LEFT BEHIND (2014)

Christopher

This movie is as big of a mess as the original but at least we get to see a crazy-looking Nicolas Cage changing into the good Christian he was always meant to be. The worst thing about these movies to me is that fact that I find the aftermath of everyone disappearing far more interesting than the actual event. It reminds me of all the Superman/Batman/Spiderman movies. Every time they reboot them they have to retell you the origin so you never get past the beginning and into the juicy stuff. I have no clue if they will make another one of these but if they do and it makes it to Netflix I’ll watch it for sure!

Elizabeth

So I’m sure you know the premise of Left Behind, right? The rapture happens. And before we move on any further, let’s just think about that for a second.

Left Behind is supposed to give you this feeling that non-Christians know at some point that, if Christianity is correct, the rapture will occur, causing all believers to disappear to hang out with God and avoid his wrath. Except in the real world, no one knows any details about this, even among Christians. The kind of rapture they’re even talking about (where some people are left behind) didn’t even really come about until like 200 years ago. And yet the left behind characters in Left Behind keep talking about how they just should have listened to their Christian friends/family members, that the Christians were right, they predicted this exactly, etc etc. Um, no. This is a world in which Christianity is the same across the board, and also I guess a world in which the Bible goes into great detail about this rapture. So really, Left Behind is almost beyond fantasy because even the idea of Christianity this movie has is not real.

So now that we’ve established that the people behind Left Behind don’t even understand the concept of the rapture (or possibly even Christianity itself), that doesn’t leave much room for any of the movie to be any kind of good. Nicolas Cage and his absolutely terrible hair play Rayford Steele, which is a name that also lends itself to this being a fantasy. Ray is a pilot married to Irene (Lea Thompson), a born-again Christian. They have a daugher, Chloe (Cassi Thomson) and neither Ray or Chloe consider themselves Christian. But Irene seems prettyyyy insane and definitely annoying, so you can see why they’re turned off by it. Cassi flies home to surprise Ray on his birthday but gets a phone call from Irene telling her that Ray was called to a last minute flight to London. Now, why Irene was not at the airport to pick up Cassi is beyond me. Cassi decides to hang around the airport to try and catch Ray, whom she sees flirting with a flight attendant and not wearing a wedding ring. While there Cassi runs into Buck Williams (Chad Michael Murray) an apparently super famous journalist (because there are so many of those). It’s somehow love at first sight (basically) between Cassi and Buck, but alas Buck boards Ray’s flight to London.

Cassi goes back home then takes her little brother to the mall. While she’s hugging him a flash of light appears and he disappears, leaving his clothes and backpack and everything else. The same thing happens to people all around Cassi and in about 2 minutes the entire mall devolves into total chaos, complete with looting and violence. Now, I understand that something like this would cause a panic on a huge scale, but would people turn into crazy animals that quickly? I think everyone would be too caught up in what the hell just happened to think about looting, but who knows. Anyway, people everywhere disappear, including on Ray’s plane. At first no one knows what’s up until gradually people start saying what I was talking about before, shit like “This is exactly what Mom described” as if there is a Left Behind-rapture scene in the Bible. Eventually Ray safely lands the plane and is reunited with Cassi (who is also reunited with her apparently new boyfriend, Buck). THE END! Except not really, since I guess we can expect the apocolypse next.

Besides everything I already mentioned about the rapture, and the insanely terrible acting and pace of the movie, I also had a huge problem with the way Cassi’s character is portrayed. She’s skeptical of religion, but she clearly loves her family (she’s frustrated with her mom, yes, but you never get the feeling that she doesn’t love her) and seems to be a decent, responsible person. And yet, not good enough for God. I feel like Cassi’s skepticism, as opposed to outright 100% athiesm, should be enough for God to have some wiggle room. But nope! I guess all these Christians who so perfectly described this rapture failed to mention that only born-again Christians get to hang out with God – everyone else is fucked.

