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The Pitch: Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) is a little bit of a no one. An unassuming, middle-aged psychology professor, he appears happy together with his comparatively uninteresting life, his marriage to his nice spouse (Julianne Nicholson), and the ever-elusive prospect of attending a prestigious colleague’s famed dinner events. He’s an professional at mixing into the background, and appears largely serious about his banal lifetime of academia; his greatest dream is to publish a e book in regards to the psychology of ants.
But fame is thrust upon him when he mysteriously begins displaying up in individuals’s desires — not doing something, actually, simply shambling about as individuals cover from bloody pursuers or tremble at a constructing collapsing round them. Out of the blue, he’s gone viral in probably the most inadvertent methods, and the nebbishy educational finds himself actually on everybody’s minds.
The prospect of fame initially allures Paul, attempt as he would possibly to shrug off film offers and advertising bros (Michael Cera) who need him to promote Sprite to individuals of their desires. Even probably the most principled of us could be hard-pressed to show away from the highlight if it have been immediately thrust upon us. However as Paul learns all too harshly, the general public’s consideration can rapidly flip bitter, particularly as Dream!Paul immediately turns violent; earlier than he is aware of it, the identical individuals who love him now hate his guts. And he didn’t even do something.
We Dwell In a Metropolis of Goals: Over the course of his decades-long profession, Nicolas Cage has bounced from younger, thrilling actor to hammy motion star to washed-up Redbox fodder and all over the place in between. Nowadays, in a post-Mandy world, he’s largely reclaimed the general public’s consideration, and rightly so: his tendency in direction of huge, theatrical histrionics and tic-heavy depth lends all his initiatives, even his worst, a form of unconventional attract.
Lately, he’s leaned into the Meme of Cage: his Renfield depends on the viewers’s need to see somebody like Nic Cage play Precise, Trustworthy-to-God Dracula, and he even performed a number of over-the-top variations of himself in final yr’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Right here, in Kristoffer Borgli’s follow-up to 2021’s Sick of Myself, Cage will get to entertain the cerebral and the foolish in equal measure.
In a single respect, Paul shares loads of DNA with Cage’s downtrodden, defeated truffle hunter in 2021’s sensible Pig; however Borgli and Cage pepper Paul’s pathos with bursts of antic disposition, not not like when Cage performed the neurotic, fictional twin brother of Charlie Kaufman in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation.
Dream Situation (A24)
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