Nathan Rabin's Happy Cast

Third time's the charm for returning guest (and video essayist extraordinaire) Patrick H. Willems, as we strap ourselves into the driver's seat for a pair of gonzo Cage-rage drivin' devil movies! First up is Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, the Neveldine/Taylor-directed sequel to the 2000s adaptation of the Marvel comic character, with Cage reprising his role as cursed cyclist Johnny Blaze. This time, he's scraping at the door in Romania, going full Terminator 2 as he keeps the Devil (a scowling Ciaran Hinds) away from his kid. Meanwhile, Neveldine and Taylor do their Crank thing to mixed results, and Idris Elba is completely wasted as a French motorcycle priest(?) obsessed with helping the good guys. Then, we shift gears to Patrick Lussier's Drive Angry 3-D, a faux-grindhouse pastiche filled with more lolrandom epic bacon humor and random CG objects popping out at the screen than you could imagine. Still, it's got a lowbrow charm to it, and William Fichtner somehow out-acts Cage as a smarmy Accountant from

This week, we continue our descent into the early 2010s with the two films that truly cemented Cage's "will-do-anything-for-money" phase! First, there's Seeking Justice, the Roger Donaldson-directed thriller about a mild-mannered English teacher (Cage) who decides to enlist the services of a kind of civilian vengeance business (led by a shaved-headed Guy Pearce) to avenge the brutal rape of his wife (January Jones, giving us nothing). Thus begins a freefall into violence and madness, shot with all the direct-to-DVD flatness of a geezer teaser. Then, there's Trespass, the last (and worst) film by Joel Schumacher, a tepid home-invasion thriller where a group of thugs (with an overacting Ben Mendelsohn at the front) break into the home of a "wealthy" jewel dealer (Cage), only for him and his wife (Nicole Kidman, who knows why she agreed to be in this) to enter a tense negotiation for their lives. Well, I *say* tense, but the film is content to fill itself with more twists than a loaf of challah.  Pledge to our P

This week, Nathan and Clint meet up for a rare in-person podcast! It's a double-dose of fantastical, flop-haired Cage this week, as he fights the forces of evil with swords, magic, and no small amount of dodgy CGI sorcery.  First up is his third and final Disney collab with Jon Turteltaub, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, where he plays Obi-Wan (with a sick leather trenchcoat) to a baby wizard played by Jay Baruchel at peak nebbish nerdiness. It's ostensibly an adaptation of that bit from Fantasia where Mickey Mouse makes the mops dance, but filtered through a buttload of Harry Potter and a vastly overqualified cast. Then, we go small for the folk horror-inspired slog Season of the Witch, where Cage and Ron Perlman play deserters from the Crusades tasked with escorting a maybe-witch (Claire Foy) to a distant monastery where they might exorcise her. There are glimmers of some neat Hammer horror darkness -- see plague-ridden Christopher Lee -- but it's otherwise a dim, cheap action-horror pastiche.  Pledge to our Pat

This week, Nathan and Clint go it alone to kickstart our Cage-heavy catchup through the 2010s, blazing through his robust filmography while Travolta peeks in every once in a while! Still, this revamped schedule allows us to indulge in some genuinely wacky double features, like Cage as the unhinged father figure to two superheroic tots! First, there's his sleepy performance as Dr. Tenma in Astro-Boy, the adaptation of the classic manga twisted into a four-quadrant CGI kids' blockbuster (with some of the smoothest, ugliest character designs you ever did see). Then, we strap on our Batsuits and watch Cage ham it up in Matthew Vaughn's bloodbath of superhero misanthropy, Kick-Ass! Come for the Mark Millar-penned edginess, stay for Cage's halting Adam West impression as Big Daddy. Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Follow us on Twitter @travoltacage Email us questions at travoltacagepod@gmail.com Podcast theme by Jon Biegen Podcast logo by Felipe Sobreiro

After a too-long hiatus, Nathan and Clint are back, with a new episode and new approach! Since Travolta and Cage's output are going to, well, dramatically differ in pace in the most recent decade of their careers, we're gonna double up on Cage movies, and let Travolta catch up as we reach the years he puts out new flicks.  But that also gives us time to zero in on some late-career classics, including Werner Herzog's hypnotic crime drama Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans! Easily one of the most bugfuck movies of the 2000s, this very-much-not-a-sequel to the Abel Ferrara flick sees Nicolas Cage as a strungout New Orleans detective working a murder case while jonesing for his next fix the entire time. It's as nuts as you'd expect, but also drips with seedy atmosphere and lurid charm -- aided, of course, by Cage at his bug-eyed best. Luckily, our souls don't dance along on this odyssey, as New York Times columnist and cultural critic extraordinaire Jamelle Bouie hops on the boat to the Big Easy to help us

