He bulges his eyes. He grins maniacally at the strangest moments. He interrogates a suspect while taking hits off a joint. Because his character has a bad back, Cage moves stiffly, carrying himself almost as if he were a living Golem. McDonagh may have his demons but, at the same time, he also seems to be having a blast every time we see him. Wisely, Herzog also allows the character some quieter moments. When the lieutenant talks about how he used to imagine there was pirate treasure buried in his back yard or when he and an ex-con sit in front of a gigantic fish tank, Cage gets a chance to show that there actually is something going on underneath all of McDonagh’s bluster. This not only one of Cage’s most over the top performances but also one of his best.

Herzog not only gets the best out of Cage but also the best out of New Orleans. He may not make New Orleans look beautiful but he still captures the atmosphere that has made New Orleans one of the most legendary cities in the world. Cage, Herzog, and New Orleans make for a great combination.

Scenes that I Love: The Iguanas On The Coffee Tables From Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Posted on February 12, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you’re in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, please be sure to keep an eye out for the iguanas.

Ever since Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans was first released, people have debated the symbolism of the iguanas on the coffee table. Are they just a sign that Nicolas Cage’s bad lieutenant is totally high or do they have a deeper meaning? Myself, I’m not even going to try to guess. All I know is that the lieutenant eventually came to appreciate their presence.

Scenes That I Love: Celebrate Mardi Gras Weekend With Nicolas Cage and Judge Reinhold in Zandalee!

Posted on February 10, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m pretty sure that I’ve shared this scene before but, since it’s Mardi Gras weekend, it feels like a good time to share it again!

In this scene from the 1991 New Orleans-set melodrama, Zandalee, Judge Reinhold and Nicolas Cage share a dance on a bayou dock. Reinhold knows that Cage has been sleeping with his wife. Cage knows that Reinhold knows. So, they decided to have an impromptu dance-off.

It sounds like a good to idea to me and, with everyone flooding into Louisiana this weekend, it seems like a good pick for today’s scene that I love!

#Dance!

Insomnia File #31: Arsenal (dir by Steve C. Miller)

Posted on December 1, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night around midnight, you could have turned over to Showtime and watched Arsenal, a film that had a brief theatrical run in January and which has now made its way to cable.

Arsenal tells the story of two brothers. When we first meet them, they’re kids and they’re living with their uncle. But then their uncle kills himself and the two brothers find themselves going down very different paths. JP (who is played, as an adult, by Adrian Grenier) turns a part-time job mowing lawns into a full-time job as the owner of a construction company. Meanwhile, Mikey (played, as an adult, by Jonathon Schaech) stumbles across gangster Eddie King (Nicolas Cage) while Eddie is busy killing a man. JP heads for a life of respectability. Mikey heads for a life of crime. Much like the Bulger brothers, they remain close despite their differing lifestyles.

But who cares about the brothers? Adrian Grenier and Jonathon Schaech both do the best that they can with these two underwritten parts but ultimately, neither JP nor Mikey is that interesting. If anything, they’re like the guys who you keep around as backups in case the guy you really like never works up the courage to talk to you. Instead, let’s discuss about Eddie King.

As I said before, Eddie King is played by Nicolas Cage. As you can probably guess, Cage does not exactly show anything resembling restraint when he plays King. That may not be surprising but what is surprising that, after twenty years or going totally overboard in almost every role that he’s played, Cage can still surprise audiences by just how far he’s willing to go. Every time that you think Cage’s performances can’t get any more bizarre, something like Arsenal comes out and proves you wrong.

There is so much to love about Cage’s batshit crazy performance as Eddie King. For one thing, it makes absolutely no sense. If you look at real-life mobsters, one thing that becomes clear very quickly is that the best ones may have been sadistic but they were usually smart enough to know when to lay low. Eddie, on the other hand, never lays low. He’s so crazy that he might as well be wearing a shirt that reads, “I kill people and then laugh about it.” So, not only do you have Cage giving one of his most over-the-top performances but, for some reason, he’s also wearing this extremely fake nose and the movie doesn’t really make much of an effort to disguise the fact that it’s a fake nose. I mean, you can literally see the glue that’s holding the fake nose over the old nose. And then there’s Cage’s haircut, which would appear to suggest that Eddie King shares a barber with every pervy humorist who has ever had a job working for Minnesota public radio. When we first see Eddie, he’s gruesomely killing a man and Cage gets so into it and there’s so much blood flying that I was half-expecting Eddie to then turn into Pennywise the clown. Eddie gets another scene where he writes a letter to his dead brother. Cage acted the Hell out of that scene. It’s as if he was saying, “You thought my Left Behind performance was strange? CHECK THIS OUT, DAMN YOU!”

Of course, Cage isn’t the only good actor acting weird in Arsenal. John Cusack plays a cop. He always wears sunglasses and a cap and he also keeps his shoulder slouched. Was it a character thing or was Cusack sincerely hoping no one would recognize him in the movie? I’m not really sure but it’s still fun to try to figure out.

