After watchingNicolas Cagesend up his career inThe Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, it’s the perfect time to check out all the great movies he references in it.The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talentsees Cage satirizing his own filmography and celebrity persona, à laCurb Your Enthusiasm, as he plays an exaggerated version of himself. During a slump in his career, Cage gets his groove back when he’s paid $1 million to appear at the birthday party ofsuperfan Javi Gutiérrez, played by Pedro Pascal.
The movie includes plenty of parodies and homages to Cage’s storied film career. Javi has a room in his house filled with Cage memorabilia: props, costumes, and wax figures immortalizing the most iconic works of Cage’s past.Cage has starred in a wide variety of moviesthroughout his life, showing off an impressive amount of dramatic range. He’s been a badass action hero in movies likeCon AirandFace/Off, a soulful thespian in movies likeLeaving Las Vegas, and a hilarious comedic performer in movies likeAdaptationandRaising Arizona.
10Con Air
When Javi shows Cage his memorabilia room, a small portrait of hisCon Aircharacter Cameron Poe is on display. He also has a replica of the burnt toy bunny prop from the film.Con Airis one of the greatest action movies ever made. Poe is easy to root for; he’s a loving husband and father who just wants to get home to his family after serving a prison sentence for an accidental killing in self-defense. Unfortunately for him, the prison transport plane he’s on is hijacked by convicts on their way to a supermax.
Con Airis an explosive spectacle, with thrilling action sequences and delightfully pulpy bad guys, but it’s also surprisingly emotional. Poe’s love for his family, symbolized by the bunny, gives the movie a compelling drama.Con Air’s cast features world-class actors like John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, and Ving Rhames, and in spite of the material, none of them phone it in.
9Moonstruck
Cage scored one of his earliest starring roles in the romantic comedyMoonstruck, and it remains one of the best performances of his career.Moonstruckstars Cher as an Italian American widow who falls for her fiancé’s estranged younger brother, played by Cage. Cage’s character is volatile, unpredictable, and endlessly hilarious. He has a wooden prosthetic hand due to carelessly putting his hand in a bread slicer, and that hand appears in Javi’s Nick Cage memorabilia room.
It’s rare that the Academy recognizes romcoms, butMoonstruckis so great that it landed six Oscar nominations and won three, including Best Actress for Cher. She shares spectacular chemistry with Cage in the central love story. A lot of romcoms let the romance or the comedy overshadow the other, butMoonstruckis as laugh-out-loud funny as it is hopelessly romantic.
8National Treasure
Javi’s memorabilia room also contains a copy of the screenplay forNational Treasure, and the torch prop that Cage carried in the movie.National Treasureis an intoxicating blend ofIndiana Jones-style action-adventure and a heist movie playing on the various conspiracy theories about American history. Cage plays historian Benjamin Franklin Gates, who races his employer-turned-rival in the search for a lost Freemason treasure, which is highlighted on a map hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence.
The plot ofNational Treasureis so absurd and far-fetched that it could be a parody of itself. But that doesn’t matter, because the execution is so much fun that the audience gets swept along for the ride anyway. It’s a throwback to classic adventure B-movies of the ‘50s, and Cage’s sincerity makes the shaky plotting land.
7Mandy
Javi tells Cage that he’s a big fan ofMandy, and even owns the chainsaw that Cage used in one of the film’s most bonkers set-pieces: a blood-soaked chainsaw duel.Mandyis a gonzo action horror opuswith some of the most disturbing and mind-bending psychedelic visuals ever committed to film. Cage plays a rural lumberjack who seeks revenge against a sadistic cult leader and his followers after they ritualistically slaughter the love of his life.
The story ofMandyis as simple as they come — a mild-mannered everyman is wronged, then uncovers a sinister violent nature to exact vengeance against the people responsible — but the aesthetic is anything but.Mandyis one of the most singular cinematic visions of the 21st century. There’s no other movie out there that looks quite like this one.
6It Could Happen To You
Another one of Javi’s prized Cage movie props is the lottery ticket fromIt Could Happen to You. The plot was inspired by a real-life news story. Cage plays an NYPD cop who stops at a diner and doesn’t have enough cash to tip his waitress, played by Bridget Fonda. He half-jokingly offers to share his fortune with her if he happens to win the lottery. The next day, his ticket yields a $4 million share of the lottery prize.
