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West Australian
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- West Australian
Reel Talk: The Surfer sees Nicolas Cage in his Ozploitation era
3 stars Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Finn Little, Alex Bertrand Rated: MA15+ In Cinemas: Now Some actors transform for a role. Others transform the role itself, bending it in their image. Nicolas Cage has always been in the latter category, and this is certainly the case in The Surfer, the Hollywood superstar's psychological thriller that was shot in Yallingup. Cage calls it 'Nouveau shamanism', illustrated hilariously when he played a version of himself in the excellent 2022 comedy, The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent. But, whatever you call it, no one does it better than him. And by 'it' we're talking about playing characters that oscillate effortlessly between unnatural calm and mania, earnestness and frivolity. If you need an actor who can believably seem unhinged, yet, by the closing credits, salvage sanity from the brink of madness, Cage is your guy. Which is precisely why Irish director Lorcan Finnegan (who previously gave us the trippy 2019 film, Vivarium) had to have the Oscar-winner for The Surfer. Wearing its influences like a blistering sunburn, the movie channels the Ozploitation era of Australian filmmaking, which produced seminal works such as Ted Kotcheff's 1971 classic, Wake In Fright. Think blazing sun, austere cinematography and a nagging sense of unease that permeates everything. The plot follows Cage's unnamed character, who returns to his coastal home town after years working in the US, with a dream of surfing the beloved break of his childhood and purchasing the house he grew up in. There's just one problem — a gang of surfers, known as the Bay Boys, are viciously protective of said break. Led by Scally, a charismatic bloke who doubles as a masculinity guru (played to perfection by Julian McMahon), the Bay Boys' locals-only policy sees them view Cage as an interloper. Stubbornly refusing to leave the car park overlooking the beach until the finance on the house comes through, Cage is inexorably pulled into a conflict with the locals. Baked in the sun, his grip on reality loosens as his desire to build a new life starts to become a desperate and unhealthy obsession. Scally, meanwhile, is indoctrinating young surfers in a storyline that examines modern masculinity, with McMahon finely balancing the menace to ensure the audience is never really convinced he's an outright villain. Similarly, Cage's perspective often feels untrustworthy, and you're left with a sense this could all be in his head, which adds to the surreal nature of the film. In the end, this oddness occasionally overwhelms the drama, and, though Cage's commitment to the role is commendable, going Full Cage is an acquired taste. Finnegan leans into the weird in a way we don't often see anymore, but it's hard to escape the feeling a more straightforward approach might have yielded a stronger result.
The Advertiser
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Like Home and Away on crack: will Aussies bristle at toxic beach Ockers?
"I hope everyone has tough enough skin to know that it's only a bit of craic." Irish director Lorcan Finnegan smiles as he ponders the possibility that Australians will baulk, and maybe even bristle, at his unflattering depiction of tribal and toxic Ocker Aussies in his trippy psychological thriller The Surfer starring Nicolas Cage. Filmed in Yallingup, the home of surf champ Taj Burrow near Busselton in Western Australia, The Surfer sets Cage on a sun-baked slow boil as a returning expat who's made an offer on a big house overlooking the idyllic beach where he grew up. He dreams that coming home to Luna Bay will bring him closer to his son and maybe save his marriage. But the thuggish gang of local surfers here won't let "outsiders" like him ride the waves, so bonding with his boy on their surfboards isn't looking likely. "Locals only", the beach signs warn. "Don't live here, don't surf here" the menacing Bay Boys growl to his face. But as the abuse of the louts escalates - beating him up, stealing his surfboard, vandalising his Lexus - Cage, desperately driven by ego, alienation and an aching sense of nostalgia, won't let it go and sets up camp in the carpark above the beach. It's a sweaty, chafing, dementedly macho scenario of sometimes surreal savagery cooked up with fiendish glee by Finnegan and scriptwriter (and fellow Irishman) Thomas Martin to push Cage to breaking point. As the hallucinogenic effects of blistering sun and extreme heat and the humiliations meted out by alpha male Julian McMahon's cult of bogan bullies pile up, he loses his fancy watch, his phone charger, his shoes and, inevitably, his mind. Those strange distortions staring back at him in the metal mirror in the carpark toilet block begin to feel frighteningly real. Partially inspired by the aggressively territorial Lunada Bay Boys, a surf gang that notoriously claimed a stretch of Californian coast as their own, the film's more recognisable reference is a retro B-movie visual style and gonzo tone that evokes Australian New Wave films of the 1970s. Think Wake in Fright (1971), The Last Wave (1977) and Long Weekend (1978). Finnegan calls The Surfer's vibe "strange and dreamy" but there's a riptide of horror running through the cinematography of Radek Ladczuk (The Babadook, The Nightingale) and the eerily off-kilter score by Franois Tétaz (Wolf Creek). Wake In Fright, Ted Kotcheff's skin-crawling portrait of an ugly Australia (notorious for its kangaroo hunt sequence and notable for being Chips Rafferty's final film and Jack Thompson's first), is an unmistakable influence. With its own animalistic grotesquery, The Surfer plays like Wake in Fright in wetsuits. "When I started filmmaking, Australian New Wave and Ozploitation films were a massive inspiration," Finnegan says. "My very first film Without Name was inspired by Picnic At Hanging Rock, the Peter Weir film, and Colin Eggleston's Long Weekend. "So for this film, yeah, we were watching a lot of Wake in Fright and also Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout. Those films have the tradition of the outsider. Not only the outsider as a character, but the outsider as the filmmaker going to Australia and making a very Australian film - with Nic Roeg being British and Ted Kotcheff being Canadian." But Finnegan insists he didn't set out to hold up a warped public toilet mirror to Australians. "This isn't a critique of Australia," he says. "It's about a very specific group of people on this beach. To me, these guys are almost part of the Jungian journey that Nic Cage's character has to go on ... they are representative of some sort of shadow self within him. What he believes he wants at the beginning of the film is just this materialist goal of owning this house and that will fix all of his problems and his relationships. They have to be mean to him because, as they say, before you can surf you must suffer. To me these characters are almost caricatures [and] ... poking fun at that sort of hypermasculinity and the male ego in crisis." Cage, the Oscar-winner for 1995's Leaving Las Vegas who relished playing a version of his kooky self in 2022's The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, leans hard into The Surfer's Kafkaesque absurdity. The film's ending comes without his character exacting the ultimate revenge we might have expected and without one of those head-bursts-into-Ghost Rider-flames explosions of Cage rage that have become the actor's trademark. But, like Wake in Fright's outsider driven to madness by the locals, Cage takes his descent into some very unsavoury places. At one point in his disintegration into delirium he flirts with eating a dead rat, then he uses it as a weapon (Look out for the line "Eat the rat!" coming to a Cage meme near you). There's also a scene involving a nest of bird eggs that takes you all the way back to 1989 and his cockroach-eating scene in Vampire's Kiss. Like Walkabout, Finnegan lays on deliberately discomforting cutaway close-ups to cackling kookaburras, shrieking cicadas and echidnas clawing at the earth. The flies - drawn to Cage's sunburn and sweat make-up ("there was a lot of fake sweat") - were an authentic bonus. "We were just lucky with the flies," he laughs. "I thought we were lucky. I don't think the actors thought that." Like many in Ireland and the UK, the filmmaker (whose previous films include Jesse Eisenberg sci-fi horror Vivarium and Eva Green thriller Nocebo) grew up with sunshine-filled Aussie soaps like Home & Away and Neighbours. He seems to relish the suggestion his pulpy psychodrama flips that image on its ugly edge and plays like Home & Away on crack. "Yes, the score for the film by Franois Tetaz, for the scene where Nic is walking around drinking out of puddles and eating bird eggs, has a piece of music called Clam's Casino that actually has flavours of Skippy in it." What's