Every Good Nicolas Cage Movie, Ranked
One of Hollywood's most prolific and versatile actors, Nicolas Cage launched his big-screen career in the early 1980s at the age of 17 and has since appeared in over 80 features in seemingly every genre, including screwball indie comedy, harrowing drama, rom-com, thriller, action, animation, and horror. In that span, Cage has moved from indies to big-budget popcorn fare and back again, along the way working with quite a few noted directors including Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, David Lynch, the Coen brothers, Spike Jonze, and his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola. (Cage's birth name, of course, is Nicolas Coppola.)
But for every great (or at least interesting) project in Cage's filmography, there is at least one outright dud, befitting a man who has both won an Academy Award and been nominated for more Razzies than all but five other actors in history. Cage has famously taken on numerous roles in low-profile, straight-to-video genre films in order to fund a lavish lifestyle and pay off a tax debt. But the resulting string of instantly forgettable, poorly reviewed titles appears to have dried up, and recent years have seen the actor once again selecting far more interesting projects and returning to the world of critical acclaim.
Fortunately, his latest film (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent) looks like it will be another one of those late-career highlights. But where, exactly, does it place among his other work? In the gallery on this page, we rank every "good" Nicolas Cage movie in order (saving the best for last) by Metascore, which represents the consensus of top professional film critics. In this case, we are restricting the list to only those films scoring 61 or higher, which encompasses all titles receiving generally positive reviews from critics.
Additional content from Keith Kimbell.
A teenage Nicolas Cage had only acted on film once before—in the failed 1981 TV pilot The Best of Times alongside Crispin Glover—before landing his big-screen debut in Amy Heckerling's 1982 high school comedy classic as part of a loaded cast that also included Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates, Anthony Edwards, Forest Whitaker, and fellow first-timer Eric Stoltz. Though most of his performance was cut from the final film, Cage, credited for the final time as Nicolas Coppola, made a quick appearance as a co-worker of Reinhold's Brad Hamilton at All-American Burger. The film's youngest cast member at 17, Cage had actually auditioned for the role that went to Reinhold (as did a young Tom Hanks), but was deemed too weird and too young for the part.
“A Trojan horse of a teen comedy that balanced lowbrow gags with subtle humor, genuine insight—[screenwriter Cameron] Crowe spent a year undercover as a high-school student—and pathos.” —Keith Phipps, AV Club
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