Nicolas Cage

For the past few Januarys, the good folks at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin have thrown a celebration of cinema’s greatest living actor called C4GED, in which they screen a surprise selection of five films starring Academy Award-winner Nicolas Cage back to back. Whether you fall into the so-bad-he’s-good camp or rightly recognize the Cage as a genuinely masterful and widely misunderstood thespian, it’s a roaring good time for all, with an open invitation extended to Cage so that he may come and receive happy birthday wishes. (The festival was specifically scheduled to fall in Cage’s birth month.) He’s never taken them up on the offer before, but this year was a little special.

The first weekend of 2017 will also give us the first Nicolas Cage movie of 2017 (but by no means the last; according to IMDb, Cage will appear in at least five more films this year). It’s called Arsenal, and in most respects it is a fairly standard DTV crime thriller; Adrian Grenier and Johnathon Schaech play brothers who get entangled in the criminal underworld and have to fight their way out.

At first glance, Arsenal looks like your average bonkers Nicolas Cage movie, if not slightly more emphatic than usual. But don’t let yourself be distracted by John Cusack’s do-rag and the sudden realization that Jonathon Schaech still exists — those things have been placed in the trailer to intentionally mislead you, for any true Cage fan will certainly recognize that Arsenal is not some basic VOD Cage Gone Wild experience; it is almost definitely a not-so-unofficial sequel to Cage’s forgotten 1993 film, Deadfall.

No, it’s not a sequel to The Adjustment Bureau, and, no, Nic Cage probably won’t wear one of those nifty dimension-hopping hats. The Humanity Bureau sounds like more of a Gattaca-meets-Elysium kind of thing, where people are unfairly assigned to live in poverty based on whether or not they’re productive to society. And Nicolas Cage has been cast to save them all, of course.

Whatever holiday you celebrate in December, it comes with a lot of pressure. If you get that special someone the wrong gift, watch out. Things can get pretty ugly. That’s particularly true for pop-culture fans. They know what they want, and they probably have most of it already. Perhaps you know someone like this. Perhaps you are someone like this. (Perhaps I am someone like this.)

For an actor whose superhero prospects haven’t always been stellar, Nicolas Cage sure does love superhero movies. His role as Big Daddy in Kick-Ass was the most positively received, but critics and audiences alike were lukewarm-to-cold on his Johnny Blaze in the Ghost Rider movies (Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is actually a good movie, okay). Cage isn’t salty about it though, revealing that he really did enjoy this year’s three most recent superhero movies (minus Doctor Strange).

After over 40 years of working in film, Paul Schrader remains as challenging as he was when he first caught Martin Scorsese’s attention with his screenplay for Taxi Driver. They made three more films together, but Schrader established himself as the more unconventional of the two when he took control of the camera. Decades later, Schrader’s filmography is just as prolific with singular titles like Hardcore, Cat People, and Dog Eat Dog — the latter is his most recent effort, a delirious crime thriller starring Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe that is every bit as wild as that simple description implies, and the reason for our conversation with the veteran filmmaker.

Few would argue that Deadwood alum Ian McShane made inspired casting for Bryan Fuller’s American Gods, but things could have been much, much weirder. According to Nicolas Cage (yes, that Nicolas Cage, just for re-emphasis), Starz’s hotly-anticipated series nearly cast him as Mr. Wednesday.

These are difficult times for our nation. Our citizenry is more divided than ever. The election could plunge our world into chaos. There is only one salve for our collective wounds: Nicolas Cage hunting for Osama Bin Laden.

Paul Schrader is a living Hollywood legend. Even if the man never wrote or directed another movie, his work as a screenwriter for Martin Scorsese  —  which includes Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Bringing Out the Dead  —  would ensure his legacy for generations to come. Thankfully, Schrader is still very much out there and looking to get his films made. Dog Eat Dog opened to mixed reviews at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, but even those who didn’t like it agreed that Schrader still has style to spare as a filmmaker. And now we’ve finally got a chance to check out the first trailer for his newest film.