that, Skip? The outsiders have stolen your banjo-and-harmonica innocence and turned it into a demented riff on dinkum tribalism? Tsk tsk! "I hope everyone has tough enough skin to know that it's only a bit of craic." Irish director Lorcan Finnegan smiles as he ponders the possibility that Australians will baulk, and maybe even bristle, at his unflattering depiction of tribal and toxic Ocker Aussies in his trippy psychological thriller The Surfer starring Nicolas Cage. Filmed in Yallingup, the home of surf champ Taj Burrow near Busselton in Western Australia, The Surfer sets Cage on a sun-baked slow boil as a returning expat who's made an offer on a big house overlooking the idyllic beach where he grew up. He dreams that coming home to Luna Bay will bring him closer to his son and maybe save his marriage. But the thuggish gang of local surfers here won't let "outsiders" like him ride the waves, so bonding with his boy on their surfboards isn't looking likely. "Locals only", the beach signs warn. "Don't live here, don't surf here" the menacing Bay Boys growl to his face. But as the abuse of the louts escalates - beating him up, stealing his surfboard, vandalising his Lexus - Cage, desperately driven by ego, alienation and an aching sense of nostalgia, won't let it go and sets up camp in the carpark above the beach. It's a sweaty, chafing, dementedly macho scenario of sometimes surreal savagery cooked up with fiendish glee by Finnegan and scriptwriter (and fellow Irishman) Thomas Martin to push Cage to breaking point. As the hallucinogenic effects of blistering sun and extreme heat and the humiliations meted out by alpha male Julian McMahon's cult of bogan bullies pile up, he loses his fancy watch, his phone charger, his shoes and, inevitably, his mind. Those strange distortions staring back at him in the metal mirror in the carpark toilet block begin to feel frighteningly real. Partially inspired by the aggressively territorial Lunada Bay Boys, a surf gang that notoriously claimed a stretch of Californian coast as their own, the film's more recognisable reference is a retro B-movie visual style and gonzo tone that evokes Australian New Wave films of the 1970s. Think Wake in Fright (1971), The Last Wave (1977) and Long Weekend (1978). Finnegan calls The Surfer's vibe "strange and dreamy" but there's a riptide of horror running through the cinematography of Radek Ladczuk (The Babadook, The Nightingale) and the eerily off-kilter score by Franois Tétaz (Wolf Creek). Wake In Fright, Ted Kotcheff's skin-crawling portrait of an ugly Australia (notorious for its kangaroo hunt sequence and notable for being Chips Rafferty's final film and Jack Thompson's first), is an unmistakable influence. With its own animalistic grotesquery, The Surfer plays like Wake in Fright in wetsuits. "When I started filmmaking, Australian New Wave and Ozploitation films were a massive inspiration," Finnegan says. "My very first film Without Name was inspired by Picnic At Hanging Rock, the Peter Weir film, and Colin Eggleston's Long Weekend. "So for this film, yeah, we were watching a lot of Wake in Fright and also Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout. Those films have the tradition of the outsider. Not only the outsider as a character, but the outsider as the filmmaker going to Australia and making a very Australian film - with Nic Roeg being British and Ted Kotcheff being Canadian." But Finnegan insists he didn't set out to hold up a warped public toilet mirror to Australians. "This isn't a critique of Australia," he says. "It's about a very specific group of people on this beach. To me, these guys are almost part of the Jungian journey that Nic Cage's character has to go on ... they are representative of some sort of shadow self within him. What he believes he wants at the beginning of the film is just this materialist goal of owning this house and that will fix all of his problems and his relationships. They have to be mean to him because, as they say, before you can surf you must suffer. To me these characters are almost caricatures [and] ... poking fun at that sort of hypermasculinity and the male ego in crisis." Cage, the Oscar-winner for 1995's Leaving Las Vegas who relished playing a version of his kooky self in 2022's The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, leans hard into The Surfer's Kafkaesque absurdity. The film's ending comes without his character exacting the ultimate revenge we might have expected and without one of those head-bursts-into-Ghost Rider-flames