Paramount Pictures / Revolution Studios and IEG Virtual Studios present a Saturn Films / Broken Road production
Running time — 97 minutes / MPAA rating: PG-13

Cage continues his quest to be the next Superman.

What will humankind be like in 100 years? No more cancer? People living to 112? Babies born from the sperm of two men only? No. What we really all want – and want from science – is super powers. Isn’t that what TV’s ‘Medium’, ‘Ghost Whisperer,’ and ‘Heroes’ is all about? In film, we have super heroes, demon slayers and Matrix dwellers. We all know someone who is psychic, reads Tarot cards, or talks to the dead.

I know a lot of people who talk to the dead. The dead have nothing to say except that they are happy and busy.

In NEXT, Cris Johnson (Nicholas Cage) has a really cool super power. He can see what will happen exactly two minutes into the future. But only if it involves him. So it’s a selfish, time-cheat super power. It does supplement his income at the blackjack tables in Las Vegas.

Yes, the whole concept is ridiculous, but not as silly as Jessica Biel falling madly in love with Johnson at first sight. He might be hiding in plain sight as a lounge magician, but those ever-present casino security cameras know he’s up to something fishy. When Johnson foils a casino shooting about to happen within two minutes right next to him, he is targeted as the gunman and flees. He steals a car and gets away. Meanwhile, he’s being hunted by FBI agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore) and her team of powerful agents who can make the Sun stop shining on her orders.

Ferris catches up with Johnson and asks him to find a nuclear bomb on its way to Los Angeles. Eight million people will die. Johnson doesn’t care. He doesn’t see himself being one of them. Here’s his reason against helping save America from a devastating terrorist attack: They’ll make him the Pentagon’s house slave and keep him in a vat of water like a MINORITY REPORT Pre-Cog.

If only Ferris had dropped the appeal to “do good” and save eight million lives and sweetened the deal with a big paycheck, a country house, and a Ferrari in any color.

Johnson has a more pressing thing on his mind then the collapse of Los Angeles. He has seen a girl in his future at a diner. So every day he goes to the same diner waiting for her to appear. The girl does turn up and its gorgeous Liz Cooper (Jessica Biel). Johnson knows where she is going so he tells her he needs a lift to Arizona. Liz volunteers to take the weird stranger with her. Liz doesn’t know that she is his dream girl, he is running from the FBI, and the bad guys transporting the bomb are after him as well.

So here you have it – Johnson has gotten to his 40s by staying under the radar, and when his country needs him, he says “No” and runs.

Cage, still appearing shirtless in films and requiring a young lady to fall in love with him, must have seen the character’s glaring problem – why not get a good contract lawyer and save eight million innocent lives? Johnson’s position is weak, especially when he finds out he, and his dream girl, are being hunted by terrorists who will kill them. Instead, he keeps running and dodging bullets with his 2-minute warning super power.

Yes, the twists were neat and the dodging-bullets-thing well done. I love how Jessica Biel is fashioning her career. Instead of going on the Jessica Alba path, she did fine work in prestige projects THE ILLUSIONIST and HOME OF THE BRAVE. I even liked her in BLADE: TRINITY. The fact that she has no chemistry with Cage is not her fault. His Johnson character is just too creepy to have a sweet school-teacher like Liz fall immediately in love with him. Cage has more chemistry with Moore, who knows how to bark orders and, seeing that he had no chemistry with Biel, threw her dialogue at him with the same intensity he thinks is his sexy trademark.

Director Lee Tamahori not only kept the story going at a fast pace, and the CGI impressive, he crafted a plot that was enjoyable. And we all like an unexpected, satisfying twist at the end that delivers.

Credits:
Director: Lee Tamahori
Screenwriters: Gary Goldman, Jonathan Hensleigh, Paul Bernbaum
Screen story by: Gary Goldman
Based on a story by: Philip K. Dick
Producers: Nicolas Cage, Norm Golightly, Todd Garner, Arne L. Schmidt, Graham King
Executive producers: Gary Goldman, Jason Koornick, Benjamin Waisbren
Director of photography: David Tattersall
Production designer: William Sandell
Music: Mark Isham
Costume designer: Sanja Milkovic Hays
Editor: Christian Wagner

Cast:
Cris Johnson: Nicolas Cage
Callie Ferris: Julianne Moore
Liz: Jessica Biel
Mr. Smith: Thomas Kretschmann
Cavanaugh: Tory Kittles
Roybal: Jose Zuniga
Irv: Peter Falk

A Columbia Pictures release in association with Crystal Sky Pictures and Relativity Media / A Marvel Studios/Michael De Luca production
Running time — 110 minutes / MPAA rating PG-13

I’m not a comic book aficionado but I liked GR. Who was that bewigged 30 year old pretending to be Nic Cage?

