Cage Ep. 111 - Butcher's Crossing (2023)

[00:00:00] Huh?

[00:00:01] Huh?

[00:00:02] Here's Sam fucking Big Bump!

[00:00:04] The beams are fucking razmin'!

[00:00:07] How did you burn?

[00:00:08] How did you burn?

[00:00:09] How did you burn?

[00:00:10] How did you burn?

[00:00:11] That's what she was there for.

[00:00:12] That was the plan.

[00:00:13] Give you a bow.

[00:00:14] You got one.

[00:00:15] Hi, fucking yaw! You're A-T-C- least some of them, I think like the stuff, stuff like the retirement

[00:01:40] plans still kind of, you know, goes, uh, yeah, the cracks a little bit.

[00:01:44] Um, but yeah, no, obviously we're yeah, I think that is what we do with Goldbloom. I mean, Goldbloom was a weird case where like our season ended in like April of 2022 and Jurassic World's Dominion came out in June and it's like, man, if you only had a couple more movies, we could have just ended right there on that. Yeah. Yeah. Season four planning will start in January and also in January, we'll be back with another

[00:03:02] Michelle Yo episode of The Brother's Son, which is that TV show that's going to hit Netflix

[00:03:07] on January 4th.

[00:03:08] Hope it's good. two Western movies back to back, one of which was The Old Way, which was released in January, this past year, which we have talked about. However, this movie was playing festivals even before that, making its debut at TIFF in September of 2022. I saw it a month later at MTFF, and it seemed like that momentum would have it released to the public a lot sooner than it did.

[00:04:21] Like, I thought I would see this, you know, release before The Old Way was.

[00:04:24] You would make sense, right? Like, I don't, yeah, it's gone, gone. Dear father, I decided to leave Harvard and drive a West. I hope to find a stronger purpose and more meaning in my life. What can I do for you? I would like to go on a hunt.

[00:05:44] This will be one of the biggest halls anyone has ever seen. I'm out here to hunt buffalo, oh, hmm. Pull that there, hides. And sell them. Woo! We were done.

[00:07:00] We sure have something to show for.

[00:07:02] You better start running,

[00:07:04] cause it's gone, gone down. the entire movie being like, this is the fresh narrative biopic. Why isn't the rest of the band coming into play? And they're going to get their, their haircuts, you know, with the beehive haircuts. Exactly. Yes. Uh, so Paul Racy from Sound of Metal, he plays McDonald, uh, Rachel Keller from Legion Fargo and Tokyo Vice plays Francine and Xander Berkeley joins the

[00:08:21] Nicholas Cage five time Rose Club.

[00:08:23] Mike, this is a five Pete reunion for Xander Berkeley and Nicholas Cage.

[00:08:27] Which one is that? I mean, we always called them out when they happened on the in the cage season, but right, but we never like kept track And we should have yeah, we were but young young idiots in 2015, you know, and now we're old idiots The film was written by Gabe which was Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, which opens at number two at the box office. You still haven't seen that yet. Have you Mike? I have not seen that, but I did just watch up inheimer this past weekend. 10 out of 10.

[00:11:00] Great movie.

[00:11:01] Nice.

[00:11:02] What if I liked it?

[00:11:02] Yes, up inheimer is great and killer is the Flower Moon.

[00:11:04] Also great.

[00:11:05] You should check it out when you get a chance.

[00:11:06] The other release that weekend was Disney's in the top 10 here, which of course we're both big fans of. The creator, a haunting in Venice, shout out to Yopod, a movie called The Blind, which I have never heard of, and the none to. What a crazy top 10. Yes, I'm just saying, it's weird when a movie that I've never heard of is in the top 10, you know what I mean? Yeah, you literally work in a movie theater. I work in a movie theater, I'm pretty tapped into

[00:12:21] the film industry, I know what's going on.

[00:12:23] I have never heard of The Blind, but one of them is Neil McDonough. And I like Neil McDonough and, you know, Serendipity with the Michael Mikepot this week because he is in Ravenous, which we'll be talking about on that podcast. Yes. We love a McDonough, I guess. That's probably some weird faith movie. I think he's like big into those now.

[00:13:40] If I remember.

[00:13:41] It looks like a sci-fi movie from what I'm.

[00:13:43] Oh, maybe not.

[00:13:44] What I was seeing.

[00:13:44] Just, I don't know, but yeah.

[00:13:46] Anyway, the shift unfamiliar.

[00:13:48] Don't know, it's a little too boring.

[00:15:01] For me, I think the kind of like man against nature,

[00:15:03] like survival thriller thing doesn So this sort of just like, it takes a long time for the Buffalo herd stuff to pay off or like to get going, which is sort of like the arduous journey to get there

[00:16:21] is cage just a mad man.

[00:16:23] And that's kind of, that stuff is okay, it's kind of fun.

[00:16:26] But then once it is. Yeah, so I'm in the preface, my opinions, by saying that I do know a few people who were involved in the making of this movie. So there's just various people that I've met kind of through working at The Roxy and Jerry Rafter, who's a producer on the movie, and Jeff Medley, who is an actor who makes a brief appearance in this movie, he's a bartender. It pops up.

[00:17:40] I did a Q&A with Jeff Medley at this past year's

[00:17:42] Montana Film Festival.

[00:17:44] So I know a few other people who are like, you know,

[00:17:46] camera people or whatever, just like various people

[00:17:48] who worked on, I like, yeah, people kept asking me what I thought about it specifically because I've become known as the Nicholas Cage guy. And yeah, I thought the movie was okay to good. I think there's a lot of really good elements about this movie.

[00:19:00] I think it's very well made.

[00:19:01] I think it looks great.

[00:19:02] Yes.

[00:19:03] And I think actually, especially now it looks better. because they worked in tandem with them on this movie. The Blackfeet Tribe, it's like herculean efforts to like conserve the buffalo. Let's like to save the buffalo essentially because that's the thing at the end of the movie kind of tells you like at one point in the 1800s there was like three million buffalo like roaming the west and then that population dwindled to like 300 or something.

[00:20:20] Like just because of how like much like, you know

[00:20:23] white people came through and just killed all the buffalo

[00:20:25] just through incredible film that. I think it was the first one. It might be the second one also. Yeah, the rest of them are all like, I don't think you actually see them like, but those first two you actually see fall to the ground. Yes. And I think that's, those are the ones. The rest of them, I think you just see like, you know, cage shooting and then like, you know, you don't actually see that, you know? Yeah, yeah, it's like cutting in between the shots and stuff.

[00:21:41] And yeah, for a lot of it, it's just sort of the,

[00:21:44] looking at cage and Will,

[00:21:47] is that the character's name? 20 seconds and then it comes back to the investigation. And it is just very funny. Like it really stands out because everything else looks so good. Yeah, I don't know. I think I think it just sort of doesn't get intense enough in the like weather survival stuff for that to like really hit. And I do. I do think it is pretty well handled and establishes like the kind of like

[00:23:04] media and like a blood simple thing that happens to cage when they try to get there.

[00:24:00] It's okay. I think it's incredibly well made.

[00:24:02] And I do think Nicholas Cage is great.

[00:24:04] And that's where I'm at.

[00:24:07] So what do you think of Nicholas Cage

[00:24:08] in Butch's Crossing, Mike?

[00:24:09] Yeah, he's really good.

[00:24:10] I think it's an interesting portrayal, I think,

[00:24:14] of this kind of mania or whatever that overtakes him

[00:24:16] for Cage because he doesn't go for the massive cage

[00:24:20] freak out stuff that I think would be like the easy,

[00:24:23] easy for him to have done that for this movie.

[00:24:27] Yeah. I was like, what the hell is this guy from? And then I went on like Wikipedia or whatever and was like, oh yeah, he's the guy in Fear Street. I only saw the Fear Street movies once. You've watched them like five or six times, I think. Accidentally, yes, because I kept being like, hey, if you watched any of the Fear Street movies, you should check out, well, okay, so there's three of them.

[00:25:40] So like we would come back and start watching them.

[00:25:43] And then I think the third or fourth time

[00:25:45] I introduced it, it was like,

[00:25:46] while the new movies were coming out, How's he doing? But Cage kind of is the anchor of the film. He's bald in this movie with a full beard and I think it's a good look for him. He looks really good. He looks like Max Payne in Max Payne 3 if you ever played that video game. I have not. But yeah, it's like the first edge bald of the beard and like a grizzle bald man who's seen some shit. You know, kind of thing.

[00:27:00] But yeah, it's a good look.

[00:27:01] He looks scary and menacing,

[00:27:03] which is definitely the point, you know?

[00:27:05] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:06] He's scary and menacing and he's like, absolutely not. I have to kill this herd, basically. And then his plan is to kill all of them and then leave and come back for the rest kind of thing, right? Yeah, stash them over the winter and come back for them. And then they stay too long and they can't get through the past anymore. And then there's a point sort of towards the end-ish, middle-end-ish of winter where the other guy says,

[00:28:22] we can get over the heart, we can get over the snow now.

[00:28:24] And Cage is like, no, we can't risk a cave-in or something.

[00:28:27] Like you're falling into the woods, like just the loudest fart sounds you've ever heard. Ever heard coming out of him. And then he confronts Hajj and beats the, like beats Hajj to death essentially. Like he kills Hajj. Yeah, Hajj is poisoning him. And he has a line about like, you know, you better, a fresh night or from the B-52s

[00:29:41] has a line about, about like, you better,

[00:29:45] if you're gonna poison man, you better like,

[00:29:47] give him a lethal dose,

[00:29:48] because otherwise you might get suspicious and stuff. all of this was for nothing. That's the whole tragic cosmic joke that the movie kind of plays on these characters. But it is very funny, I think, when Cage and Will are climbing up, but up the mountain on their horses, they have a wagon just, oh, with all their buffalo hides on it, or all the ones that they're able to carry,

[00:31:00] that's on that wagon.

[00:31:02] And Hodge is on that wagon,

[00:31:03] and he loses control of the wagon,

[00:31:05] and it falls down the town and the town is deserted, like it's gone. Like nobody's there anymore. The woman that Will has been fantasizing about like the entire time, she's gone. Yep, right. And they finally find McDonald's and he's like, nobody wants buffalo hides anymore, man.

[00:32:22] They're gone.

[00:32:23] Like they're useless now.

[00:32:24] Like I can't give these away.

[00:32:26] And so for all the buffalo that they killed sort of reminded me of maybe just because you made me watch this movie recently, but the perfect storm. Absolutely, yeah. It's, you know, these people who, you know, went out, do some hunting, do some fishing, whatever it is, come back and you're going to have the biggest haul of your career, but you're taken down by your own hubris and in the perfect storm, they all died. And in this one, half of the crew died. But and then will and cage make it back and cage sets fire to the remaining buffalo hides

[00:33:45] that McDonald has, right?

[00:33:46] Yeah, it's like shop or whatever.

[00:33:48] Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. There was just something that made it not quite click for me with buttress crossing. I think, I think like I said, it's confident. It looks beautiful. The performances are pretty good, especially cage in particular, but I don't know if it's just a run time or like the balance between the hunting stuff and the survival stuff just kind of fell that a whack for me for some reason.

[00:35:01] Yeah, fair enough.

[00:35:01] How do you think this fits into the cage roles

[00:35:03] that we've seen so far, Mike?

[00:35:04] You know, another Western.

[00:35:06] So there's that, which I don't think,

[00:35:07] I think is it just the old way?

[00:35:08] No, he's, I think, you know, obviously, like the comparison is the old way because they were both filmed at the same time. They're both shot in Montana. They're both Westerns. And yeah, I do think this movie is much better than the old way, which the old way is like among

[00:36:20] my least favorite movies the year so far.

[00:36:22] Like it's not good, you know?

[00:36:24] And I think just kind of talking about the current,

[00:36:26] like the crop of Nick Cage credit that we are giving it. Like this is a classic like, Cage elevating a movie just through his performance, sort of situation. So it's not like, you know, Pig I think would have been a good movie. I mean, I think Pig is maybe elevated by Nick Cage's performance, absolutely. He's giving a career best performance in that.

[00:37:41] But like, you know, that's a movie

[00:37:42] that like is interesting enough on its own

[00:37:44] where like, you know, Cage is only like added to it.

[00:37:47] Whereas this is like, okay, In this movie, it's not like technically a crime other than a crime against nature. It's a heist on a civilization level. Exactly, yes. I think the position of Cage's character is similar in that movie to this movie is kind of what I'm saying. Yeah, that makes sense. I think there's also a really interesting point

[00:39:02] or perspective in which was crossing where the characters other than Cage,

[00:40:01] not gonna be a good high. Like you could see like all the scratches and stuff on it

[00:40:02] and stuff, but kill him for, right.

[00:40:05] He's gonna die first.

[00:40:06] He's gonna die first

[00:40:07] because that's gonna throw the whole herd off.

[00:40:08] And like that's, yeah, then they're not gonna know

[00:40:10] what to do basically.

[00:40:11] They're not gonna run as far.

[00:40:12] Right.

[00:40:13] It's basically the way the whale hunter's talking

[00:40:16] avatar to you.

[00:40:17] It's the way.

[00:40:18] I like the thing is piacoon,

[00:40:21] but that's the actual character's name.

[00:40:23] Pyacon is the whale.

[00:40:24] It's the whale, yeah.

[00:40:25] Well, sorry, the taukoon.

[00:40:26] Taukoon.

[00:40:27] I couldn't remember the word taukoon. like, no, it's like, and they're like already to draw guns on each other and stuff, because you know, he's so, I forget exactly, but basically the like that we need it kind of thing. And he's so committed to destroying this buffalor, getting this catch, you know, whatever, the herd that they won't spare a canteen for this family of literate with literal children of water for them.

[00:41:40] And then they end up having this whole, you know, the movie maybe has like 20 minutes of, you know, will come into town. He meets some of the key players. He meets Nicholas Cage. He meets Francine, the sex worker that is in the town

[00:43:02] that he kind of takes a liking to.

