Nathan Rabin's Happy Cast

This week, Nathan and Clint dig back into the classic mold of Travolta/Cage double features -- unfortunately, it's for more late-aughts VOD dreck. First up is Speed Kills, a Dollar Tree Casino riff starring John Travolta as a fictionalized version of speedboat manufacturer and mobbed-up multimillionaire Donald Aronow (here "Ben Aronoff"). It looks and feels cheap, and thrums with all the speed of a rowboat down the ol' Mississipp' -- probably because it was initially conceived as a chintzy VR-cinema experiment.  Then, we get a slight reprieve with A Score to Settle, which features Nic Cage as his millionth aging mob enforcer looking back on his post-prison life and broken relationships with an eye towards revenge. Cage is reliably solid here -- he can play these kinds of roles in his sleep, not that his terminally-insomniac character would allow it -- but the rest of it is a slog. Still, beats Travolta in a motorboat! Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Follow us on Twitter @travoltacage Email u

This week, Nathan and Clint stare into some glowy rocks for a single serving of Cage in Richard Stanley's Lovecraft adaptation Color Out of Space! Serving as a spiritual followup to Mandy (with its cosmic-horror stylings and full-on Rage Cage moments), Color Out of Space puts Cage in another tale of rural tranquility disrupted by neon-tinted ravings from the beyond. This time, he's the patriarch of a broken yet resilient family who retreats to the woods to repair long-festering emotional wounds, only to find themselves torn apart by a fuschia glow that emanates from a meteorite that lands in their backyard. Crops grow uncannily, people lose their minds, and alpacas take on new, horrific shapes -- all while Cage and co. flail against the unfathomable knowledge the "color" presents them. It's a lean, effective, genuinely haunting bit of cosmic horror, and the boys dig into why it gets under their skin so.  Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Follow us on Twitter @travoltacage Email us questions at

This week, Cage plays two flavors of bad husband in a pair of VOD-ready erotic thrillers!  First, we cover the Gina Gershon-starring Inconceivable, an overamped Lifetime movie about a crazy mommy (Nicky Whelan) who cozies up to a well-to-do couple (Gershon, Nicolas Cage) whose IVF-born child just so happens to be from her egg. Hitchcockian antics ensue, by which we mean Whelan's wacko MILF (falling far short of the post-breakdown Lindsay Lohan the original casting promised us) kills female wrestlers with dumbbells in shallow ponds, gaslights Gershon into restarting her pill addiction, and womb-jacks Gershon's latest attempt at a child. Still, it's got Gershon and a bored-looking Cage together for the first time since Face/Off! Then, there's Looking Glass, a low-budget motel thriller so indebted to David Lynch they even got Angelo Badalamenti to provide some themes! Cage plays a dye-bearded wreck who, with his depressed wife (Robin Tunney), take over a motel in the middle of nowhere as a means to get over thei

This week, we're back to the unfortunate Nic Cage double features -- this time with our boy Nicolas on either side of the law! First, there's the staggeringly sloppy cop thriller 211, in which Cage plays an aging cop who teams up with his fresh-faced rookie son-in-law and a teenage ridealong to thwart a four-man bank robbery in Massachusetts. It's got the politics and aesthetics of a well-meaning anti-drug PSA, a bloated, poorly staged shootout even at a sparse 80-some minutes.  Then, we get real weird with it with Between Worlds, a wild supernatural dirtbag romance with Cage as a scraggly, widowed truck driver, whose fling with another doomed soul (Run Lola Run's Franka Potente) leads them down a road where his dead wife's soul zaps into the body of Potente's hot young daughter (Penelope Mitchell). Marathon screwing and over-the-top garden hose fights ensue, as Cage goes as wild as he can with a film seemingly made for five dollars. Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Follow us on Twitter @trav

This week, Jordan Morris (Jordan Jesse Go!) returns to the pod for a seminal moment for both our boys -- a 2018 that saw Nic Cage rise from the VOD ashes to enter a new era of cult acclaim, and John Travolta take his biggest swing-and-a-miss yet! First, there's Panos Cosmatos' Mandy, a trippy bit of horror-fantasy psychedelia in which a logger (Cage) exacts revenge on the drug-fueled doomsday hippies who kill his love (Andrea Riseborough). Cue the neon lights, the screaming, and more Cheddar Goblin than you can swing an oversized chainsaw at! From there, we earn the respect of all five boroughs of New York City -- count 'em on your fingers if you have to -- for Gotti, directed by one of the guys from Entourage and endlessly hagiographic of its subject, noted mob boss John Gotti (Travolta). It's a goofy, misguided waste of an okay Travolta performance, made even worse by the fact that it feels like someone watched GoodFellas high and decided the movie thought mobsters were really awesome (and great dads!).  Pl