In all candor, I do not read comic books, but that doesn’t mean I am prejudiced against possible money-making comic book franchises – which this clearly is. Done right, of course (I hate those soulless “Fantastic Four”). Nic Cage wanted to play Superman. Yes, he was a tad old for that gig even back a few years, but many people indulged him in that fantasy.

Looking 30 years old – with a botoxed brow and skin stretched too tight over cheek implants – Cage shows off a ripped, youthful body. He’s lithe, he’s thin, he’s wearing the movie star wig. He is not chewing up the scenery with over-acting. And we all know Cage is in the cabal of over-acting stars led by 1st Place Holder Jack Nicholson and 2nd Place Holder Al Pacino.

I did not know anything about Marvel’s “Ghost Rider” except we applauded the trailer when it was previewed a few weeks ago. How often does the audience do that?

Ben Affleck picked a superhero (“Daredevil”) with a disability (blindness) for his foray into Franchiseland – a stupid choice (but it took many more bombs than DAREDEVIL to sideline his career). Cage chose a motorcycle-riding anti-hero that spits fire and has a major flaw – he sold his soul to The Devil-With-A-Facelift. Don’t you just love it when The Devil is wearing a stylish Prada long trench and the latest in Brazilian faces?

The living emblem of cowboy righteous, Sam Elliot, opens GHOST RIDER with the story’s masculine history. It is the run-up to young Johnny Blaze (Matt Long) who works alongside his father Barton (Brett Cullen) in a circus motorcycle act.

Finding out Barton is dying of cancer, Johnny quickly does the right thing and sells his soul to Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) in exchange for his father’s clean bill of health.

Johnny does not read the fine print or have a lawyer present.

Instead of running around bragging, “Guess who I just met!”, Johnny is hoodwinked by The Big D. In the manner of the great Don Corleone, The Devil tells Johnny: “Someday – and that day may never come – I’ll call upon you to do a service for me.”Upset over his devil dupe, Johnny leaves his young girlfriend Roxanne (Raquel Alessi) and finds fame and fortune. Thirty years later, when we meet up with Johnny (Nicholas Cage) again, he’s a huge motorcycle-jumping superstar. He cannot die! He is invincible. He looks like he’s 30 years old too!

At Johnny’s career apex, Roxanne (Eva Mendes) returns. She is a TV reporter. She’s been watching him get filthy rich and famous. He’s been watching her interview mugging victims on local TV.

But, wouldn’t you know it? It’s payback time. No, Mephistopheles doesn’t need a birthday cake. He requires the services of a bounty hunter and calls upon Johnny to become his motorcycle-riding “Ghost Rider.” Johnny gets a neat superpower now. He can tell when evil people are around and he transforms into a fiery, skeleton in black leather. He kills bad people.

Mephistopheles has a problem: A mean, ungrateful son named Blackheart (Wes Bentley). His kid runs a gang of three buddy-demons. If Johnny gets back a1,000 Souls Contract that Blackheart is after, and kills the bastard, Mephistopheles will rescind his contract. He gets to keep his soul!

Lucky for Johnny, his new friend, graveyard denizen Caretaker (Sam Elliott), considers him “a kid” without a mentor. He tells him the ground rules and the lay-of-the-franchise-land.

Director-screenwriter Mark Steven Johnson redeems himself from the debacle that was DAREDEVIL. But DAREDEVIL did have an interesting look, and so does GHOST RIDER. At times Johnny’s lair reminded me of the J.F. Sebastian’s warehouse. GHOST RIDER’s story is nicely presented with a Devil Pact as the hook. While GHOST RIDER does not have the SPIDERMAN cartoon special effects budget, it has a gritty atmosphere that would have suffered with over-the-top digital effects.

Nic, you have your franchise now and I liked your goofy charm. Who, in Johnny’s place, wouldn’t try out a few superhero poses in the bathroom mirror? And you didn’t look fat in that Elvis motorcycle jumping costume.

Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Mark Steven Johnson
Producers: Avi Arad, Steven Paul, Michael De Luca, Gary Foster
Executive producers: E. Bennett Walsh, Ari Arad, Stan Lee, Norm Golightly, David S. Goyer, Lynwood Spinks
Director of photography: Russell Boyd
Production designer: Kirk M. Petruccelli
Film editor: Richard Francis-Bruce
Costume designer: Lizzy Gardiner
Special visual effects and animation: Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc.
Music: Christopher Young
Cast: Johnny Blaze: Nicolas Cage, Roxanne: Eva Mendes, Blackheart: Wes Bentley,
Caretaker: Sam Elliott, Mack: Donal Logue, Mephistopheles: Peter Fonda.

Warner Bros. Pictures / Alcon Entertainment and Millennium Films present a Saturn Films and Emmet/Furla Films production for Equity Pictures, Medienfonds, GmbH & Co., KG III and Nu Image Entertainment
MPAA rating PG-13 / Running time — 97 minutes

Human sacrifice and a stringent lesbian cult…what’s not to like?

Once again I will state that I do not condemn remakes of “classics.” I never saw the original 1973 THE WICKER MAN anyhow. Who did?

A Nicholas Cage film not previewed for the press? No radio-promotion-free-screenings for the great unwashed? Nevertheless, I don’t let the studios dictate to me what I can or cannot review. I can pay for a ticket.

Director-screenwriter Neil LaBute, not known for this kind of film, has updated this cult classic. And Nicolas Cage, one of the movie’s producers, must have liked the idea of being the only man in the cast who had a speaking part.

That should have tipped off his character.

Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage), a tough California motorcycle cop, gets a letter from a former fiancée, Sister Willow (Kate Beahan), asking him to help find her missing daughter. Malus is suffering from nightmares and hallucinations – due, no doubt, to his constantly swallowing some kind of prescription drug, ever since he nearly died helping a woman and her young daughter during a highway stop. They were killed suddenly when a truck slammed into them.

Willow cruelly dumped Edward, so now he goes to a remote, sealed-off-from-society island called Summersisle in the Pacific Northwest, populated by weird old women and very pregnant young girls. He wants to get some answers why Willow left him years ago. Willow doesn’t say much about this female-dominated community where everyone looks like archetypal lesbians and/or FLDS sister-wives. Willow should explain but doesn’t. Apparently, Edward and Willow had a very strange, non-verbal relationship that led to an engagement.

Edward gets rightly furious at everyone but stumbles along trying to find Ronan, Willow’s missing daughter. No one answers any questions and all the men on the island are mute and passive.

The island – which is a honey-producing farm – is run by a wacky priestess named Sister Summersisle (Ellen Burstyn) who has vestal virgins attending her. Edward flips out and starts running around the island searching for Ronan, getting himself nearly killed twice! He has no way to leave the island. He has no plan.

When I lived in Santa Fe, we would go to the yearly “Burning Man” festival. It was very illuminating. I understand how such a ceremony serves to purge and re-energize people. As the fire is lit, you can send all your misdeeds up in smoke! What’s not to like about purging all one’s sins? It’s not walking the “El Camino de Santiago,” or circumambulating Mount Kailash on foot to erase past and future lives’ karma. (If you can endure the high altitude stress, you should circle Mount Kailash on your stomach).

With elderly Sister Summersisle and Willow walking around like a used rag doll, it’s up to the audience to instill THE WICKER MAN with sexual overtones and the type of sinister horror that LaBute misses.

There is a lot wrong with THE WICKER MAN: The casting could have been better, Cage could have had hair people on set, a more psycho-sexual subtext, better occultism, and perhaps better editing of Cage’s at times silly dialogue.

I did like the premise, the supporting cast of Frances Conroy, Molly Parker, and Leelee Sobieski, as well as the surprise ending. And Cage’s character is tough and nasty as he gets more and more hysterical. There is a strangeness to the remote location that is intoxicating, and with Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting score, THE WICKER MAN is enjoyable.

Victoria:

I just finished your review of “The Wicker Man” and wanted
to thank you for taking the film on its own faults/merits
rather than simply comparing it to the original. Much
appreciated and a pleasure to read.

Thanks again for your incisive thoughts–keep up the good
work.

