It’s no secret that Nicolas Cage’s taste in movie roles has changed from the days when he starred in A-list films like Raising Arizona, Moonstruck and Leaving Las Vegas. The 54-year-old actor appears to flip a coin when deciding what to make these days. Sometimes he gets lucky — The Croods has a sequel on the way and Joe made some box office bank — while other times he ends up in films like Outcast, a period piece whose outlandish story careens through Europe and Asia like a drunken soldier on shore leave.
It’s trendy to write Cage off as an actor throwing his talent away, more concerned with cash than art. YouTube brims with videos like Crazy Cage Moments and Cage Rage. Between them they’ve racked up millions of views, which is certainly more people — give or take several zeroes — that saw his recent bizarro-world revenge film Mandy or direct-to-oblivion domestic thriller Inconceivable. And yet, no matter how low rent some of his recent output is, he’s usually compelling.
The vids are an eye-opening compendium of Cage’s trademarked brand of extreme acting — a method of over-emoting perfected in the more than 80 movies he’s made since his debut (under his real name Nicolas Coppola) in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Citing The Incredible Hulk star Bill Bixby as a major influence, he has always been, for better and for worse, one of our most completely fearless actors.
This weekend’s Mom and Dad promises an extra helping of full-throttle Cage. He calls it his favourite movie in a decade, while Glen Kenny, writing in the New York Times said, “In this morbid satire about parents trying to kill their kids, Mr. Cage has plenty of opportunity to go full him.” Cage, who forever will be best known for hits like Adaptation, National Treasure and Leaving Las Vegas, has made many other movies that are worth a second look.
One writer called Cage’s work in 1989’s Vampire’s Kiss “a grand stab at all-out, no-holds-barred comic acting or one of the worst dramatic performances in a film this year,” but decades later the movie has earned cult status because of Cage’s edgy work. The story of a man who may — or may not — be turning into a vampire is best remembered as the film in which Cage ate a live cockroach, but also features one of his most unhinged performances.
A few years later, somewhere between Honeymoon in Vegas and Guarding Tess, came Red Rock West, a genre-busting movie — Ebert said it “exists sneakily between a western and a thriller, between a film noir and a black comedy” — that unfairly barely made it to theatres. Cage hands in some of his best work as a broke but honest drifter, but only took the role after Kris Kristofferson turned it down.
Existing at the intersection of Vampire’s Kiss and Red Rock West is Wild at Heart, a film that perfectly showcases Cage’s manic energy. As Sailor, a lover boy on the run from hit men hired by his girlfriend’s mother, he’s a one-of-a-kind, an Elvis wannabe with a snakeskin jacket and an attitude. It’s a bravura performance. Like the jacket, which he says “represents a symbol of my individuality,” Wild at Heart is a symbol of his artistic individuality.
In its first hour, the new film Permission looks and feels a lot like a traditional romantic comedy — but this is a trick, says actress Rebecca Hall.
“When we first started out making this (director Brian Crano) said, ‘I want this to look like a classic rom-com from the ’90s. Lots of backdrops from Manhattan. Lots of completely gorgeous-looking apartments that, inexplicably, these people are living in. Everyone is beautiful. Everything is beautiful,” explains Hall.
And just when you think you’re on cosy ground, “the rug is pulled out from under you. You feel gut-punched.”
In the film, Will, played by Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens, and Anna (Hall) have been sweethearts since high school. Now, on the cusp of her 30th birthday he’s about to pop the question. First though she drunkenly proposes they sleep around a bit. Not break up, but get some life experience before they settle down. At first they encourage one another in a bit of harmless fun but as their polyamorous relationships start to deepen, uncomfortable realities are revealed.
“Over the years we’ve all had conversations about relationships and where they were heading,” Hall says. “Brian noticed a general trend that happened somewhere around the ages of 27 to 30-something, where people who had been in shockingly monogamous, stable relationships either got married or broke up. This was something he was interested in because so many of his friends were children of divorce or had complex attitudes toward monogamy. Some were fundamentally monogamous while others were exploring other options.”
