What are Nicolas Cage's best movies? 10 worth your time

The Herald Scotland

28-04-2025

Cage's style has always been flamboyant, showy, some might say over the top. He is not a quiet actor. The late David Lynch once described him as 'the jazz musician of American acting'. But what are his best tunes? Here's 10 that are worth your time.
Valley Girl
(Martha Coolidge, 1983)
Nicolas Cage in Valley-Girls (Image: unknown)
'What a hunk.' Cage as romantic lead? It's maybe hard to remember now given all the gore and violence that was to follow, but that was one of his early calling cards. In this 1983 comedy he plays a punk from Hollywood who falls for the valley girl of the title (Deborah Foreman). Cage was a teenager when the movie was shot and as he has said himself didn't have a method at the time. But the result is a performance that's restrained and sweet, if a bit sweary. The American film critic Roger Ebert loved Valley Girl at the time: 'This movie is a little treasure.'
Peggy Sue Got Married
(Francis Ford Coppola, 1986)
The first time you get a sense of Cage's 'difference' as an actor. Coppola's time-travelling romance sends Kathleen Turner back to her school days and her first meeting with the man she would marry. Cage's performance as the bouffant-haired, lemon V-necked future husband can feel like it should be in another movie at times, but it was a marker of where he was heading.
Raising Arizona
(The Coen Brothers, 1987)
The Coen Brothers' live-action version of a Warner Brothers cartoon delights in Cage's rubbery, long-limbed, bounciness. At times he looks like he's been drawn by Chuck Jones. Raising Arizona is the second Coen Brothers movie and one of their most joyous; a giddy plot involving a stolen child, escaped felons, a biker from hell and some top-notch yodelling. It's a show-off movie full of amphetamine-fuelled tracking shots and big performances. As a result, Cage fits right in.
Moonstruck
(Norman Jewison, 1987)
Norman Jewison's romantic comedy is a self-consciously operatic movie that's primed for excess in both its language - John Patrick Shanley's endlessly quotable script is ripe cheese; pungent and tart - and its expression. And there is no one more expressive than Cage. As the one-armed baker Ronny Cammareri he turns the amp up to 11 from the very first time we see him. My favourite Cage performance. And Cage and Cher make a great couple.
Wild At Heart
(David Lynch, 1990)
By the time he appeared in Lynch's Wild at Heart the 'Nicolas Cageness' of Cage was already established. Eating live cockroaches on camera for the movie Vampire's Kiss probably helped. As Sailor in Lynch's road movie, he channels Elvis and beats a guy's brains out (literally). At times it feels like the director is parodying himself. But there is a charge between Cage and Laura Dern. And the car crash sequence is prime Lynch; strange and sad and chilling all at the same time.
Con Air
(Simon Jenkins, 1997)
The 1990s were weird for Cage. He turned up in neo-noirs (Red Rock West), erotic thrillers (Zandalee), the unjustly neglected crime drama Kiss of Death and the highly-regarded yet rather problematic Mike Figgis drama Leaving Las Vegas in which Cage won an Oscar playing a writer determined to drink himself to death. Then there was the unnecessary Hollywood remake of Wings of Desire - renamed City of Angels - and the deeply unpleasant 8mm.
Nicolas Cage in Con Air (Image: unknown)
And, of course, there were the blockbusters. The Rock, opposite Sean Connery, and Face/Off opposite John Travolta, a favourite of many, directed by Hong Kong's king of action movies John Woo. But I'd opt for Simon West's Con AIr, in which Cage plays the wrongly imprisoned Cameron Poe just wanting to get home to his wife and kid, but stuck on a plane full of psychopaths and murderers led by Cyrus the Virus (John Malkovich's best cartoon villain performance).
It's either a smart movie playing dumb or a dumb movie pretending to be smart. Or maybe it's both at the same time. It's certainly a big, blowsy entertainment and Cage looks great with long hair.
Bringing Out the Dead
(Martin Scorsese, 1999)
Nicolas Cage in Bringing Out the Dead (Image: unknown)
This 1999 Scorsese movie - with a script from Paul Schrader - is rather overlooked. Maybe because at the time it was seen as a film too much in Taxi Driver's shadow. But this story of a New York paramedic played by Cage is a fever dream of a film; dark, painful, terrifying, hallucinogenic. It offers one of Cage's quieter performances (up to a point), but that's because his character is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. It's a difficult, dark movie but it has a power to it. And you will laugh at the I Be Banging scene.
Adaptation
(Spike Jonze, 2002)
And then we're into the 21st century and, oh boy, a lot of bad movies (mostly reduced to 'Cage Rage' memes). And yet the century started so well. This was director Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman's follow-up to Being John Malkovich and it has a similar meta vibe to it. It's the story of Charlie Kaufman trying to adapt New Yorker writer Susan Orelan's book The Orchid Thief. Cage plays Kaufman and Kaufman's brother Donald. He got nominated for an Oscar for the double role but lost out to Adrien Brody.
Mandy
(Panos Cosmatos, 2018)
Safe to say, not for everyone. Panos Cosmatos's bloody revenge movie is over the top of over the top. Chainsaw fights? Check. Big axe called The Beast? Check. So, it's tailor-made for Cageian excess (and it gets it). By now Cage has cast off even the slightest notion of naturalism in his performances. Cosmatos gives him a film that is as unhinged as he is. If death metal were a movie …
Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Image: unknown)
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
(Tom Gormican, 2022)
Not a great film to end on but one at least aware of Cage's reputation of late and having fun playing with it, albeit heavy-handedly. In it Cage plays Nick Cage, a past-it actor whose career and financial situation is foundering. So much so that he agrees to appear at the birthday party of a billionaire superfan played by Pedro Pascal who may also be head of a cartel. The humour is broad and isn't really ready to stick the knife in, but Cage is having fun playing this version of himself.