The Best Nicolas Cage Movies Of All Time

Regardless of your opinion on Nicolas Cage’s acting ability, one thing’s for sure: there’s no one else like him.

Cage has had quite a career since his small debut role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He’s gone from critically-acclaimed performances in movies like Raising Arizona and Leaving Las Vegas (the latter earning him an Oscar), to blockbusters like The Rock and Face/Off, and now to the upper echelon of the meme world.

To celebrate Cage’s odd, divisive, wonderful career, we’ve rounded up his best movies of all time. Read on to see our picks, and to find links to stream the films online.

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1. The Rock

In The Rock, Cage stars opposite Sean Connery as an FBI agent named Stanley Goodspeed. The duo are sent to Alcatraz, where General Francis X. Hummel (Ed Harris) is attempting to use chemical weapons against the citizens of San Francisco.

But after Goodspeed’s SEAL team is wiped out by General Hummel, it’s up to him and british spy John Patrick Mason (Sean Connery) to save the day.

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2. Birdy

One of Nicolas Cage’s earliest movies was Birdy, a 1984 drama about a Vietnam vet (Matthew Modine) whose horrific experiences in war have lead him into a state of insanity where he believes he is a bird. Cage plays Birdy’s best friend Al, who visits him in an attempt to bring him back to reality.

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3. Face/Off

Face/Off is pure 90s action movie fun.

After terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) is injured in a plane crash, the FBI agent pursuing him, Sean Archer (John Travolta), undergoes surgery to replace his face with Troy’s.

But while Archer uses his new disguise to gain information, Troy wakes up from his coma and turns things up to 11: he also undergoes face-swapping surgery, replacing his face with Archer’s.

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4. Moonstruck

Cher stars alongside Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck, and won an Academy Award for best actress for the role. Cher plays soon-to-be remarried widow Loretta, but after getting engaged, she realizes she’s falling for her fiance’s younger brother, Ronny (Nicolas Cage).

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5. Wild At Heart

David Lynch (Twin Peaks) is the director and writer of Wild at Heart, Cage wears a snakeskin jacket, and his girlfriend is named Lula Fortune (Laura Dern).

Plus, Willem Dafoe plays a bad guy (obviously) with filed teeth. If that’s not enough to make you watch this movie, I don’t know what to say.

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6. Leaving Las Vegas

Cage’s performance in Leaving Las Vegas got him just about every acting award in the book, including an Oscar. Cage plays Ben Sanderson, a tortured screenwriter who goes to Vegas to drown in alcohol. While on his bender, he meets a compassionate prostitute named Sera (Elisabeth Shue), and the two start an unhealthy but incredibly sweet relationship together.

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7. Raising Arizona

Before their widely known cult-classics like The Big Lebowski and Fargo, The Coen Brothers made Raising Arizona: an equally lovable, hilarious, off-beat movie with Nick Cage and Holly Hunter. The duo play an ex-con and an ex-cop looking to start a family, but when they find out they’re infertile, Cage’s character attempts to kidnap a child from of a set of quintuplets.

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8. Adaptation

In Adaptation Cage stars as Charlie Kaufman, a screenwriter trying to adapt “The Orchid Thief,” by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep). This is easier said than done however, as he must also deal with his freeloading twin brother Donald (also Cage), and his own feelings of self-loathing and inadequacy. In his frustrated mineset, Kaufman begins to write himself into the screenplay.

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