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 4

  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 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…

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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 Jovine ★★★★ 4

  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 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 Kevin206 ★★★★★ 2

  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 Kyle ★★★½ 9

  Do people still think Nicolas Cage is the worst actor alive?

  Personally, I'm hoping that we as a society can stop directing hate towards Cage's acting skills and instead send it to his choice in roles. There's no reason for the man who starred in Adaptation to be the face of the Ghost Rider franchise. I'm getting off-topic. Let's talk about Matchstick Men.

  If someone were to do a Top 5 list for Cage, Matchstick Men would definitely be in it. He plays Roy, a con man (oh excuse me, "con artist") suffering from a multitude of phobias. He's successful at what he does, amassing over a million dollars. Cage's performance is great. He knows just when to include that…

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  Review by Matt J. ★★★★ 4

  This is a wonderful film about con men, who are played by the great Sam Rockwell and Nicholas Cage, in one of my favorite Cage roles. Their world is turned upside down when Cage meets his 14-year-old daughter for the first time.

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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 Silent J ★★★★½ 5

  One of the worst things about studying in the psychology field is that it opens your eyes to all of the bullshit you find in movies like these.

  Don't get me wrong, this is still one of my favorite movies and possibly my favorite Cage performance, but as far as Cage's therapist prescribing him menopause pills to get Cage to see that his anxieties are all in his head...yeah, no. Just no. First off, super unethical for a therapist to lie to his patient like that. Second, while this method does coincide with the placebo effect, that's not how anxieties work. Anxieties like OCD don't just magically disappear like they do for Cage in the film nor can they be…