Travolta/Cage #59: Joe/Rage (with Marya E. Gates)

This 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-y action and creaky performances follows, even as there are some glimmers of something interesting with its fresh spin on the usual revenge narratives. 

We follow that up with David Gordon Green's mournful Southern Gothic fable Joe, about an alcoholic tree-poisoner (Cage) who finds himself the erstwhile father figure to a kid (Tye Sheridan) trying to escape the thumb of his abusive father (Gary Poulter, one of moviedom's great one-and-done performances). 

Together, the three of us talk about these two distinct takes on Cage's distinct style of middle-aged vengeance -- one highbrow, one lowbrow -- and you'll be shocked where our opinions actually differ!

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