Nicolas Cage Is Getting His Own 35mm Film Festival Courtesy of Metrograph — Watch Trailer

Nicolas Cage‘s status as a national treasure is being cemented by the Metrograph.

The New York City-based theater has announced a “Nicolas Uncaged” festival to honor the acclaimed star. The 10-film retrospective opens November 8 at Metrograph In Theater, and will feature 35mm showings of “Con Air,” “Moonstruck,” “The Wicker Man,” and “Wild at Heart.”

“Heaped with praise and panegyrics as one of the finest screen actors of his generation, pilloried and parodied as an anything-for-a-paycheck hambone with a weakness for weird wigs and prostheses, Nicolas Cage is a one-man sideshow, a mixture of Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchum, Lon Chaney, and a stick of TNT who takes back ‘serious thespian’ prestige whenever he wants to, dives into grindhouse material and Academy Award hopefuls with the same mad enthusiasm, and never seems to be having anything less than a total blast in front of the camera,” the Metrograph press statement reads. 

The statement continues, “From blockbusters to broody neo-noirs, from dining on cockroaches to hunting for foraging pigs, a tribute to the inimitable and impossible to pin down Nic, a prodigious and untamed talent whose kabuki mannerisms, off-the-wall accent work, and go-for-broke brio have been delighting discerning moviegoers for almost 40 years.”

The series runs from through January 2, and additionally includes screenings of Spike Jonze’s “Adaptation,” Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” “National Treasure,” “Pig,” “Red Rock West,” and “Vampire’s Kiss.”

Watch the film fest’s trailer here:

Cage recently starred in 2024 film “Longlegs.” The actor is confirmed to portray NFL icon John Madden in an upcoming David O. Russell feature.

“Nicolas Uncaged” runs from November 8 to January 2, with select encore screenings to follow.

Check out the full lineup below, with language provided by Metrograph.

ADAPTION
dir. Spike Jonze, 2022, 115 min, DCP

In what will certainly go down as one of his most memorable turns, Cage is Charlie Kaufman, tasked with writing a screenplay based on Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief.” He embarks on a voyage to solve the myriad problems in both his art and life, resulting in a head-spinning film that attempts far more than should be possible in two hours (and somehow pulls it all off). It’s a deeply felt portrayal of anxiety and insecurity, a meta-commentary on the codified rules of screenwriting, an exploration of “adaptation” in all its forms, and miraculously, a genuinely funny, moving, and enthralling story.

BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
dir. Werner Herzog, 2009, 112 min, DCP

Giving a performance as unexpected and feral and occasionally touching as that of Harvey Keitel in Herzog and producer Ed Pressman’s pulp-surrealist sequel-in-name-alone to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film, Cage plays painkiller-numbed, off-the-rails Big Easy cop Terence McDonagh, trawling the waterlogged, depopulated post-Katrina city in search of the perp in a multiple homicide case, in a film whose many unforgettable detours include an iguana’s-eye-view interlude, Cage soliloquy-ing to Eva Mendes over an old Sterling silver spoon, and partner Val Kilmer bemoaning the ruination of his $55 Swiss cotton underwear. “Herzog has always been as concerned with location as with character; ‘Bad Lieutenant’ is as much about the sorry state of New Orleans as it is about that of the protagonist’s mental health.” —J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

CON AIR
dir. Simon West, 1997, 115 min, 35mm

Cage caught plenty of flack for his ’90s turn to action blockbuster leading man—not least from Sean Penn, who’d try to make the same pivot after it was too late—but at worst his multiplex outings made for dunderheaded fun, and at best, like the kinetic, cuckoo “Con Air,” they were a lot of dunderheaded fun. Headed home to his wife and child after a stint in the stir aboard an aerial prison transport filled with the worst of the worst, brawny ex-army ranger Cameron Poe (Cage) hits a patch of turbulence when supergenius serial killer Cyrus “The Virus” (John Malkovich) launches a mid-flight takeover, forcing Cage to work covertly with US Marshall John Cusack to cure The Virus if he wants to see his family again. Worth the price of admission for Cage’s drawling delivery of the line “Put the bunny down” alone. 