I mean, of course this movie is bad, but you knew that right? It’s actually not as bad as the terrible Kirk Cameron version from 2000 if for no other reason than the production is slightly better. But this movie is unbeliveably terrible and I would hope anyone going into this would expect nothing less. Just look at this fucking poster:

CON AIR (1997)

Elizabeth

When we watch a narrative film there is a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. It’s expected and as an avid movie watcher, I’ve never had a problem with that. Until it’s too much to ask. Let me tell you the series of events that begins Con Air.

Nicolas Cage is Cameron Poe, an Army ranger who is back home from . . .somewhere. We basically first see him on a dock staring into a bar, where it turns out his wife, Tricia (Monica Potter) works. His wife is pregnant but extremely thin, which makes one wonder who got her pregnant since they act like they haven’t seen each other in years. Anyway, even though Poe is in full uniform, he’s immediately accosted by some drunk assholes. Because I think everyone knows that men in full military uniform are probably the biggest targets of harrassments in neighborhood bars. They shoo them away long enough to enjoy their night together but the men follow them to their car when they go to leave for the night. Really, Poe and Tricia could have easily still driven away at this point since they were both in the car. But Poe gets out and decides to fight. While he’s being attached, Poe punches one of them in the nose and kills them instantly. I’m assuming it’s one of those punch-in-the-nose-so-the-bone-stabs-the-brain punches that I heard about so much as a kid, but we never really get an explanation. Not that it matters because next time we see Poe it’s at his sentencing. He gets 7-10 years for manslaughter. Further, the judge gives him that much time because as a former Army ranger, his body is a deadly weapon and therefore . . . he has to pay more for what he did? Sooooooo in this world:

– When you leave the army they drop you off in a boat directly in front of where you need to be

– Civilians hate members of the armed forces

– Self-defense doesn’t exist

– A judge can willy-nilly decide to up your sentence based on the fact that you used to be in the army and that makes you more dangerous

So by the time we see Poe in prison, I have no idea what world we’re in. We’re not in the real world for the above reasons. The rest of the movie doesn’t help.

After being in prison for eight years, Poe is let out on parole. He’s never met his daughter because he didn’t want her to see him in prison (ugh). Poe is being flown to Alabama to be released (once they parole you do they not just let you go? I truly don’t know the answer but it seems weird that he would get paroled and then have to be on a hellplane with non-parolees) but is sharing a plane with prisoners who are not getting paroled but are rather getting sent to a crazy super super super maximum security prison. So on this aircraft you have a nice mix of people like Poe, out on parole for manslaughter, and Garland Greene (Steve Buscemi), a serial killer and possible cannibal. Because that sounds like a nice mix of gentlemen that will get along well! Also included are Cyrus “Cyrus The Virus” Grissom (John Malkovich), some kind of criminal mastermind; Nathan “Diamond Dog” Jones (Ving Rhames) whom is somehow related to politics but is also a crazy criminal so I don’t really understand what his deal was; Johnny-23 (Danny Trejo), called that because he’s raped 23 women.

U.S. Marshall Vince Larkin (John Cusack) is overseeing this whole operation, which makes one wonder if he’s the most psychotic one of all. Because it reallyyyyy doesn’t take long for a riot to start, allowing Cyrus, Diamond Dog, Johnny-23 and others to be set free, further allowing Cyrus to kill the co-pilot and force the pilot to say everything is okay. There’s also a scary element where they have a female prison guard on board (another brilliant/psychotic decision by Larkin?) who, once the prisoners are freed, is under constant threat of rape by Johnny-23. Luckily, none of the other prisoners are okay with rape (she really kinda lucked out on that part) and they just all try to keep him off her. It’s just weird and scary. Oh yeah, there’s an undercover cop on board, too, but he gets killed pretty quickly. He did have a tape recorder on him, though, and Poe finds it. The plane is going to make a stop in Carson City for yet another criminal mastermind (this time a drug lord, Francisco Cindino) and afterward Cyrus has the plane head for a small airport where Cindino is arranging for all the prisoners to be picked up and taken to a non-extradiction country. A bunch of stuff happens and then everyone, including Larkin, ends up at the small airport. Larkin and Poe know they’re on the same side at this point. More shit happens, Poe and the rest of the prisoners leave the airport when they realize that Cindino had tricked them and a plane wasn’t coming for them. The prisoners then find out that Poe is a parolee and not a crazy psycho so they want to kill him. Luckily, the plane gets shot and is forced to crash land on the Las Vegas strip . . . so not exactly a super successful end to shooting the plane down. But, eventually, the bad guys all get killed and/or captured, Poe gets reunited with Tricia and meets his daughter.

