TheRetroCritic

Welcome to another of my Top 10s! This time I'm looking at Nicolas Cage movies and if you know me at all then you know that Mr Cage is something of an obsession with me... I'll be counting down the Top 10 Cage films that I personally enjoy watching the most. I'll be leaving out loads of good movies of course ( Lord Of War ), as well as movies I haven't seen in a long time and really need to re-watch ( Snake Eyes , 8MM , The Rock ) so I might revisit this list eventually. Some films that I actually quite like, I'm thinking Trapped In Paradise , Matchstick Men or Peggy Sue got Married just missed out on the list which includes genuinely good movies and movies which may not be particularly great (or simply so bad they're good) but are worth watching since The Cage is at his most entertaining. On that note, lets "Cage" that shit up: 10 DEADFALL/THE WICKER MAN In the so-bad-they're-good category, here we have two films, both clunky

For a film about downsizing, Up In The Air really doesn't have much to say on the matter except, well, that it's a painful experience. But that's hardly an innovative notion. As a character study though, Up In The Air is pretty good with George Clooney's Ryan not exactly the kind of guy you expect to end up liking but you do anyway. It's light, breezy, funny, stylish and pretty entertaining.  The Oscar buzz feels undeserved though, as good as Clooney is, his performance doesn't exactly leap off the screen and as fun as the film is, it doesn't have much to say besides the old Disney message that families are "good". Unlike Reitman's  Thank You For Smoking  which was far more convincing as a similar type of study. Overall, see it, just don't expect  Lost in Translation .  

Climbing back up the hill after cult classic cinematic catastrophe The Happening was always going to be a tough one. With The Last Airbender, Shyamalan takes a small step in the right direction but still falters on so many levels making this last effort better than his Mark Wahlberg turkey but just about. M Night Shyamalan's de-evolution as a filmmaker could be traced back to when he really became Shyamalan the "auteur" with Lady in the Water . The latter had its merits and was wrongfully underrated upon release but it was flawed, clunky and uneven like no other Shyamalan film had been before. Even a lesser effort like Signs felt focused and acutely paced and executed compared to it. One can only conclude that M Night is just not a good screenwriter. The naivity and annoyingly juvenile undertones of his ideas just fly through his script pages like concords cancelling all senses of danger, suspense or darkness from the finished material. A horror film like The Happeni