explosions of Cage rage that have become the actor's trademark. But, like Wake in Fright's outsider driven to madness by the locals, Cage takes his descent into some very unsavoury places. At one point in his disintegration into delirium he flirts with eating a dead rat, then he uses it as a weapon (Look out for the line "Eat the rat!" coming to a Cage meme near you). There's also a scene involving a nest of bird eggs that takes you all the way back to 1989 and his cockroach-eating scene in Vampire's Kiss. Like Walkabout, Finnegan lays on deliberately discomforting cutaway close-ups to cackling kookaburras, shrieking cicadas and echidnas clawing at the earth. The flies - drawn to Cage's sunburn and sweat make-up ("there was a lot of fake sweat") - were an authentic bonus. "We were just lucky with the flies," he laughs. "I thought we were lucky. I don't think the actors thought that." Like many in Ireland and the UK, the filmmaker (whose previous films include Jesse Eisenberg sci-fi horror Vivarium and Eva Green thriller Nocebo) grew up with sunshine-filled Aussie soaps like Home & Away and Neighbours. He seems to relish the suggestion his pulpy psychodrama flips that image on its ugly edge and plays like Home & Away on crack. "Yes, the score for the film by Franois Tetaz, for the scene where Nic is walking around drinking out of puddles and eating bird eggs, has a piece of music called Clam's Casino that actually has flavours of Skippy in it." What's that, Skip? The outsiders have stolen your banjo-and-harmonica innocence and turned it into a demented riff on dinkum tribalism? Tsk tsk! "I hope everyone has tough enough skin to know that it's only a bit of craic." Irish director Lorcan Finnegan smiles as he ponders the possibility that Australians will baulk, and maybe even bristle, at his unflattering depiction of tribal and toxic Ocker Aussies in his trippy psychological thriller The Surfer starring Nicolas Cage. Filmed in Yallingup, the home of surf champ Taj Burrow near Busselton in Western Australia, The Surfer sets Cage on a sun-baked slow boil as a returning expat who's made an offer on a big house overlooking the idyllic beach where he grew up. He dreams that coming home to Luna Bay will bring him closer to his son and maybe save his marriage. But the thuggish gang of local surfers here won't let "outsiders" like him ride the waves, so bonding with his boy on their surfboards isn't looking likely. "Locals only", the beach signs warn. "Don't live here, don't surf here" the menacing Bay Boys growl to his face. But as the abuse of the louts escalates - beating him up, stealing his surfboard, vandalising his Lexus - Cage, desperately driven by ego, alienation and an aching sense of nostalgia, won't let it go and sets up camp in the carpark above the beach. It's a sweaty, chafing, dementedly macho scenario of sometimes surreal savagery cooked up with fiendish glee by Finnegan and scriptwriter (and fellow Irishman) Thomas Martin to push Cage to breaking point. As the hallucinogenic effects of blistering sun and extreme heat and the humiliations meted out by alpha male Julian McMahon's cult of bogan bullies pile up, he loses his fancy watch, his phone charger, his shoes and, inevitably, his mind. Those strange distortions staring back at him in the metal mirror in the carpark toilet block begin to feel frighteningly real. Partially inspired by the aggressively territorial Lunada Bay Boys, a surf gang that notoriously claimed a stretch of Californian coast as their own, the film's more recognisable reference is a retro B-movie visual style and gonzo tone that evokes Australian New Wave films of the 1970s. Think Wake in Fright (1971), The Last Wave (1977) and Long Weekend (1978). Finnegan calls The Surfer's vibe "strange and dreamy" but there's a riptide of horror running through the cinematography of Radek Ladczuk (The Babadook, The Nightingale) and the eerily off-kilter score by Franois Tétaz (Wolf Creek). Wake In Fright, Ted Kotcheff's skin-crawling portrait of an ugly Australia (notorious for its kangaroo hunt sequence and notable for being Chips Rafferty's final film and Jack Thompson's first), is an unmistakable influence. With its own animalistic grotesquery, The Surfer plays like Wake in Fright in wetsuits. "When I started filmmaking, Australian New Wave and Ozploitation films were a massive inspiration," Finnegan says. "My very first film Without Name was inspired by Picnic At Hanging Rock, the Peter Weir film, and Colin Eggleston's Long Weekend. "So for this film, yeah, we