This week, our boys lean into some hard times on opposite ends of the family-friendly spectrum; in Killing Season, Travolta slaps on a dyed-black chinbeard and a thick moose-and-skvirrel accent as a Bosnian War vet set to take revenge on the American soldier (a weary Robert De Niro) who nearly killed him years ago. It's a one-on-one survival thriller in the wilderness among two old men, which isn't as fun as it sounds (save for some ooey-gooey gore effects). On the kiddie half of the equation, Nic Cage teams back up with Jerry Bruckheimer for G-Force, a hokey live-action/animation adventure that asks the fundamental question: what if guinea pigs were spies? It's a feast of late-aughts 3D gimmickry, comedy actors slumming it (Will Arnett, Zack Galifinakis) and Cage hamming -- well, mole-ing -- it up as a member of the team with a surprising secret (and a nasal voice that would make Peggy Sue Got Married jealous).  Critic and author Marya E. Gates joins us on the pod to talk about this highly unique double feat

You know, every day it seems like we’re hurdling ever closer to the end of the world — so it’s fitting that we’ve got a double feature to match! This week, Dan and Jordan from Knowledge Fight take a little breakie from sifting through the purestrain nonsense of Infowars and Alex Jones to talk with us about Savages and Knowing! In Savages, Oliver Stone adapts a tawdry crime thriller about what happens when a pair of hunky poly Laguna Beach weed entrepreneurs (Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson) have to rescue their third (Blake Lively) from a scary Mexican drug cartel led by Salma Hayek and Benicio Del Toro. The results are long, washed-out, and obnoxious, to the point where not even a go-for-broke Travolta can save it in a supporting role as a corrupt DEA agent. Ironically, things start to look better as the Earth nears apocalypse, with Alex Proyas’ deceptively earnest sci-fi drama Knowing. Nic Cage plays an astrophysicist who suddenly has to face the possibility that the world’s going to end (slash disco

This week on the podcast, YouTuber video essayist extraordinaire Patrick H. Willems hops back on the mic with us for another pair of misguided, xenophobic action pictures! First, there's Bangkok Dangerous, a messy mix of John Woo and Wong Kar-Wai involving an American assassin (Cage) traipsing around Thailand for his next kill, only to find strange purpose among the people (and spicy food!) of the place. Too bad this remake of a 1999 Thai action flick is shockingly low in energy and style, and Cage just doesn't look happy to be here. The same can't be said for the Luc Besson-produced From Paris With Love, a fatty bit of EuropaCorp sleaze that pairs a buttoned-down Jonathan Rhys Meyers with a bald, goateed American pig-dog Travolta as they jaunt around Paris with vases of coke and set about stopping an Islamist terrorist attack. It's as perversely fun as it is horrendously racist, which is an...interesting dynamic to try to navigate! Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Follow us on Twitter @travo

Film critic Caroline Siede (The AV Club, FOX Digital) joins us on a globe-trotting double feature with two distinctly inconsequential sets of stakes!  In Old Dogs, Travolta teams up with the late, great Robin Williams (and the team behind the execrable but profitable Wild Hogs) for a maddening, dizzyingly-edited nightmare about two fiftysomething men tasked with taking care of two young kids. Problem is, the movie's barely about the kids, and instead reads like a disconnected series of frantic, frequently racist sketches with some of the broadest acting outside of British panto! (And not in a good way!) Luckily, we sail towards steadier waters with National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, in which Cage's Constitution-loving Boy Scout Ben Gates embarks on the greatest adventure of all: trying to save his family from getting cancelled by historical revisionists! It's a silly, pointless lark, but its greatest weakness (aping the first National Treasure to a fault) is its greatest strength (National Treasure is pr

This week, we're taking a break from the double-feature format for a special, singular look at one of the most important films in Nic Cage's filmography: Neil LaBute's baffling remake of The Wicker Man. And we're pleased to be joined by special guest Bill Corbett, of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax fame! Together, we break down the ways this one strays from the eerie folk horror origins of the Robin Hardy original, Nic Cage's turning, whirling-dervish performance, and the innate absurdity of punching an innocent woman in the face while wearing a bear suit. Not only that, we get to touch on why exactly this film came along at the perfect time to haunt Cage's career for decades hence, sending him into an Internet meme-hole he's only recently been able to begin to claw his way out of. Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Follow us on Twitter @travoltacage Email us questions at travoltacagepod@gmail.com Podcast theme by Jon Biegen Podcast logo by Felipe Sobreiro

