Travolta/Cage
125 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★★ - 47 ratingsA deep dive into the strange, fascinating careers of two of cinema's most prolific weirdos -- John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. With Nathan Rabin (Nathan Rabin's Happy Place) and Clint Worthington (Consequence, The Spool).
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Episodes
#74: Speed Kills/A Score to Settle
March 20, 2024 15:24 - 44 minutes - 103 MBThis 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...
#73: Color Out of Space
March 06, 2024 16:25 - 45 minutes - 62.6 MBThis 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 w...
#72: Inconceivable/Looking Glass
February 23, 2024 09:00 - 48 minutes - 111 MBThis 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...
#71: 211/Between Worlds
February 07, 2024 09:00 - 43 minutes - 99.5 MBThis 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...
#70: Mandy/Gotti (with Jordan Morris)
January 24, 2024 09:00 - 1 hour - 154 MBThis 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 Chedd...
#69: American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson
January 10, 2024 15:15 - 48 minutes - 67 MBHappy 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. N...
#68: Mom and Dad/The Humanity Bureau
November 15, 2023 09:00 - 43 minutes - 60.4 MBNic 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, thin...
#67: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse / Teen Titans GO! To the Movies (with Alonso Duralde)
October 05, 2023 08:00 - 54 minutes - 74.1 MBThis 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-Ma...
#66: I Am Wrath / Vengeance: A Love Story
September 20, 2023 13:18 - 42 minutes - 59 MBThis 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 (C...
#65: In a Valley of Violence / Arsenal
August 30, 2023 08:00 - 48 minutes - 66.7 MBThis 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...
#64: USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage / Army of One (with Abby Olcese)
August 09, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutes - 73.2 MBThis 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 (t...
#63: Criminal Activities / Snowden (with Matt Goldberg)
July 12, 2023 13:54 - 53 minutes - 122 MBThis 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 (Travo...
#62: The Trust/Dog Eat Dog
June 28, 2023 14:19 - 49 minutes - 68.3 MBThis 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 ...
#61: Life on the Line/Pay the Ghost (with Brock Wilbur)
May 24, 2023 13:04 - 56 minutes - 77.4 MBWe'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 f...
#60: The Runner/Dying of the Light
March 22, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutes - 60.1 MBThis 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 ...
#59: Joe/Rage (with Marya E. Gates)
March 08, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 90.7 MBThis 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...
#58: Outcast/Left Behind (with Dave White)
February 09, 2023 15:27 - 1 hour - 94.5 MBThis 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 ...
#57: The Croods/The Frozen Ground (with Dan McCoy)
January 11, 2023 14:27 - 59 minutes - 82.4 MBHappy 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 ...
#56: The Forger/Stolen
November 23, 2022 08:00 - 58 minutes - 79.8 MBThis 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 h...
#55: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance/Drive Angry 3-D (with Patrick H. Willems)
October 19, 2022 13:48 - 1 hour - 82.9 MBThird 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 s...
#54: Seeking Justice/Trespass
September 30, 2022 12:59 - 44 minutes - 101 MBThis 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 ...
#53: The Sorcerer's Apprentice/Season of the Witch
September 02, 2022 01:08 - 56 minutes - 77 MBThis 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 Fantas...
#52: Astro-Boy (2009) / Kick-Ass
August 17, 2022 14:44 - 52 minutes - 120 MBThis 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 (wit...
#51: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (with Jamelle Bouie)
June 30, 2022 14:44 - 47 minutes - 65.5 MBAfter 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 on...
#50: Killing Season/G-Force (with Marya E. Gates)
April 21, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 90.1 MBThis 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 equat...
#49: Savages/Knowing (with Knowledge Fight)
April 06, 2022 16:15 - 1 hour - 88.9 MBYou 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-...
#48: From Paris With Love/Bangkok Dangerous (with Patrick H. Willems)
March 23, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 94.8 MBThis 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,...
#47: Old Dogs/National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets
March 09, 2022 14:48 - 1 hour - 93.9 MBFilm 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 fr...
#46: The Wicker Man (2006) (with Bill Corbett)
February 23, 2022 08:00 - 58 minutes - 80.9 MBThis 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 ...