Permission’s final third contains the film’s most essential truths. In a dramatic shift in tone from the first hour, the harsh realisms of this arrangement appear.
“The thing we were interested in weren’t the moral rights or wrongs, if there are any, of having an open relationship,” she says. “It was more about these two people who are stuck, who have not allowed each other growth because they have been together for so long and have not had the level of communication in the relationship that is necessary. The film is really about giving ourselves permission to question a relationship that is basically good. It sounds like a nothing statement but no matter how sophisticated and evolved and progressive we have all become there is still this strange pressure to do the right thing. If the relationship is good you stay in it because if you leave it you might be mean or a failure.”
The film takes a thoughtful and mature approach to its story, asking: How far can you stray, even with permission?
“Brian and I used to play a little game,” Hall says, “where we would try and think of films and stories where women have sexual agency but aren’t kooky, crazy people who end up being psychopaths or pixie dream girl stereotypes. It was difficult to come up with. The construction of Anna was really someone who is working out what that means. She is going to discover what sexual agency means for her. She is going to own it and be empowered by it. I think that is a really important message to put out there right now.”
The house is one of the strangest buildings ever erected. A massive 24,000 square feet, the rambling Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion has zigzagging staircases, 2,000 doors, rooms-within-rooms and over 10,000 windows. Some will even tell you the old place is haunted. Located on nine acres in Silicon Valley it is known as the Winchester Mystery House.
These days the house is open to the public but for many years it was the obsession of Sarah Winchester, the eccentric heiress of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company fortune, who envisioned the place as home to an “army of ghosts.”
This weekend, in the mystery thriller Winchester, Helen Mirren plays her. The backstory sees the widowed Winchester, reeling from the loss of her husband William in 1881, visit a psychic in hopes of finding solace. He says her recent tragedies — the loss of a daughter, father-in-law and husband — were the work of the spirits of people killed by the Winchester repeating rifle, a.k.a. The Gun That Won The West. To save herself from the restless spectres, he told her to move west and build a home big enough to accommodate all the phantoms that bedevilled her family.
She took the advice to heart, buying a large 161-acre plot of land in San Jose, Calif., and began building. And building. Legend has it that with no blueprints, Winchester, one of the richest women of the 1880s, spent the next 38 years — 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year — working on the strange dwelling.
Winchester lived in the house during construction and, to confuse curious spirits, never slept more than one night consecutively in any of the bedrooms. At night she held séances to confer with the ghosts who shared her living space, hence the nickname The Mansion Designed By Spirits. Guided by those apparitions she ordered never-ending alterations that required the use of maps to navigate. The place grew to such a size that after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake damaged the home, it took the staff hours to find her in the labyrinth of rooms.
Just as eccentric as the ever-evolving layout were Winchester’s home decor choices. She engraved the numbers 7 and 11 throughout the house for good luck and the number 13 to ward off evil spirits. A chandelier was redesigned to hold 13 candles instead of the usual 12 and drain covers on sinks were punched with 13 holes. Today, in tribute, a large 13-shaped topiary tree sits on the property and every Friday the 13th a bell is rung 13 times at 1300 hours.
Winchester lived in the home until her death in 1922. Work on the home ceased instantly and there are several half-driven nails in the walls where carpenters stopped hammering when they heard the news.
Winchester has the underpinnings of a good psychological drama but a biography dampens the mythology with a dose of reality. In the book Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune, author Mary Jo Ignoffo says Winchester “routinely dismissed workers for months at a time ‘to take such rest as I might.’”
Whatever the truth, Mirren sums it up best: “There’s nothing like it anywhere that I’ve ever seen. It grew out of such very specific circumstances that are sort of unrepeatable.”
