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. 

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's distinct style of middle-aged vengeance -- one highbrow, one lowbrow -- and you'll be shocked where our opinions actually differ!

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 poorly-shot fight choreography in a limp chase movie set in ancient China. Sure, Cage shows up in the last act with snake-hands and a British accent like a Disneyland Jack Sparrow impersonator, but it's not quite enough to save this slog.

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 (Josh Lucas, truly Doing the Most) who has his daughter trapped in his cab’s trunk. It’s a goofy, fun chase through N’awlins, complete with colorful characters, campy twists, and some genuinely great side characters.

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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 the underworld who's chasing Cage's hell-escapee grandpa and his sexy waitress sidekick (Amber Heard). 

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. 

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. 

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.

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 dig into its deceptive, Cagetastic appeal.