Between Worlds

2018 Nicolas Cage movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: A truck driver gets involved with a woman who can bring back the dead when she's being strangled. Or something. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

"I know that nothing has made any sense." A character said that, and it's as accurate as anything I can think to type about this movie. I don't even know what I want to say! Actually, I know one thing I want to say, so I'll type a "1" and then start a list and see where that takes us.

1) The first thing that needs to be mentioned might be my new favorite Nicolas Cage moment. The man's had his moments, but has he ever had a sex scene in which a partner asks him to read to her, a request he obliges by pulling out a book of poetry called "Memories" by Nicolas Cage and reading really bad poetry? No, he hasn't. An actor playing a character named Joe reading a book by the actor? That's the kind of thing that can demolish eighth walls in octagon-shaped rooms that only exist in your freakin' mind!

2) As a trucker with a mullet, the character Cage resembles most here is Cameron Poe from Con Air. However, he makes a reference to a woman's "peach juice" at one point which sounds more like Castor "I Can Eat a Peach for Hours" Troy from Face/Off. According to extensive notes I've taken on the subject, there are also peach references in Wild at Heart (he's offered one), Zandalee (he offers to share one with Judge Reinhold), Rage ("She's a peach."), and probably Windtalkers, a movie I've not seen.

3) I've decided that Nicolas Cage, likely because he's the kind of actor people are just dying to work with, gets carte blanche with his lines. For the longest time, I've assumed that screenwriters have just been good at giving him Nicolas Cage things to say, but now I'm thinking the stuff that comes out of his craziest characters' mouths have to come from the depths of Cage's own soul. How else do you explain the following:

"I'm gonna drain the main vein." That's a reference to urination, naturally.
"Does the tin man have a sheet metal cock?" That's a "Does a bear poop in the woods?" type of rhetorical question.
"Hold me, baby. Hold daddy tight." That's. . .I don't know what this is exactly. He says it while sneaking a swig of somebody else's medicine though, and the woman he says it to seems to roll her eyes after the line.
"Next time, why don't you wrestle a mangator." Anyway, I think that's what he said. You know, because "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" or "Why don't you fight a man?" would have been too normal. We have to get "mangator" in there.

4) I would like to talk about the music. I don't know how much Angelo Badalamenti did, but I know he did the opening theme. That's pretty good actually, a haunting introduction to the supernatural shenanigans about to take place. The rest of the score is just awful, and there's way too much of it.

5) Two musical bits really stand out--one is the use of a Marilyn Manson song which, combined with the Badalamenti use, made me wonder if director Maria Pulera wants to be the next David Lynch or something. The other was the use of "Leader of the Pack" which baffled me. I can't reveal what was going on when that song came on, but it was during a "big" moment in the narrative, and "Leader of the Pack" didn't connect at all. I kept thinking there was some irony I was missing, but I don't think that was the case either. It was just baffling.

6) It was a stuffed bunny in Con Air. In this, the toy prop Cage gets to hold like it's a skull in Hamlet and act his mullet off with is a jack-in-the-box. During a moment when he holds it and weeps, I wept right along with him.

7) He also has a bitchin' shirt in this, one with a big alligator head on it. Or maybe it's a crocodile head. As people who have read the quality content I create here know, I don't know the difference between an alligator and a crocodile. But I know a bitchin' shirt when I see one!

8) If I had to pick a second-favorite character, it's probably the guy who tells Nicolas Cage that somebody is taking his truck. "Hey, Joe, they're taking your truck" guy. Or maybe it's "Rick" played by Hopper Penn, one of Sean Penn's kids. Rick is one of the daughter's stoner friends who I think might be around for comic relief. "I mean, I know we suck. . ." I'm not sure because large chunks of this movie seem to be comic relief.

9) The worst acting is done by Franka Potente. At times, she has a German accent, sounding a little like a female Tommy Wiseau. At other times, the accents not there. There is a random reference to her coming from Germany that I think had to be included after the filmmakers realized that it sounds like she has an accent at different points in the movie.

10) Maybe that accent is why Cage's character seems perpetually confused throughout this movie. At one point, his character was pretending (I think?) to not remember how to have sex (I think?), saying, "I don't even remember how to have sex. Sex?" And by that point, I've seen the character look entirely confused about everything else, so I just wasn't sure. Of course, a really intense sex scene with a lot of animalistic grunting occurred directly after that, so I guess he figured it out.

11) I recently made a list of my favorite films from 1973, and I bumped The Exorcist a few notches higher on that list. The reason was because I had just watched this movie, and Cage, during one of the sex scenes, asks the woman he's banging to say "Fuck me" like Linda Blair in that movie. I'm sure this is another case where Cage got to improvise.

12) This movie might contain Nicolas Cage's worst line delivery in his entire career. "You'd never hurt her." I think he might be holding the jack-in-the-box when he says that one.

13) "Golden shower!" If you've seen this movie, that might make you laugh.

14) Here's a conversation from this movie that I think I've actually had at some point in my life:

"Put your fucking pants on! You're gross!"
"Well, I don't know what makes you says that."

Speaking of this scene, it makes two movies from 2018 where Nicolas Cage gets to do his thing while wearing a ridiculous shirt and his underpants.

15) "Co-ouch!" I'm not going to criticize this one because it's really clever.

16) People who know me know that I love when Nicolas Cage points in exaggerated ways. That point has seemed to evolve into something else in this movie--a weird, gnarled hand gesture that looks like the bastard spawn of the Nicolas Cage point. I loved it!

17) Another hand gesture--this movie (which is poorly edited, by the way) has a bit of dialogue where Cage's character is talking about his dead daughter. He says, "She was five" and holds up his hand and all five fingers as a visual aid. And then the editing shows him raising his hand and showing five fingers a second time. I don't think I was supposed to start laughing at that point, but I did.

18) I don't know which was worse in this movie--the camera work or the pointless flashback that ended the movie.

19) I'm placing this movie--without doing any actual thinking about this--in my top ten Nicolas Cage performances. Between this, that scene in the bathroom in Mandy, and the pool table demolition in Mom and Dad, this is an actor at the peak of his powers. We are in the middle of a golden age of Nicolas Cage, my friends.

20) Ok, that's all I've got.