TAGGED AS: Film, films, movies
(Photo by Neon)
When the Pig trailer surfaced ahead of its July theatrical debut, audiences were baffled. Was this Nicolas Cage movie, ostensibly the story of a Pacific Northwest recluse and his stolen truffle pig, going to be a revenge thriller like Mandy? Would it be in the realm of recent Rage Cage (TM) genre offerings, including Willy’s Wonderland and Color Out of Space?
Pig – which hits platforms today like Vudu and Amazon Prime – is, in fact, nothing like those. And what Pig reveals itself to be is perhaps even more audacious: A deeply melancholic and meditative drama, with a towering, career-best performance from Cage as the withdrawn yet sympathetic former chef Rob Feld, who cuts into the dark underbelly of the gourmet dining scene. In our Critics Consensus, we sum it up: “Like the animal itself, Pig defies the hogwash of expectations with a beautiful odyssey of loss and love anchored by Nicolas Cage’s affectingly raw performance.”
With such a full trough of laurels and plaudits, no surprise then that Pig is currently the best-reviewed live-action movie of Cage’s career: It’s Certified Fresh with a Tomatometer score of 97% after 151 reviews.
“I wanted to get back to a kind of a quiet, meditative, internalized performance,” Cage tells us in a recent interview. “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.”
In our list of every Nicolas Cage movie ranked by Tomatometer, you’ll see that Pig‘s Tomatometer score actually matches Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse‘s, where he voiced Spider-Man Noir. But since Spider-Verse has more reviews (391 total) hanging off its 97% score, we give the no. 1 spot to the beloved animated superhero blockbuster.
Other Certified Fresh Nic Cage movies in the 90th-percentile include Leaving Las Vegas (for which he won the Best Actor Oscar), Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, Raising Arizona, Adaptation, Face/Off, and Moonstruck.
Pig is in theaters and streaming now.
