Entertainment
Nicolas Cage’s Unhinged Revenge Thriller Makes No Sense, But You’ll Watch It Anyway
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Here’s something I’ve learned about myself that I’m not particularly proud of. When I’m scrolling through my streaming apps looking for something to watch, I occasionally stumble upon a Nicolas Cage flick I’ve never seen before, like 2019’s A Score to Settle. The truth is I probably thought I’d already seen it, but was confusing it with one of his other straight-to-video outings with a similar revenge-coded title, like Stolen, Rage, Dog Eat Dog, and so on. While I’m thrilled that I’m one film closer to seeing everything Nicolas Cage has ever done, I’ve gotta say this movie is pretty terrible.
But here’s the thing every Nicolas Cage fan will tell you: a terrible Nicolas Cage movie is still a good Nicolas Cage movie, because Nicolas Cage is in it. I’m sorry, but it’s true. The screenplay is absolute trash, but he still commits to it. It makes no sense no matter how you break it down. He’s still the greatest actor on this planet, and I’m glad I’m alive at the same time he is because it means that when I stare up at the moon at night, he might be looking at it too.
Why A Score To Settle Makes No Sense
Here’s where I’d normally break down the plot before offering commentary, but I don’t think that’s entirely possible with A Score to Settle. I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything coherent. Nicolas Cage plays a man named Frank who’s released after serving 19 years in prison because he has a rare form of insomnia that will eventually kill him, so they just send him home.
Why is Frank serving 19 years? When he was younger, he worked for the mob and witnessed his boss Max (Dave MacKinnon) murder one of his hustlers with a baseball bat. He’s promised he’ll be paid handsomely and that his family will be taken care of, so he takes the fall under the assumption he’ll be out in six years. Instead, he gets a life sentence. His wife dies while he’s inside, and his son Joey (Noah LeGros) grows up to become an orphan and a drug addict.
In other words, Nicolas Cage’s character is perfectly set up for revenge because he willingly went to prison for someone known to double-cross people, and then acts shocked when that exact thing happens, as if he was born yesterday. After his release, he reconnects with Joey and digs up a briefcase buried in his old backyard that contains $450,000 and the murder weapon. And I need to remind you again that the people who locked him up thought he bludgeoned somebody to death with a baseball bat, and they just let him go, even though it’s confirmed without a sliver of a doubt that he’s mentally unstable.
He then takes his drug-addicted son to a luxury resort, buys him lobster and lamb, expensive watches, and a Corvette, as if that’s going to make up for an entire childhood without a father who willingly put himself behind bars for an amount of money that in this economy will buy a modest house, at best. Considering how much money he’s spending right off the rip on an excessive amount of luxury items, he’ll probably have to settle for a duplex with bars on the windows when all is said and done.
It Gets Worse
Nicolas Cage starts tracking down the men who wronged him in A Score to Settle, passing out at the most inopportune times because of his life-threatening insomnia. He falls in love with a prostitute named Simone (Karolina Wydra), then gets mad at a pimp for sending a different woman using the same name the next day. He buys automatic weapons from the daughter of a former associate known as Sleepy, in front of her kid, then kills a man named Tank while snacking on beef jerky at his upscale, butcher-themed gastropub.
Nicolas Cage doesn’t know how to use a cell phone because he missed the smartphone boom while in prison, but somehow immediately knows how to use the device’s GPS while driving a sports car at reckless speeds. Earlier in the film, he paid a bellhop $500 to help him get it off its lock screen and look up a couple of addresses for him. Stuff like this keeps happening in A Score to Settle, and I’m not even going to spoil the most ridiculous part because you need to see it for yourself.
Every revenge trope you can think of shows up in A Score to Settle, but you also have to remember that because of the insomnia angle, it’s technically a psychological thriller too, but only when it feels like being one. It’s a ramshackle affair where Nicolas Cage does the best he can with what he’s given, but what he’s given is so bad that even he can’t save it. I’ll give him an A for effort, but A Score to Settle makes Prisoners of the Ghostland look like Casablanca by comparison.
If you’re working your way through Nicolas Cage’s filmography as a means to cope with the horrors of modern life, A Score to Settle won’t do you any favors. It will get you one step closer to your final form, and it does deliver some classic Cage Rage, which is always good for the soul. This one’s an absolute punisher, though, and you should know that going in.
A Score to Settle is currently streaming for free on Tubi.
Entertainment
The Last NCIS Has One Fatal Flaw
By Robert Scucci
| Published
NCIS is one of those ride-or-die franchises you’ll have a shaky relationship with for the rest of your life if you started watching at a certain age. I remember sitting with my parents watching the flagship series when it first came out, and over the years I’ve kept tabs on its many spinoffs. Now that NCIS: Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Hawai’i have run their course, and the one-off Tony & Ziva miniseries totally screwed the pooch, we’re back to just the flagship series and its prequel, NCIS: Origins.
