The welcome return of Nicholas Cage

There's just something so damn watchable about Nicholas Cage.  I mean, I put it down to the sheer physicality of the man.  The way his eyeballs bounce around in their sockets.  The way his Cheshire Cat grin bisects the screen like a sawblade.  The way his skin is stretched a bit too tight across his skull.  And all those amphetamine fiend mannerisms and twitches.  Yep, when Cage is on form, he belongs in the same School of Delightfully Unhinged Actors as, say, the great Timothy Carey.  Guys who don't just fill the frame – but devour it, snort it, whatever.

Which is why it's a great shame that, over recent years, Cage hasn't been on form.  Or, rather, the films he's been in just haven't matched his level of poise and bombast.  I know this because I watched Next (2007) just to catch his performance (and that of my favourite modern actress, Julianne Moore) – and promptly walked out of one of the dreariest attempted-blockbusters I've ever seen.  The remake of the Wicker Man was no better.  And I just decided to pass on stuff like National Treasure (2004) and Ghost Rider (2007).  What, I was left thinking, had happened to the Lynch and Scorsese collabarations which had previously channelled Cage's brand of insanity to perfection?

Well, rest assured, the real Nicholas Cage seems to be back, with three recent films which are more or less fitting pedestals for his talent.  The first, Knowing (2009), came out last year – and sees director Alex Proyas return to the challenging, luscious sci-fi of his earlier Dark City (1998).  I won't say too much about it here, except that it plays like the first paranoid thriller of the post-9/11 era: something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) for those who watched the planes crash.

And then there's the Kick-Ass (2010), which hit cinemas last weekend: a fun comic-book adaptation which is as manic as Cage's performance as the vigilante 'Big Daddy'.  One for Saturday night, with a bucket of popcorn.

But the best, by far, is Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009).  It's not out in UK cinemas yet – but I caught it a few months back, and already have a copy of the US Blu-Ray on my shelf.  If you've seen its 1992 forbear, then you'll halfway know what to expect: the decline and fall (and redemption?) of a cop wired on drugs, gambling and violence.  But little will prepare you for the delirious colour, verve and weird beauty of Herzog's film – nor for Cage's central performance as Terence McDonagh, the Bad Lieutenant of the title.  It's art-trash at its very finest, and the film Cage was made for.

Here, by way of a sign-off, is the trailer: