Honeymoon in Vegas - A normal Nicolas Cage and an attractive Sarah Jessica Parker... Yeah.

This is getting weird. Honeymoon in Vegas marks two movies in a row that I've actually enjoyed. Not that I haven't already seen some good (and precious few great) movies over the course of this project, but these last two were just simply sit-back-and-watch enjoyable. Zandalee was, obviously, more intense than this, but still...

Anyway, Nicolas Cage plays Jack Singer, a private detective whose mother made him promise, on her deathbed, never to marry. He's a normal guy, with no real accent, regular hair and clothes... It's unnerving almost.

He works at a desk, but not once does he scream his way through the alphabet at a therapist...

Anyway, some years later, his girlfriend is slowly getting tired of his apparently oft-repeated official position on marriage, and they start to drift apart, at which point Singer realizes that if he's going to keep his beautiful, intelligent, sensitive woman in his life, he's going to have to break the promise that he only really made to his mother after she was already dead. Would it even still count at that point? Who knows? So the pair fly to Vegas to get hitched. Oh yeah, and that aforementioned beautiful woman? Played by Sarah Jessica Parker.

This is, believe it or not, the same woman who led Jeremy Clarkson to deploy what is perhaps his greatest simile ever.

Anyway, in Vegas they meet a pro/sleazy/dangerous gambler who takes a fancy to Bessie, and proceeds to arrange things so that he gets to spend the weekend with her.

It's actually a genuinely good movie. It also has Pat Morita in it, playing a Hawaiian taxi driver named Mahi Mahi.

He must've waxed off his facial hair...

The point is, you should go see it. Cage does a good job with his role (he still gets to go a little nuts and have just a bit of screaming, which provides a nice sense of continuity with the rest of his roles) and the whole thing moves along with the kind of predictability and Hollywood rationality that makes for a decent 90 minutes of relaxed movie-watching, as long as you don't take yourself too seriously.

Zandalee - finally!

Nicolas Cage only made one movie in 1991, and this was it.

He plays Johnny, a weird (is there any other kind?) painter who lands back in the life of his childhood friend, Thierry (Judge Reinhold), a former poet and professor, current (reluctant) business executive married to the titular Zandalee (Erika Anderson), who is bored and unfulfilled by her bored and unfulfilled husband.

For starters, the movie has more nudity in it than A) most movies, B) any on this list so far, so if that's a deal-breaker for you, move along.

Now that they're gone, I can tell you that I found this to actually be one of the best movies I've seen for this project so far. It's no Raising Arizona, obviously, and the reviewers at IMDB were collectively unimpressed, by the look of it, but I thought that it was compelling. It wasn't just a movie that is watched - it draws you in. There's probably a significant element of "if you let it" involved here - it'd be pretty easy for someone with a hate on for Our Hero to simply dismiss the scenes that he's in (IE most of them) or for someone to dismiss the whole movie as simply smut due to the (many) sex scenes.

All together, though, I thought it was great. I'm glad I watched it, and this is precisely the type of experience that this type of project is awesome for. I never would have heard of this movie otherwise, and now I've seen another film that I really enjoyed. Yay!

That's not to say you don't get to see Crazy Cage in it...

Wild at Heart - David Lynch and Nicolas Cage together again!

Well, what can you say about Wild At Heart?

It's a David Lynch movie. If that last  sentence means nothing much to you, I'd recommend starting with Industrial Symphony No. 1, because it's short, and will actually make this look almost reasonable by comparison.

If you're familiar with Lynch, but haven't seen Wild At Heart, then you'll be fine. It's definitely no Eraserhead or Mulholland Dr..

It does contain this shot, and a remarkable fixation on fire, that will offer plenty of reminder that you're watching a David Lynch film...

It's got a fairly contiguous storyline, featuring the ne'er-do-well Sailor (played by Our Hero), his love interest (who spends a seriously large portion of the movie either entirely or partially disrobed, FYI) Lulu (played by Lynch favourite Laura Dern), her legitimately crazy mother and a supporting cast of people, most of whom are trying to kill Sailor. Because Lulu's mom asked/paid them to.

Seriously. Her mom's a crazy person. That's lipstick. Everywhere.

The real story picks up after Sailor gets out of jail, where he did time for beating to death a thug who Lulu's mom hired to kill him, and follows the lovers on their quest to go to California together, despite his parole conditions.

Lulu also brings Sailor his snakeskin jacket. It's a symbol of his individuality and his belief in personal freedom.

Sailor's a weird character, but he manages, in the context of this film's universe, to be fairly normal at the same time, and Cage plays him well, despite the accent.

There are some fairly... vivid... flashbacks as they catch each other up on the weirdness that's made up their lives prior to each other (Lulu's cousin, for instance, was completely nuts, made sandwiches all night and had a cockroach fetish.) that also serve to remind you that your brain and eyeballs are in the hands of the man who made Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet.

This is The Good Witch. This scene is in this movie.

It's a weird movie that swings between surreal ridiculousness to raunchy erotica to really surprising violence to black humour and back again with all the agility of a greased mongoose, but assuming you're cool with all of those things, I'd recommend it. It's an experience, if nothing else - like just about all of Lynch's movies.

Also, Willem Dafoe's in it.

Okay, it was unfair to spring that on you. Here's a shot of how Nic Cage gets out of a car when he's excited about finding some heavy metal on the radio:

You're welcome.