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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.
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
Los Angeles Times
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘The Surfer' is a gnarly psychodrama in which Nicolas Cage can't catch a break
A sunny beach noir sounds like a contradiction until you're sweating in the sand aware of the sting in your eyes and the uncomfortable sense that there's something wrong with you, your life and how you're living it. Why aren't you having more fun? 'The Surfer,' directed by Lorcan Finnegan ('Vivarium') and written by Thomas Martin, captures that scenic unease and cranks up the heat until even its own bright yellow retro title font looks sarcastic. It's a film in which the mythic crashes into the ridiculous, the intersection where its star Nicolas Cage has also staked his career. Playing an unnamed surfer stuck high and dry atop a parched parking lot, Cage stares down at the waves below with the thirst of a battered cartoon coyote. You half-expect to see his pupils pop out of his binocular lenses. The action all takes place on a small spot of coastland in fictitious Luna Bay, Australia, where Cage's character claims he grew up before moving to California at age 15. His accent doesn't have a trace of it, but at least his skin is tanned the same shade of orange as his hair. Now a linen-suit-clad businessman, he's returned with his own teenage son (Finn Little) shortly before Christmas with some paternal ocean wisdom. 'You either surf it or you get wiped out,' Cage tells his boy, philosophically. The kid is unimpressed by him; the local surf bullies even less so. Cage doesn't get a toe in the tide before he's given the heave-ho by a pretentious group of quasi-spiritual surfers called the Bay Boys. The beach is public, Cage insists. The Bay Boys' guru Scalley (Julian McMahon, fantastic) is unmoved. 'Yeah, but nah,' Scalley says and shrugs, his chill turning ice cold. An intimidatingly fit and happy life coach, Scalley promotes the power of male primal energy, although the film is savvy enough to point out that he was also born rich and curates an Instagram. Kudos to costumer Lien See Leong for outfitting McMahon in a hooded terry cloth poncho that makes him look like Jesus walked across the water to hang ten. 'The Surfer' has a plot you could recount in 30 seconds. First, Cage won't leave and then he can't leave — and then he can't do anything without the Bay Boys making him suffer. ('Suffer' and 'surfer,' Martin's script points out, are only one letter apart.) The film is inspired by a real-life surf gang from the Palos Verdes Peninsula, but everything from the pace to the performances has been amplified into absurdity. A minute never goes by without Cage's circumstances getting worse. His insistence on staying put makes him sacrifice one status object after another — his phone, his shoes, his car — and it isn't long until he's limping and ranting and crouching next to condom wrappers while men chase him with tiki torches. Luna Bay drives people lunatic. It's all building toward the same tsunami of rage. Cage has been on a streak of making catchy low-budget B-movies by rising filmmakers such as 'Pig,' 'Dream Scenario' and 'The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.' It's a brilliant approach: His fame gets interesting projects off the ground and, in turn, he gets to be the biggest thing in them. Not every film works, but enough of them do, particularly the ones that promise violence — which this delivers, but not in the way you might think. Most of 'The Surfer's' damage is mental; we're steeped in Cage's descent. It would make a great double-feature with Burt Lancaster's 1968 'The Swimmer,' another hallucinatory psychodrama about a braggart skidding downhill. The tribalistic Bay Boys deserve sea urchin spikes jammed into their toes. You come to hate their enviable ease, the pink zinc cream slashed across their noses, their wagging tongues and middle fingers. (They even sabotage the water fountain, just like Rome's Gen. Aquillius is said to have poisoned his enemy's wells.) Their giant, phony smiles reminded me of dolphins circling their prey and their mean laughter is blended into the sound of cackling birds. I think the film knows that the gang name Bay Boys — the same one as the actual Californians — is a lame idea of cool. It's hard for the characters to say it with menace. More unnerving is the way everyone just accepts these guys are in charge. Shrugs one ritzy woman, 'It stops them beating the Botox out of their wives.' At stake is our outrage that the beauty in this world has been commandeered by people who act like they own the planet. We wouldn't be as invested if the stakes were privately owned — say, a golf club or a gated community — although Cage's character with his luxury car and costly latte habit probably cares about those, too. He's no honorable underdog, brushing off a bum (Nicholas Cassim) who begs him for help. Cage doesn't want to equal the playing field. He either wants to belong or burn it all down. For him, this beach is personal. As a boy, he played on this exact spot. As a man (and there's more testosterone in this movie than water in the Pacific Ocean) he's desperate to buy back his grandfather's house on the cliff. These blue-green waves are his birthright. In phantasmagoric flashbacks, we learn that his family spilled blood in their foam. Now, that promise is receding by the hour as guys with happier families and healthier muscles take his place. The grief in this film is relatable to anyone who's realized how hard it is to go home again, whether that means a newly gentrified neighborhood or simply the security of what a middle-class wage used to afford. Sun and sea are in every frame. Golden light dapples on Cage's face. Aerial shots of water are used as scene wipes and their crashing noise underscores his psychic distress. Radek Ladczuk's psychedelic camerawork loves dramatic zooms and lenses that make bodies blend and distort, underscoring how easily someone can slide from comfortable to wretched, and the grandly mystical soundtrack by François Tétaz is wonderful, even if it uses enough wind chimes to summon Poseidon. 'It's all building to this breaking point,' Cage says of the waves. Audiences hoping for a gonzo bloodbath will be disappointed that Finnegan keeps his morality murky. But it's the right choice. It bugs you just like 'The Surfer' intends to, making the film follow you home like sand in your shoes.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Yahoo
Surf Gang's Infamous Lair Further Demolished
It's been a hot minute since the Lunada Bay Boys, a 'surf gang' once responsible for a reign of terror against outside surfers in the southern Los Angeles suburb of Rancho Palos Verdes, were in the news. Back in 2016, a lawsuit was filed against the alleged 'gang' for intimidation – rock throwing, tire slashing, verbal and physical abuse, etc. – from out-of-town surfers attempting to ride waves at their coveted home spot. Amidst the legal proceedings, the area was ordered to become more welcoming for visitors: trails for hikers, benches, signage, and the gang's former stone fort demolished. Now, with regards to the latter, further demolition of the Bay Boys' lair has been removed. Specifically, bamboo along the beachside fortress of intimidation was airlifted via helicopter on March 31st. Per the Daily Breeze: 'Palos Verdes Estates will be removing bamboo along the shoreline of Lunada Bay on Monday, March 31, with the aid of helicopters being flown from the Ken Dyda Civic Center in Rancho Palos Verdes. 'The removal of the Arundo grass, commonly known as bamboo and not native to the area, is part of a settlement agreement in September in a lawsuit brought by out-of-town surfers who accused the Lunada Bay Boys, a group of local surfers, of bullying and harassment.'Per the original lawsuit, several Bay Boys were ordered to stay away from the area for at least a year or to pay settlements from $25,000 to $90,000. And further refurbishment of the area continues. 'The city was facing an existential financial risk if the case ultimately had gone against the city,' Christopher Pisano, the city's legal counsel said in a statement. 'This settlement resolves the matter with the addition of modest amenities, which will be designed to maintain the natural feel of the blufftop, and a promise that the city will continue to vigorously enforce the laws protecting coastal access. This is a win for the city given the structure of the beach access laws and the uncertainty of the legal outcome.'