#45: The Taking of Pelham 123/Next (with Elliott Kalan)
February 02, 2022 15:58 - 1 hour - 185 MBElliott 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...
#44: World Trade Center/Hairspray (with Jason Bailey)
January 18, 2022 18:02 - 54 minutes - 75.3 MBFilm 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/...
#43: Ghost Rider/Bolt
January 05, 2022 16:51 - 50 minutes - 69.4 MBNathan 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 villai...
#42: Wild Hogs/The Ant Bully (with Jordan Morris)
December 22, 2021 15:29 - 1 hour - 95.7 MBThis 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 ...
#41: The Weather Man/Lonely Hearts (with Jon Gabrus)
December 09, 2021 15:17 - 1 hour - 105 MBThis 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 dea...
#40: Lord of War/Be Cool (with Lon Harris)
November 24, 2021 14:33 - 54 minutes - 124 MBThis 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...
#39: National Treasure/Ladder 49
November 10, 2021 14:32 - 47 minutes - 108 MBThis 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...
#38: A Love Song for Bobby Long/Matchstick Men (with Preston Fassel)
October 21, 2021 17:00 - 1 hour - 79.4 MBWe’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 Jap...
#37: The Punisher/Adaptation (with Stephen Sajdak)
August 25, 2021 13:22 - 1 hour - 103 MBThis 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 adapta...
#36: Basic/Sonny (with Robert Daniels)
July 19, 2021 08:00 - 59 minutes - 82.3 MBThis 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...
#35: Domestic Disturbance/Windtalkers
June 30, 2021 08:00 - 57 minutes - 78.9 MBThis week, Nathan and Clint go it along for a decidedly humdrum double feature in Travolta and Cage’s careers — the early-aughts slumps Domestic Disturbance and Windtalkers! In Domestic Disturbance, Travolta squares off against a sleazy Vince Vaughn (still knee-deep in Gus Van Sant Psycho modes, channeling his blue-collar menace) as the latter weasels his way into Travolta’s family as the Fun New Stepdad. Well, as it turns out, the Fun New Stepdad has a secret, and one he’s willing to kill a ...
#34: Swordfish/Christmas Carol: The Movie (with Patrick H. Willems)
June 09, 2021 13:49 - 1 hour - 100 MBFor this week’s decidedly strange double feature, YouTube video essayist extraordinaire Patrick H. Willems hops into the driver’s seat as we gawk at the baffling combination of Swordfish and 2003’s Christmas Carol: The Movie! First, we put on our wraparound sunglasses and low-rise jeans to time-warp back to the gossamer pre-9/11 months of 2001, where the world was still riding high from Matrix fever and Dominic Sena tried to hop on that bandwagon with the ridiculous hacker-action-thriller Swo...
#33: Lucky Numbers/Captain Corelli's Mandolin
May 20, 2021 11:19This week, Nathan and Clint go it alone to compare two strange curios in Travolta and Cage’s respective careers — Nora Ephron’s post-Battlefield Earth comedy flop Lucky Numbers and the painfully-earnest romantic war drama Captain Corelli’s Mandolin! While it got a critical drubbing upon release (no small thanks to the lingering stink of Travolta’s Terl), Lucky Numbers surprisingly holds up as a pitch-black comedy — with a script by Death to Smoochy’s Adam Resnick — about a down-on-his-luck lo...
#33: Lucky Numbers/Captain Corelli's Mandolin
May 20, 2021 11:18 - 79.2 MBThis week, Nathan and Clint go it alone to compare two strange curios in Travolta and Cage’s respective careers — Nora Ephron’s post-Battlefield Earth comedy flop Lucky Numbers and the painfully-earnest romantic war drama Captain Corelli’s Mandolin! While it got a critical drubbing upon release (no small thanks to the lingering stink of Travolta’s Terl), Lucky Numbers surprisingly holds up as a pitch-black comedy — with a script by Death to Smoochy’s Adam Resnick — about a down-on-his-luck l...
