The Mission Statement and Methodology for this Madness

"I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion."

- Nicolas Kim Coppola

I don't know why I tilt at windmills. Quixote doubtless knew not the reason either. A victim of my own Stinsonian "challenge accepted" madness, I decided to watch Nic Cage's every movie and then write about the experience after finding myself on several occasions defending his acting. At some point, perhaps while grappling with said madness, I realized that while I know Cage has done some wonderful work, like Raising Arizona, he's also thrown out some terrible dung, like The Wicker Man, making him an actor of "range" albeit, not the kind that folks tend to revere. 

It became a mission for me to gorge upon Cage's filmography, to develop an actual feel for whether or not he truly is as bad an actor as folks claim. Surely he's got something going for him. National Treasure was an immensely successful film and there are several movies that Cage has made that I really enjoy. It's no surprise that as part of his colossal body of work, there are some stinkers, since he has a reputation for taking any role that folks hand him, but how much trash truly floats in the oceanic depths of Cage's billing? And what of his lesser known projects? His penchant for weirdness and oddball films have given us fairly interesting films like Adaptation. 

So here's the gist. I'm going to watch every movie Nicolas Cage has ever made, with a few exceptions. I'm excluding Fast Times at Ridgemont High because I have seen it ad nauseam and his role is fairly minuscule. Anything where he has a cameo I am also omitting. Small roles are okay, but the few instances where he had mere seconds of screen time, I'm not going to commit time to when I've got Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance to watch. Ya feel me? I'm also not watching the made-for-TV movie he starred in before everything else because I don't have the time or inclination. There are some depths to which I will not dive. My goal is to do this sequentially with respect to release date, earliest to latest. 

Because this is a Nic Cage-centered exercise, my reviews of the movies will have to bend towards what Cage brings to it. I'll be rating the movie for sure, but I'm also going to be singling out Cage's role in it and try to establish whether he improved or otherwise worsened the film. 

I'm not completely sure what will be gained by doing this, but I am going to do it anyway, dammit. My hope is that by diving into an actor's lifetime of work, I can find some nuggets of goodness I can abscond with. Why not have it be Nicolas Cage? 

Stay tuned, friends.