Popular reviews

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  Review by Marcissus ★★★ 4

  >Nicolas Cage researched his character by binge drinking, and would film himself drunk to study his speech patterns.

  
  One of the great pains in my life is that I will never see this footage.

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  Review by DirkH ★★★★★ 22

  This film kicks my teeth in in the most beautiful way every time I watch it.

  Whenever an artist manages to combine and contrast beauty and reality I'm always sucked in without reservation, often leaving me wrecked but smiling. Figgis, Cage and Shue made promises here they unfortunately never kept in their later careers.

  The notion of a man leaving everything behind to drink himself to death in the capital of sin is as strong as it is fraught with the danger of skirting melodrama. Figgis manages to walk this tightrope really well as he is as unrelenting for his audience as Cage's character is for himself. He cuts no corners and unveils two lives that meet, linked in misfortune,…

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  Review by Harry Ridgway ★★★★½

  "Hey man, you want a drink?"
  "Nah, I just watched Leaving Las Vegas"
  "Oh, I'm sorry. I guess I'll see you around"
  "Maybe"

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  Review by adambolt ★½

  nicolas cage GETS DRUNK and HAS SEX

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  Review by Jizzmonkey ★★★★★ 8

  Writing a film review and drinking go hand in hand. And I've discovered there's actually a bell curve. The review is better the more you've had to drink, then there's the peak of creative genius where you've ingested just the right amount of booze, then there's the inevitable degradation in quality as you realize you've sold all your possessions and are sleeping under a bridge.

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  Review by Emma Skirrow-Gurney ★★ 1

  Kind of sexy.
  Kind of sad.
  Kind of shit.

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  Review by Sigfred Storstrand ★★★★ 2

  I'm not sure whether I relate more to the depressed lonely person or the depressed suicidal person here.

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  Review by Rocky Ibarra ★★★★

  It’s never occurred to me that Leaving Las Vegas is a film that revolves around depression, alcoholism or prostitution; you’ll have to include scenes where the hardships of coming from those backgrounds are the matter but the film struck me for a couple of reasons that are not associated with any of these things. Mainly, it is a touching story with realistic people in it in real-life relationships. It is about people with those backgrounds but the backgrounds don’t really say anything about their personalities. They can be tender. Much of the film is about the capacity to contain hope in the midst of knowing that we are empty and hollow, and that there will always be people who care…

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  Review by Will Sloan

  Whenever Cage talks about acting in interviews, he talks about his desire to move away from naturalism, or to find a way to combine naturalism with the "expressionism" of silent-film acting. I get excited hearing him talk about these ideas, and then wonder if he uses his dozens of under-the-radar, direct-to-VOD jobs as opportunities to experiment. But then I check him out in something like Rage or Left Behind and my excitement immediately deflates.

  Anyway, Cage absolutely pulls it off here. Elisabeth Shue also very good.

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  Review by laird ★★½ 10

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  With sincere apologies to Kent "The Beast of Brier" Beeson whose Beasts of the Southern Wild review this apes:

  Hey girl, sorry your physically abusive Latvian pimp was murdered by gangsters, your job entails demeaning yourself in public, you got kicked out of your apartment, and you got anally gang raped by those college boys. At least in between being constantly victimized you got to fall in love with that dying drunk for whom you played Madonna-whore before the script got around to giving you any agency.

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  Review by Christian Di Leo ★★★★

  Now I've done some binge drinking in my day but this is just ridiculous!

  🥴🍾🍷🍸🍹🍺🍻🥂🥃🍶🧉

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  Review by jourdain searles ★ 2

  miserable, and not in a profound way.

  
  I’ve never experienced a film less aware of what it is.