#32: Battlefield Earth/The Family Man (with Alonso Duralde)
May 06, 2021 07:00 - 1 hour - 91.7 MBGreetings, rat-brains! This week, we welcome puny man-animal Alonso Duralde for a double dose of religious-themed mayhem: Travolta’s Scientology-adjacent epic Battlefield Earth and Nic Cage’s erstwhile Christmas dramedy The Family Man! Battlefield Earth has long carved out a place as one of the great so-bad-its-good classics, as L. Ron Hubbard’s gargantuan pulp sci-fi novel turns into a messy, Dutch-angled workplace comedy with a mincing Travolta performance that must be seen to be believed. ...
#31: The General's Daughter/Gone in 60 Seconds (with Simon Barrett)
April 21, 2021 19:54 - 1 hour - 92.3 MBThis week, the realms of Travolta and Cage come perilously close to merging, as our double feature covers films directed by fillmmakers who either have or will directed the other! In The General’s Daughter, we’ve got a steamy, somewhat dated legal thriller/airport potboiler courtesy of Con Air director Simon West, in which a warrant officer (John Travolta) investigates the rape and murder of a young female captain on a Georgia army base. On the other, deliberately dumber side of the coin, we’...
#30: A Civil Action/Bringing Out the Dead (with Josh Gondelman)
April 07, 2021 08:00 - 1 hour - 103 MBhis week on the podcast, comedian and podcaster Josh Gondelman (author of Nice Try: Stories of Best Intentions and Mixed Results) hops in the passenger’s seat for a wild night of good-to-great cinema with our two boys! First up is A Civil Action, the schmaltzy-but-scintillating Steven Zaillian legal drama starring John Travolta as a sleazy personal injury lawyer drawn to the allure of justice, surrounded by a murderer’s row of ‘90s character guys (William H. Macy, Tony Shalhoub, Robert Duvall...
#29: The Thin Red Line/8mm
March 24, 2021 16:45 - 1 hour - 84.4 MBThis week, Nathan and Clint go it alone for one of the podcast’s most curious double features — an art-film masterwork with barely any Travolta in it, and a fully-loaded grotesquery with more Cage than we can shake a snuff film at!First, there’s Terrence Malick’s 1998 war film The Thin Red Line, an elegaic meditation on man’s inhumanity to man, and the way war corrupts the majesty of nature — with an ensemble cast so sprawling even folks like George Clooney can just pop up for 37 seconds! It’...
#28: Primary Colors/Snake Eyes (with Emily VanDerWerff)
February 24, 2021 15:07 - 1 hour - 96.8 MBThis week on the podcast, Vox culture writer extraordinaire Emily VanDerWerff hops on the campaign trail for an interesting, auteur-driven double feature mired deeply in the politics and aesthetics of the late ‘90s! First up is Primary Colors, a Mike Nichols-directed, Elaine May-scripted adaptation of the Joe Klein-penned roman a clef about the Clinton Years. Travolta does his best Alabama drawl as Senator “Jack” Stanton”, a Bill-esque figure whose political idealism is marred by the many per...
#27: Mad City/City of Angels (with Fiona Underhill)
February 10, 2021 15:00 - 1 hour - 95.6 MBThis week, we (along with special guest, JumpCut Online’s Fiona Underhill) begin our post-Face/Off slide into the latter years of Travolta and Cage with two ‘90s artifacts, Mad City and City of Angels! In City of Angels, Nic Cage takes the ‘fallen angel’ baton from Travolta’s Michael, as a dewey-eyed angel who falls in love with a heart surgeon (a radiant Meg Ryan) and decides to become human to explore that. It’s a remake of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire that bumps the political dimension for...
#26: Face/Off (with Jordan Morris)
January 08, 2021 14:35 - 58 minutes - 80.1 MBIt's like looking in a mirror, only.... not. It's finally here, folks, the apex of John Travolta and Nicolas Cage's careers, American action cinema, and this podcast's stated mission! This week, the two realms merge with John Woo's Face/Off, in which Travolta and Cage play dual-wielding badasses on opposite sides of the law who find themselves swapping faces and lives as they continue their cat and mouse game. As a John Woo film, it's got all the doves, slow-motion dives, and incongruous Cath...