Haha oh yeah, except for Garland Greene, who escaped and we last see playing in a casino. Happy endings for all! . . . except for the people that Greene will inevitably murder now that he’s out of prison. They kinda got screwed by the system.

This whole movie is so outlandish, even for an action movie. It’s hard for me sympathize or empathize with characters that are either entirely evil or caught in a world with rules that don’t make sense. I also got the impression that Cage’s long hair was supposed to make him look more like a badass but it was actually just distractingly gross and terrible. Also, Nicolas Cage’s idea of a Southern accent is apparently mimicking Scarlett O’Hara.

Christopher

I’ve really never thought much of this film. It was something I saw part of cause TBS and/or TNT used to play it all the time but I always found it very boring and uneventful. Watching it again I kind of felt the same way but I think watching it as, this is a terrible movie, instead of, this is a movie adults talk about a lot which must mean it’s good, brought out parts of this film I didn’t really notice before.

The movie is so full of holes and unnecessary issues it’s pretty funny. The whole story is about a giant plane that prisoners can’t escape from and within moments of it taking off the prisons are in control. And of course you have the great Nic Cage trying to do some 18^th-century southern voice.

I wouldn’t really recommend this movie as I still find it to be a bit boring a slow but I’m glad I watched it with Elizabeth!

THE CROODS (2013)

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION:

• Best Animated Feature Film

Elizabeth

Uhhhhh. Oh my God. Okay. Is this a joke? Did this movie get nominated for an Oscar, seemingly because it, as a whole, is good? Because, spoiler alert, it’s not good.

Let me get this out of the way: I will say that in terms of animation, The Croods had impressive elements. The characters’ facial features in particular were really well done. So, now that I’ve said that, I can talk about how laughably terrible The Croods is. First of all, the patriarch of The Croods, Grug, is voiced by Nicolas Cage, and this is endlessly distracting. Because, as we all know, Cage isn’t really associated with good movies anymore. All of the yelling and terribleness that I associate with his character from The Wicker Man is totally present here.

The protagonist, Eep, is the teenage daughter of The Croods. But she’s animated to be weirdly sexy, wearing a short, halter-top, leopard-print dress. The Croods are cavemen, but I guess super cavemen? They can outrun pretty much any animal they come across, with no explanation. They have incredible balance and can quickly and easily climb almost anything. This is never explained. What is also never explained is where they are: where are they in time? Where are they in the world? Are they on earth? Because nothing, and I mean nothing, in this movie is based on reality as we know it. At times, The Croods look tiny, at one point nearly being crushed to death by giant popcorn that pops from giant ears of corn. Animals are either huge or tiny, if they resemble anything we know at all. I don’t care that they made up this universe for the story, but I do care that they gave us nothing to go on. Nothing seems weird, special, or scary when you have no context for what would be considered out of the ordinary.

The Croods is also full of plot holes, like how in the beginning of the movie we see the family demonstrating their incredible speed, but then around the middle of the movie, the family cannot fathom the idea of walking to a nearby mountain. “We’ve never walked that far!” one of them laments. Uh, what? The beginning of the movie shows them scaling miles of ground in mere seconds, but now all of the sudden they not only can’t run, but don’t even want to walk? What the fuck?

The Croods is beyond pointless and not even remotely worth it. If it wins the Oscar, I’ll throw up.

Christopher

I’ve been pushing to watch this movie, mostly ’cause I knew it wasn’t going to be good but also ’cause I knew Elizabeth was dreading it. Though I found that funny, I quickly regretted my decision when it started ’cause this movie is hard to get through. Almost nothing makes sense. I absolutely love animation but what is the story in The Croods? To watch them out-walk the end of Pangea? As they slowly evolve into smarter creatures? It’s so bad.

