Another A24 movie has been made available since mid-March. Have you caught up with it? It is another doozy from Nicolas Cage and is directed by Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli. It is the dark fantasy DREAM SCENARIO.
Mr. Cage Nicolas Cage stars as Paul Matthews, a listless family man and tenured professor with an affinity for evolutionary biology and anxiety regarding his own anonymity. One day, he discovers he has begun to appear in other people’s dreams at an exponential rate. As in life, his presence in these dreams is banal and non-intrusive – he’s simply there, staring indifferently at the fantasies and nightmares of strangers. Nonetheless, he becomes an overnight celebrity, and is soon showered with the attention he has long been denied. But when Paul encounters a dreamer whose visions of him differ substantially from the norm, he finds himself grappling with the Faustian bargain of fame as his dream-selves start inexplicably becoming violent within their respective subconsciousnesses.
Did you catch all that? Nicolas Cage loves to wrap himself up in these little oddball projects, doesn’t he? Yes, we know of his great work in Moonstruck, The Cotton Club, Leaving Los Vegas and the like but, as of late, he has done some unique titles like Prisoners of the Ghostland, Pig, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and Renfield. Hey, don’t stop being you, Cage!
It seems reviewers were kinda into seeing Cage, or should I say his character, popping in & out of people’s dreams. It also seems that very popping in & out was an effective visual in the movie as well. Many top critics were favorable. Detroit News stated – “Cage, recommitted the last few years after spending ages on Hollywood’s fringes, dials down his mania and lets everything around him be eccentric and outlandish; he’s the straight man in this oddball world, and it suits him well.” Regarding the director, Los Angeles Times says, “The best parts of Dream Scenario are those dreams, the sequences in which Borgli pushes the medium and himself into unsettling, hallucinatory territory.”
Our go-to aggregator gives it an honorable rating –
Okay, to be fair not everyone gets it or appreciates it. One negative review from the Wall Street Journal stated, “Dream Scenario is such an imaginatively offbeat movie that it’s a shame it isn’t better.” Only you can decide for yourself. So, if you haven’t seen a Nicolas Cage piece in a while or just keep going back to this Award winners then I’d have to say that DREAM SCENARIO just might be the Cage picture you need to see. What do ya say?
