8mm
8mm: A private investigator is hired to authenticate or debunk a snuff film found by an eccentric millionaire’s widow. The headline here is a shocking display of anti-acting by Cage – could easily be in his bottom 5 performances (and that’s saying something) – totally woeful – especially when he loses his shit near the end Gandalfini steals the show with his ‘here’s what happened’ scene, and Phoenix plays a stereotype deviant well enough. So you’re thinking ‘Cage is rubbish, but at least the story’s alright…’ then the last hour happens. What the shit is the end of this film about; why does some guy have a crossbow? Why is Cage going vigilante? Why burn a stack of Porn? Rainy Mud fight? DANZIG?… everything is turned up to 11, or 20. It reeks of all the good 90s thrillers, but feels like a TV movie. 8mm is one of those films that everyone remembers being decent, but when replayed, is absolutely terrible. While the subject matter is intriguing, this film’s far too bizarre for most people to enjoy. Would recommend Tesis and Hardcore over this. Shame on Schu-macher!
Score: 2.5/10
Paragraph Film Reviews 
I remember renting this film when I was in middle school and not making it through twenty minutes. Truly awful!
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I’ve seen this movie twice, and I don’t know why. It makes me feel dirty every time. No, wait, I do know why — it’s because I love the character of Max California and what Joaquin Phoenix does with him. I liked Max so much that at the second viewing I had to skip his most distressing death scene.
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Maybe it’s the names involved, or because I just love a bit of the Cage but for some reason I always end up thinking ‘This film was alright’… Oh dear.
Favourite scene is where Cage is talking on a payphone and it sounds like he’s struggling through a phonetic copy of a foreign language scirpt.
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