Dennis Quaid, originally cast as the star, could never.Ĭage is utterly unique here in the actorly cocktail he brews. And Loew is supposed to be a ridiculous figure: A wannabe fancy lad whose misogyny and fear of women morph him into a cartoonish monstrosity. The levels of physical control on display here are just as impressive as the end product’s ridiculousness. I believe he would still finish the scene if that happened. Cage delivers complex pieces of esoteric dialogue concerning contracts and literary agency goings-on while looking down his nose with dinner-plate eyes that threaten to pop from his head and dangle on his cheeks. Pillow talk is nails on a chalkboard office abuse becomes obviously clownish. It disappears when bellowing, then dominates his speech and colors everything while speaking normally. “We chose this, because if he did the role totally straight, the character is so hateful that it would be unwatchable.’” The accent highlights Cage’s own early fascination with transformative pronunciation tics, like his breathy Never on Tuesday cameo or intensely nasal Peggy Sue Got Married intonation. “Nicolas and I have been working on this a lot,” producer Barbara Zitwer remembered Bierman saying of the accent. Modulated through Cage’s mewling accent-somewhere between an affected transatlantic whine and a mysterious Transylvanian mutter-lines take on new life. ![]() That’s impressive, odd, gripping work punctuated by choreographed gesticulations. There are certainly the lanky arm gestures that piston out of the electric actor (“Am I getting through to you, Alva?”) and an athletic leap he takes upon a desk, but nothing beats his iconic, essential recitation of the entire alphabet: After an encounter with a fanged woman (Jennifer Beals) at his bat-chelor pad, Cage starts going full Renfield-meets- American Psycho as Loew becomes convinced he’s becoming Nosferatu of the Upper East Side.Īpart from the incredible feats of eye-bugging and bug-eating on display-really, Cage eats a bug right in front of us-this manifests in some increasingly deranged line readings. The dark comedy’s Peter Loew (Cage) is a yuppie, well-versed in vampire lore, who’s seducing a new woman every night and coming apart at the seams. If Hercules was an actor, the labors he would need to accomplish as penance for killing his family would all be contained in Vampire’s Kiss. One of our picks for the best vampire movies ever made, director Robert Bierman’s feature debut is like watching someone compete in every event in the Olympics of acting. ![]() Ironically, Cage never says the line “You don’t say,” which often accompanies the meme sceenshot taken from Vampire’s Kiss. That performance comes in 1988’s Vampire’s Kiss. Why kick his legs out from under him before a movie even starts filming? Instead of dwelling on this boneheaded move, let’s look back at one of Cage’s most talkative performances in order to remember and appreciate the kind of kitchen-sink acting-where he plays both the human body and its vocal creations like jazz instruments-that made Cage both a movie star and beloved champion of ironists everywhere. Nicolas Cage is so good at saying words, so endlessly entertaining at the act of speech, that he hosted a Netflix show seemingly crafted around him swearing. Counterintuitive, done more out of novelty than good sense. Parsons and God-and it’s seemingly sacrilegious. That’s a decision between Cage, director Kevin Lewis, writer G.O. The film’s star, “the one known for completely committed line readings of even the most ridiculous material, has not a single line of dialogue in this action/horror flick,” writes editor/critic Brian Tallerico in his Willy’s Wonderland review. In fact, it doesn’t let him speak at all. ![]() It’s no surprise that the middling-to-bad Willy’s Wonderland doesn’t use Cage to his fullest. Just look at Color Out of Space, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Prisoners of the Ghostland-the latter of which has received plenty of notice for a screamed delivery of the evocative word “testicle.” These films have some primo Cage line readings, which aren’t all that make up the actor’s arsenal, but certainly help differentiate between Sleepy Cage and Awakened Cage. Sure, Cage has been hit and miss, miss, miss, miss in his recent fare (partially because the man’s cranking out half a dozen films a year), but that doesn’t mean his abilities have gone away. The Oscar-winner saw his Five Nights at Freddy’s-esque movie Willy’s Wonderland open over the weekend to middling reviews-something that should never happen to a film about one of our great screen presences beating the bejesus out of several murderous animatronic animals. Another month, another promised Nicolas Cage movie that isn’t quite as bonkers as that descriptor seems to promise.
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