'Mandy' and more: Five essential Nicolas Cage performances

Nicolas Cage, that most enigmatic, enraged and enthusiastic of actors, is riding a wave of critical buzz thanks to the gory, psychedelic horror show “Mandy,” which opened last weekend at Chicago's Music Box Theatre and is already available for rental and purchase on digital platforms such as iTunes and Vudu. (Film critic Dann Gire awarded it three stars last week.)

It's been a while since Cage has had a hit — you could count “The Croods,” a 2013 animated cave man tale that featured his voice, I guess, but it's probably more accurate to say that he hasn't starred in a bona fide big movie since 2007's “National Treasure: Book of Secrets.” (Eleven years already since the second movie in that franchise? I sure would love to see a third one.)

Cage has appeared in nearly a hundred movies since his small role in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (credited as Nicolas Coppola) in 1982, and it's been a career of peaks and valleys, to say the least. Here are five peaks:

“Raising Arizona” (1987) — Cage's funniest work, courtesy of a couple of young filmmakers named Joel and Ethan Coen. (“Fargo” was pretty good, huh? And “No Country For Old Men”?) Hapless criminal H.I. McDonnough kidnaps one of the newborn “Arizona Quints” after he and his cop wife Edwina (Holly Hunter) learn they can't have children. The Coens' distinctly weird, distinctly American comic sensibilities are on full display. (Available for digital rental.)

“Leaving Las Vegas” (1995) — Mike Figgis' portrait of an alcoholic's death spiral earned Cage his one and only Academy Award, beating a best-actor field that included Sean Penn (“Dead Man Walking”) and Anthony Hopkins (“Nixon”). Elisabeth Shue was not similarly honored, but gives a similarly superb performance as the prostitute who becomes Cage's final companion. (Streaming on Amazon Prime and Showtime; digital rental.)

“The Rock” (1996) — Michael Bay's best movie gives us Cage's most likable action protagonist, the Beatles-loving Stanley Goodspeed, who finds himself partnering up with an infamous convict (Sean Connery) to break into Alcatraz to stop a crazed military man (Ed Harris). This movie features a veritable parade of “hey, it's THAT guy” guys. (Streaming on Hulu and Showtime; digital rental)

“The Weather Man” (2005) — A quirky flop from Gore Verbinski, the director of the first three “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, casts Cage as a Chicago meteorologist at a TV station that bears a remarkable resemblance to WGN Channel 9. (Because it is.) The city is painted in beautiful, frigid blues, appropriate for a story about a massively dysfunctional family. The central relationship is between Cage's Dave Spritz and his towering, overbearing, dying father, played by Michael Caine. This film doesn't often resemble real life, or the real Chicago — Dave's family lives in the city, but the kids go to Old Orchard? He practices archery in his downtime in Plainfield? — but it's a memorable curiosity. (Streaming on Showtime; digital rental.)

“Mandy” — The aforementioned horror movie by co-writer/director Panos Cosmatos doesn't display its title card until 75 minutes have gone by, splitting the movie into two distinct halves. The first is a dreamlike dirge, a descent into madness as a religious cult summons a hellish biker gang to kidnap the title character (Andrea Riseborough). The second is a gloriously gory revenge picture as Mandy's lumberjack lover (Cage) hunts down her captors. Cage's manic tendencies fit the film perfectly; the key scene holds on Cage as he downs an entire bottle of vodka while screaming on a toilet. (Your reaction to that sentence probably determines whether you want to see this or not.)

• Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald multiplatform editor. His mom is a huge Nicolas Cage fan, especially of that scene from “Moonstruck” when he says, “This wood is fake.” Follow him on Twitter at @SeanStanglandDH.