Anyway, Arsenal is your typical low-budget gangster film, where there’s a lot of yelling and people getting shot and tortured and all the rest of the usual crap. There are thousands of these films and they tend to blend together into one tedious mass of pointless mass of sadism. One of the brothers gets kidnapped. The other one has to shoot a lot of people. Bleh. Boring. Outside of the people who need something to watch while at the Russian mafia sleepover, who cares? WAKE ME WHEN THE BULLETS HAVE STOPPED FLYING AND IT’S ALL OVER! But at least Cage and Cusack are around to keep things kind of interesting.

Previous Insomnia Files:

A Movie A Day #264: The Cotton Club (1984, directed by Francis Ford Coppola)

Posted on September 29, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

The time is the 1930s and the place is New York City. Everyone wants to get into the Cotton Club. Owned by British gangster Owney Madden (Bob Hoskins), the Cotton Club is a place where the stage is exclusively reserved for black performers and the audience is exclusively rich and white. Everyone from gangsters to film stars comes to the Cotton Club.

It is at the Cotton Club that Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere) meets everyone from Dutch Shultz (James Remar) to Gloria Swanson (Diane Venora). Shultz hires Dixie to look after his girlfriend, Vera (Diane Lane). Swanson arranges for Dixie to become a movie star. Meanwhile, Dixie’s crazy brother, Vincent (Nicolas Cage), rises up through the New York underworld. Meanwhile, dancing brothers Sandman and Clay Williams (played by real-life brothers Gregory and Maurice Hines) are stars on stage but face discrimination off, at least until Harlem gangster Bumpy Rhodes (Laurence Fishburne) comes to their aid.

The Cotton Club was a dream project of the legendary producer, Robert Evans, who was looking to make a comeback after being famously charged with cocaine trafficking in 1980. Having commissioned a screenplay by his former Godfather collaborators, Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, Evans originally planned to direct the film himself. At the last minute, Evans changes his mind and asked Coppola to direct the film. After working with him on The Godfather, Coppola had sworn that he would never work with Evans again. (When he won an Oscar for The Godfather‘s screenplay, Coppola pointedly thanked everyone but Robert Evans.) However, by 1984, a series of box office flops had damaged Coppola’s standing in Hollywood. Needing the money, Coppola agreed to direct The Cotton Club.

Evans raised the film’s $58 million budget from a number of investors, including Roy Radin. Roy Radin was best known for putting together Vaudeville reunions in the 70s and being accused of raping an actress in 1980. Radin and Evans were introduced to each other by a drug dealer named Lanie Jacobs, who was hoping to remake herself as a film producer. During the production of The Cotton Club, Radin was murdered by a contract killer who was hired by Jacobs, who apparently felt that Radin was trying to muscle her out of the film production.

While all of this was going on, Coppola fell into his familiar pattern of going overbudget and falling behind schedule. This led to another investor filing a lawsuit against Orion Pictures and two other investors, claiming fraud and breach of contract. When the film was finally released, it received mixed reviews, struggled at the box office, and only received two Oscar nominations.

With all of the murder and drama that was occurring offscreen, it is not surprising that the film itself was overshadowed. The Cotton Club is a disjointed mix of gangster drama and big production numbers. As always with post-Apocalypse Now Coppola, there are flashes of brilliance in The Cotton Club. Some of the production numbers are impressive and visually, this movie has got style to burn. However, among the leads, neither Richard Gere nor Diane Lane seem to be invested in their characters while the talented Hines brothers are underused. The supporting cast is full of good character actors who are all in a search of a better script. A few do manage to make an impression: James Remar, Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne as veteran gangsters, Nicolas Cage as the film’s stand-in for Mad Dog Coll, and Joe Dallesandro as Lucky Luciano. The Cotton Club is sometimes boring and sometimes exciting but the onscreen story is never as interesting as what happened behind the scenes.

A Movie A Day #90: Red Rock West (1992, directed by John Dahl)

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

The place is Red Rock, a little town located in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. When a man from Texas (played by Nicolas Cage) wanders into his bar, the owner, Wayne (J.T. Walsh), assumes that the man is Lyle From Dallas, the semi-legendary hit man who Wayne has hired to kill his wife, Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle). Wayne gives the man half of his payment in advance and promises the other half after Suzanne is dead. What Wayne doesn’t realize is that Lyle From Dallas is not actually Lyle From Dallas. Instead, he is a drifter named Michael who has just recently lost his job. Michael takes Wayne’s money but, when he sees Suzanne, he tells her that Wayne wants her dead. Suzanne responds by offering to pay Michael to kill Wayne. Michael mostly just wants to leave town but his every effort is thwarted, with him continually only managing to get a mile or two out of town just to then find circumstances forcing him to once again pass the Red Rock welcome sign. Meanwhile, the real Lyle From Dallas (Dennis Hopper) has shown up and he is pissed.

