Hollywood is no stranger to controversy, but it has produced perhaps no more consistently polarizing figure than Nicolas Cage.  Any website devoted to him quickly devolves into a  Hatfield and McCoy-esque feud in which the commenters' love for/hatred of Cage is expressed in increasingly exclamatory lists of his movie titles (i.e. "OMG, Adaptation!" "OH YEAH???GHOST RIDER!!!") which are eventually supplanted by posts expressing the wish that the other commenters would get stranded on a desert island and die. 

Even when one can find slightly meatier debate, it is hard to know what to think. Depending on what you read, he is either a hack with "next to no talent" or an Oscar winner with "great charisma"; an actor who bravely breaks down genre conventions or who robotically plays the same character in every movie; a man whose hair looks like he stapled a dead muskrat to his forehead or one who is "soooo fucken hott".  

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Cage's first starring movie role (as high-school rebel Randy in 1983's Valley Girl) and he has been working prolifically ever since, with over 50 released films under his belt and another nine in production. In honor of his silver anniversary on the silver screen, I am embarking on a quest: to watch every Nicolas Cage movie ever made, in chronological order. Some I have seen; most I have not. Some I expect to enjoy; others I am already dreading.  By doing this I hope to cut through both the vitriol and adoration and get some answers. Firstly to the question underlying all Cage debate: Is he a good actor with terrible taste or a bad actor who occasionally gets lucky? But I also intend to examine issues raised by a film-by-film analysis of his entire career: How does his take on fatherhood change from Raising Arizona to Matchstick Men? Which does he play more often, a con man or a hit man?  What happened to Las Vegas in between Honeymoon in and Leaving?

On the war-torn boards of IMDb, one commenter posted a plaintive request for unpartisan discourse: "if ur in luv wit the guy leave, if u absolutely hate him leave... wut do some of u unbiased ppl think?"   I think it is about time we find out.