The Cage Gauge

February 1, 2023 3:07 PM

The Cage Gauge. Every Nicolas Cage movie, ranked.
posted by Fiasco da Gama (56 comments total)

If you want funny but sincere reviews of all of Nicolas Cage's films you should check out Nathan Rabin's Happy Place. He's been doing a long-running series called "Travolta/Cage" where he -- you guessed it -- reviews all of their films, in chronological order.
posted by riotnrrd at 3:29 PM on February 1, 2023

Okay, I did not see that #1 coming. Every time I mention that movie to someone and then try to describe it, they look at me like I imagined it in a fever dream. I suppose that's fitting.
posted by WaylandSmith at 3:31 PM on February 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

This list is wrong. It’s wrong about Con Air.

It’s like this list couldn’t put the bunny back in the box.

Oh list, why couldn’t you put the bunny back in the box?
posted by chavenet at 3:41 PM on February 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I am personally outraged at the placement of movies #69 (Valley Girl), #60 (National Treasure), and #52 (Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse).

The fact that Con Air is not in the top ten is a tragedy. A TRAGEDY, I tells ya.
posted by Kitteh at 3:45 PM on February 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

I would've pushed #19 a few notches higher, but maybe I was just the right age when it came out. With any other actor, I'm not quite sure it would have made the line between love and madness seem so fine.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:47 PM on February 1, 2023

I love that the actual film quality is measured on a scale of 1-2.

Glad to see that The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent made it as high as it did. That was a great movie with some seriously high-quality Cage.
posted by Mchelly at 3:54 PM on February 1, 2023 [13 favorites]

Mchelly, that movie is so good. So so good. I might have bumped it a few notches but it was pretty well placed.
posted by Kitteh at 3:56 PM on February 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

haha
I was coming here to demand a higher ranking for... that one that is #1. LOL. I won't spoil it for the next person.
posted by Glinn at 4:10 PM on February 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I would seriously watch more Cage/Pascal buddy films.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:12 PM on February 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Moonstruck at 19 I will begrudgingly accept because this is a Nic Cage list more than a movie list, and he was just one of many excellent people and parts of that thing.
posted by Glinn at 4:13 PM on February 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

I unironically think that Nic Cage is one of the most gifted actors who has worked during my lifetime. He just chooses to deploy that gift at differing levels and for differing purposes according to whim or financial necessity.

And yet it’s truly incredible how many of his films I haven’t seen or have only seen once. I feel like I really need to sit down with a notepad and make a streaming plan.
posted by uncleozzy at 4:26 PM on February 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'm happy to see The Weather Man so high on the list. I still hiss "why. are. you. here." to myself on a regular basis anytime I'm annoyed by something.
posted by curious nu at 4:35 PM on February 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't think there are 18 movies, full stop, that I like more than Moonstruck, much less 18 Nic Cage movies.
posted by protocoach at 4:35 PM on February 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'm confused by this list. Why isn't every entry Face/Off?
posted by brundlefly at 4:48 PM on February 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

Metafilter: I’ll Be Taking These Huggies And Whatever Cash You Got.
posted by Chuffy at 5:00 PM on February 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

I am personally outraged at the placement of movies #69 (Valley Girl), #60 (National Treasure), and #52 (Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse).

Yeah this ranking made a lot more sense once I started paying attention to their metrics. For instance, Spiderverse gets a middling 2.5 on the Quality of Cage, a 1.5 on the Originality of Cage, and a 2/2 on the Quality of Movie scale. This is accurate. Spiderverse is an excellent, wildly inventive, great movie. What it isn't, by any but the loosest of definitions, is a Nicholas Cage movie.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:03 PM on February 1, 2023 [12 favorites]

Wasn’t this a Brooklyn 99 episode?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:03 PM on February 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

👶
🚐
posted by clavdivs at 5:12 PM on February 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I haven't seen most of these. Several are "on the list." The only ones I've seen outside the top 20 seem to be Snowden and Lord of War, both of which I liked a lot better than this guy (although I had forgotten Cage was even in Snowden, so I suppose it can't have been much of a Cage movie).

My favorite is either FACE/OFF or Bad Lieutenant.