Happy new year, boys and ghouls! Our first episode of 2024 (and the first after a bit of a hiatus) finally puts the spotlight back on Travolta after a string of Cage double-features and Johnny T failures. Blessedly, the television gods granted him the kind of role his 2010s VOD output could not: His mannered, theatrical turn as OJ Simpson lawyer Robert Shapiro in Ryan Murphy's anthology series American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson. Among a crowded field of stars (Cuba Gooding Jr. Nathan Lane, Courtney B. Vance, Sarah Paulson), Travolta stands out as OJ's calculating, reputation-focused lawyer, and we talk about how Travolta's idiosyncratic instincts finally worked in his favor. Plus, we talk about the cultural impact of the OJ trial, where we were, and how Murphy's melodrama was a perfect tone to strike for that crazy time in American pop culture.  Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Follow us on Twitter @travoltacage Email us questions at travoltacagepod@gmail.com Podcast theme by Jon

Nic Cage plays sad dad figures of children (or child figures) facing the threat of violence this week! First up is The Humanity Bureau, another piping hot cup of Redbox dreck with Cage as a renegade agent for a dystopian future agency meant to track the populace's productivity on a dying Earth. Unfortunately, that mostly takes the shape of shoddy green-screen effects, a meandering road trip in a chintzy station wagon, and a cast of Canada's finest day players to play off. Fortunately, things get better in Brian Taylor's zombie-parent horror-thriller Mom and Dad, as Cage (along with Selma Blair) play stressed-out middle aged parents who find themselves the victim of a plague that causes people to murder their offspring. Sure, a good portion of it is a clever "Home Alone meets Dawn of the Dead" scenario, with gore and power tools aplenty. But there's a fascinating strain of adult melancholy in there, with Cage doing some of his best recent work.  Plus, we talk a bit about Nic Cage's latest, the droll, bizarre A

This week, we take a break from the DTV dreck to get a little more...animated, let's say, with a pair of charming animated Nic Cage jaunts into the world of superheroes! And we've got our trusty sidekick, Alonso Duralde (Linoleum Knife), to join us on this crime-fighting crusade! First up is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti, and Rodney Rothman's dizzying animated epic about Miles Morales' (Shameik Moore) initiation into the jam-packed multiverse of Spider-Man! It's still one of the freshest takes on the web-slinger we've ever seen, and its unique blend of animation styles has left an indelible mark on the moviemaking landscape. But more importantly for our interests, it has Nic Cage as a hardbitten, noir-tinged Spidey that gives the actor a change to break out his James Cagney impression. Then we zap into another meta-charmer, Teen Titans GO! To the Movies, following the cherubic team of sidekicks and their desperate efforts to get a superhero movie like every other character u

This week, Travolta and Cage go down the revenge rabbit hole (again) in two Cage-produced schlockfests centered on middle-aged men with bad wigs and leather jackets shooting people in the face. Go figure! First is I AM WRATH, a low-budget JOHN WICK riff that was originally meant to pair Cage with director William Friedkin! Instead, we drew the short end of the stick in this timeline, so we've got a constipated-looking John Travolta in a shock-black party wig and the director of The Mask (Chuck Russell). Here, Travolta avenges his wife's death in a seemingly-petty murder, only to go back to his life as a black ops expert, armed only with his wits, a Bible passage, and his old war buddy (Christopher Meloni). Then, there's VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY, the first (and hopefully only) action picture adapted from a Joyce Carol Oates novel. (Eat your heart out, BLONDE!) Here, Cage plays a virtuous cop who takes pity on a young woman (Anna Hutchison) whose gang-rapists get acquitted thanks to a sleazy country lawyah (Don

This week, Travolta returns to the fold.... in a good movie this time?! Nathan and Clint break down two tales of violence and revenge, both throwbacks in their own way: one to the spaghetti Westerns of the '60s and '70s, the other to, I guess, Deadfall? First up is Arsenal, a chintzy DTV Cage vehicle with a twist: this time, apropos of nothing, he's reprising his over-the-top role as mustachioed drug kingpin Eddie King from his brother Christopher Coppola's chintzy 1993 thriller Deadfall. Once again, he's paired with a bland lead (Adrian Grenier, whose face makes you always wonder whether the movie you're watching is a fake Vincent Chase joint) in a disjointed, overly-stylized tale of brothers pitted against each other in a battle for their own souls. But this time, with a lot more snot-nosed Cage weeping every single line in a Tony Clifton wig.  Fret not, though, for sunrise is just over the horizon in Ti West's slick, darkly funny Western pastiche In a Valley of Violence. Taking the same arch approach he ta

