It’s hard not to love Nicolas Cage.

That face! The hair! The wacky, non-traditional roles he chooses! His larger-than-life personality! It’s not surprising that in the upcoming film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, by all accounts he is crushing a role tailor-made for him: the role of actor Nicolas Cage.

Cage plays a more theatrical version of himself in the film, which opens April 22nd. The movie’s official description (and the hilarious trailer) make it sound like the most Nick Cage movie yet.

Creatively unfulfilled and facing financial ruin, the fictionalized version of Cage must accept a $1 million offer to attend the birthday of a dangerous superfan (Pedro Pascal). Things take a wildly unexpected turn when Cage is recruited by a CIA operative (Tiffany Haddish) and forced to live up to his own legend, channeling his most iconic and beloved on-screen characters in order to save himself and his loved ones. With a career built for this very moment, the seminal award-winning actor must take on the role of a lifetime: Nicolas Cage.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent site

So how do you become a “dangerous superfan” of Mr. Cage by opening day? Binge these most Cage-y films from the Oscar-winner’s considerably large body of work, to start. It’s hard to narrow down Cage’s best work to just a few films, as so many have to be left out of even a lenghty list. So while you can’t go wrong with (most of) Cage’s work, the following films feature Cage at his most outrageous, scenery-chewing awesomeness.

Valley Girl (1983)

This movie was Cage’s first big role, starring as a radical punk (named Randy!) romancing Julie, a Valley Girl played by Deborah Foreman. A classic mis-matched boy meets girl tale, this one was made to capitalize on the ’80s novelty hit song, very much against the wishes of Frank Zappa and his daughter Moon Unit, who released it. Cage, who had recently dropped his birth name to distance himself from his famous director uncle Francis Ford Coppola, went method for the production, sleeping in his car in Hollywood for most of the 20-day shoot to better understand Randy and shaving his chest hair into a triangle (after being told he needed to lose some of it to appear younger).

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

Kathleen Turner in her heyday stars as Peggy Sue, one of the most popular girls in high school who finds herself married to her high school beau Charlie (Cage) and starting a family. Fast forward 25 years later and she’s depressed and facing divorce when Charlie runs off with another woman. At her high school reunion, Peggy Sue faints and wakes up back in high school with a chance to relive her life – and maybe take a different path this time. Cage, then 22, was in his highest-profile role to date, but made the production a fraught one because he really didn’t want to be there: he used a strange accent, false teeth, and basically turned his character’s weirdness up to eleven by playing “Jerry Lewis on acid.” Unsurprisingly, he and Turner had a frosty off-screen relationship.

Raising Arizona (1987)

This quirky, optimistic comedy follows convenience-store robber H.I. McDunnough (Cage), who falls in love with police officer Ed (Holly Hunter) over the course of multiple arrests and jail stints. When Ed, who desperately wants a baby, discovers she’s infertile, the couple decides to kidnap one of the quintuplet newborns of Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson), a furniture magnate and local celebrity. Cage wanted to bring his own ideas to the movie and the character, causing a bit of tension between him and the Coen brothers, who directed the movie. What Cage did bring was a Woody Woodpecker tattoo and hairstyle, and the crazier his onscreen antics were, the wilder his hair became.

Moonstruck (1987)

Moonstruck is a romantic comedy starring Cher, who plays Loretta Castorini, a 37-year-old Italian American widow whose husband was killed by a bus just two years into their marriage. She’s in an unexciting relationship with Johnny, played by Danny Aiello, but is pursued by his younger (as in younger than her) brother Ronny (Cage.) Cage’s performance as the one-handed Ronny is a leap; melodramatic, dramatic and just plain weird, he moves through the movie like a tragic hero in an opera, although one who shouts lines like “I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his bride!”

Vampire’s Kiss (1989)

It’s the face that launched a hundred thousand memes – you know the one, with a bug-eyed Cage grimacing weirdly. That hardly narrows it down, but you know it when you see it. This movie is a darkly comic story about a mentally disturbed literary agent named Peter Loew (Cage), whose empty, unfulfilled romantic exploits cause him to rant to his therapist and torment his poor secretary, Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso). When Peter gets bitten by a vampiric lover named Rachel (Jennifer Beals), he believes he’s turning into a vampire and descends into insanity, ranting and raving and begging for death. Among other stories of Cage-ian madness, the actor insisted on eating a live bug for the role, against the wishes of the producers. Guess who got their way?

Con Air (1997)

What is it about Cameron Poe, Cage’s Con Air character, that’s so compelling? Is it the hair? The accent? The biceps? Whatever it is, Cage is firing on all cylinders here. He plays an Alabama military veteran who goes to jail after accidentally killing a guy who’d been harassing him and his wife. Newly paroled, he finds himself on a prison transport plane with some of the country’s most dangerous criminals, who take control and try to escape the country. Cameron, played by Cage as a neo-Elvis hayseed, has to find a way to stop them while playing along with their scheme. This is the point at which we start to see glimpses of the goofy, take-any-role Cage we know today and not the semi-serious, sometime art-house film guy he once was. Classic Cage line: “Put the bunny back in the box!”

Face/Off (1997)

Face/Off is a John Woo actioner about an FBI agent named Sean Archer (John Travolta) who undergoes a procedure to switch faces with Castor Troy, a criminal (Cage) to go undercover to get Castor’s brother Pollux to help him figure out how to defuse a bomb that’s about to blow up Los Angeles. But then Troy does his own face swap to look like Archer, and inserts himself into Sean’s life, even trying to fool Archer’s wife and daughter. Naturally, Cage plays the mythologically-named Troy as a complete maniac, The real fun is when Cage plays Archer playing Troy, and vice versa. Keep in mind that by now, Cage had won the Best Actor Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas.