Red Rock West is a clever and energetic neo noir that plays out like the child of a marriage between the Coen Brothers and David Lynch. Like the Coens’ Blood Simple, Red Rock West is a violent movie that is full of twist and turns and features characters who are often confused and rarely understand what is actually going on. From David Lynch, it borrows both Twin Peaks‘s Lara Flynn Boyle and Blue Velvet‘s Dennis Hopper. Red Rock West was made when Nicolas Cage still gave a damn and it also shows why, during his short career, J.T. Walsh was everyone’s favorite duplicitous character actor. Hopper is his usual crazy self and Boyle is a sultry and sexy fatale. Red Rock West is one of the best neo noirs of the 1990s.

Dance Scenes that I Love: Aidan Quinn, Daryl Hannah, and Adam Baldwin in Reckless & Judge Reinhold and Nicolas Cage in Zandalee!

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi, everyone!

Tonight, I am going to share two dance scenes that I love!

Why?

Because I love dancing and, even more importantly, I love our wonderful readers!

Our first scene was suggested to me by Valerie Troutman. It’s from a 1984 film called Reckless. I haven’t even seen this film but I liked this little scene. The dancing starts at 2:20 and let’s just say that you’ll never look at Aidan Quinn the same way again.

Our second scene is one that I’ve shared before but it’s just such an odd little scene that I feel like I have to share it again. Who knows — maybe someone out there is depressed and could use some cheering up. In this scene from 1991’s Zandalee, Judge Reinhold and Nicolas Cage share a dance while Erika Anderson watches.

Enjoy!

Here’s The Trailer For USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage!

Posted on May 5, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Nicolas Cage and Tom Sizemore in the same film!? THIS IS GOING TO BE GREAT!

Or maybe not…

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #86: Zandalee (dir by Sam Pillsbury)

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“I want to shake you naked and eat you alive…”

— Johnny (Nicolas Cage) in Zandalee (1991)

As you can probably guess from the quote above, Zandalee is a crazy little movie.

Zandalee takes place in New Orleans, which means that there’s a lot of rain, a lot of jazz, a lot of flamboyant accents, and a lot of sweat. Zandalee (Erika Anderson) owns a boutique and spends most of her time jogging across the city. (Zandalee has reddish hair, comes from a Catholic background, and runs a lot so naturally, I related to her.)

During one of her runs, Zandalee happens to pass a thief who is being chased by the police. The thief flirts with her even while he’s being arrested. The thief, interestingly enough, is played by a surprisingly hot Steve Buscemi. Even more interesting is that, though his character makes a dramatic entrance and gets a lot of good lines, Buscemi doesn’t appear again until near the very end of the movie. There’s really no point to Buscemi being in the film but somehow, it just seems right for him to suddenly be there.

And really, that’s the type of film that Zandalee is. Odd characters pop up and then disappear. Plot points are raised and then abandoned. Events play out almost at random, as if Zandalee’s morning runs are taking her further and further into a dream world.

(It’s all a bit like Lost River, except for the fact that Zandalee is actually memorable in its weirdness, as opposed to just being annoying.)

Zandalee is married to Thierry (Judge Reinhold), a former poet who has abandoned his literary ambitions and taken over the family business. Now, he’s mostly a figurehead who spends all of his time hanging out with drunk and uninteresting Philistines. Thierry is so guilt-ridden over giving up poetry that he’s been rendered impotent. Try as he might, he cannot make love. As he puts it, while standing naked and staring out into the dark night, he is “a paraplegic of the soul.”

And then Johnny (Nicolas Cage) shows up. Johnny was Thierry’s childhood friend. Johnny is a painter and, from the minute he arrives, he’s giving Thierry a hard time for selling out. Johnny also has long, stringy hair and a mustache and goatee. He speaks in Nicolas Cage’s trademark muffled monotone, muttering lines of philosophical pretension. When we first meet Johnny, he’s with Remy (Marisa Tomei, who much like Steve Buscemi, pops up and then vanishes and yet somehow it still seems totally appropriate that she’s in the film) but soon, Johnny has decided that he wants Zandalee.

Or, as he tells her when he approaches her during one of her runs, “I like it when you don’t wear anything underneath….”

Soon, Johnny and Zandalee are having a passionate affair. Much as Zandalee once inspired Thierry’s poetry, she now inspires Johnny’s art. Of course, Johnny is also inspired by cocaine. Along with selling it and snorting it, Johnny also mixes it with olive oil and dips his fingers in it before fingering Zandalee. And, as effective as some of these Johnny/Zandalee scenes are, it’s still impossible to watch all of this without thinking, “What the Hell, Nicolas Cage!?”

(Even by the standards of Nicolas Cage, Zandalee is a strange film.)

Anyway, eventually, Zandalee breaks it off with Johnny and Johnny’s paintings starts to suffer. Thierry realizes what has been going on and it all leads to the scene below.

And, believe it or not, that all happens during the first hour! Even after that epic dance off, there’s still another half hour of melodrama to go! Zandalee is a seriously odd movie.

Zandalee can be viewed, in its uncensored entirety, on YouTube. Usually, I’d embed the film at the bottom of this review but Zandalee is so extremely NSFW that it’s probably safer if you just go to YouTube and search for it yourself.

Seriously, Nic Cage wants you to do it.