This week, The Pitch's Abby Olcese joins us for two Nic Cage-fronted true stories of dubious execution!  First up is Larry Charles' Army of One, a grating retelling of the real-life tale of Gary Faulkner (Cage), who was arrested in Pakistan hatching a plot to kill Osama bin Laden in 2010, all for 'Murica. In theory, it could be a neat little dramedy about the self-delusion of the flag-pilled white dude; in practice, it's an annoying slog with Cage making all kinds of delusional choices (the voice he does here) and everyone's favorite kook Russell Brand as God.  Things get a little better, if a little safer, with Mario Van Peebles' po-faced WWII drama USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage. Peebles casts Cage as the doomed captain of the equally-ill-fated Navy ship that famously smuggled vital parts for the atomic bomb behind enemy lines, only to get shot down by a Japanese U-boat. From there comes starvation, sharks, and a whole lotta sitting around and waiting. Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Fo

This week, Matt Goldberg (formerly of Turner Classic Movies, currently of the Substack Commentary Track) joins us for the mighty return of... gasp.... John Travolta in a good role? First, we cover Jackie Earle Haley's directorial debut, Criminal Activities, a messy but ultimately interesting Tarantino riff in which a group of down-and-out high school buddies (Michael Pitt, Christopher Abbott, Rob Brown, Dan Stevens) ends up inadvertently in debt to a cheeky, Macbeth-quoting mob boss (Travolta, having a grand old time). They can get out from under his thumb, if they do one big job for him -- kidnap the failson (Edi Gathegi) of his mob rival. Twists, turns, and darkly comic antics ensue, as a deeply-overqualified cast leans into the film's innate goofiness.  On the other side of the coin comes Oliver Stone's poorly-aged, deadly serious, self-righteous political biopic Snowden, charting the life of Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, doing his best Elizabeth Holmes impression) as he goes from dull intelligence

This week, Nathan and Clint are pleasantly surprised to find two non-stinkers in Cage's 2010s output! First, there's The Trust, a darkly-comic heist thriller about two amoral cops (A mustachioed Nicolas Cage alongside a wiry, disaffected Elijah Wood) who plot to steal a mysterious stash from unknown criminals, only to find themselves wayyy in over their heads. Cage and Wood are fantastic together as two losers forging a curious, fractious partnership out of economic necessity, and there are some great little moments from Cage as a corrupt father figure of sorts. Then there's the Eddie Bunker novel adaptation Dog Eat Dog, Paul Schrader's semi-redemption from the execrable Dying of the Light. This time, Cage plays a Bogey-obsessed ex-con who ropes in his fellow criminal pals (Christopher Matthew Cook and Willem Dafoe, the latter doing his damndest to out-Cage Cage with his wily psychopath Mad Dog) into a hapless plan to kidnap the baby of a local gangland rival. Things go to pot as predicted, and Schrader paint

We're back, baby! After a couple of months of hiatus (and a whole new set of chompers for Nathan), Travolta/Cage is back on the case! We're not the only thing that's returned: not only do we have guest Brock Wilbur (co-author of Postal, Editor in Chief of KC's The Pitch) popping back on the show, we finally see the vaunted return of John Travolta to the pod. Unfortunately, it's for Life on the Line, a too-schmaltzy-by-half ode to electrical line workers that plays out like Yellowstone with fewer horses. Hope you like ponytail beards and white dudes named Pok' Chop! On the Cage side of things, he's slumming it in low-rent supernatural horror with Pay the Ghost, as a lit professor in New York who starts seeing apparitions of his missing son a year after losing him.... at Halloween! (Cue crackling thunder.) It's also pretty dismal, an Insidious riff that lacks any of that film's charm or atmosphere, which leads to a pretty grim double feature all around. Still, we brighten things up with a quick chat about Cage'

