Shitty Movie Sundays: Next

Next movie posterThank goodness for Nicolas Cage. He could have been like so many other best actor Oscar-winners and gone on to a lifetime of prestige roles and special appearances, but Cage decided to zig instead of zag. He’s a prolific worker, but a casual movie fan can be forgiven should they be unable to name anything he’s been in for the past ten years. He has fully, and without reservation it seems, given his life over to shitty movies. Just this year he has starred in a film about a former government assassin who runs a fleabag hotel in South America, another film about zoo animals running loose on a cargo ship, a neo-noir thriller, a drug wars action flick, an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, and a second neo-noir thriller. Six movies! And not one of them has been good enough to advertise during sporting events or primetime TV. But, I bet they’re all entertaining flicks.

This review steps back in time a little bit, to the tail end of Cage’s time as an A-lister.

From 2007, Next stars Cage as Cris Johnson, a smalltime Las Vegas stage magician who happens to have a real psychic talent. Johnson is able to see two minutes into his future and make decisions based off of those visions. It’s a pretty useful talent to have in a shitty magic act, and also makes him a buttload of cash at the blackjack tables. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Next”

The Empty Balcony: Total Recall (2012)

It’s no secret. Hollywood loves remakes. They love squeezing new cash out of old ideas. And why not? We’re a country that embraces the familiar. We find comfort in it. It’s this tendency of the public to seek out what it already knows that makes Applebee’s and the Olive Garden successful properties in Times Square. Who the hell would come all the way to New York City only to eat the same food they can get in Boise? Americans, that’s who. Continue readingThe Empty Balcony: Total Recall (2012)”