Neil Labute

Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Neil LaBute
Producers: Nicolas Cage, Norm Golightly, Avi Lerner, Randall Emmett, John Thompson, Boaz Davidson
Executive producers: George Furla, Joanne Sellar, Trevor Short, Andreas Thiesmayer, Josef Lautenschlager, Danny Dimbort, Elisa Salinas
Director of photography: Paul Sarossy
Editor: Joel Plotch
Production designer: Phillip Barker
Costume designer: Lynette Meyer
Music: Angelo Badalamenti

Cast:
Edward Malus: Nicolas Cage
Sister Summersisle: Ellen Burstyn
Sister Willow: Kate Beahan
Dr. Moss: Frances Conroy
Sister Rose: Molly Parker
Sister Honey: Leelee Sobieski
Sister Beech: Diane Delano

Paramount and Escape Artists present an Escape Artists production
MPAA rating R / Running time — 100 minutes

Free-floating depression and the mocking of a twelve-year old for comedic relief.

I related to THE WEATHER MAN on two points: (1) I live in Las Vegas where there is never foul weather. Las Vegas weather men are ceremonial TV positions. I miss the misery of New York City weather. THE WEATHER MAN brings to those of us outside of domain of miserable weather another colorful landscape. We are privileged in Las Vegas. Our cars always start. We never have to scrape ice off the windshield. (2) I spent two years as a member of the Dover, New Jersey Archery Club. I entered tournaments. I have a custom-made compound bow and all the accoutrements of the sport including a huge traveling bag, archery binoculars, a perfect stabilizer and scope, and custom-made-to-my-specifications arrows.

Archery is a metaphor in THE WEATHER MAN.

Someone has to stop Nicholas Cage from narrating all his movies. He’s having a love affair with his voice. He narrates LORD OF WAR and now THE WEATHER MAN. Last night he narrated a dream of mine.

I’m imploring you, Mr. Cage, stop it.

Is narration necessary? Show me. Film is a visual medium. No, stars want to narrate a movie so that even when they are not on screen, you are hearing their voice and thinking about them.

David Spritz (Nicholas Cage) is a weather man for a local Chicago TV station. He admits he guesses about the weather, works two hours a day, is not a meteorologist, and makes a quarter of a million dollars a year. He has a nice, glossy city apartment. His ex-wife Noreen (Hope Davis) and his two kids, twelve year old Shelly (Gemmenne De La Pena) and fifteen year old Mike (Nicholas Hoult) live in the suburbs in a mansion. His father Robert Spritz (Michael Caine) is a world renowned, Pulitzer Prize winning author. David’s mother is a shadowy figure. THE WEATHER MAN is about a man in a crisis finally realizing he has failed making his father proud of him.

David is miserable even though he is famous in Chicago. Sure, he gets sex without trying but Noreen has a boyfriend and his father disapproves of his chubby daughter. Noreen is oblivious to the teasing Shelly gets at school. I blame Noreen for allowing Shelly to get fat and wear clothes that everyone ridicules. Mike already has a court-appointed counselor, Bill (Gil Bellows). Noreen isn’t keeping tabs on Mike and his too interested counselor. Noreen is a lousy mother. David wants to get back with her.

For some reason, Chicagoans love to throw fast food and drinks at David as he walks around town. I’ve never heard of this. Have you?

At the center of THE WEATHER MAN is David’s contentious relationship with his father, which changes once the old man is diagnosed with a fatal disease. David tries to interest Shelly in archery but takes up the sport and starts to use it as a metaphor for – I don’t know – focusing on who you are? I thought it was all about just hitting the bull’s eye.

It is a very sexy sport. A compound bow is sleek. However, I would never ruin my arrows by going outdoors. You have to deal with wind and dirt.

I never walked around showing off my bow, or with my arrows sticking out of my quiver slung over my back. I never thought of the bow and arrow as an extension of the penis. I never thought archery was a metaphor for sexual domination.

There is only one brilliant scene in THE WEATHER MAN; yet, the shock of the movie is the acknowledgement of the underground term “camel toe.” Unfortunately, this cruelly amusing piece is given to Shelly to shoulder.

Isn’t a man of David’s age too old to face the freedom of losing a father? Because, with his father’s death, David is liberated. And while it is David who buys Shelly new clothes, she will have the disapproving Noreen haunting her adult life.