I didn't care for Mandy, it felt like a poster in search of a movie. I would rate Color Out of Space highly for Quality of Cage but poorly for Quality of Movie. I think Con Air and (especially) The Rock are not very good at all. I don't like Charlie Kaufman very much but I grant that Adaptation has to be scored well in Quality of Cage.
posted by grobstein at 6:00 PM on February 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Cage is excellent in Moonstruck partly because every single line of that script is pure gold. But he brought his signature sweaty charm to it perfectly.

I haven't seen a lot of his movies because I'm not an action movie gal, but even if he'd only ever made Moonstruck and Raising Arizona I'd love him forever.

I am wonder about seeing him in Renfield, I think that could be fun with a buzz on.
posted by emjaybee at 6:02 PM on February 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

All that said I think the project of watching every Nicolas Cage move is admirable. I don't think I'll do it myself but I'm definitely trying to watch all the good ones. He's goated!
posted by grobstein at 6:02 PM on February 1, 2023

Con Air - I will never understand the love that people have for this movie. Don't get me wrong, it was good, it was entertaining, it had Nic Cage but.......I don't feel that Cage was sufficiently Cagey in comparison to many of his other roles, the whole adventure aspect of it was interesting but I never felt that I was doing anything other than watching a movie. Ah well, different strokes etc etc.
posted by ashbury at 6:05 PM on February 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

That Valley Girl ranks as low as it does made me check to make sure this list was written by a man and yes, indeed, it was.

I know so many women my age and older that developed such crushes on him after seeing that movie. And he is basically perfect in that movie.

Peggy Sue Got Married at least fares a bit better, but he was kind of insufferable there.

I do feel like this list was compiled with a certain sense of the Nicholas Cage persona rather than who he actually is as an actor. Maybe that's the joke, though, but I also feel like it's ignoring that at one point, he was a really good actor (and still can be, when he wants).
posted by edencosmic at 6:09 PM on February 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

I didn't care for Mandy, it felt like a poster in search of a movie.

That's a great way of putting it; it's one of the most overrated movies of the last decade, a grab-bag of artsy-fartsy touches slathered over the most perfunctory Roaring Rampage of Revenge plot imaginable. Its placement so high on this list is deeply dumb and ruins the whole shebang.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:12 PM on February 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Raising Arizona should be #1.

Moonstruck should be #2.

I really don't care where the rest go, except that, echoing edencosmic, "Valley Girl" should be much higher.
posted by thivaia at 6:12 PM on February 1, 2023 [9 favorites]

Just a reminder that Color Out of Space was directed by Richard Stanley, a man quite convincingly accused of domestic abuse. Not sure that should affect a "Cage raing," but still....
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:25 PM on February 1, 2023

Willy’s Wonderland deserves to be in the top 10.
posted by swift at 6:35 PM on February 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Next, National Treasure, and Willy's Wonderland are underrated. The latter very much so.

Thank you for reminding me of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
posted by krisjohn at 7:11 PM on February 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

What's a hat tip?
posted by tinlids at 7:20 PM on February 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

You know in Bad Lieutenant when he keeps laughing at the fact that G goes by the moniker “G”? That’s my favorite Nicolas Cage moment.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 7:22 PM on February 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

The *real* Nic Cage top 100:

1. Valley Girl
2. Peggy Sue Got Married
...
3 - a million. who cares?
posted by NoMich at 7:32 PM on February 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

I think a reasonable metric is, could another actor have played the role to similar effect?*

By that measure, one of my favorite Cage roles, Moonstruck, falls, I think. Lots of young, confident actors could have made a meal (career) out of Ronny.

Same goes for Leaving Las Vegas.

Raising Arizona, though? That's a level up.

Also: Birdy is, in a way, even stranger than, say, a high-concept, paint-by-numbers affair like face/off. Roger Ebert:

The strangest thing about "Birdy," which is a very strange and beautiful movie indeed, is that it seems to work best at its looniest level, and is least at ease with the things it takes most seriously. You will not discover anything new about war in this movie, but you will find out a whole lot about how it feels to be in love with a canary.