Honestly, I’m okay with this. The original series still has its charm despite its many personnel changes, and NCIS: Origins allows for some great retconning and callbacks that are obvious enough for diehard fans, but not so granular that newcomers can’t jump in without doing homework. It’s a perfect show if you’re a fan of the franchise, and the best thing that’s been put out in years.
However, there’s one big problem that NCIS: Origins runs into, and it’s something unavoidable: there’s no suspense. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of thrills in the heat of the moment when the drama gets dialed up. There are also surprisingly strong action sequences for a series that belongs to a franchise that’s basically a procedural soap opera for boomers who just want to tune into their stories week after week.
One Specific Kind Of Suspense Is Missing
On an episode-to-episode basis, there are plenty of reasons to keep tuning into NCIS: Origins. We get to learn about the early days of Special Agent in Charge Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and how he cut his teeth working for NIS before it became the agency and franchise we all know and love. We see how his 91 rules came to be. We get more backstory on Special Agent Mike Franks, the best character in the series (and it’s not even close), and Kyle Schmid is a dead ringer for the older, somehow more cynical Franks from the original series (Muse Watson).
Even better, comic relief comes in the form of Randy Randolf (Caleb Foote), who, if it weren’t for Franks, would be the standout character. We also get the best kind of wise-cracking forensic nerd banter from Woody (Bobby Moynihan) and Philip (Ely Henry). I could go on, but the point is, NCIS: Origins is a beyond solid series, sans one thing.
There’s no real suspense.
Yes, people get hurt, and dangerous leads get chased, but that’s not the kind of suspense I’m talking about.
The kind of suspense the show is missing, which is par for the course when it comes to prequels, is the kind it could never have in the first place. The show stars Austin Stowell as a young and hungry Gibbs, but it’s still narrated by Mark Harmon. More importantly, we know Gibbs rises through the ranks and then has a 20-year tenure on NCIS. In other words, any time Gibbs finds himself in danger in NCIS: Origins, we know without a sliver of doubt that he’s going to be just fine.
The same can be said for Franks, and the rest of the gang to a certain degree. While I’m speculating here, I think we can guess Lala’s (Mariel Molino) fate as well. She’s never mentioned in the flagship series, yet she’s a constant presence in NCIS: Origins, the series that tells Gibbs’ entire backstory leading up to NCIS. I could be grasping at straws, but I have reason to believe something terrible happens to her that’s too painful to bring up later. The series has done an excellent job retconning the original series, so it’s surprising that they’d come up with a character who could have easily been one of the dozens of agents mentioned in the main series but never actually seen on screen or seen in passing.
In other words, as much as I like her character, I’m not going to get too attached because she’ll probably meet a tragic end at some point.
Fortunately, We Don’t Need This Kind Of Suspense
Thankfully, NCIS: Origins is worth tuning into week after week, not for the suspense, which we’ve established doesn’t exist here for obvious reasons, but because it’s an excellent character study of one of cable’s most iconic, coffee-chugging curmudgeons. We’re currently watching Gibbs’ second marriage, which has yet to fall apart, and I can’t wait to see how that whole thing dissolves, along with his (checks notes) third and fourth marriages.
Lack of pure, adrenaline-pumping thrills aside, showrunners Gina Lucita Monreal and David J. North know what they’re doing with the lore. NCIS: Origins remains a great watch for old-timers and newcomers alike. But if you’re like me and find yourself asking your wife, “Do you think he’s going to make it?” for the thousandth time in an attempt to be funny (she doesn’t find it funny), you’ll be pleased to know that Gibbs does, in fact, make it out alive, and then goes on to star in another 435 episodes.
NCIS: Origins is streaming on Paramount+
Entertainment
Lord Of The Rings Is Now In The Hands Of One Of America's Most Hated Celebrities
By Jennifer Asencio
| Updated
Just when we thought the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert meant the end of seeing the comedian’s rhetoric, he’s rising again like Sauron trying to collect the One Ring. But this time, the target of his didactic punditry is nerddom: Colbert is penning a “sequel” to The Lord of the Rings.
One Sequel To Rule Them All
The movie’s working title is The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past and is going into production after the newest entry, The Hunt for Gollum.
Colbert believes he can add to JRR Tolkien’s work with a story that begins 14 years after Frodo leaves for the Grey Wastes. Sam’s daughter goes girl-boss and makes a discovery that leads her “to uncover why the War of the Ring was nearly lost before it began.” That leads to a flashback in which the movie will cover chapters 3-8 of The Fellowship of the Ring, a story that includes exciting prospects like The Barrow Downs.
As if The Hobbit and Rings of Power weren’t damaging enough to Tolkien’s legacy, now we’re getting another shameless cash grab at the expense of the author’s work. Only this time, one of the most divisive and extremely political personalities in Hollywood is writing the script.
Colbert is co-writing the film with his son, Peter McGee, and “franchise veteran” Philippa Boyens. Boyens has long been a part of the Peter Jackson productions; she co-wrote The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Jackson’s King Kong.
Colbert Really Is A Certified Tolkien Obsessive
Colbert has been held out as a Tolkien expert since the announcement on March 24, 2026, and that is actually fair, no matter what one thinks of his extreme political views. He has studied the author’s work extensively, to the point where he can speak both Elvish languages, Quenya and Sindarin.
The biggest question on the minds of fans is whether Colbert will be tempted to infuse the story with his personal politics, or if the writing team will try to add extra material that isn’t needed by Tolkien’s story. The Hobbit didn’t work because it added embellishments, such as the romance between Tauriel and Kili. Rings of Power doesn’t work because, on top of adding modern identity politics to the series, it also doesn’t follow the source material, earning the derision of many Tolkien fans.
Boyens has shown that when she sticks to Middle Earth and not regular Earth, she can deliver on Tolkien’s mastery. However, the inclusion of Colbert raises concerns that this movie will stray beyond Tolkien’s boundaries.
In his other job as a talk show host, Colbert has made it a mission to inject his divisive personal politics into his work. That tendency towards personalizing what he does could either strongly enhance a new Lord of the Rings project or turn it into a stain on Tolkien’s legacy by applying themes to the world of the One Ring that Tolkien never intended. Which Colbert will ultimately write the script: the political loudmouth or the Tolkien scholar?
Entertainment
Sandra Bullock’s Sexy, 90s Action Thriller Will Make You Care About Floppy Disks Again
By Robert Scucci
| Published
There’s nothing more entertaining than watching a movie about cutting-edge technology from the 90s, 30 years after the fact. On one hand, I’ll give 1995’s The Net credit where it’s due. It’s well-acted, Sandra Bullock is the hottest computer geek in cinematic history (sorry, Hackers), and the plot actually kind of makes sense because they don’t drown you in tech jargon and junk science. There’s a golden rule when it comes to technological thrillers: the less you explain the logic, the better. The Net toes this line perfectly because I know enough about computers to pick up what they’re throwing down, but I’m also dumb enough to think, “that makes sense,” while watching.
I’m not going to pause the movie and look up the technical semantics to prove this point, but the storyline is immersive enough to grab your attention without getting so convoluted that it takes you out of the experience. I don’t know how any of this stuff works at this level, and as a viewer, I appreciate that The Net doesn’t treat me like I’m too dumb to understand the implications, while also refusing to hold my hand because it’s all pretty straightforward.
Sandra Bullock Is Lost In The Net
The Net focuses on Sandra Bullock’s Angela Bennett. She’s a perfect patsy for what’s about to go down because she’s a freelance systems analyst who works from home. Most of her relationships are the kind of faceless encounters you have online, and her mother lives in a nursing home because she has Alzheimer’s disease and barely remembers she exists. It’s a lonely life for Angela, but she’s also well connected through her work. Or so she thinks.
When Angela’s coworker Dale (Ray McKinnon) sends her a floppy disk known as Mozart’s Ghost, she’s told to click on the Pi button hidden in the document, which functions as a backdoor into an application known as Gatekeeper, an elaborate cybersecurity system she’s not supposed to have access to.
Dale dies under mysterious circumstances, and Angela goes on vacation, where she meets a man named Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam). Jack brings Angela out on his boat, but he’s outed when she realizes he plans to kill her and take the floppy disk. After a violent scuffle, Angela wakes up in the hospital three days later and learns that Jack and his nameless, faceless associates have scrubbed her identity from existence and given her a new one: Ruth Marx.
As Ruth, Angela uncovers a vast conspiracy involving a group of cyber terrorists known as the Praetorians, who are using the Gatekeeper software to orchestrate massive network failures across the country while framing her in the process. Angela confides in her former therapist and lover, Dr. Alan Champion (Dennis Miller), who doesn’t necessarily believe her conspiracy theories but isn’t going to turn down a motel meetup with her either.
A Solid Tech Thriller For The Average iPhone User
While I knew my way around MS-DOS as a kid and have kept up with tech to some degree (I have an iPhone that’s about five generations behind), what I like most about The Net is that it gets its point across without being patronizing or overly complex. There are plenty of flashes of computer screens that help drive the story, but everything is so straightforward that you don’t get lost in granular details. The main focus is the conspiracy and identity theft plot that drives The Net. While you need the occasional tech speak to get from point A to B, you don’t need to be a genius to read between the lines and enjoy the thriller for what it is.
All you need to know is that Sandra Bullock does her best computing in a bikini, everybody thinks she’s somebody she’s not, and because of this, she can’t trust anybody. It’s obviously a bit dated by today’s standards, but it’s still a fun watch because it deals with cybersecurity concepts that remain relevant. I’d imagine similar conversations about different applications are happening behind closed doors today. We’re just getting the 1995 version here.
As of this writing, The Net is streaming for free on Tubi.
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