were watching a lot of Wake in Fright and also Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout. Those films have the tradition of the outsider. Not only the outsider as a character, but the outsider as the filmmaker going to Australia and making a very Australian film - with Nic Roeg being British and Ted Kotcheff being Canadian." But Finnegan insists he didn't set out to hold up a warped public toilet mirror to Australians. "This isn't a critique of Australia," he says. "It's about a very specific group of people on this beach. To me, these guys are almost part of the Jungian journey that Nic Cage's character has to go on ... they are representative of some sort of shadow self within him. What he believes he wants at the beginning of the film is just this materialist goal of owning this house and that will fix all of his problems and his relationships. They have to be mean to him because, as they say, before you can surf you must suffer. To me these characters are almost caricatures [and] ... poking fun at that sort of hypermasculinity and the male ego in crisis." Cage, the Oscar-winner for 1995's Leaving Las Vegas who relished playing a version of his kooky self in 2022's The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, leans hard into The Surfer's Kafkaesque absurdity. The film's ending comes without his character exacting the ultimate revenge we might have expected and without one of those head-bursts-into-Ghost Rider-flames explosions of Cage rage that have become the actor's trademark. But, like Wake in Fright's outsider driven to madness by the locals, Cage takes his descent into some very unsavoury places. At one point in his disintegration into delirium he flirts with eating a dead rat, then he uses it as a weapon (Look out for the line "Eat the rat!" coming to a Cage meme near you). There's also a scene involving a nest of bird eggs that takes you all the way back to 1989 and his cockroach-eating scene in Vampire's Kiss. Like Walkabout, Finnegan lays on deliberately discomforting cutaway close-ups to cackling kookaburras, shrieking cicadas and echidnas clawing at the earth. The flies - drawn to Cage's sunburn and sweat make-up ("there was a lot of fake sweat") - were an authentic bonus. "We were just lucky with the flies," he laughs. "I thought we were lucky. I don't think the actors thought that." Like many in Ireland and the UK, the filmmaker (whose previous films include Jesse Eisenberg sci-fi horror Vivarium and Eva Green thriller Nocebo) grew up with sunshine-filled Aussie soaps like Home & Away and Neighbours. He seems to relish the suggestion his pulpy psychodrama flips that image on its ugly edge and plays like Home & Away on crack. "Yes, the score for the film by Franois Tetaz, for the scene where Nic is walking around drinking out of puddles and eating bird eggs, has a piece of music called Clam's Casino that actually has flavours of Skippy in it." What's that, Skip? The outsiders have stolen your banjo-and-harmonica innocence and turned it into a demented riff on dinkum tribalism? Tsk tsk! "I hope everyone has tough enough skin to know that it's only a bit of craic." Irish director Lorcan Finnegan smiles as he ponders the possibility that Australians will baulk, and maybe even bristle, at his unflattering depiction of tribal and toxic Ocker Aussies in his trippy psychological thriller The Surfer starring Nicolas Cage. Filmed in Yallingup, the home of surf champ Taj Burrow near Busselton in Western Australia, The Surfer sets Cage on a sun-baked slow boil as a returning expat who's made an offer on a big house overlooking the idyllic beach where he grew up. He dreams that coming home to Luna Bay will bring him closer to his son and maybe save his marriage. But the thuggish gang of local surfers here won't let "outsiders" like him ride the waves, so bonding with his boy on their surfboards isn't looking likely. "Locals only", the beach signs warn. "Don't live here, don't surf here" the menacing Bay Boys growl to his face. But as the abuse of the louts escalates - beating him up, stealing his surfboard, vandalising his Lexus - Cage, desperately driven by ego, alienation and an aching sense of nostalgia, won't let it go and sets up camp in the carpark above the beach. It's a sweaty, chafing, dementedly macho scenario of sometimes surreal savagery cooked up with fiendish glee by Finnegan and scriptwriter (and fellow Irishman) Thomas Martin to push Cage to breaking point. As the hallucinogenic effects of blistering sun and extreme heat and the humiliations meted out by alpha male Julian McMahon's cult of bogan bullies pile up, he loses his fancy watch, his phone charger, his shoes and, inevitably, his mind. Those strange distortions staring back at him in the metal mirror in the carpark toilet block begin to feel frighteningly real. Partially inspired by the aggressively territorial Lunada Bay Boys, a surf gang that notoriously claimed a stretch of Californian coast as their own, the film's more recognisable reference is a retro B-movie visual style and gonzo tone that evokes Australian New Wave films of the 1970s. Think Wake in Fright (1971), The Last Wave (1977) and Long Weekend (1978). Finnegan calls The Surfer's vibe "strange and dreamy" but there's a riptide of horror running through the cinematography of Radek Ladczuk (The Babadook, The Nightingale) and the eerily off-kilter score by Franois Tétaz (Wolf Creek). Wake In Fright, Ted Kotcheff's skin-crawling portrait of an ugly Australia (notorious for its kangaroo hunt sequence and notable for being Chips Rafferty's final film and Jack Thompson's first), is an unmistakable influence. With its own animalistic grotesquery, The Surfer plays like Wake in Fright in wetsuits. "When I started filmmaking, Australian New Wave and Ozploitation films were a massive inspiration," Finnegan says. "My very first film Without Name was inspired by Picnic At Hanging Rock, the Peter Weir film, and Colin Eggleston's Long Weekend. "So for this film, yeah, we were watching a lot of Wake in Fright and also Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout. Those films have the tradition of the outsider. Not only the outsider as a character, but the outsider as the filmmaker going to Australia and making a very Australian film - with Nic Roeg being British and Ted Kotcheff being Canadian." But Finnegan insists he didn't set out to hold up a warped public toilet mirror to Australians. "This isn't a critique of Australia," he says. "It's about a very specific group of people on this beach. To me, these guys are almost part of the Jungian journey that Nic Cage's character has to go on ... they are representative of some sort of shadow self within him. What he believes he wants at the beginning of the film is just this materialist goal of owning this house and that will fix all of his problems and his relationships. They have to be mean to him because, as they say, before you can surf you must suffer. To me these characters are almost caricatures [and] ... poking fun at that sort of hypermasculinity and the male ego in crisis." Cage, the Oscar-winner for 1995's Leaving Las Vegas who relished playing a version of his kooky self in 2022's The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, leans hard into The Surfer's Kafkaesque absurdity. The film's ending comes without his character exacting the ultimate revenge we might have expected and without one of those head-bursts-into-Ghost Rider-flames explosions of Cage rage that have become the actor's trademark. But, like Wake in Fright's outsider driven to madness by the locals, Cage takes his descent into some very unsavoury places. At one point in his disintegration into delirium he flirts with eating a dead rat, then he uses it as a weapon (Look out for the line "Eat the rat!" coming to a Cage meme near you). There's also a scene involving a nest of bird eggs that takes you all the way back to 1989 and his cockroach-eating scene in Vampire's Kiss. Like Walkabout, Finnegan lays on deliberately discomforting cutaway close-ups to cackling kookaburras, shrieking cicadas and echidnas clawing at the earth. The flies - drawn to Cage's sunburn and sweat make-up ("there was a lot of fake sweat") - were an authentic bonus. "We were just lucky with the flies," he laughs. "I thought we were lucky. I don't think the actors thought that." Like many in Ireland and the UK, the filmmaker (whose previous films include Jesse Eisenberg sci-fi horror Vivarium and Eva Green thriller Nocebo) grew up with sunshine-filled Aussie soaps like Home & Away and Neighbours. He seems to relish the suggestion his pulpy psychodrama flips that image on its ugly edge and plays like Home & Away on crack. "Yes, the score for the film by Franois Tetaz, for the scene where Nic is walking around drinking out of puddles and eating bird eggs, has a piece of music called Clam's Casino that actually has flavours of Skippy in it." What's that, Skip? The outsiders have stolen your banjo-and-harmonica innocence and turned it into a demented riff on dinkum tribalism? Tsk tsk!
