Beware the coming of the Cage, destroyer of movies!

God, this is depressing... Anybody remember the days when Nicolas Cage actually gave a damn about his work and could generally be counted on to choose decent scripts? Remember the guy who chose to work under a pseudonym so people would take his work seriously rather than cash in on the fact that he's actually a Coppola, not a Cage? Remember the guy who made Moonstruck and Raising Arizona and Wild At Heart? Yeah, that guy's long gone, a rapidly fading memory absolutely eaten up and destroyed by the big pay days that came as a result of the Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas. Sure, he'd made bad films before then - I actually paid theatrical price for Kiss Of Death - but at least he still viewed himself as an actor instead of a star and once he crossed that line... shudder... Now he's the guy who named his kid Kal-El, sports a variety of bad hair weaves and over-emotes his way through crap like The Wicker Man, Bangkok Dangerous and The Ghost Rider. And now the guy who was once one of the quirkiest and best things going has become movie poison, a sure fire indication that you should stay far, far away from the theater.

Cage's latest victim is Alex Proyas, brilliant director of Dark City and The Crow, who really should have known better than to get in bed with a big star again after his experiences with Will Smith on I, Robot. This makes me sad because I love Proyas - I really, really love him — but Cage looks so unbelievably bad in the trailers for Knowing that I just can't stomach the idea of actually sitting through this. Memo to Hollywood: Nic Cage kills movies. Stop casting him. Please. So while there's a fighting chance that Knowing will top the box office this weekend thanks to the weak competition - the only other real options are either I Love You, Man or a repeat from Race To Witch Mountain - there's no chance in hell you'll catch me there.

What to do instead? I recommend recent SXSW implant-gone-wrong film Boob.

Ah. That hit the spot.