I love Nic and there’s still a good chunk of his movies that I haven’t seen.
Favorite - Wild at Heart. Best acting - Leaving las Vegas. Unique Gems - Raising Arizona, Red Rock West, Knowing, Moonstruck, Adaptation, Bringing out the dead, Mandy.
Bringing out the Dead is a goddamned underrated masterpiece. It’s Nicholas Cage in his perfect unhinged element, playing perfectly to his strengths in a movie where they can really shine.
Knowing is an amazing movie that has been lost to time. I was flying from Philly to Ireland and can’t sleep on planes, so I watched that, and it was so mind blowing that I had to wake my wife up to make her watch it.
Pig was absolutely brilliant. It totally defied my expectations and left me fucking weeping at the end.
Well, I think his best performance was in 8mm. Brilliant movie, and often gets forgotten in favor of his lighter roles.
That being said, my favorite is Con Air. It’s ostensibly an action movie, and has that 80s action movie vibe, but all the scenery chewing him and Malkovitch do takes it to new heights of hilarity at times. They both over acted so hard it went beyond silly and into epic. It is absolutely the most fun movie he has ever done, including Raising Arizona, which I love too.
Face Off, just for the weird idea to steal your enemy’s face
I love everything after Cage and Travolta swap faces. Watching the two of them impersonate each other is top notch. The cream on top of some high quality John Woo action cake.
Wild at Heart is the clear favorite for me. I’m a big David Lynch fan, and that movie is just deliciously bizarre.
As far as hidden gems, I don’t know. I haven’t seen a large portion of his filmography, and I’d guess that what I’ve seen is probably his better known stuff. Not much help there, sorry.
I’m so glad someone else mentioned Wild at Heart, that is without a doubt my favourite Cage movie of all time. He’s in vintage form in that film. It’s so funny too, like legitimately funny. Kind of like that one he did with Elijah Wood, The Trust. He was fucking hilarious in that movie, it felt like a return to vintage form, he got creative with it. A lot of people hated it, I guess because of the abrubt ending, but if you focus on Nic’s performance it’s a truly great movie. I’d call that a “hidden gem” for sure. More people need to give it a chance, it really is a great film