Irish Examiner
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Film review: Nicolas Cage is brilliantly cast in The Surfer
The Surfer ★★★★☆ A sport, a way of life, a philosophy for living: surfing lends itself to extravagant myth-making, which The Surfer (15A) is happy to lean into as the movie opens, with our eponymous hero (played by Nicolas Cage) informing his estranged son (Finn Little) that life's crucial moments are a lot like encountering a massive wave: 'You either surf it,' he says, 'or you get wiped out.' But when the Surfer returns home to surf the remote beach at Luna Bay, he discovers that the shore has been colonised by the Bay Boys, led by the guru-like Scally (Julian McMahon), and that a culture of 'localism', which refuses entry to non-natives, is tacitly encouraged. Outraged at being denied the right to surf, the Surfer refuses to leave, setting him on a collision course with Scally and his thugs. Nicolas Cage is brilliantly cast here, playing an ostensible tough nut who privately mythologises a gilded past in which surfing equalled freedom and endless possibility; now, separated from his wife, and desperate to put his old life back together, the Surfer is trying to reinsert himself into the exclusive world of Luna Bay by buying his childhood home. But our hero, we fear, is doomed before the story even begins: a dreamer given to exotic fantasies of the perfect life, he is prone to delusion even before dehydration, heatstroke and the Bay Boys' escalating aggressions cause his grip on reality to loosen. Irish director Lorcan Finnegan ( Vivarium) blends the Surfer's fever-dream into a stunningly beautiful landscape, heightening the effect of the increasingly surreal episodes as the disorientated Surfer plunges deeper into paranoia; meanwhile, the cultivated Scally, who likens his followers to Shaolin monks, is gradually revealed to be an erudite exemplar of toxic masculinity. A vivid account of a fragile man's attempt to regain his paradise lost, The Surfer is a powerfully poetic drama. theatrical release Ocean with David Attenborough ★★★★☆ Ocean with David Attenborough Ocean with David Attenborough (G) sets out to explore 'the last great wilderness of open ocean,' a realm, Attenborough tells us at the outset, that is 'almost entirely a mystery.' Who better to guide us through the murky depths than Attenborough himself, who, at 98 years young, is one of the planet's greatest living treasures. He may be considerably frailer now than he appeared in his very first outing (the film employs old footage of the young naturalist frolicking in the sea), but his passion for the natural world remains undimmed. Almost inevitably, Attenborough isn't simply revealing the ocean's hidden wonders; this film also serves as a warning about climate change, and about the existential crisis being caused by the industrialised fishing of an increasingly scarce resource; but it also sounds a hopeful note, demonstrating how quickly the ocean can bounce back if afforded the opportunity. If Ocean does prove to be, as Attenborough suggests, his final film, it is a fitting testament to his life's work. theatrical release The Wedding Banquet ★★★☆☆ Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran in The Wedding Banquet Set in Seattle's Asian-American LGTBQ community, The Wedding Banquet (15A) is a droll farce about doing whatever it takes to survive. Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) are trying to conceive; their best friends Chris (Bowen Yang) and Min (Han Gi-Chan) are desperate to prevent Min being dragged back to Korea by his wealthy, conservative family. And so Min proposes – literally – that he should marry Angela, with her 'dowry' being the cost of the latest round of Lee's fertility treatment. Andrew Ahn's film revels in subverting expectations – Angela's 'Tiger Mom' May (Joan Chen), for example, is outraged that her darling lesbian daughter would even consider marrying a man – and the script is littered with dry one-liners ('Queer theory takes all the joy out of being gay.'). For a film that satirises conservative attitudes, however, The Wedding Banquet is itself excessively polite and restrained; it's fun, but it might have benefited from a little more irreverence. theatrical release
Times
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The Surfer review — Nicolas Cage saves this pretentious thriller
Nicolas Cage's trademark Gonzo energy is the vital spark in this dense thriller, rescuing the film from its own pretensions. It's a bonkers sun-scorched psychodrama about a middle-aged beta-male divorcee trapped in a car park from hell, metres away from a paradise beach in southwest Australia. Cage's character, known only as 'the Surfer', has come to Luna Bay (actual location: Yallingup Beach) to bond with his semi-estranged son, seal a nearby property deal and reinvigorate his hollow, lonely dad existence. Unfortunately a group of local 'surf gangsters' — called the Bay Boys and led by the charismatic Scally (Nip/Tuck's Julian McMahon) — have other ideas. They ban the surfer from the beach, steal his shoes and phone, and confine him to the car