*a gold standard for me, anyway, is Ian Holm's character in Alien, Ash.
posted by Caxton1476 at 7:34 PM on February 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

You know in Bad Lieutenant when he keeps laughing at the fact that G goes by the moniker “G”? That’s my favorite Nicolas Cage moment.

This will always be his top moment: No, but your face is
posted by NoMich at 7:35 PM on February 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

All of my faves not even in this top ten. But any Cage appreciation is appreciated. His talent is consistently under-rated, even for an Oscar winner.
posted by ovvl at 7:46 PM on February 1, 2023

The ones in the middle are wrong.
posted by chasing at 8:06 PM on February 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

EXCEPT THEY'RE NOT RANKED, Fiasco da Gama, THEY'RE SCORED, AND YOU CAN'T SORT THEM.

God damn it. Just go watch "Raising Arizona".
posted by metametamind at 8:16 PM on February 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Just go watch "Raising Arizona".

Always a good plan.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:34 PM on February 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Oddly enough I guessed the number 1 which is a wildly under known film. I can't think of anyone else who could have done it as well. He references certain classic movie character actors, while not relying on schtick and it works extremely well. One of my favourite performances by him and one that should be much better known.
Also, Raising Arizona.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 8:46 PM on February 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have never seen Drive Angry, but have set Saturday night aside to do so. And by that, I mean every Saturday life for the rest of my life.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:06 AM on February 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

I have never seen Drive Angry, but have set Saturday night aside to do so. And by that, I mean every Saturday life for the rest of my life.

I had never heard of it until I flipped to it on TV maybe 5 years ago. I couldn't look away. It's just so batshit. A real delight, and I'd say it's even Cagier than described here.
posted by uncleozzy at 4:39 AM on February 2, 2023

I have never seen Drive Angry, but have set Saturday night aside to do so. And by that, I mean every Saturday life for the rest of my life.

I had never heard of it until I flipped to it on TV maybe 5 years ago. I couldn't look away. It's just so batshit. A real delight, and I'd say it's even Cagier than described here.

May I direct you to my comment about Drive Angry from a previous Cage film retrospective on MeFi years ago...and I still stand by it.

Because in all likelihood--life is short, blah blah blah--I will never see Drive Angry, I am trying to read the Wikipedia synopsis and my brain and eyes are having trouble getting past "John Milton is an undead criminal who has escaped Hell and stolen Satan's personal gun"

it's just like what

how do you

...I need a lie down.
posted by Kitteh at 10:27 AM on August 14, 2018 [16 favorites +] [!]

posted by Kitteh at 5:10 AM on February 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

It's interesting how many of the movies I have seen, and how often I enjoyed the movie despite being all too aware that this was Nicholas Cage going over the top. Most of the time, I can't suspend disbelief when it's Nic Cage, but somehow it doesn't matter. For instance, the gloriously awful Con Air, which is hammy and ridiculous but fascinating as a multiple car pile-up.

Moonstruck is an exception for me. He was perfect for the role in that wonderful movie, and Cher was right to lobby for him. It wouldn't have been nearly as good without his energy. And Birdy, but Matthew Modine was what made that movie.
posted by Peach at 5:40 AM on February 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

So I watched Vampire's Kiss last night because of this list, and yes, it is PEAK Nic Cage, absolutely singular performance. HOWEVER, contrary to title and preview and billing, this is not a vampire movie. I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect the really actually disturbing movie where the Cage character's increasingly abusive treatment of a workplace subordinate (Maria Conchita Alonso) is just plain difficult to watch (like, I forgot you could use the 'c' word about women in movies in the 80s....). It has not aged well regarding our social and interpersonal sensibilities but is a document that confirms aggressive misogyny was normalized and common all the way through the 1980s (movie is 1989).

(spoiler alert)

But it's just a movie where we watch a guy fall into psychosis, imagining he's becoming a vampire, resulting in his murder of one woman and the assault and attempted rape of another. And then he's killed by the brother of the woman he assaulted. The end.

posted by LooseFilter at 7:15 AM on February 2, 2023

But it's just a movie where we..

