A tragicomic dissection of male, middle-aged angst, this centers on a Chicago meteorologist (Nicolas Cage) who is a well-meaning but consistently disappointing
divorced father of two. As it chronicles his foibles, you realize few movies plant us so squarely inside a character’s head. Partly this is due to Cage’s sad-clown performance and part of it has to do with the confessional voice-over narration in Steve Conrad’s
pitch-perfect script. Director Gore Verbinski, meanwhile, turns what could have been a strictly emotional experience into a brisk visual one by embracing the slushy, frigid Chicago we all know and endure.
