The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
(15) 106mins
★★★☆☆
LIFE’S often stranger than fiction.
Especially when that life has been lived by a Hollywood A-lister.
As one of the more openly eccentric actors to have (so far) survived the chaotic world of film stardom, Nicolas Cage is taking advantage of his wild ways.
He has a reputation for being unpredictable and outlandish — married five times, collects dinosaur bones and gave his cat magic mushrooms.
So what better subject to lead a film?
Playing a gently fictionalised version of himself, this is Nick Cage, who has been living in a hotel for a year, seemingly has one ex-wife in the form of Sharon Horgan and wants to be taken seriously as an actor.
Like the real Cage though, his back catalogue of work is the same (Face/Off, Con Air) and he has pumped out countless undetected films in the past few years.
As all of those who regularly tread the red carpet at movie events, Cage is riddled with neuroses and feels despondent about the world of acting, claiming to his agent (Neil Patrick Harris) that he wants to quit.
But his debts have other ideas.
And before he can bow out of his job, Cage has to put on his last show — attending the birthday party of Spanish billionaire superfan Javi (Pedro Pascal), for a fee of $1million.
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Javi knows everything about Nick Cage, even having a room devoted to the actor, and has written a script for his idol to read.
Despite Cage’s initial wariness of him, the pair soon start a highly amusing bromance, going on stoned trips to town and crying over Paddington 2 together.
When two CIA agents (Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz) reveal that Javi is in fact a murdering mafia boss, Cage is devastated.
He is then used as a source to spy on Javi’s crimes.
Up to this point, it is a funny, reflective and often bonkers film, especially when Cage starts snogging a young Wild At Heart version of himself.
But then it becomes an action movie involving car chases, fight scenes and kidnap.
Director Tom Gormican deals with the self-aware madness of Cage well.
But the second half shifts a little too far into a different film.
One that, strangely, you need to suspend your disbelief for, even more than when the leading man is kissing himself.
However, Cage clearly wanted to make a film that entertains no matter what you think of him — and he certainly succeeded in that.
Happening
(15) 99mins
AN unwanted pregnancy is a very stressful thing for any woman to go through.
But in Sixties France, abortion was illegal and anyone either performing one or having one could be jailed.
★★★★☆
The stresses were so great that most women in the Western world now can’t comprehend it.
It is the situation Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei) finds herself in during the early scenes of this intense and often uncomfortable film.
Anne has pulled herself up from her working-class roots in the early Sixties and is a promising student, noticed by her teachers.
But having got pregnant after one underwhelming liaison, the film follows Anne week by week as she desperately tries to find a way to end the pregnancy.
Pleas to friends fall on deaf ears, as they are terrified of the punishment.
Her frantic visits to doctors end in judgment and deception, making you want to scream in frustration for her.
Not for the faint-hearted, this film has no gore in it but Anne’s growing problem makes you feel claustrophobic and as if you want to get up and run.
The challenging watch will make your heart race.
Ennio
(12A) 128mins
★★★☆☆
EVEN if you have not heard of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, you might have listened to his music at a Bruce Springsteen, Metallica or Muse stadium gig.
But most likely, it would have been on some of the greatest films in history, such as The Good, The Bad And The Ugly and Once Upon A Time In America.
Morricone, who died in 2020, wrote 500 scores for film and TV and sold 70million albums, winning his first Oscar in 2016 for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.
This epic documentary, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, unpicks his career, note by note, with the forensic precision and passion of the maestro himself.
Watch his first blow of a trumpet and scenes from the Italian music school where he studied, plus rare behind-the-scenes footage.
With such a hefty running time, this will please superfans . . . but is likely to make others yawn.
Praise comes from famous faces such as Springsteen, Clint Eastwood and Tarantino, while fellow film composer Hans Zimmer calls his work “radical”.
There are also tender moments when Morricone talks of his wife Maria, who hears his themes before any director gets to.
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