NICOLAS CAGE - MOVIE REVIEWS: NEXT

MOVIE REVIEWS: NEXT

With Next, Nicolas Cage again receives better reviews than the movie he's appearing in. Only a few weeks ago, Cage starred in Ghost Rider, which received nearly universal condemnation by critics -- who nevertheless gave good marks to Cage, with several wondering about his script choices. The film turned out to be one of the biggest hits of the year, thanks, presumably, to Cage's ability to draw a crowd. "Mr. Cage remains an insistently watchable screen presence, as even this dopey movie proves," Manohla Dargis acknowledges in the New York Times. But besides Cage, Next also features a script based on a short story by sci-fi genius Philip K. Dick, a performance by Oscar nominee Julianne Moore, and a cameo appearance by Peter Falk. David Germain comments for the Associated Press that the movie simply "shows how a solid crew of filmmakers and performers can apply a big-studio budget to a good story idea and still have everything come out wrong." How wrong? Well, Peter Howell in the Toronto Star dismisses it as "this straight-to-DVD wannabe;" Chris Kaltenbach in the Baltimore Sun calls it "the silliest movie of 2007;" Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times concludes: "The title pretty much sums it up." And that title, writes Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe at Nicolas "Cage's rate of production, could be the name of all his upcoming movies."

27/04/2007