Nicholas Cage's The Surfer is as subtle as a shark bite... but David Attenborough's Ocean documentary is a big splash, writes BRIAN VINER

Daily Mail​

09-05-2025

The Surfer (15, 100 mins)
Almost a year has passed since I first saw The Surfer at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival yet I still vividly remember the whoops of excitement at the opening titles – ' Nicolas Cage is… The Surfer' – followed by the bemused silence and then the steady walk-outs.
To put it mildly, this nutty Australia-set thriller is not everyone's can of Foster's. It certainly isn't mine.
With his trademark excess, Cage plays the unnamed title character, a man returning with his surfboard to the beach where he spent his carefree youth, wanting to re-live the fun with his son.
But it quickly becomes clear that in life, as in water, he is not even close to riding the crest of a wave. On the contrary, he's a XXXX loser, a human punchbag, humiliated at every turn.
Cage throws himself into this role with wild-eyed glee. What he does not throw himself towards is any semblance of an Aussie accent, which is more than a little mystifying until, handily, it's explained that as a kid he was taken off to live in distant California.
Now he's back in the (fictional) resort of Luna Bay, about to buy his grandfather's old house on Cliff Top Drive.
His son doesn't seem comfortable around him, which is entirely understandable, since he attracts misfortune like carrion attracts blowflies.
And he's separated from his wife, who splatters any prospect of a reconciliation with the news that she wants to re-marry. Oh, and that's not all. She's pregnant.
Still, there's always his beloved surf; surely that will wash his cares away? But no. A gang of hostile locals take exception to him crashing their waves.
'Don't live here, don't surf here' is their boorish mantra, as their ringleader (Julian McMahon) becomes ever more vindictive.
From this point Lorcan Finnegan's film begins to strain with almost audible grunts to replicate the feel of John Boorman's 1972 classic Deliverance, as our would-be surfer, in what he thinks is his own land, finds that he is an undesirable.
Yet for some reason only partly explained by a flat car battery he chooses to stick around, getting victimised; his luck getting worse and worse.
If there's a passing rat, it will bite him. A vicious dog in the vicinity? You've guessed it. Will the house sale at least go through to stop his life from completely falling apart?
Hmmm. Might the Luna Bay cop offer salvation, or will he turn out to be a kind of one-man South American banana republic of stinking corruption? Hmmm again.
Perhaps the only way to enjoy The Surfer is to pack away your disbelief and revel in Cage's thunderously over-the-top performance in a movie as subtle as a shark bite.
Ocean With David Attenborough (PG, 95 mins)
Verdict: In-depth documentary
Rating:
Sharks pop up, as you would expect, in Ocean With David Attenborough. So does the peacock mantis shrimp, with its fabulously complex eyesight, and boxer crabs, which for self-defence use clumps of venomous anemones as gloves, and look so much like pugilists limbering up for a fight that there should be a promoter, a crustacean Frank Warren, standing behind them.
Yet Ocean is not a typical Attenborough documentary. It's basically an appeal to the world's governments, and to us as potential lobbyists, to protect more of our deep seas from the catastrophic effects of industrial fishing.
Yet Ocean is not a typical Attenborough documentary. It's basically an appeal to the world's governments, and to us as potential lobbyists, to protect more of our deep seas
He has many reasons to be optimistic, and one of them is the explosion in the world's whale population since commercial whaling was banned almost 40 years ago
Attenborough argues persuasively, aided by spectacular underwater footage, that the key to humanity's survival lies beneath the waves. But he does not deliver this message gloomily.
He has many reasons to be optimistic, and one of them is the explosion in the world's whale population since commercial whaling was banned almost 40 years ago.
In anyone else's hands all this could seem overly tendentious, maybe even tedious. But Attenborough makes it utterly compelling. He turned 99 yesterday and wears his age far more like a cloak of authority than a shroud of infirmity.
Riefenstahl (15, 115 mins)
Verdict: Fascinating and creepy
Rating:
The film-maker, photographer and actress Leni Riefenstahl made it to 101. Andres Veiel's documentary Riefenstahl tells her extraordinary life story, which was full and varied, and fell less than two years short of spanning the entire 20th century, but was defined by her relationship with Adolf Hitler.
He admired her extravagantly and she returned the compliment, although she was less enamoured of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, who was besotted with her and, she claimed, twice tried to rape her.
This fascinating and comprehensive portrait examines her impact as the most influential woman in the Third Reich, whose films Triumph Of The Will (1935), lionising the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, and Olympia (1938), celebrating the 1936 Berlin Olympics, were as technically brilliant as they were creepily sinister.
But clips of her being interviewed later in life show her railing fiercely against the notion that she was in any way an instrument of evil.
She denied even being a propagandist. Triumph Of The Will was about 'work and peace', she said. She only did what anyone with her skills would have done. She was, in short, just obeying orders.
The Wedding Banquet (15, 103 mins)
Verdict: Lily Gladstone, an Oscar nominee for 2023's Killers Of The Flower Moon, gives another splendid performance in a remake of Ang Lee's hit 1993 rom-com of the same name.
Rating:
In the original, a gay Taiwanese man hides his sexuality from his conservative parents by marrying a Chinese woman, and pretends his boyfriend is his landlord. But sexual
politics have changed considerably since then, so director and co-writer Andrew Ahn tweaks the narrative accordingly.
Two gay couples (one female, played by Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran), the other male, have various challenges to navigate, this time involving IVF and rich Korean grandparents who must be kept from the truth if their grandson is to keep his inheritance.
Farce ensues, but the film is touching as well as funny, and despite a few dud notes, it mostly works very nicely.
I wasn't so keen on The Uninvited (15, 97 mins, HHIII), a debut feature for writer-director Nadia Conners, whose husband, Walton Goggins, plays the male lead.
It's a clunky, over-theatrical movie-industry satire, in which an agent (Goggins) and his actress wife (Elizabeth Reaser) throw a party at their smart Hollywood Hills home.
Inconveniently, a confused old woman (Lois Smith) turns up on the night of the do, claiming that the house used to be hers.
There are some great lines and lively supporting performances from Rufus Sewell and Pedro Pascal as ghastly Hollywood big shots, but if you don't show up for The Uninvited, you won't have missed much.