In March 2016, production was shut down on Maze Runner: The Death Cure when star Dylan O’Brien was hurt filming an elaborate stunt. O’Brien, who rose to fame as the resident heartthrob on Teen Wolf, was strapped in a harness on top of a moving vehicle when he was suddenly thrown and struck by another car. WorkSafeBC reported his injuries included “concussion, facial fracture and lacerations.”
With production postponed, O’Brien’s publicist Jennifer Allen said, “His injuries are very serious and he needs more time to recover.”
Director Wes Ball tweeted, “Well, it’s been a whirlwind of emotions these past few days. I’ve been overwhelmed with feelings of anger and sadness and guilt. But, ultimately I find myself left with just a deep love and respect for Dylan. He is one tough cookie.”
The film, originally scheduled for release on Feb. 17, 2017, was delayed until this weekend.
O’Brien says he was “in a really fragile, vulnerable state,” and during the early days of his recuperation thought he may never act again. “I’ve gotten to a place where I’m OK with it,” he told People, “but it was definitely a rough year.”
The 26-year-old isn’t the first actor to be hurt performing a dangerous deed. Jackie Chan is famous for doing all of his own stunts — and breaking almost every bone in his body in the process — while Mission: Impossible 6 was recently put on hold after Tom Cruise broke his ankle attempting a jump across a building gap.
Sylvester Stallone broke ribs on the First Blood set and Charlize Theron herniated a disc in her spine while shooting Aeon Flux. Jason Statham joked about almost being drowned during the making of The Expendables 3, but it is serious business. How far should filmmakers go in the search for realism in stunts?
Industry insiders say the best way to keep everyone safe is to let the professionals do their jobs. Arnold Schwarzenegger, no stranger to films with wild action scenes, said, “With stunts, we have a rule that if you can get injured or killed, you let a stunt guy do it, because they are much more skilled in how to do the falls, being on fire, how to deal with all those things.”
Stunt driver Richard Lippert asserts that, stunt-wise, actors only have to know how to do three things: first, how to convincingly fake a punch; second, how to drive on and off a mark; and finally, how to credibly handle a weapon. Other than that, he says, “actors shouldn’t plan to do their own stunts no matter how ‘cool’ or exciting it may seem.”
Other than personal danger for the actor, one wrong move can shut down a set costing everyone their livelihoods. “Taking a job away from someone to stroke your ego is not a good way to become popular,” says Lippert.
CGI is another option, although many top directors prefer real action. After years of “following the CG evolution,” using computer-generated images to create beautiful animated films like Happy Feet and Babe: A Pig in the City, director George Miller used actual stunts performed by stunt men and women in his action epic Mad Max: Fury Road. “It was like going back to your old hometown and looking at it anew,” he said.
When you think of Christian Bale what picture do you conjure up in your mind’s eye? Is it as American Psycho’s square-jawed investment banker Patrick Bateman? Or is it as the gaunt whisper of a man from The Machinist? Perhaps it’s as 3:10 to Yuma’s scruffy cowboy Dan Evans or the cowled Caped Crusader of the Batman films.
The point is Bale recreates himself from film to film. “It’s helpful not to look like yourself,” he recently told The Guardian. “If I look in the mirror and go, ‘Ah, that doesn’t look like me,’ that’s helpful.”
He could make a fortune playing superheroes in action movies but instead chooses to shake things up. Since his breakthrough performance in 1987’s Empire of the Sun, he has been a chameleon, losing 60 pounds to play the skeletal lead in The Machinist and gaining a beer gut and a combover for his role in American Hustle.
Creating the “Olympian physique” of serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho took some discipline. “I’m English,” he said, “we don’t have many gyms around. We’d rather go to a pub instead.” A trainer and a protein diet took off the pounds.
As boxer and former drug addict Dicky Ecklund in The Fighter he dropped 30 pounds and used makeup and prosthetics to age himself. How did he lose the weight? “Usually I always say, ‘Oh, I do a lot of coke whenever I lose weight.’ I’m not sure if it’s so funny for this movie, to say that.” In reality he trained with the real-life Ecklund and boxed the pounds off.
