I've featured some of the women's costumes from this film before, but the men deserve some attention as well. Lord Wessex wears this magnificent outfit when he comes to inform Viola that a match has been arranged between them. The embroidery on his doublet and cloak is simply jaw-dropping in its variety and intricacy. I've included some closeups to show both the details of the embroidery and the texture of the various materials.
It's a shame we can't see what he's got for footwear, and we also never see him wearing the hat. He also manages to make the ruff look like something a person might actually wear on a regular basis.
Favorite Films | 1998
Dark City (dir. Alex Proyas) | The X-Files: Fight the Future (dir. Rob Bowman) | Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (dir. Steve Miner) | Practical Magic (dir. Griffin Dunne) | What Dreams May Come (dir. Vincent Ward) | Urban Legend (dir. Jamie Blanks)
City of Angels (1998, dir. Brad Silberling) - review by Rookie-Critic
The third stop on my Nicolas Cage weekly movie nights was an odd choice. After two absolutely unhinged films like Con Air and Face/Off, why would my friends' next choice be a rom-com between Cage and Meg Ryan that happens to be a remake of a beloved 80s film by auteur Wim Wenders? The answer was simple: The song "Iris" by The Goo Goo Dolls was written for this movie, and that was intriguing enough to give it a slot, and honestly I'm the kind of person who wants to devour an actor's entire filmography, especially for an actor like Nicolas Cage, so I didn't mind at all. I didn't have super high expectations going into this one, I'd never even heard of it before and, looking at the reviews, they didn't seem too favorable. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how well written, well acted, and just generally well made this was.
Cage and Ryan both give absolutely stellar performances, with Cage actually managing to draw a tear out of me with a line delivered towards the end of the film. Special shout out should also go to Dennis Franz, who is unforgettable as Nathaniel Messinger in the film. While the story may seem a tad ridiculous on the surface; an angel wants to become mortal after falling in love with a human woman, the film does a very good job of bringing that frankly wacky premise down to Earth and making it believable within the rules the movie sets up for itself. I know I've already mentioned that Cage gives a stellar performance in this, but I don't think I've really sold it enough, so I'm going to keep talking about it. This isn't Cage unhinged, this is Cage subdued. It's such a straight-laced, non-bombastic performance that I'm not sure I've ever seen out of him before. Even taking Pig into account, which by all metrics is a more subdued performance from his average outing, still has aspects to it that are wacky, and only one scene in this entire film sees Cage approaching his normal levels of insanity, but even then it fits within the confines of the character. I know that a lot of the charm surrounding Nicolas Cage is his crazed, frantic acting, but when I see him in films like this, like Pig, it makes me a little sad, because I know that he's more than capable of giving a truly incredible performance. One that's memorable for how good his acting is as opposed to how bizarre and bonkers it is, which, again, has its own charm and appeal. I don't necessarily want Cage's reputation as a wildman actor to go away, I don't want his legacy to consider how genuinely talented he is, as well.
While I don't understand the Tomatometer's 57% for this film (inversely to how I don't quite understand Face/Off's 92%), there are aspects of it that don't work for me. For one, while the dialogue is amazing, Ryan and Cage have absolutely no chemistry. Cage is definitely not the rom-com scene partner that Tom Hanks is to Ryan, and it shows. It really is their chemistry because, as I stated earlier, their performances are both stellar, but I just got nothing in the romance department out of them. Another lackluster piece of this puzzle is that it does lean over into overly sappy territory more than once, for sure. A lot of the music cues, while the songs themselves are good, were almost too much. One in particular, when Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" plays during a pivotal romance scene, was actually too much. This very possibly could be because of that song's connection to the ASPCA commercials from the mid-2000s, and if that is that case I can't really hold that against the film, but the on-the-nose nature of the song's titular line and the style of music it is was more of a hindrance than a help, as was the case for the scene where "Iris" plays.
One last thing I'll say in the con category is with a specific scene in the film in which we are shown flashes of black-and-white clips that don't really seem pertinent as well as black-and-white versions of things that had happened earlier in the movie. From what I understand, the black-and-white aspect of this is in reference to original Wim Wenders film, Wings of Desire, in which it is a major plot point that angels can't see color, which is all well and good except for the fact that this had never been established in City of Angels up to that point, which makes it very jarring and confusing as to why that was been presented that way. It also still doesn't answer what those other, unrelated clips were. The closest thing I think for them to be are shots from Wings of Desire that were placed there as a way to homage the original film, but I have no idea if that's true or not, and it still wouldn't make sense as to how they relate to Seth in this film. Regardless, City of Angels was great. It's one of the better genuinely fantastic performances I've seen out of Cage, the writing was awesome despite its leads' lack of chemistry, and most importantly, I had a fun time watching this with friends. What more can you ask for?
Score: 8/10
Currently available for rent/purchase on digital (iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, etc.) and on DVD & Blu-ray through Warner Bros./Regency.