That 'just' is doing a lot of heavy lifting - it's a movie where one form of societal parasite (abusive middle manager who does no actual work whatsoever and only exists to make others' lives worse) descends into lunacy by trying to imagine himself as the romanticized parasite metaphor instead. The fact that even in his revised version of reality he is still desperately begging for validation from an imagined iteration of his therapist, operating as a thrall of a powerful woman/vampire rather than coming to terms with how his very existence only serves to make worse the lives of everyone around him. Dismissing it as just a movie about a crazy guy rather than a dissection of privilege, entitlement, projection, resentment and misogyny sells it pretty short.
posted by FatherDagon at 7:33 AM on February 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

(If you enjoy reading about Nicholas Cage, you might also like Keith Phipps' 'Age of Cage: Four Decades of Hollywood Through One Singular Career.')
posted by box at 8:38 AM on February 2, 2023

Woah, mescalaline. I'll never do that again!
posted by AJaffe at 8:41 AM on February 2, 2023

At the twilight of physical media, Nicolas Cage still dominates the discount-store disc market. His 21st-Century work proudly sits in the cardboard $1.50 DVD dump at Big Lots, next to the 3-liter Shasta Cola bottles and the Screaming Yellow Zonkers. He occasionally shows up in a teetering stack of discs next to the automotive section at Dollar Tree.

You could do worse than a $5 movie night featuring a single-word Cage movie (Stolen, Rage, Arsenal, etc), a frozen burrito, a 3-liter of soda, a box of Whoppers and the Zonkers.
posted by JDC8 at 11:33 AM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have never seen Drive Angry, but have set Saturday night aside to do so. And by that, I mean every Saturday life for the rest of my life.

I have; the scene described is actually a bit crazier than the description. I'm pretty sure I consider the fact I watched it some sort of punishment I did to myself.

I'm not a huge fan of the '90s action ones either, but Raising Arizona is exceptional and he's excellent in it.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:34 AM on February 2, 2023

Dismissing it as just a movie about a crazy guy rather than a dissection of privilege, entitlement, projection, resentment and misogyny sells it pretty short.

Sure, that's fair, and I got that, I just didn't think it was very thoughtful commentary on those things. (And the actual escalating abuse is genuinely difficult to watch. As a survivor of the 1980s, for me maybe it wasn't cartoonishly absurd enough to sit clearly in the realm of social critique.)
posted by LooseFilter at 12:15 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

What thivaia said: Raising Arizona for #1. God, that was a funny movie.
posted by y2karl at 12:44 PM on February 2, 2023

Because of this list, I remembered a few Cages I kinda wanted to see, but I chose Willy’s Wonderland because I was not in the mood for Pig or Vampire’s Kiss.

So I watched Willy’s Wonderland last night.
I guess it was pretty much what I expected, knowing almost nothing about it going in. It should have been an R-rated movie instead of PG-13, but I guess the “PG-13 horror is a watered-down disappointment” ship has long since sailed.

It was nice to see the “Aronofsky montage” applied to something as light as drinking sodas and playing pinball, instead of, like, heroin.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 1:32 PM on February 2, 2023

Ugh by which I mean “they should have made an R instead of a PG-13 movie,” not that the movie, as made, should have had a stricter rating.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 1:36 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I only saw the page with the top 34, but if you took out the 6 movies I know from the page, I would be totally unable to determine if it was a real list or elaborate joke.
posted by snofoam at 2:36 PM on February 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Peggy Sue Got Married at least fares a bit better, but he was kind of insufferable there.

"Kind of"? Yish - his 'performance' (which was intentionally bad, since he didn't want to be involved) ruins that film, whenever he's on-screen, except for the very end.
posted by Rash at 11:37 AM on February 4, 2023

He didn’t entirely ruin it for all that he hated it. That was a sweet movie. If I had to pick my favorite Coppola comedies, that would be #2, right under One from the Heart.
posted by y2karl at 5:52 PM on February 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

I just think Valley Girl and Peggy Sue Got Married are neat.

(As for how terrible Cage is in Peggy, I just read that as ... look, if your 30YO mind was transported to your 18YO body, how ridiculous and insufferable would whoever you were dating then seem to you?)
posted by seraphine at 9:39 PM on February 5, 2023