The other big thing is that in the opening scene all our main characters are running at speeds up to 100mph easily, but when the main plot points show up to walk to a mountain that is a few days away they feel they can’t do it? JUST RUN OVER THERE!?!? I don’t know, this movie is a mess, the animation is okay at times, the character design is shit, but it does have Nic Cage as the voice of the dad!

Never check this out! It’s on Netflix.

TRESPASS (2011)

Christopher

I’m so glad we finally saw this. I really am interested in seeing every Nicolas Cage movie, cause all the current ones suck, and some of the old ones are some of my favorite movies. It’s so interesting how crazy he appears to be these days.

What annoyed me the most about Trespass was how unthreatening the bad guys really were. I mean if you’re going to steal from a house with a family, wouldn’t you be ready to do whatever it took to get out of there with what you went there for? I mean, the whole movie Nick Cage is not cooperative with the villains and it takes a whole hour for someone to be seriously hurt. Wouldn’t you kind of want to speed up the process?

Also, no one was cool in this movie. Cage is a mess and is obviously a bad father, and the bad guys are at each others’ necks from the beginning! This movie is dumb but fun, kind of boring but enjoyable to watch.

Elizabeth

I was really nervous about watching Trespass because it’s a home invasion movie and I’ve concluded that home invasion movies are at the top of the list of movies I don’t want to see. But then on the flip side, I only heard of how bad it was, so I hoped that the badness would trump any scariness. I’m so glad I decided to go for it, because Trespass is not the least bit scary and really is sooooooo bad.

I think what makes it particularly bad is how stupid everyone is. The family being held hostage, the people robbing their house – they’re all super stupid. And they’re all just sort of awful, too. The biggest thing that got me is that it’s “revealed” that the wife, Sarah (Nicole Kidman), slept with one of the robbers, Jonah (Cam Gigandet). We know this because of security cameras all through the house, which show Jonah, who used to work around the house, swimming in their pool and then kissing Sarah before they go off together. This is revealed a good amount after the couple has been taken hostage. But everyone is 100% first to believe Jonah, the armed robber, over Sarah, the woman getting robbed. Because, lo and behold, as it turns out, Jonah basically assaulted Sarah and she did not sleep with him. Well yeah! Did that not cross anyone’s minds, especially Kyle (Nicolas Cage), Sarah’s husband’s? That just seemed so insane to me.

So much of what the characters in this movie doesn’t make sense. Like when Sarah has a chance to escape by car, but stops. Or when Kyle is constantly bargaining with the robbers, even when they keep threatening Sarah. Or when one of the robbers goes into Sarah’s closet, strips down, and starts trying on Sarah’s clothes. Or how no one actually does anything to anyone for a long time. The list goes on and on. I hope in the end, Kyle and Sarah were able to sue their security company, who didn’t do shit the entire time their house was getting robbed.

This was definitely a movie that makes you think, right after watching it, “Why the hell did I just watch that?”

FACE/OFF (1997)

Elizabeth

Chris was in the mood to watch a legitimately good action movie, and the first thing that came to my mind (that neither of us had seen) was Face/Off. I think Chris was sort of surprised that I thought it was supposed to be legitimately good, but we both wanted to see it so we went for it. A pretty good decision all-around.

What kind of struck me about Face/Off is how so many elements at play in the movie would never work now. It came out almost exactly 16 years ago, even though it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. First of all, the public (and theatrical) personas of Nicolas Cage and John Travolta have changed so much, I don’t think anyone would take them seriously if this movie came out now. This was back when Nicolas Cage could still be a badass, rather than just being a weird knockoff of a badass. He does a great job of being scary and funny, something he desperately still tries to pull off now but just can’t anymore (thanks largely in part to the shitty projects he chooses now, though). And maybe it’s just me, but I just can’t look at John Travolta without seeing his weird plastic surgery and Scientologyness. This was also one of John Woo’s first big US productions, so things like having a gunfight in a church among white doves flying around was probably a lot less cliche in 1997 than it looks now. At least I’m assuming so, because it definitely looks a little silly now.

I will say that Face/Off deserves a lot of credit for not being confusing. The synopsis of the movie from IMDb (“A revolutionary medical technique allows an undercover agent to take the physical appearance of a major criminal and infiltrate his organization.”) makes it sound like it’ll be extremely hard to follow, but it’s really not. And considering how many simply-plotted movies we’ve seen that are super confusing, I think that’s definitely an accomplishment.

