The weekend before the Superbowl is by far the worst of the year. No football means scanning the channels for entertainment with low expectations. This weekend, it seemed USA, TNT and TBS presented an answer in the form of the filmography of an actor as much awesome as sucky. That actor is Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage. I spent the better part of the day delighting in National Treasure, an opus of the awesome/sucks genre, and Godfather Part III, which has the Nick Cage connection via Sophia Coppola, daughter to Francis Ford and cousin to . . . Nicolas Cage.
No one faults an Academy Award winner for cashing in post-Oscar. It is a rite of passage to pick up that first $10 million-per-movie paycheck the second you fold up that acceptance speech. But Nick Cage took it to a whole new level. I present to you the filmography of Nicolas Cage, post Oscar to 2005: a ten year period of films that include some of the most awesomely sucky movies of all time. The first movie in this multi-part series: The Rock.
The Rock - 1996
Awesome/Sucks Rating: 8/10
7 word summary: Cage stops VX rockets, Cage saves day.
Best Cage Line: "How in the name of Zeus' BUTTHOLE did you get out of your cell!"- Stanley Goodspeed to John Mason after being captured.
Bonus line: "What kinda FUCKED UP tour is this?" - Random Hostage #6.
Most ridiculous moment: Newly confident Cage defeats a heavily armed ex-marine with a quip from an Elton John song.
Key Awesome/Sucks Moment: Slow motion zoom in on Cage with the green flares as the F-15s zoom across Alcatraz destroying it with thermite plasma.
Better Use of Key Location: So I Married an Axe Murderer - Scene starring Phil Hartman, where he discusses Machine Gun Kelly's prison-friend.
Best Plot Hole/Mistake: At one point the FBI guy played by classic "That Guy" William Forsythe says the rocket is headed toward a football game in Oakland, but they show Candlestick Park where the Niners play. Unforgiveable!
Nitpick: One of the marines insults Mason, played by Sean Connery, because he's English, and the marine's father was Irish. However, earlier in the movie the guy that played the introspective guy in High Fidelity firmly established that Mason was born in Scotland (specifically Glasgow), and Mason was thus a Scot, not English. The Scots suffered at the hands of the English as well. The marine could have been referring to the Scots that settled Northern Ireland that later became the Protestant ascendency in the six county area. This of course would lead to decades of sectarian strife, culminating with the notorious "Troubles" of the 1960s-80s, but Bruckheimer doesn't develop the reference and we are left to guess.
Next week: Con Air
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