What follows is a surprisingly touching love story. The conceit that brings these characters together is pretty unique, but the emotions of their romance are universal. Cage is charming as always and Fonda is well-matched as his kind-hearted partner.It Could Happen to Youdoesn’t get a lot of discussion in the romcom fandom, but it’s massively underrated.
5Adaptation
Nick and Javi’s bromance inThe Unbearable Weight of Massive Talentis solidified by Nick’s rendition of “Happy Together” by The Turtles. This isn’t the first time that Cage has sung “Happy Together” in a movie; he also performed the song inan earlier self-aware satire,Adaptation. Cage’s dual role as himself and his imaginary counterpart inThe Unbearable Weight of Massive Talentis a callback to his double duty inAdaptation.
While struggling to adaptThe Orchid Thiefinto a screenplay, Charlie Kaufman instead wrote a tongue-in-cheek comedy about his struggles to adapt the book. Cage plays both Charlie, a brilliant screenwriter with lofty ambitions, and his fictional twin brother Donald, a hack screenwriter who relies on tropes and clichés (and achieves much more success because of it). Cage gives two of his funniest performances inAdaptation.
4Wild At Heart
All throughoutThe Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Cage is tormented by “Nicky Cage,” a figment of his imagination who resembles his younger, wilder self. These imaginary conversations are a reference to Allan’s chats with Humphrey Bogart inPlay It Again, Samand Clarence’s chats with Elvis Presley inTrue Romance. But the appearance of Nicky Cage is specifically based on Cage’s character fromWild at Heart.
The film community recently suffered a tragic loss withthe passing of David Lynch, andWild at Heartremains one of Lynch’s most underappreciated movies. Cage and Laura Dern star as young lovers Sailor Ripley and Lula Fortune, who go on the run to escape the hitmen that Lula’s overbearing mother has hired to kill Sailor.Wild at Heartis a riveting crime thriller, a twisted pitch-black comedy, and a surprisingly heartfelt love story all rolled into one.
3Face/Off
The centerpiece of Javi’s Nick Cage memorabilia room is a life-size wax figure of Castor Troy, Cage’s character from the classic action thrillerFace/Off, complete with his iconic golden guns. John Travolta plays an FBI agent and Cage plays the terrorist who murdered his son. As part of a convoluted investigation, they undergo a secret government experiment to switch faces and assume each other’s identities.
In the hands oflegendary director John Woo,Face/Offis a masterpiece of action cinema. Its action scenes are so operatic and over-the-top that they match the absurdity of the plot. Cage and Travolta have a ton of fun playing each other and affecting each other’s mannerisms after the characters switch places.Face/Offsounds ridiculous on paper, but the movie itself works really well in the execution — it’s a gem.
2Leaving Las Vegas
Cage earned a much-deserved Academy Award for Best Actor for his breathtaking work inLeaving Las Vegas. He plays an alcoholic writer who heads to Vegas to drink himself to death and ends up falling in love with a sex worker, played by Elisabeth Shue. As they both attempt to escape their miserable lives, they find a kindred spirit in one another.The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talenthas a direct reference toLeaving Las Vegas: when Cage is at his lowest point, he’s shown drinking a beer at the bottom of a swimming pool.
Just when he was gaining a reputation as an action star, Cage threw critics and audiences a curveball with his heartbreaking dramatic turn inLeaving Las Vegas. He captures the self-destructive tendencies of an addict with devastating authenticity. Cage and Shue round out two classic stock characters into three-dimensional human beings.
1Raising Arizona
In Javi’s Nick Cage room, a small portrait of H.I. McDunnough, Cage’s character fromthe Coen brothers’ endlessly quotable crime caperRaising Arizona, can be seen on display. He also has a diaper pack prop from the movie.Raising Arizonastars Cage as an ex-con and Holly Hunter as an ex-cop. When they fall in love and want to start a family, they find that they can’t conceive due to biological reasons and can’t adopt due to legal reasons. When a local furniture tycoon has quintuplets, they decide to kidnap one and raise him as their own son.
AlthoughRaising Arizonawas just their second feature film afterBlood Simple, the Coens’ quirky comedic sensibility was fully formed. The situation is shamelessly dark, but there’s plenty of lighthearted slapstick humor.Raising Arizonais a classic farce, andNicolas Cagefits in perfectly with that tone.
