Nicolas Cage returns to Shitty Movie Sundays with a flick that was released just this past month, although one would be hard-pressed to find a theater that’s shown it.
Primal comes to us from screenwriter Richard Leder and director Nick Powell. Cage stars as Frank Walsh, a selfish, world-weary wiseass who hunts and captures wild animals to sell to zoos.
Like in every shitty movie he’s been in, Cage overacts. He can’t seem to help himself, and that’s fine with this shitty movie fan. Often, especially in revenge flicks, Cage plays melancholy so deep its laughable. Not in this flick, though. His Frank Walsh character is just as damaged as any of the other characters he has played, but there’s no hint of a dead wife, or girlfriend, or kid — no hint he’s carrying a dark secret. In this flick, Cage is just an asshole.
The film opens with Cage bagging a white jaguar in a South American jungle. It’s the biggest get of his life. Selling it to the highest bidder means retirement. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Primal (2019)”
Thank 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.
What a putrid mess. Dead Trigger, from 2017 but resting on a shelf until this year, is an adaptation of a video game. It’s not the worst video game adaptation I’ve ever seen (that title belt is, and very well always could be, held by House of the Dead), but, it is a properly awful movie. It’s a good thing for the shitty movie fan that this film stars Dolph Lundgren, who has been gracing productions like this for over 30 years. The man is a shitty movie legend — the Tom Brady of bottom feeding dreck.
What a vile, vile movie. It could have been worse. Oh, so much worse. But, this flick still managed to plumb the depths of taste, artistry, technique, and every other highfalutin term about film one can come up with. It’s the type of film that counts on awakening the hormonal 13-year-old boy in all of us. I’m not even sure 13-year-old boys would like this trash much, though.