This Just Became Nicolas Cage's Best-Reviewed Live-Action Film
What is Nicolas Cage's best performance and his best movie? Is it him playing H.I. McDunnough in "Raising Arizona"? Is it his portrayal of twins Charlie and Donald Kaufman in the legendary 2002 film "Adaptation"? Or is it one of his many action films like "Con Air" or "Face/Off"?
Your favorite Cage film might well come from his more recent turn toward the horror genre. Films like "Mandy" and "Color Out of Space" have certainly turned a lot of heads. Or it's possible that you're into old-school Cage, and only things like "Valley Girl" or "Peggy Sue Got Married" will do. Despite all the excellent Cage movies to choose from (and there are a lot), would you believe that, from a raw data perspective, Cage just had his most positively reviewed live-action movie of all time? In fact, it's a film that is equaled in the Cage canon only by the animation sensation that is "Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse."
Believe it or not, yes, we're talking about the very unusual, truffle-hunting horror film "Pig."
Why Pig is such a hit with critics
It's virtually impossible to boil "Pig" down to its basic parts. It is almost genre-defying. Yes, in some ways it fits with Cage's latest pivot toward horror films, but it's also a deeply personal journey for Cage's character, Rob Feld, a formerly legendary chef whose personal suffering leads him to become this reclusive, sad figure.
"I wanted to get back to a kind of a quiet, meditative, internalized performance," Cage said in an interview with Rotten Tomatoes. "It was something that I felt I had the life experience for and the memories and the dreams, if you will, to portray without forcing it."
Co-starring in the film is "Hereditary" actor Alex Wolff, who certainly did not spare Cage's blushes when discussing what it was like to work with the veteran performer. In an interview with Variety, Wolff compared his work with Cage on "Pig" to experiences in "Midnight Cowboy" and "Raising Arizona." "To get to be the one who's yelling at Nic, and then have Nic be the really opaque one, felt like a beautiful, unexpected way to go to have Nic be the stoic fragile one," Wolff said.
Whether or not it's Wolff and Cage's duo that people are connecting with or just the intense story being told, "Pig" is a massive critical hit. As of this writing it holds a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 151 reviews. And, yes, the only other film in Cage's repertoire that can boast the same is "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" — hard to believe, but true.
"Pig" is available to stream on Vudu, Amazon Prime, and most VOD platforms now.