National Treasure (2004)

Cage gets his Indiana Jones on for this movie, which finds him playing a treasure hunter named Benjamin Franklin Gates (of course) who decides to steal the Declaration of Independence (original copy) to decode a secret message leading him and his crew on a treasure hunt all over Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. There’s a lot of DaVinci Code hooey about Knights Templar and Freemasons, but it’s amiable fun, with Cage’s character bringing just the right amount of goofy earnestness needed to make the ridiculous story work.

The Wicker Man (2006)

“Not the bees!” Seriously, is there anything else you remember about this movie apart from the scene where Cage’s character is forced to wear a beehive helmet as punishment? Cage plays Edward Malus, a sheriff investigating the disappearance of a young girl from a small island. He discovers to his detriment that there is a larger mystery to solve among the island’s secretive, neo-pagan community. If you look on the IMDb quote page for this movie, a remake of the 1973 Christopher Lee classic, you’ll see a wealth of bombastic Cagey line reads so funny, you won’t need to watch the movie. But you should, if for nothing else than to see him gallivanting around the island in a bear suit, shouting at little girls that they should not be afraid of him.

Ghost Rider (2007)

Cage becomes comic book hero/anti-hero Johnny Blaze, aka Ghost Rider, and though he isn’t yet part of the MCU, he definitely goes the extra mile to embody the role of a motorcycle-riding shaman with a flaming skull for a head. Cage gave the CGI team an x-ray of his own cranium to make their effects just that more realistic, and in fact, provided a 3-D scan of his entire body so that his movement effects were as realistic as possible. And in true weird Cage style, he wore Afro-Carribbean face paint and Egyptian artifacts into his costume to fully inhabit is character. Oh, and those abs he was sporting? Those were 100% Cage.

The Death of ‘Superman Lives’: What Happened? (2015)

Not content to exist as a Marvel hero, Cage made a play for what is arguably DC’s number one hero: Superman. The fact that you don’t remember him suiting up as the Kryptonian isn’t an accident – the movie was never made. In The Death of ‘Superman Lives’: What Happened?, a documentary directed by Jon Schnepp about the making of the Tim Burton’s aborted attempt at a new Superman flick, we finally get a look at many of the concept designs and costume/effects tests. Nearly every key member of the production is interviewed, along with Kevin Smith, who penned the script. The movie would have featuring Supes fighting a giant spider, as well as a skirmish between Superman nemesis Brainiac (Christopher Walken) and a pair of polar bears at the Fortress of Solitude, which sounds awesome. What wasn’t awesome was the sight of Cage suited up as the Man of Steel. That was just kind of sad-looking.

Mandy (2018)

Cage has a prolific late-teens, early-’20s career, and none of his films stand out as much as Mandy does. Here he plays Red Miller, a quiet man who lives in California’s Shadow Mountains, where he cuts down trees with a chainsaw all day and comes home every night to his beloved Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). But when a religious cult kills Mandy, Red goes into a psychotic rage, killing everyone (human and supernatural) who was involved in her death. Cage’s over-the-top killing spree excess, together with the gorgeous cinematography, make for one unmissable flick.

Color Out of Space (2019)

Another B-movie adventure, this one is based on a H.P. Lovecraft story and finds Cage playing Nathan Gardner, the patriarch of a family of five trying to adjust to the move to Arkham, Mass., where Nathan’s wife (Joely Richardson) is recovering from cancer surgery. Things really begin to go haywire when a meteorite lands in the front yard, forcing the Gardners to contend with what comes with it: the mysterious color of the title, rendered in the film as a glowing purple/pink energy. It’s no Mandy, but Cage does get some great lines, chiefly when he says “If you don’t mind, it’s time to milk the alpacas.” That’s followed by a scene in which Nathan does just that, even going so far as to drink some alpaca juice, fresh from the source.

Willy’s Wonderland (2021)

If anyone could pull off a mute janitor fighting off a horde of demonic Chuck E. Cheese-type animatronics, it’s Cage. In Willy’s Wonderland, Cage plays a character known only as The Janitor, a man of no words, and apparently no back story. We only know that he drives fast, he plays pinball, and he’s addicted to high-energy power drinks. He is hired to clean the restaurant housing the anthropomorphic beasts, but finds himself fighting off the evil monsters and the townspeople who willing sacrifice travelers to feed the hungry, hungry demons before peeling out with the restaurant firmly in his rear-view mirror. And we never know what the hell is going on for the entire length of the movie.

Pig (2021)

Finally, a good movie. No, really, Pig is surprisingly effective, and Cage’s performance as a truffle hunter who loses his beloved pet and sets off to get her back, is a true delight. This movie takes some unexpected turns, not the least of which is Cage’s humane, nuanced performance as Rob, a former chef turned hermit. We see bits of Rob’s past life come together, and see that wasn’t always a lonely mountain man. He used to be somebody, but he was pushed out of that world by some painful experience he’s burying. He tells one of the men he’s interrogating, “every day you wake up, there’ll be less of you,” adding, “we don’t get a lot of things to really care about.”

So that’s the list – you may wish to add to it – of some of Cage’s best roles, or at least his most memorable ones. Watch them all before you go see The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.