So, I still stand by Face/Off being a legitimately good action movie. I mean, it’s no Taken . . . but still definitely worth watching.

Christopher

I’ve been wanting to see this movie since I was a kid. I know I’ve seen parts of this, some of the prison scenes looked familiar, but I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy watching it as much as I did. I think the difficult thing about watching this movie now, is that we know how weird both John Travolta and Nicolas Cage are. In no way does anyone go out of their way to watch any movie with either of these actors now.

A big part of this movie journey with Elizabeth has been loving when a movie says its title in its own film. Face/Off does this often. And with a movie like Face/Off I would think that that would be difficult. But John Woo knows what he’s doing I guess.

SEASON OF THE WITCH (2011)

Christopher

THIS MOVIE IS GREAT. The film truly has no tension because you don’t care about any of the characters. Who really cares if everyone dies. But I think this movie is brilliant in its awful CGI, forgettable cast, and lack of a real story.

I do enjoy a good Cage film but I think this is the best one I’ve seen in a while.

Elizabeth

There are about a million awful things that distract you from the awful story of Season of the Witch, but I think probably the worst offender is the fact that Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman, though credited as playing the characters “Behmen von Bleibruck” and “Felson,” respectively, they’re really just playing Crusader versions of NIcolas Cage and Ron Perlman. Not that I necessarily would want to hear Cage or Perlman attempt British accents, but the fact that they don’t even attempt accents and just sound like Americans fighting in the Crusades makes this movie seem like some sort of weird and awful time travel movie. Which actually would have been more interesting.

I think what Season of the Witch is supposed to be about is the plague (not sure if it’s THE plague that we all know and love or a made up plague for the movie) being caused by a demon that possesses women. Or something? All I know is, Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman play Crusaders who kill a shitload of people in a bunch of battles (thanks to a very extended montage of this), and then suddenly get a change of heart when they realize they killed women and children. Now, I’m not about to pretend to be any kind of scholar on the Crusades, but I have a feeling that this wasn’t a once-in-a-Crusades occurrence. But they’re such good guys! Or something.

I don’t know.

STOLEN (2012)

Elizabeth

Well, I need to be up front about this. Chris and I sat down to watch Stolen after a huge, fancy dinner, and strong, fancy drinks. And Stolen is not exactly the edge-of-your-seat thriller it thinks it is and . . . well I fell asleep about halfway through and didn’t wake up until the movie and a couple of King of the Hill episodes that Chris watched were over. I thought about rewatching it, but . . . no thanks.

Stolen is trying so hard to be Taken, but it never will be, and it never could be because Taken is amazing and Liam Neeson is amazing and Nicolas Cage seemingly is incapable of being in anything amazing in the past few years. Nicolas Cage’s weird-looking daughter gets kidnapped by an even weirder, laughably fucked up Josh Lucas. I kind of don’t know much past that. Obviously, my consciousness couldn’t take it. But I’m okay with that.

Christopher

THIS MOVIE WAS GREAT!! The whole time I suppose there is a conflict but it also kind of feels like an SNL skit that just lasts too long to get to the joke. Nic Cage, as everyone knows, is currently at a place in his career where it’s impossible to take him seriously. And Stolen confirms this!

THE WICKER MAN (2006)

Christopher

I kept on forgetting what I was watching throughout this film. Cage looks completely different in every scene. But as forgettable as most of this movie is it’s still extremely entertaining. The film does have a lot going for it but my favorite part was definitely the CGI bees! Nothing could have looked worse, except for maybe Cage’s hair.

Elizabeth

The Wicker Man might be one of the greatest examples of a movie remake completely shitting all over the original. Now, I haven’t seen the original The Wicker Man in a really long time, but it super scared me when I did. The scariest element of the remake of The Wicker Man is that it actually got made.

Nicolas Cage plays such an asshole and makes so many awful decisions that make absolutely no sense, that you feel no sympathy for his character. It’s not scary, tense, or thrilling. It is only hilarious in its unbelievable tragedy (of getting made).