Caged Pig

 

 (imdb)

PIG-(2023)-Mysterious, unfriendly and unclean Rob (Nicolas Cage) lives by himself in a cabin in a remote forest in Oregon. His only companion is a truffle sniffing pig. One night his pig is stolen. He enlists his main truffle customer Amir (Alex Wolff) to help him get his pig back. This leads to a underground fighting ring for restaurant employees run by Edgar (Darius Pierce) where Rob is beaten by a waiter in exchange for info. Later, Rob's past identity is revealed and he has a confrontation with Amir's father (Adam Arkin). 

Very loony, out there story with some weird characters and Cage doing his best to stay awake while acting. Director Michael Sarnoski went on to make A QUIET PLACE:DAY ONE in 2024.

Ghost Rider

GHOST RIDER-2007-This adaptation of the Marvel comic isn't very good. It takes forever to get started and when it finally does it's pretty incoherent. 

Nicolas Cage (who I've been told took his last name from comic book hero Luke Cage) is Johnny Blaze, a daredevil motorcycle stuntman who sells his soul to the devil (Peter Fonda, sounding a lot like David Carradine) to save his father who dies anyway. Eventually his head turns into flaming skull and he fights crime and three evil riders. Not learning from the mistakes of Ang Lee's THE HULK, some genius thought it would be good to bring in Sam Elliot to growl out the legend. Eva Mendes is equally unfortunate as Blaze's reporter/long lost love. 

This was not director/screenwriter Mark Steven Johnson's first encounter with a Marvel superhero. He'd previously messed up...I mean made DAREDEVIL with Ben Affleck. Still the movie did well enough to spawn a sequel in 2011, GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE.

The real deal!

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