f the five or six movies Nicolas Cage made last year, only one role seemed to genuinely challenge him. In the spiky modern satire, he played a paunchy, balding professor whose lofty estimation of his own intelligence was only matched by some equally towering emotional insecurities. It is an intriguing film, and Cage consciously tamped down his volcanic acting style to match his drab academic outfits. But I can’t have been the only one