Elliott Kalan of The Flop House fame returns to the pod to fully usher our boys into the era of Bad Movies and Bad Hair! First up is The Taking of Pelham 123, Tony Scott's penultimate film and a remake of the 1976 thriller classic about a heist aboard a New York City subway train. But this time, the slow-burn tension and grimy tale of a Big Apple suffused with sleaze and danger is replaced by a slick, post-9/11 NYC and John Travolta in Orange County Chopper cosplay doing The Most. Not even Denzel can put the brakes on this train! Then, we pull some sleight-of-hand and move on over to Next, wherein Nic Cage plays a greasy, showboating magician with the magical power to see two minutes into the future. He could use it to help FBI agent Julianne Moore save the world from nuclear catastrophe, but instead he'd rather mack on Jessica Biel, who's young enough to be his daughter. It's a bonkers movie with an even more bizarre ending, and saunters far from the Philip K. Dick story it's based on.  Pledge to our Patreon

Film critic and author Jason Bailey (Fun City Cinema) hops on the Amtrak Acela Express with us, as we bounce between the Big Apple and Baltimore for a decidedly cacophonous double feature! First up is Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, which trades in Stone’s signature conspiratorial thinking for an earnest, if narratively stagnant, disaster movie about the real-life tale of two Port Authority police officers (Nic Cage and Michael Peña) trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Cage does a lot with a little, treating the film as an acting exercise, but it’s as po-faced as something made so soon after the tragedies probably would be. Still, it’s an interesting, if heavy, glimpse at how we were processing such an historical horror through cinema. Don’t worry, we’ve got a nice pastel palate-cleanser to follow in the form of Adam Shankman’s breezy, bright adaptation of the Broadway musical Hairspray! A re-do of John Waters’ most accessible picture, now filtered through Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittma

Nathan and Clint ride alone this week for two movies about going very fast - one for the kiddies, one for angsty Hot Topic teens! First up is Ghost Rider, Nic Cage's first foray into the world of Marvel's very own bike-riding Spirit of Vengeance. The good news? Cage is really fun, injecting no small amount of Elvis-y elan to the deeply weird Johnny Blaze. The bad news? It's written and directed by Daredevil's Mark Steven Johnson, so literally nothing else works -- from the mall-goth villains to the ropey CG to Eva Mendes getting nothing to do but stand around in tight clothing. Bleak! Luckily, we get a zipper, more complex kid's tale with Disney Animation Studios' first big hit, the Pixar-inflected Bolt, about a white lab (voiced by Travolta) who thinks he's a superhero, only to have to confront the horrors of the outside world. It's a cute, clever premise (what if The Incredibles was also The Truman Show?) elevated by sincere performances and some stunning animation that still holds up. Pledge to our Patreon

This week, Jordan Morris (Jordan, Jesse, Go!, the new graphic novel Bubble) comes back to the cast for a decidedly cursed double feature to end 2021: Wild Hogs and The Ant Bully! In Wild Hogs, Travolta plays second fiddle to Tim Allen, alongside Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy as a quartet of sad, middle-aged weekend warriors who flee their hen-pecking wives for a wild cross-country road trip on their hogs. Naturally, this means 100 minutes of saggy gay panic jokes and boomer humor so achingly bad you'll beg for this one to end just like Easy Rider.  Then there's The Ant Bully, a Jimmy Neutron-inflected CG adaptation of a children's book that sees Cage in his most normal, regular-guy role yet: a wizard ant with magic powers who shrinks a ten-year-old boy to the size of an ant to teach him a lesson in humility. The effects are marginally charming, even if the human models look like porous hell-creatures intent on consuming our skin for sustenance. Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Follow us

This week on the podcast, actor, comedian, and podcaster extraordinaire Jon Gabrus (Drunk History, The Action Boyz Podcast) joins us to talk Cage's The Weather Man and Travolta's Lonely Hearts! In The Weather Man, Cage continues his mid-aughts exploration of sad, moody middle-aged antiheroes as a Chicago TV weatherman shrugging his way through his midlife crisis. In lesser hands, that'd be insufferable, but with Cage in one of his saddest, most wearied performances and Gore Verbinski's deadpan direction, it's a strangely sweet, darkly funny tale of a man struggling against his own mediocrity. Contrast that with the flashy, sepia-toned melodrama Lonely Hearts, in which John Travolta plays a rugged gumshoe tracking down the infamous Lonely Hearts Killers, here played bafflingly by Jared Leto and Salma Hayek. When they're on screen, it's perverse fun, as miscast as the two are (Hayek's having a blast, despite playing someone who's decidedly NOT supposed to be one of the most beautiful women in the world). But th

