February 9, 2024
Nicolas Cage Films
Almost everyone loves a good movie night. Getting all snuggled up under a blanket with some popcorn can be one of the best ways to spend a quiet night at home. If you are anything like me, you’re probably going for a double or even triple feature. When watching movies back to back, it can be fun to choose ones that fit into a specific theme, or as I like to do, movies that include a specific actor. For this edition of the Driftwood, we are focusing on the one and only Nicolas Cage. Appearing in more than 110 movies to date, Cage has a large range of selections for viewers to choose from. As an avid fan, here are two movies of his that I think are must-watches.
National Treasure
In this movie full of drama and adventure, Cage’s character Ben Gates is a historian and code breaker. He has spent his whole life searching for a treasure that is said to date back to the creation of the United States of America. He teams up with treasure hunter Ian Howe, and together they find a clue that points them toward their next step: stealing the Declaration of Independence. With the knowledge of this new clue, Howe betrays Ben with the hopes that he doesn’t have to share the treasure when he finds it. The two then race to the document and the next clue that will lead them to the find of a lifetime. Who will get to the Declaration first to get the next clue, and will the treasure ever be found? Available on Hulu and Disney+.
Willy’s Wonderland
If you are a fan of hilariously bad movies, this one’s for you. In this film (which is quite obviously a rip-off of Five Nights at Freddy’s), Nic Cage plays an unnamed man who finds himself with a flat tire in a small town with only one auto shop that can help him out. The mechanic at this shop offers him a deal: he will fix the car for free, but the man must spend the night cleaning an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese-inspired restaurant called Willy’s Wonderland. He accepts this offer and heads over to the restaurant. It doesn’t take long before he realizes the animatronic animals that perform at Willy’s are no ordinary robots; rather, they are vicious killing machines. On this same night, a group of teenagers who know the truth about the nature of Willy’s Wonderland decide to break in and burn the place down, ending the robots once and for all. Together, the man and teenagers fight against the robots and try to survive until the morning. Will they make it out alive, or will Willy the Weasel and his band get them all? (Please note that this film does contain violence.) Available on Hulu, Amazon Prime, the Roku Channel, and Tubi.
—Payton Rhyner, Movies Editor