This week, Nathan and Clint go it alone for two more Nic Cage joints, ones in which he plays characters reckoning with their personal political failings! In The Runner, Cage plays a well-meaning but deeply flawed N'awlins politician whose attempts to heal NOLA post-BP oil spill gets thrown by one scandal after another. Cue the sub-House of Cards politicking, Connie Nielsen as a bottle-blonde ladder-climber, and Sarah Paulson as one of the least likely Cage love interests of all time! Then there's Paul Schrader's fatally compromised political thriller Dying of the Light, starring Cage as an old CIA flack whose quest for revenge against his Muslim terrorist captor 20 years ago is complicated by his failing mental state. There's glimmers of something interesting here; too bad the studio ripped the film away from Schrader and turned it into a blank, hokey mess! Still, it features Anton Yelchin in one of his final roles, so there's that.  Pledge to our Patreon at patreon.com/travoltacage Follow us on Twitter @trav

This week on the podcast, film critic and author Marya E. Gates (read her Substack!) joins us for another double-feature deep dive into Nicolas Cage's 2010s filmography, this time as two men failing to run from violent pasts! In the VOD thriller Rage, Cage plays a former criminal whose successful life on the straight and narrow is disrupted by the kidnapping and death of his daughter, which sends him spiraling back, as the Bugs Bunny meme would say, to "the old me." The prototypical Redbox-y action and creaky performances follows, even as there are some glimmers of something interesting with its fresh spin on the usual revenge narratives.  We follow that up with David Gordon Green's mournful Southern Gothic fable Joe, about an alcoholic tree-poisoner (Cage) who finds himself the erstwhile father figure to a kid (Tye Sheridan) trying to escape the thumb of his abusive father (Gary Poulter, one of moviedom's great one-and-done performances).  Together, the three of us talk about these two distinct takes on Cage

This week, Linoleum Knife's Dave White joins us for some rigorous religious scholarship surrounding two of Cage's Godliest movies! First, there's Vic Armstrong's adaptation of the best-selling apocalypse novel Left Behind, starring Cage in one of his sleepiest roles as hotshot airline pilot Rayford Steele, who finds himself flying a plane where half the passengers -- and his co-pilot -- have disappeared thanks to the Rapture. On the one hand, it's the rare Christsploitation movie where it doesn't feel like a feature-length Fox News segment; on the other, it's a cheap, warmed-over Airport riff featuring shoddy effects, wonky pacing, and an all-timer breakdown from American Idol's Jordin Sparks. Then we travel East for Outcast, a Chinese-American-Canadian coproduction in which, much like Season of the Witch, Cage plays one half of a pair of Crusade Knights who quit the church because genocide is a bit too spicy for his taste. Problem is, it's not his movie: it's Hayden Christensen, glowering his way through poo

Happy New Year, Travoltatrons and Cageiacs! The year may have changed, but Nathan and Clint are still trudging along the highs and (mostly) lows of our boys' filmography, as Cage cranks out role after role and Travolta hangs back, waiting for the right time to strike.   Luckily, this week we've got The Flop House's Dan McCoy back to help us sift through the mayhem, as our Cage-heavy double feature has him playing father figures in ice ages of varying sorts. First, there's the Dreamworks animated comedy The Croods, with Cage as an uptight, conservative cave-dad worrying about his daughter (Emma Stone) breaking out of her own prehistorical shell. Then, we zip over to 1980s Alaska for The Frozen Ground, a limp serial killer thriller that sees him protecting a young sex worker (Vanessa Hudgens, playing real tough, you feel me?) against fellow Redbox outcast John Cusack as real-life killer Robert Hansen.    And along the way, we all live-react to the Renfield trailer, and wonder about Cage's transition from fake c

This week on the podcast, Nathan and Clint go it alone for the welcome return of Travolta to the cast! Unfortuantely, it’s in the worse half of an otherwise-decent double feature about ex-thieves dragged back in for One Last Job to look after an estranged child in hyper-specific American cities! In Philip Martin’s ponderous The Forger, Travolta tries his hand at a serious, downbeat character drama, as an expert art forger from Boston who works out a deal to get out of prison early to see his terminally ill son (Tye Sheridan). But of course, it’s contingent on forging a priceless Monet and stealing the real one! Too bad any attempts at intergenerational male bonding (between Travolta, Sheridan, and a game Christopher Plummer as their irascible gramps) is bogged down by a top-tier bonkers Travolta wig/soul-patch combo. On the bright side, there’s Stolen, which is the good kind of bonkers! Reuniting with Con Air director Simon West, Cage hams it up as an expert bank thief blackmailed into giving his ex-partner (

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