This week on the podcast, Screen Junkies writer and Binge Boys host Lon Harris joins us for another case study for why the mid-2000s were so good for Cage, and so. very. bad for Travolta: Lord of War and Be Cool! In Andrew Niccol's Lord of War, Cage plays an unscrupulous arms dealer with a calculator where his heart should be, tracking him through his nefarious, cold-blooded life as a weapons merchant. It's a searingly prescient, post-9/11 take on American imperialism and the intersections between capitalism and war, with a great Cage performance and the one time Jared Leto's been tolerable on screen. On the other hand, we've got Be Cool, the misguided, decade-on sequel to Get Shorty, with F. Gary Gray warping this PG-13 nudge at the music industry of the aughts into an unfunny monster of a picture. The good: The Rock steals every scene he's in as a gay bodyguard who wants to be an actor! The bad: Harvey Keitel raps. The ugly: Just about everything everyone's wearing on screen. Pledge to our Patreon at patreo

This week on the podcast, Nathan and Clint go it alone for this double feature about AmErIcAn HeRoEs - National Treasure and Ladder 49! First is National Treasure, one of Disney's most successful post-Pirates bids to chase the big-budget family-friendly adventure dragon. This time, the theme is America, with Cage as a boy-scout adventurer determined to steal the Declaration of Independence so he can find a secret treasure trove of riches with ties to America's origins. It's rollicking good, dumb fun, and has Sean Bean betraying someone. What more do you want? On the other side of the spectrum, we've got Travolta's weepy firefighter drama Ladder 49, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a whitebread firefighter navigating the risks and stressors of life in the service, with Travolta as his sage mentor. It's all very po-faced and sincere, the kind of movie you can definitely watch with your dad who flies a Thin Blue Line flag outside his house.  Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Follow us on Twitter @trav

We’re back after another short hiatus! This week, Daily Grindhouse’s Preston Fassel joins us to talk about two films featuring our heroes in erstwhile dysfunctional families: A Love Song for Bobby Long and Matchstick Men! In Love Song for Bobby Long, Travolta plays the titular Southern-fried English professor, a hard-drinking, hard-living man dealing with his itinerant ways in N’Awlins, only to have to grow up when a young girl (Scarlett Johansson, not quite yet playing black widows or Japanese people) shows up to claim the house he’s squatting in as hers. Contrast that with Ridley Scott’s masterful Matchstick Men, in which Cage fills the tic-filled shoes of a con man struggling with Tourette’s and OCD, and what happens when a young girl (Alison Lohman) who may be his daughter comes into his life. One’s a sprightly, energetic dramedy with all the power of an actor and director at the top of his game (plus Sam Rockwell dancing!). The other? Well, it’s got Travolta saying “pussy” a lot. Take a listen!

This week, we're dealing with a decidedly idiosyncratic double-feature, with We Hate Movies perennial Stephen Sajdak along for the ride! First, there's the 2004 version of The Punisher, the Tom Jane-led throwback to 70s action movies mixed with the best 2000s buttrock post-9/11 society had to offer us. Oh, and Travolta's there as a sleepy, uninspired bad guy. Luckily, to dull the pain, we've got Spike Jonze's Adaptation to dig into -- the delightful, mercurial movie about the nature of adaptation and creative frustration, with Cage pulling in incredible work as a fictionalized version of Charlie (and Donald) Kaufman. Flowers and guns galore this week! Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Follow us on Twitter @travoltacage Email us questions at travoltacagepod@gmail.com Podcast theme by Jon Biegen Podcast logo by Felipe Sobreiro

This week on the podcast, we’re joined by film critic Robert Daniels (of 812filmreviews and a contributor to RogerEbert.com, NY Times, Vulture, and others) to break down an exceedingly strange double feature in our heroes’ oeuvre! First up is Basic, the final film to date from John “Die Hard” McTiernan, which sees John Travolta return to the military-legal-thriller well after General’s Daughter. Here, he plays (no shit) Tom Hardy, a sardonic crooked DEA agent roped into a murder investigation of his former hard-ass CO (Samuel L. Jackson, spitting ‘motherfucker’s from beyond the grave). It’s a wild, ropey ride with more twists than a loaf of challah. On the other side of the coin, we see what happens when Nicolas Cage ropes his actor friends into a warmed-over Tennessee Williams riff with his first (and only) director credit to date, the disastrous Sonny! James Franco pops up as a pouty gigolo-turned-army-vet returning home from the war to N’awlins and his brothel-madam mother (Brenda Blethyn), who just won’t