At first I thought the theatre was using an old bulb. THE WEATHER MAN is so dark and washed out that it was hard to concentrate on the story. After adjusting to cinematographer Phedon Papamichael’s vision, I enjoyed the bleakness of the snow and grim rain. The mood set, you couldn’t help but see life exactly as David does, and agree with him. Life sucks, but if you were making a quarter of a million dollars a year for two hours a day of work, you’d find some joy somewhere. Free-floating depression is not pretty.

Cast:
David Spritz: Nicolas Cage
Robert Spritz: Michael Caine
Noreen: Hope Davis
Don: Gil Bellows
Russ: Michael Rispoli
Shelly: Gemmenne De La Pena
Mike: Nicholas Hoult

Credits:
Director: Gore Verbinski
Screenwriter/co-producer: Steven Conrad
Producers: Todd Black, Steve Tisch, Jason Blumenthal
Executive producers: David Alper, William S. Beasley, Norm Golightly
Director of photography: Phedon Papamichael
Production designer: Tom Duffield
Music: Hans Zimmer
Costumes: Penny Rose
Editor: Craig Wood

QUOTE: While clues abound in National Treasure, I was left clueless.

Isn’t Nicholas Cage a little long in the tooth to be running around treasure hunting with a young buddy? The screenwriters address this by having Cage’s character, Benjamin Franklin Gates, comment on his lack of current female involvement. But don’t worry, the other guy, Riley Poole (Justin Bartha), does not get the girl, gorgeous German actress Diane Kruger, who, like Denise Richards in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, plays an improbable character – National Archives Conservator of the Charters of Freedom, Dr. Abigail Chase.

In “The Tomb of God: The Body of Jesus and the Solution to a 2,000-Year-Old Mystery” by Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger, the authors have thoroughly researched a wild theory: The Knights Templar removed Christ’s body from Jerusalem and brought it to France. They left clues in paintings as to its location such as the tilted equilateral triangle. Did you ever notice that Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s painting of Lord George Stuart shows Stuart’s staff at 72 degrees to the horizontal? A line joining the tip of his forefinger to the lower end of the staff is at 75 degrees to the horizontal. It’s a clue to the tomb’s site. A French village parish priest discovered some encrypted parchments in the altar of a local church. The search began. There are many paintings of angels and saints pointing somewhere. This finger-pointing, and a noticeable degree of rotation, are clues.

(That’s me below kissing, supposedly, the empty Tomb of God in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.)

The Gates family has a long, but dismal history for hunting, unsuccessfully, a rumored treasure – The Knights Templar Treasure – much more fantastic than the actual bones of Christ.

The Masons, an off-shoot of the Knights Templar, hid a huge, mysterious treasure someplace in the U.S. Several Founding Fathers were Masons. That’s why there are lots of strange markings on our dollar bills. That floating eye is a Mason clue? Gates comes to believe that the back of the Declaration of Independence holds a map to The Treasure. He has teamed up with his wealthy patron Ian Howe (Sean Bean). When Howe announces he will steal the Declaration, Gates decides to steal it first to protect it.

Stealing the Declaration of Independence is a cakewalk. Gates knows his way around high value, priceless thievery. One assistant and millions of dollars worth of equipment – that is all it takes.

This is the type of movie that relies on the computer genius buddy to have every password, tool, and solution to all seemingly impregnable problems.

Gates knows minutia about the Founding Fathers that allows him to decode riddles and clues that exhaust the audience.

While Gates, Poole and tag-along Dr. Chase dope out the most outrageous clues hidden for 200 years, Howe and his thugs are right behind them. The clues are so convoluted that boredom sets in. If any of the clues actually made sense it might be fun for us to go along for the ride, but what do we know about weird markings on a church corresponding to the position of the Orion Galaxy in the year 612 B.C.?

Apparently, Nicholas Cage likes working with producer Jerry Bruckheimer. This is their fourth collaboration (THE ROCK, CON AIR, and GONE IN 60 SECONDS). Unlike these other films, NATIONAL TREASURE dumps the team spirit, leaving Cage and his lady friend to miraculously dope out far-flung trivia. And the resolution? I was rather insulted with the premise that our Founding Fathers were behind such massive looting and hid priceless treasures for hundreds of years depriving the common unwashed of such knowledge.

Cast:
Nicolas Cage – Ben Gates
Diane Kruger – Abigail Chase
Justin Bartha – Riley Poole
Sean Bean – Ian Howe
Jon Voight – Patrick Gates
Harvey Keitel – Sadusky