[00:43:04] Yeah.

[00:43:05] And I think that's also a pretty fun,

[00:43:07] it's a pretty interesting thing for his character Yeah, it was basically it was like late 2021. I think production had just wrapped on this movie, but that was right when Nicholas Cage was getting kind of Oscar buzz for pig. Like he was getting a horse recognition for it. And ultimately did not get nominated for an Oscar, which is one of the biggest travesties in recent years of the Oscars. Devastoy. The Will Smith slap, nothing compared to Nicholas Cage

[00:44:20] not getting nominated for pig.

[00:44:21] So he was part of that round table.

[00:44:22] And yeah, and that round table he talked about the horse

[00:44:25] that he wrote in this movie, which was named.

[00:45:21] So the Andrew Garfield was there. And like that's,

[00:45:22] that was when Tick Tick Boom was coming out.

[00:45:24] I don't think he was nominated either actually.

[00:45:25] Now that I'm thinking about it,

[00:45:26] I don't think Johnathan Major's or Peter Dinklage

[00:45:27] was either too actually.

[00:45:29] So they really whiffed on the round table.

[00:45:31] Like, who knows.

[00:45:35] But any other thoughts about butchers crossing

[00:45:37] like before I start out from this set,

[00:45:38] moving on to Letterbox of use?

[00:45:39] No, I think I'd like to hear what some

[00:45:41] of the other people have to say.

[00:45:42] All right, let's do it.

[00:45:43] Let's get into some letterbox of use for butchers crossing.

[00:45:46] I got a two star review here Sergio Munoz Esquire, indie film with

[00:47:00] Nicholas Cage playing a crazy ass character obsessed with an animal is my favorite movie genre.

[00:47:07] Of course, referring to a pig, I believe, is the.

[00:48:02] And I wouldn't go so far as to say it's an Oscar worthy performance or even one of his best, but I do think Cage is very good in this movie.

[00:48:05] Like he's very locked in.

[00:48:06] He's definitely the standout.

[00:48:07] Yeah, it'd be interesting, you know, if you put him in there for the mics this year,

[00:48:10] just to shake it out, just to see what happens.

[00:48:12] Well, I'm hoping that Dreamscenario is that movie for me.

[00:48:15] Double nominated him, get him in there.

[00:48:17] Yeah.

[00:48:18] Just kick out whoever else I got in the best actor race for the mics.

[00:48:23] Yeah, I think right now, I can tell you who my mics nominations are right now, Mike.

[00:48:28] I can... This is for me, but Dream Scenario might, you never know. I hear good things about Dream Scenario. Yeah, that's possible. And I have nominated Cage, I think three times in the last five years. So, yeah, after I think Mandy was a nomination, Colorado Space was a nomination and Pig also a nomination. So yeah, Cage doing good work in the last few years, which is nice.

[00:49:40] That's pretty great.

[00:49:41] Yeah, I think I remember on our Mike and Mike

[00:49:43] best of the year, I guess 2021 or whatever,

[00:49:44] whenever Pig came out.

[00:49:45] And I was like, who would have thought,

[00:49:47] I think I made it just sitting there, in a buffalo hide, shaving his head with the straight razor in the snow is like some prime visual stuff. Yeah, that's real good. That's the image right there. Kind of reminds me of Bill Duke shaving and predator a little bit. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Might just be because I just watched predator a couple

[00:51:00] weeks ago, but it's still.

[00:51:01] Yeah, I just watched Deep Covered to have a.

[00:51:04] Did you really?

[00:51:05] Complete works.

[00:51:06] Yeah, it was streaming-COVID, I forgot about that. It's Nicholas Cage, we'll dry it back out again. But all right, so dream scenario next week. And yeah, butch is crossing. It is available on Video on Demand now. People wanna check it out. There you go, it's an okay time

[00:52:20] with some good stuff in it, you know?

[00:52:22] So certainly some good stuff in it for sure.

[00:52:24] Chief among which a great cage performance

[00:52:26] and some great cinematography. Our theme song was created by Kyle Cullen, he goes for your own podcast themes, at Kyle's podcast themes at Gmail.com, and our logo was designed by Jacob Honeycuts, or at Jacob Honey on Twitter. He of course designed the Cage logo, not the Michelle Yolo go. So that's why Jacob's getting the credit for this one. Join us next week on Complete Works. We've got another Nicholas Cage movie coming at ya. Dream Scenario, directed by Christopher Borgley,

[00:53:42] and produced by Ari Aster.

[00:53:45] Very excited about that.

[00:53:46] I can't wait, I mean, I haven't seen Dream Scenario yet,