Epoch Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Epoch Times
‘The Surfer': Nicolas Cage Goes Full-Tilt Gonzo
R | 1h 40m | Drama, Mystery, Thriller | 2025 Regardless of the issues he has in his personal life (excessive spending, tax debt, five marriages), few can deny the acting talent of Nicolas Cage and his seemingly tireless work in front of the camera. Some naysayers claim Cage's financial woes are why he works so much, which could be true. However, from my perspective, Cage just likes what he does for a living and prefers to stay busy. A fever dream psychological thriller, 'The Surfer,' finds Cage riffing on his 'paranoid persecuted victim' mode. Cage's character lands not too far from his roles in 'Raising Arizona,' 'Red Rock West,' 'Mandy,' and 'Dream Scenario.' The unnamed title character is equal parts optimistic, proud, unwavering, and more than a tad bullheaded. Exterior Chamber Piece The action takes place entirely at a parking lot and the Australian beach it overlooks. 'The Surfer' has a baked-in claustrophobic air that makes it play out like an outdoor chamber piece. Irish director Lorcan Finnegan ('Vivarium' and 'Nocebo') and his fellow countryman, first time feature writer Thomas Martin, slowly amp up the dread factor right out of the gate. Director Lorcan Finnegan (L) and Nicolas Cage on the set of "The Surfer." Roadside Attractions The Surfer and his teen son (credited only as the Kid, played by Finn Little) arrive at the fictional Luna Bay, where the Surfer grew up. After reaching the sand, they are told in no uncertain terms that if they don't live there, they can't surf there. Not wanting to be there to begin with, the Kid implores his father to leave, but the Surfer refuses. When told the same thing by Scally (Julian McMahon), the Surfer only digs in deeper. He tells Scally he's buying his childhood home (which is visible from the beach) in mere days, but no dice. The irresistible force has met the immovable object. Test of Wills For the next hour, 'The Surfer' becomes a test of wills between the Surfer, Scally, and the dozen or so members of Scally's gang dubbed the 'Bay Boys.' Mostly young beach bum types with foul mouths and questionable hygiene, the Bay Boys taunt the Surfer at every turn. This includes, but is not limited to, defacing his Lexus, stealing his belongings, and beating him whenever he encroaches their space, meaning everywhere. Scally (Julian McMahon, C) and the Bad Boys confront the surfer, in "The Surfer." Roadside Attractions The Surfer has separate yet equally disquieting encounters with the Bum (Nic Cassim) and the Cop (Justin Rosniak). He's now convinced there is a giant conspiracy looking to bring him down, which is understandable, but not entirely true. A combination of his own misplaced ego, perceived humiliation, past errors, summertime heat, dehydration, and some major league Bay Boy gaslighting is slowly but surely driving the Surfer mad. Related Stories 1/15/2024 10/13/2023 With many of Finnegan's framing choices, and an odd, up-tempo, light jazz score by composer François Tétaz, the movie carries an unmistakable 1970s-era exploitation genre vibe. This becomes even more apparent with the overlap of subplots. A quick glance at some of the early reviews on Rotten Tomatoes will reveal that many of them (mostly positive) contain the phrase 'toxic masculinity.' A term that came into vogue in the last five or so years, this intentionally negative catch-all description is beyond overused, and that's the case with these reviews. David Fincher This collective knee-jerk labeling could be because there are only four female speaking roles in the movie (one of them off-screen), and that most of the men behave like … well, men. A huge, thoroughly out-of-left-field (but very welcome) third act twist negates most of the alleged 'toxic' qualities. This is the point where Martin (non-spoiler spoiler ahead) tips his hat to two David Fincher movies: 'The Game' and 'Fight Club.' The Kid (Finn Little), in "The Surfer." Roadside Attractions Charged with appearing in all but two of the movie's 100 minutes, Cage spends close to half of that time performing solo, or only in the company of animals. This isn't quite as easy as it might initially sound. Acting is mostly reacting; not having another human to interact with and moving silently to one's own voiceover is something most actors can't pull off with conviction. Cage's performance here easily ranks among his all-time Top 10. 'The Surfer' isn't a movie for all or most tastes. It's blunt, raw, in your face, and unforgiving. It's also strangely cathartic and freeing. Sometimes one has to be broken in order to feel whole and complete. The film opens in theaters on May 2. 'The Surfer' Director: Lorcan Finnegan Stars: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nic Cassim, Justin Rosniak Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes MPAA Rating: R Release Date: May 2, 2025 Rating: 4 stars out of 5 What arts and culture topics would you like us to cover? Please email ideas or feedback to