MOONSTRUCK
dir. Norman Jewison, 1987, 102 min, 35mm

Presenting Italian American New York family life at its most unapologetically and operatically emotional, magically madcap romantic comedy “Moonstruck” stars Cher as a 37-year-old Brooklyn Heights widow who, not long after accepting a proposal from solid, stolid lunkhead boyfriend Danny Aiello, finds herself drawn as if by tractor beam towards his estranged younger brother (Cage), a fiery tempered baker with a wooden prosthetic hand and a massive chip on his shoulder. “In a career of playing goofballs, Cage has never surpassed his Ronny Cammareri. Who else could bring such desperation to his speech when he declares his love?… The performance is worthy of an Oscar.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

NATIONAL TREASURE
dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2004, 131 min, DCP

A Sunday serial pastiche in the style of Indiana Jones with added heaping helpings of patriotic schmaltz—conveyed with endearing earnestness by Cage—and Founding Fathers-related conspiracy theory piffle, this breezy, criminally enjoyable blockbuster stars the man of the hour as cryptographer, historian, and adventurer Benjamin Franklin Gates, who, following a trail of clues, comes to the conclusion that he’ll have to steal the Declaration of Independence for the good of the Republic. When Gates enters Independence Hall with the Declaration in hand and proclaims, “The last time this was here… it was being signed,” there won’t be a dry eye in the house. 

PIG
dir. Michael Sarnoski, 2021, 92 min, DCP

Formerly a star of Portland’s fine dining scene, Cage’s Robin “Rob” Feld now lives an austere and isolated life in the deep woods of Oregon, his lone companion a prize foraging pig with whom he ekes out a living hunting for truffles—until one fateful night when unknown assailants make off with his porcine partner, sending Rob on an odyssey into a world of haute cuisine and underground lowlives in a bid for her return. Cage gives an unusually scaled-in and enormously soulful performance in Sarnoski’s disarmingly affecting character study, which describes one man’s journey out of the wilderness of his deep, dark, private sorrow.

RED ROCK WEST
dir. John Dahl, 1993, 98 min, DCP

A standout entry in the early ’90s neo-noir boom, Stahl’s taut, twisty, awfully nasty thriller stars an unusually and effectively laconic Cage as a discharged marine who wanders into Red Rock, Wyoming, looking for a job and instead finds himself caught up in the dirty dealings of sleazy bar owner J.T. Walsh, his seductive and conniving wife Lara Flynn Boyle, and “Lyle, from Dallas” (Dennis Hopper), a superficially genial hired killer with plenty of experience in his field. “A diabolical movie that exists sneakily between a western and a thriller, between a film noir and a black comedy… It’s the kind of movie made by people who love movies.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

VAMPIRE’S KISS
dir. Robert Bierman, 1989, 104 min, DCP

Written by Joseph Minion, earlier author of the screenplay for Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985), Bierman’s gut-busting Grand Guignol offers another memorably stygian view of 1980s Manhattan, with Cage as a snide yuppie literary agent who becomes increasingly, fabulously, floridly frenetic as his conviction grows that he’s turning into a vampire after a one-night-stand with bloodsucker Jennifer Beals. “Nicolas Cage is airily amazing as… a poseur with a high-flown accent and a pouty, snobbish stare—he does some way-out stuff that you love actors in silent movies for doing… This may be the first vampire movie in which the modern office building replaces the castle as the site of torture and degradation.” —Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

THE WICKER MAN
dir. Neil LaBute, 2006, 102 min, 35mm

The online churls who smugly declared LaBute’s rowdy remake of Robin Hardy’s 1973 UK folk horror classic to be “unintentionally” funny received a definitive and defiant answer from star Cage some years after its release: “There’s a need by some folks in the media to think that we’re not in on the joke. But you don’t go around doing the things that character does—in a bear suit—and not know it’s absurd. It is absurd.” Whatever the case, watching Cage play a sexually repressed Washington State police officer being chased around an island by neo-pagan descendants of the Salem witches until he’s finally fitted with a bee-filled helmet is what we call a damn fine time at the movies.

WILD AT HEART
dir. David Lynch, 1990, 125 min, 35mm

“This is a snakeskin jacket. And for me it’s a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.” Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage are Lula and Sailor, hotpants lovers on the lam, in Lynch’s fever dream road trip through a sleazy South of stick-up men, heavy metal concerts, and pornos, Texas-style. The guiding influences are Elvis Aron Presley, who Cage channels throughout, and “The Wizard of Oz,” with Sheryl Lee’s Good Witch appearing at the end of a rough ride menaced by Diane Ladd’s mad matriarch and Willem Dafoe’s oleaginous, stub-toothed Bobby Peru.