nicolas cage Archives - Greg King's Film Reviews

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT

Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Tom Gormican Stars: Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Sahron Horgan, Tiffany Haddish Ike Barinholtz, Lily Mo Sheen, Neil Patrick Harris, Paco Leon, Demi Moore, Alessandra Mastronardi, David Gordon Green. Nicolas Cage, the Oscar winning actor and iconic and prolific star of nearly 100 movies, plays a thinly disguised fictional version of himself in this entertaining and enjoyable action comedy that explores the fickle nature of fame, the process of making a movie and the movie industry itself. Cage is undergoing some sort of …

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SPIDERMAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

Action, Adventure, Animation, Drama, Family, Film Review, S

Reviewed by GREG KING Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman Stars: voices of: Shamiek Moore, Brian Tyree Henry, Mahershala Ali, Hailee Steinfeld, Nicolas Cage, Chris Pine, Jake Johnson, Kimiko Glenn, John Mulaney, Liev Schreiber, Lily Tomlin, Kathryn Hahn, Stan Lee, Zoe Kravitz, Luna Lauren Velez, Natalie Morales, Oscar Isaac, Lake Bell. From Marvel Studios in association with Sony Animation Studios this subversive take on the whole superhero genre gives us one of the more sophisticated examples of animation to hit our screens in recent years. …

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MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018 – reviews

Drama, Action, Comedy, film festival, Film Review, Horror, L, M, W

ALL REVIEWS WRITTEN BY GREG KING LAST UPDATED AUGUST 17, 2018 THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE. The struggles faced by idiosyncratic and maverick filmmaker Terry Gilliam in trying to bring to the screen his long gestating passion project about Don Quixote have been well detailed in the fascinating 2002 documentary Lost In La Mancha. That film told of the storms that destroyed sets, the lack of financial support and the ill health of its star, all of which combined to halt production within a week of the project starting physical production. Now some twenty years …

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SNOWDEN

biopic, Drama, Film Review, S

Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Oliver Stone Stars: Joseph Gordon Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Rhys Ifans, Nicolas Cage, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quino, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Olyphant, Scott Eastwood, Ben Schnetzer, Ben Chaplin, Logan Marshall Green, Joely Richardson. Dual Oscar winning filmmaker Oliver Stone is a polarising figure with a strong political conscience whose films often shake up the establishment. His films have often explored themes of power and corruption and complex issues about American values in the modern world. He has explored some of the darker …

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JOE

Drama, Film Review, J

Reviewed by GREG KING Director: David Gordon Green Stars: Nicolas Cage, Tye Sheridan, Gary Poulson, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Adriene Mishler, Brian Mays, Aaron Spivey-Sorrells, Sue Rock, Heather Kafka. Not to be confused with John G Avildsen's blistering 1970 drama of the same name, which starred the late Peter Boyle as a viciously unrepentant bigot, David Gordon Green's gritty drama taps into the Southern noir aesthetic with its themes of masculinity, revenge, retribution and violence. It also mixes these more adult themes with the tropes of the coming of age tale. And …

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SEASON OF THE WITCH

Adventure, Film Review, S

Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Dominic Sena Stars: Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Claire Foy, Christopher Lee, Robert Sheehan, Ulrich Thompson, Stephen Campbell Moore, Stephen Graham. Sneaking into cinemas without much fanfare is Season Of The Witch, a rather dull, disappointing and inherently silly sword and sorcery adventure set in 14th century Europe. This clunky $40 million production flopped at the US box office and is being thrown away by the local distributors before it disappears onto DVD. The 14th century was a time of religious zealotry, the bloody …

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SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

Drama, Film Review, Horror, S

Reviewed by GREG KING Director: E Elias Merhige Stars: John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Catherine McCormack, Cary Elwes, Udo Kier, Eddie Izzard, John Aden Gillet, Ronan Vibert. Exploring the behind the scenes drama of film making holds a natural attraction for film makers, and E Elias Merhige's sharp and irreverent Shadow Of the Vampire is probably the best of its type since Ed Wood. A clever and wry black comedy, Shadow Of The Vampire takes a fictitious look behind the scenes of the making of Nosferatu, one of the most influential and highly regarded of all …

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THE FAMILY MAN

Drama, Film Review, T

Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Brett Ratner Stars: Nicolas Cage, Tea Leoni, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Piven, Saul Rubinek, Josef Sommer, Harve Presnell, Amber Valletta, Mackenzie Vega. The spirit of Frank Capra's enduring Christmas classic It's A Wonderful Life runs throughout this well meaning romantic comedy/drama in which a rapacious, uptight Wall Street broker suddenly discovers that maybe greed is not so good and, sometimes, the best things in life are the simple things. Thirteen years ago, hot shot financial whiz kid Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) left his …

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