In many ways, Nicolas Cage’s starring role in Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario follows naturally from his role in Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022). The Gormican film allowed Cage, through self-parody, to pull back the curtain on his idiosyncratic public persona, which had formerly been constructed through tabloid headlines and his singularly emotive acting methods (“shamanic,” he calls them). Cage made two things clear: he is aware of his strangeness and he loves nothing more than performance. With Dream Scenario, A24 Films has provided him with a perfect playground. It centers on a biology professor (Cage) who begins appearing in his students’—and then everyone’s—dreams. When the mystifying phenomenon garners national attention, an unassuming everyman is thrust into the spotlight. Cage, as usual, revels in it. —Jack Sullivan