In Velvet Goldmine he plays a London journalist looking into the life and faked death of glam rock singer Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Once again he had to physically transform, but not in the traditional way.
When his mom saw that he was working out and running at 6 a.m. she said, “Christian, what are you doing? You’re doing a film about sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Why don’t you do it the way they did it? They weren’t out running. They drank a helluva lot and lived unhealthily.” “I took that to heart,” he said.
This weekend he appears in Hostiles as the elaborately moustachioed Joseph J. Blocker, an 1892-era U.S. Army captain approaching retirement, grappling with the anguish and regret that has scarred his soul. The impressive ’stache may be his biggest physical transformation for this role — the AV Club joked “Christian Bale’s moustache is the best thing about Hostiles” — but he says the biggest change here was spiritual.
To create the character’s contemplative demeanour he spent a lot of time “sitting in a room quietly staring at a wall.” He says he likes to get as “distant as possible” from his own personality. Imagining Blocker’s life journey before filming allowed him to internalize the character and “feel like you’re trying very hard by the time you get to be working.”
Next up for Bale is the biopic Backseat. He shaved his head and packed on pounds — “I’ve just been eating a lot of pies,” he says — to play former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney. “I’ve got to stop doing it,” says the 43-year-old actor of the extreme weight gain. “I suspect it’s going to take longer to get this off.”
Jessica Rothe is what used to be called a ‘starlet.’ The thirty-year-old actor appeared with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in the Oscar-winning La La Land, and last year was the best thing about the time loop murder mystery Happy Death Day.
She’s landing lead roles but still building her career, trying out various film genres and characters.
“One thing that feels very important to me as an artist is to continually challenge myself and push myself to do all kinds of different things,” she says. “If it is good storytelling, it is good storytelling. I just want to do it all.”
Her latest is Forever My Girl, a romance in the mould of Nicholas Sparks. She plays Josie, a young woman left at the altar by boyfriend Liam, a musician who ran off to find fame as a country music star. When he returns to their small Southern town years later his presence reignites old feelings but there is a difference in the form of Billy, played by Abby Ryder Fortson, the daughter Liam never knew about.
Rothe says working with her precocious eight-year-old co-star helped her make Josie a fully rounded character.
“I met with Abby and her mom at a juice bar so she would feel comfortable with me,” Rothe says, “but we didn’t get a lot of prep time because she was still in school.
“In some way the fact that I was her mother in the film really benefitted our relationship because every time I didn’t know what I should be doing in the scene, or what Josie would be thinking about, it was always, ‘Where is Abby? Is Abby safe? Is she hungry?’ Having that be the backbone of Josie and her thought process was incredibly helpful. As somebody who is not a parent I can only imagine that is how you would function. It helped that our relationship on set and off set was very similar. I came to feel protective of her. Film sets can be crazy but I think it worked to our benefit.”
The actress, who will next be seen in an all-singing-all-dancing version of the 1983 romantic comedy Valley Girl, relates to her young co-star’s acting ambitions as well.
“If I, as an eight year old, could have been that worldly and on top of my game I would have been amazed with me,” she laughs. “I always knew I wanted to do this but I didn’t think it could be my real job. I’m lucky my parents are incredibly supportive and generous people who have put so much faith in me as I jump into this crazy business. It really is so far outside their comfort zone in terms of what a profession can be.”
Speaking of straying outside of comfort zones, Rothe already knows who she wants to work with next: horror master Guillermo del Toro.
“I just watched The Shape of Water the other night and thought that was absolutely stunning. It is almost the perfect movie. I could talk about it a lot but I won’t because I’ll get in trouble. Everyone reads the Forever My Girl interview and it is just me raving about The Shape of Water and trying to get a job on his next film. That would not go over really well!”
