Nicolas Cage’s Best Performances Onscreen

We have reached the point in Nicolas Cage’s career when it is easier for each new film in which he is simply describing his pranks in them. Dracula Cage, terrible boss, that is “Renfield”. Moody Chef Cage, Retriever or Amado Animal, that’s “pig”. Caga de Manariles de la Caba de la Caba de Satanado, that’s “Longlegs”.

Tactics works because it is easy to imagine Cage wearing any of those forms, and a thousand more also. Many commentators have noticed the propensity of Cage to the roles that can only be described as crazy, but the actor’s career is too expansive and more nuanced, to reduce their deranged characters. Tell me that he is going to play, I do not know, a ballet teacher or a chief of the mafia or an tattered father (as in his last film, “The Surfer”) and I will believe you, because it is shown that it contains multiple multiple, again and again. Sometimes, Hey plays more than one guy in the same film, as in my favorite of his films, “adaptation”, in which he appears as twins.

That means that the best way to control Cage as an artist is to consider his through his many faces. Just when it occasionally takes that face, um, out.

‘Monstruck’ (1987)

The sincere love interest

At first, Cage worked to establish a career apart from his last name. (The director of the “godfather”, Francis Ford Coppola, is his uncle, and the directors Roman and Sofia Coppola and the actor Jason Schwartzman are his cousins). He drove it quickly in a series of films that included many peredancies such as a mockery. What shines through each one is a commitment to body with any emotional reality of the character, all the desires that staggered, suffering, ecstasy.

A great representative performance of this era is its turn like the Lovelorn Ronny head, which is in love with the fiancee of her brother (Cher) in the romantic comedy of 1987 “Monstruct”. Ronny is missing a hand thanks to a strange accident of bread, but he does not lack any gallantry, coughing as it is. It is a lovely, rude, loving role, and versions of that cage appear in “Raising Arizona” (1987) of the Coen brothers and “Wild At Heart” by David Lynch (1990).

(Transmit “Monstruck” on the Roku channel and the Criterion channel, or rent it on most main platforms).

‘With Air’ (1997)

The action star

Many broad -shoulder Hollywood men have become films full of acrobatics, and the cage is no exception. Many action films are as weak as the document in which the script was printed, but when it seems invested in the paper, the cage of the brings some. In “With Air” (1997), for example, the film around it is quite silly, it is the old hero of Opme in a transport plane full of convicts, but there is something moving and textured about his work that goes far beyond the needs. And you can also throw a convincing blow.

(Rent “with Air” on most of the main platforms).

Cage tends to get their strangest performances for films with budgets small enough to let the filmmakers go crazy. There is a good possibility that we carry a lot of thesis, he thought that the “Mandy” of Vennge Fantasia 2018 obtained a possible worship follow -up.

Seeing the cage in the duration of “Longlegs” by Osgood Perkins the hottest days of 2024 certainly seemed the vertex of this character, the type of paper that chases you long after the movie ends. As a serial murderer who terrifies young women and their families, is almost unrecognizable, bleached skin and gates added to fibrous hair and a terrifying smile wants to disappear the splitting of my mube of corn palomites. This son of role is less about Cage is strange and more about his willingness to make anything for a performance, regardless of how unrecognizable it is.

(Transmit “Longlegs” in Hulu or rent it on most of the main platforms).

‘The unbearable weight of mass talent’ (2022)

The self-parodist

Cage knows that he has a public reputation for being intense, explosive, a little upset and prolific, a son of living life and breathing. In recent years, he has inclined that person as a joke. The 2023 drama “Dream Scenario” played in this: portrays an unfortunate professor who begins to appear in the dreams of dozens of strangers and at first enjoy the attention of the media he brings. It is a film about the delights and the dangers of broad fame, which certainly knows something.

But it is really in “the unbearable weight of mass talent” (2022) that allows this show of Guaño and his knowledge. He plays actor Nick Cage, who is dating a superfan (Pedro Pascal). It is full of ironic references to Cage’s best -known films, a comedy about being Nick Cage that we believe we know.

(Rent “the unbearable weight of mass talent” on most main platforms).

‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ (2010)

The boy of “I need a payment check”

Look, everyone needs to pay the invoices. Cage occasionally has a financial hot water, with its real estate and purchases of Wackadooodle (a dinosaur skull of $ 276,000) calling the attention of the media.

You can say when Hollywood actors have debts to pay, because they begin to have inexplicable roles (already commercial endorsements). In the case of Cage, thought, payment check films become more boring, it is not an example greater than the 2010 version of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. Cage brings some eccentricity, but above all a sense of obligation with the remake something lifeless of Disney Classic. That is all that the script requires.

(It carries “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” in Disney+ or rent it on most main platforms).

Here is the thing: Cage is a great actor. Not only because it has reach, but also because it has great depths and can plome them, especially for less striking roles. His only Oscar arrived in 1996, because “leaving Las Vegas” from Mike Figgis as an alcoholic screenwriter who decided to drink until death. In “City of Angels” (1998), “presenting the dead” (1999) and “Joe” (2014), assumes equally dramatic roles with unforgettable results.

One of his greatest performances came in the drama of characters of 2021 “Pig”, in which he plays a disconsolate and furious chef who travels through the culinary scene of Portland and his underworld in search of has been looking for. His character is Taciturn, a mountain of a man who seems complete, controlled and ready to explode, and Cage keeps you alert all the way. Near the end, cook a food with a very specific purpose, and is completely inseplable.

(Transmit “Pig” in Paramount+ or rent it on most of the main platforms).

‘Adaptation’ (2002)

The chameleon

It is difficult to nail Nicolas’s cage. What you are doing in any movie can hesitate and balance and running out of the rails, sometimes it is difficult to say at any definitive moment on paper. In “Adaptation” (2002), he plays screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (who actually wrote the script) and his fictional twin brother, Donald. Charlie is an obsessive, sweaty and stressed an anxiety ball, while Donald is windy and shameless and confident in a way that has really been won. It is a bananas movie, lovely and strange. But seeing the game of the cage temperamentally oppose the twins next to the other, you begin to see how much it contains, what can do their long and expressive face.

Cage’s last film, “The Surfer”, could be summarized in this way: Business Guy Cage is stranded in a parking lot for reasons that would approach the Kafka style if they are so driven by the broken ego. Then, slowly, he goes crazy while he is intimidated by a welfare cult of Australian surfer under the oppressive sun. He may think that you know how his performance will be like, but you will probably be a bit wrong, because there is one thing that is always true for the cage: just when you have a handle of him, you are something.

(“Adaptation” rent on most of the main platforms).

Videos: MGM (“Monstruck”); Touchstone Pictures (“With Air”); C2 Motion Picture Group (“Longlegs”); Lionsgate (“the unbearable weight of mass talent”); Walt Disney Pictures (“The sorcerer apprentice”); Ai film (“pig”); Columbia Pictures (“Adaptation”)