Nathan and Clint return after another short hiatus to break down another two-fer of VOD dreck -- first with Travolta's slow-moving racing drama Trading Paint , then with Cage's gonzo Tarantino/Guy Ritchie drug-biz knockoff Running with the Devil ! 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...
May 22, 2024•50 min
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-c...
Mar 20, 2024•45 min
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...
Mar 06, 2024•46 min
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 wrest...
Feb 23, 2024•48 min
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 rea...
Feb 07, 2024•43 min
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 Go...
Jan 24, 2024•1 hr 7 min
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. Nath...
Jan 10, 2024•49 min
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 ge...
Nov 15, 2023•44 min
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...
Oct 05, 2023•54 min
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 R...
Sep 20, 2023•43 min
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...
Aug 30, 2023•49 min
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 voic...
Aug 09, 2023•53 min
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...
Jul 12, 2023•53 min
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 som...
Jun 28, 2023•50 min
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 fe...
May 24, 2023•56 min
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 ther...
Mar 22, 2023•44 min
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 ...
Mar 08, 2023•1 hr 6 min
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 does...
Feb 09, 2023•1 hr 9 min
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 ...
Jan 11, 2023•1 hr
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 te...
Nov 23, 2022•58 min
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 scowli...
Oct 19, 2022•1 hr
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 ...
Sep 30, 2022•44 min
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 whe...
Sep 02, 2022•56 min
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 som...
Aug 17, 2022•53 min
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...
Jun 30, 2022•48 min•Season 3Ep. 1
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, ...
Apr 21, 2022•1 hr 6 min
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-John...
Apr 06, 2022•1 hr 5 min
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 ...
Mar 23, 2022•1 hr 9 min
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,...
Mar 09, 2022•1 hr 8 min
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 absur...
Feb 23, 2022•59 min