Last year Liam Neeson announced his retirement from action films. “Guys I’m sixty-f******-five.’ Audiences are eventually going to go: ‘Come on!'” Then, just months later, he had a change of heart. ““It’s not true, look at me! You’re talking in the past tense. I’m going to be doing action movies until they bury me in the ground. I’m unretired.”
At an age when most action stars are staying home soaking in vats of Voltaren Neeson continues his tough guy ways in this weekend’s action thriller The Commuter. He plays an everyman caught up in a race-against-the-clock criminal conspiracy on his train trip home from work. Expect a mix of blue-collar action and Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.
It’s a perfect companion to the movies Neeson has made since his actionman breakout role. It all began with Taken in 2008. He played Brian Mills a former “preventer” for the US government who contained volatile situations before they got out of control. Now retired, when his seventeen-year-old daughter is kidnapped by a child slavery ring he has only 96 hours to use his “particular set of skills” to get her back.
He admits to being, “a tiny bit embarrassed by it,” but his burly build and trademarked steely glare made him an action star.
“Believe it or not, I have even had Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis calling my agent saying, ‘How do I get these scripts?’” he said on his sixtieth birthday.
Audiences ate up his rough and tumble work. His habit of paying the rent with chest-beaters like the Taken films, Battleship, Unknown and The A-Team led one macho movie fan to post this on Facebook:
“After watching the movie The Grey, I can only come to the (very logical) conclusion that Liam Neeson should be King of the Earth. Who’s better than Liam Neeson? Nobody. That’s who. Nobody.”
But there was a time when a kinder, gentler Neeson graced the screen.
His first film, 1977s Pilgrim’s Progress, was so low budget he played several characters. He’s credited as the Evangelist, a main character in John Bunyan’s Christian allegory, but can also be seen subbing in as the crucified Jesus Christ.
It was another supporting role in a movie called Shining Through that led to his breakthrough. In it he plays a Nazi party official opposite Michael Douglas. The performance so impressed Steven Spielberg he cast Neeson as Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List, which turned him into an Oscar-nominated star.
He parlayed that fame into starring roles in period pieces like Rob Roy, Michael Collins (at the age of 43 Neeson was 12 years older than the real-life Michael Collins when he died) and Les Misérables. Then comedies Breakfast on Pluto and High Spirits showcased his more amiable side.
High on the list of his mild-mannered roles are two films with Laura Linney. He’s worked with her so often on stage and in the movies they joke they feel like “an old married couple.” They’re part of the ensemble cast of Love Actually and play husband and wife in Kinsey, about America’s leading sexologist Alfred Kinsey.
Neeson, it seems, can portray almost anything on screen but claims he doesn’t give acting much thought. “I don’t analyse it too much. It’s like a dog smelling where it’s going to do its toilet in the morning.”
Earlier this week Northern Michigan’s Lake Superior State University added the term “fake news” to its 43rd annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness. According to dictionary.com those two toxic words, popularized by Donald Trump and adopted by, well, almost everyone, denote “false news stories, often of a sensational nature, created to be widely shared online for the purpose of generating ad revenue via web traffic or discrediting a public figure, political movement, company, etc.”
A new film, The Post, is a time capsule back to a time before exhortations of “fake news” created an atmosphere where the press is perceived as an enemy rather than the voice of the people.
Meryl Streep plays Katharine Graham, the first female publisher of a major American newspaper. With the paper bordering on insolvency she has tough decisions to make.
When the New York Times breaks the story of a massive cover-up and is shut down by the Nixon White House, hardnosed editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) sees an opportunity to scoop the Times and make a splash. “Are any of you tired of reading the news,” he asks his staff, “instead of reporting on it?” Trouble is, the story involves several people close to Graham, most notably former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood), who prolonged the Vietnam War despite knowing it was a no-win situation.
Graham must make the decision to publish or not. Running the so-called Pentagon Papers would expose years of government secrets, make an enemy of President Nixon and could scare off the investors she’s been courting. Not reporting could endanger young the Americans who were still being drafted and sent to fight an unwinnable war. “The only way to assert the right to publish is to publish,” argues Bradley.
The Post is a historical tale that feels as timely as any front-page story in today’s paper. A high-stakes look at journalism before the age of fake news, it reminds us of the importance of objective, investigative reporting in an era of secrecy, lies, and leaks. It’s an ‘if you don’t know your past, you don’t know your future” message movie that shines a light on a watershed but mostly forgotten slice of our past.
The Pentagon Papers were a significant turning point in our recent history. They were proof of a credibility gap between what politicians say and what they are doing. For Bradlee, publishing these documents sent a message that the White House had no influence on what stories made the front page and which don’t. “The press must serve the governed not the governors.”
Combined, all these elements add up to a movie that aims to make a statement while avoiding preaching to its audience. Director Steven Spielberg and stars Hanks and Streep are entertainers first and foremost, and they do entertain here, but they also portray a period whose reverberations in the time of fake news are being felt stronger than ever.
The air of paranoia that hung over All the President’s Men, another movie centered on the investigative reporting of The Washington Post, is missing in The Post. Instead, Spielberg film’s is a fist-pump-in-the-air look at the integrity and importance of a free press. It’s a little heavy-handed but these are heavy-handed times.
Here’s what my crystal ball predicts for 2018 at the movies.
More Nicolas Cage films you won’t go see: The “Nouveau Shamanic” actor has no fewer than three films scheduled.
More men in tights: Look for spandex-clad superheroes in Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity Wars, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Aquaman to name just a few. There’s even some super duper animation coming in the form of The Incredibles 2.
More movies directed by women: The Kindergarten Teacher from Sara Colangelo, Jane Fonda in Five Acts by documentarian Susan Lacy and Desiree Akhavan’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post are just three of the 16 female-led films screening at Sundance this year.
More of the Netflix logo: The streaming service will release more movies than almost all of the other major studios combined. Investing heavily in the theatrical productions, they will release upwards of 80 movies in 2018 at the cost of a whopping $8 billion.
A year of reckoning for Johnny Depp: With three films set for release and several others in production audiences will make it known whether or not they still care about the quirky movie king.
A new catchphrase: “Hugs not drugs,” from the movie Deadpool 2 will become 2018’s “Sorry not sorry!”
Of course, then there are the movies themselves.
Depending on your point of view, Fifty Shades Freed will either make you want to gag or want to wear a gag.
Fifteen years after Angelina Jolie hung up her Lara Croft combat boots, Tomb Raider returns with Alicia Vikander in the character’s trademarked tank top and ponytail. That’s great news for fans of the Swedish actress, less so for fans of new, original ideas.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a remake of a remake, comes to screens courtesy of Illumination Entertainment, the masterminds behind the Despicable Me movies. Does that mean the Whos of Whoville will be played by the jellybean-shaped Minions?
We’ll have to wait for breakout director Jordan Peele to step behind the camera again, but in 2018 he’s producing the Spike Lee-helmed Black Klansman and lending his voice to the puppet thriller Abruptio.
Ex Machina director Alex Garland returns to the big screen with the genre-twisting science/fantasy/action/horror film Annihilation based on a book by Jeff Vandermeer. The author is impressed by Garland’s work. “It was so tense our bodies felt sore and beat up afterwards,” he said. Sounds good to me.
Bradley Cooper will write, direct and star in the fourth remake of A Star is Born. Lady Gaga, who will be credited by her given name, Stefani Germanotta, sits in for Barbra Streisand, who sat in for Judy Garland who took over from the character’s originator, Janet Gaynor.
Don’t mind subtitles? Check out Loveless, a film from Leviathan director Andrey Zvyagintsev. Russia’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar is the tale of a divorcing couple whose son disappears during one of their knock-down-drag-out arguments.
Want to take the kids to the flicks? Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 is an animated movie that is the first feature to include all four of Disney’s major brands, Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. Look for cameos from princesses Cinderella and Moana as well as C-3PO, Yoda and Iron Man.
