Dream Scenario review: Nicolas Cage’s superb comedy is bound to be a sleeper hit
DREAM SCENARIO
(15) 100mins
★★★★★
MY blood runs cold when anyone says: “I have to tell you about my dream.”
No. No, you really don’t. Please don’t.
For me, there’s nothing worse than hearing the REM ramblings of hallucinogenic tales from someone’s subconscious.
So it was with extreme trepidation that I watched a film entirely based on lots and lots of dreams.
Thankfully, this superb comedy was anything but a nightmare.
It’s the story of Paul (Nicolas Cage), a middle-aged, slightly miserable man you wouldn’t look twice at.
Fickle world
Bald, pot-bellied and often wearing a drab anorak, Paul is a professor at the local university and lives with his perfectly pleasant wife Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and kids in suburbia.
Although reasonably content, he strives to be taken more seriously and longs to be a published author (for a book he is yet to write).
Soon, however, this unremarkable man gets into the minds of people all over the world.
For an unexplained reason, Paul starts appearing in dreams.
He’s not ever the subject of the dream, but rather an observer. In every dream, he literally just stands there.
Quickly becoming a person of international interest, Paul signs up to a marketing agency called Thoughts?
In a hilarious scene with Thoughts? director Trent (Michael Cera) and his team, Paul expresses that he’d like to write a book on ants.
In a hilarious scene with Thoughts? director Trent (Michael Cera) and his team, Paul expresses that he’d like to write a book on ants.
But Trent wants to get him on Sprite commercials or have former president Barack Obama dream about him.
The fickle world of five-minute fame soon turns on Paul and his family, when instead of being the silent watcher in dreams, he becomes the subject of the world’s nightmares.
The film then dips its toe into exploring the often unfair cancel culture and its terrible consequences.
Cage’s performance is a beautiful balance of mundane and manic, and should definitely go down as one of his most entertaining ever.
Although his self-mockery in The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent was excellent, his precision in playing the bland and bitter Paul is award-worthy.
Just like most dreams, this film doesn’t quite know how to end.
But with performances that don’t falter and one of the most excruciating sex scenes in history, I didn’t want to wake up.
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GIVE ME PITY
(15) 80mins
★★★☆☆
STROBE lights, sequins and surrealism underpin this smart but unsettling depiction of fame from director Amanda Kramer.
Sissy St. Claire (played by a compelling Sophie von Haselberg) is our host for a Saturday night TV special.
With her big hair, dazzling outfits and soft-focus lighting, she impeccably captures the feel and look of the early Eighties.
In her “An Evening With” telly style event of the time, the young star echoes performers such as Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand as she chats, sings, dances and plays the piano.
But as the show progresses, things gradually become more avant-garde than Ant and Dec.
Sissy’s musings become philosophical, the choreography and scripts more dark, and a disturbing masked man with a knife flits on and off the set.
Is Sissy hallucinating or buckling under the pressures of fulfilling her dream of small screen celebrity that she has always craved?
Innovative and experimental, Sissy’s live unravelling is boundary-pushing.
But it is also challenging to stick with when, at times, the bold film-making veers into being simply bizarre.
THE MARVELS
(12A) 105mins
★★★★☆
IT’S not easy making a Marvel movie now, given how knotty its cinematic universe has become.
But with The Marvels, Nia DaCosta has served up an entertaining escapade with a heart of gold.
It’s simple to follow, even if you haven’t watched every film in the franchise.
Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), de facto leader of the Kree race, wants to save her planet Hala by pillaging other worlds for resources.
She finds a mystical bracelet to help her but its energy forces a superhero team-up between Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), her grown-up “niece” Captain Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and the young Miss Marvel (Iman Vellani).
Their light wielding abilities become entangled, causing them to switch places, making for some inventive fight sequences.
Their awkward family dynamic keeps the adventure grounded even as they find themselves on silly escapades with tentacled space cats or visiting a world who speak in song.
It’s a charming sequel, hingeing on the most important thing about superheroes: their true strength lies not in their powers, but in their real identities.