Popular reviews

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★ 7

  For a deeply satisfying movie that hinges on a career-defining performance from one of modern cinema’s most fascinating stars, Ridley Scott’s “Matchstick Men” has a strange way of falling through the cracks. Released to a tepid response in September 2003, this slippery tale of a con artist with a guilty conscience was too much of a tweener to find the audience it deserved, and — much like its twitchy protagonist — was also conflicted about swindling people out of their money. For a major Hollywood film that climaxes with a bare-assed Nicolas Cage running around an L.A. parking garage, its “B” Cinemascore is borderline miraculous.

  Even now, 15 years to the month since its debut, “Matchstick Men” lurks in the…

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  Review by Evan ★★★½ 5

  Another iconic Nic Cage freakout. It was short and subtle, but it was still the work of master. The way he told that man to piss blood was inspirational.

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  Review by Peaceful Stoner ★★★★ 17

  I regret not watching matchstick men before today. This one film in itself is proof that Nic Cage can act and what he is been doing or the directors have been doing all through his life conning him into doing stupid roles except for maybe a few like this one, Lord of War, Leaving Las Vegas and Adaptation.

  Any film which has a character with ocd gives a considerable amount of intrigue and likeability. Nic Cage here suffers from a multitude of phobias and he is so believable in his mannerisms. On a whole he just perfectly exectued his role in this film. He attracted so much affection from me even more than Rockwell in this(and I thought he was…

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  Review by D.B. ★★★½ 2

  I wish con artist Nicolas Cage was my dad.

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 9

  Action!: The Scott Brothers – How To Get Screwed By Spielberg Twice W/ Ridley Scott

  Talking about a movie that always played on TV, and I only watched the first minutes just to change the channel right away. But there are some films that one is destined to watch sooner or later.

  Boy, I'm disappointed with myself for not paying more attention to it. As it stands, this is a film that a six-year-old may not enjoy much since the imain conflict themselves may appeal more to adults than to children, at least if they have more maturity. I love how the film manages to create this unique synthesis of old and new through its script, direction, and score. Some…

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  Review by Jordan Horowitz ★★★★½ 1

  Did not at all remember how good this is. Script and Cage, in particular. And Lohman. But really that script. Wowzers.

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★½

  In ye olden days of Filmspotting SVU, this would have been a perfect candidate for the annual I Didn’t Get It Award. I wasn’t crazy about this one in theaters back in 2003, and I still don’t love it now. I’m torn between digging every kooky thing Nicolas Cage is doing, and finding the con man plot super predictable from the beginning to the end. In a con movie, if you are far ahead of the characters and their schemes, and they never surprise you at all, that is pretty much fatal. And nothing in Matchstick Men surprised me. Cage’s manic, twitchy energy nearly puts it over the top anyway. But I want another version of this where his character is 50% smarter, and the con itself is 50% more shocking.

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  Review by Kevin206 ★★★★★ 3

  The con. The swindle. The Cage. I doubt this movie is finding many new viewers, I never see it on any must-watch lists. To me, it's a classic, it's when I realized just how amazing Sam Rockwell can be. It came out when people didn't shrug off every Nicolas Cage movie, and it's directed by Ridley Scott. You'd think it'd be hard to ignore, but I fear it has been. A must watch movie.

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  Review by Kunga Sagar ★★★★

  The Scott brothers aren’t my go-to directors, but they certainly have made some gems (you won’t believe how riveting Deja Vu is), and this is very much in the gem camp for Ridley. Sandwiched in between two of his epics, it features two of our leads’ finest performances, right down to Nic Cage’s occasional (and iconic) over-the-top moments which completely fit the character. Alison Lohman ties the movie together, her charm and innocence is crucial to making the story less repetitive. It’s such a stylized movie, almost feeling like a Tony movie (True Romance without the Tarantinoisms). Granted, he made Thelma and Louise, but that film focused on the crime aspect more than this. It was the sweetest, most heartfelt film Ridley…

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  Review by ZaraGwen ★★★★ 1

  I want Sam Rockwell to impregnate me

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  Review by Raphael Georg Klopper ★★★★ 1

  Being true to its title, the movie is just like a con man’s job being fulfilled before your eyes with a cinematic texture. First, it smoothly tricks you into thinking something of the film and feeling it for it being in such way, and it does it with originality. At the tables you get three different plots, all rolled up into one:

  One is about two con-men engineering what could be the biggest score of their miserable criminal lives, that pretty much works and plays as your usual gangster flick but with despicable crooks doing what they do for a living, and is as fun as it sounds seeing Nic Cage and Sam Rockwell interacting in the dynamics of this…

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  Review by Fabian ★★★ 2

  The Cage-athon: Delving Into Nicolas Cage's Filmography

  The portrayal of con men in film has a long tradition in Hollywood, and Ridley Scott's Matchstick Men is a worthy addition to the subgenre, featuring yet another wild performance by Nicolas Cage. (One might joke that people only write about what they know.)

  In this film, Nicolas Cage plays a con man who also suffers from severe mental health issues and tourette's syndrome. Unfortunately, this did not exactly provide him with the platform to deliver a performance of Dustin Hoffman's caliber in Rain Man, but rather clashes with Cage's tendency to overact, and felt exaggerated.

  As a further twist to the story, Scott explores a fragile father-daughter relationship, which is where the…