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Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Review: Nicolas Cage Goes Full 'Groundhog Day' Thriller in 'The Surfer'
A surprisingly low-key Nicolas Cage performance anchors The Surfer, a throwback revenge thriller with a jet-black comedic edge from Vivarium director Lorcan Finnegan. For about 40 minutes, this film is an intriguing and even propulsive B-movie programmer. The first act is an efficient revenge setup, infused with some lush photography (the picture was shot on location in Melbourne) and an authentic grittiness which recalls '70s Antipodean grindhouse classics. But unfortunately, like all exploitation riffs which make the mistake of taking themselves too seriously, The Surfer goes on far too long and eventually exhausts its audience. Cage plays the titlular character, an unnamed office drone who whisks his son (Finn Little) to an idyllic coastal spot in the community where he was raised. The Surfer wants to buy a home overlooking the beach, the very same one in which he lived until age 15, when his father died and his mother moved the family to California. Hoping to take his son out to catch a few waves and an enviable glimpse of their new abode, he's instead met with some hostile 'localism' from the beach's resident muscle heads who are engaged in a bizarre salt-water cult overseen by Scally (Julian McMahon). At this point, The Surfer takes a detour into the sort of nightmare comedy about which you can ask no questions. Why, after being violently rebuffed and humiliated in front of his son, does Cage begin living on the beach in his car? Why does he keep returning to receive fresh injuries from the cult members? Why not just grab an Airbnb near his new home? What's up with the old man, also living out of his car, who's passing around flyers advertising his missing son? And why, after stealing his surfboard, do the cult members claim they've had it for seven years? There's a lot going on in The Surfer — the broken relationships of fathers and sons; the seeping wounds of male ego; mid-life malaise; the unexplained possibility of time loops — but none of it develops into anything. It's long been the safe haven of marginally talented filmmakers to produce a hallucinatory, vaguely existential film of dubious quality and pass it off as the vision of an auteur; but when the quality isn't there, it's all terribly transparent. Instead of interrogating or developing any of the ideas to which the film gestures, Finnegan visits a succession of increasingly outlandish humiliations onto his title character, all of which seem tailor-made for Cage's particular acting style. Watch him drink dirty water from a puddle (and later a public toilet)! Wince as he jumps onto broken glass! Shudder when he pawns his late father's watch for a flat white!The screenplay, by Thomas Martin, doubtless sent its cast and crew into fits of giggles. None of that mirth translates to the screen. By the time Cage swings a live rat by the tail (which he later beats to death and pockets for a snack) and attempts to shoot a dog in the head, you'll likely wish the whole thing would end so you can go home. Sequences which seem designed to provoke a strong emotional reaction pass without impression, boring instead of outraging. The climax is so foregone and uninspiring that your mind may wander to your shopping list in the film's final moments. It's worth mentioning that there's an admirable nastiness to this movie, and one gets the sense that Finnegan would do nicely with a straight, no-frills suspense piece. There's a queasy quality to the beach bullies that wouldn't be out of place in a home invasion movie, and before it goes off the rails, the film chugs along with a nicely suspenseful rhythm. There are even fleeting moments where you see in Finnegan's approach something of the efficient, genre-literate subversion Steven Soderbergh accomplishes so effortlessly. But what's the point of it all? Considering most of its business will presumably be done on streaming, it's odd that The Surfer so frequently tempts its audience to tune out. Unfortunately, the temptation stems not from the visceral impact of the travesties visited upon Cage (none of which truly land) but rather from the intense feeling of déjà vu. For all of its excesses, we've seen this done many times before and frequently better. The Surfer is currently in cinemas.
Daily Mirror
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Nicolas Cage's 'meme-worthy' moment in new movie was inspired by classic film
Nicolas Cage stars in Lorcan Finnegan's new thriller The Surfer, which sees the Hollywood icon spiral into madness In his latest outing, The Surfer, directed by Lorcan Finnegan, Nicolas Cage revisits the offbeat, manic energy he's renowned for, plunging into a sun-drenched abyss of insanity. Cage plays a nameless surfer who travels back to his hometown in Australia with the intention of repurchasing his childhood residence. However, his plans are foiled when he and his son (played by Finn Little) are met with aggression by a clique of hostile locals at the beach, spearheaded by the captivating yet confrontational Scally (Julian McMahon). This unwarranted hostility relentlessly chips away at Cage's character's sanity. As the surfer's mental state continues to deteriorate, his desperation reaches new depths when he resorts to scavenging for food and entertains the notion of feasting on the dead body of a rat he had encountered before. Director Lorcan Finnegan shared an insider's perspective with Express Online, recalling the details of the scene: "We had two rats, one that had a mechanical part to bite him and another one that was soft for whacking against the card", reports the Express. "So he threw that away and he's supposed to find it the next day and think about taking a bit out of it. He picked it up and that's as far as it was in the script." Cage's penchant for injecting a bit of the unconventional into his characters ensures that each portrayal is nothing less than fascinating. Movie buffs and Cage aficionados, prepare for a scene set to join the ranks of the iconic 'Not the bees!' moment from The Wicker Man. In this moment, the surfer pockets a rat, turning it into an impromptu tool against Pitbull (Alexander Bertrand), one of Scally's henchmen. Director Finnegan revealed: "But then Nic put it in his pocket and he wasn't really sure why yet, but he was kind of formulating an idea. "The art department wanted the rat back, they were like, 'We need to keep that, we only have one', and he's like, 'No, no, I need to keep it in my pocket'." As it turns out, the wacky fight sequence was a brainchild of Cage himself, taking inspiration from a film icon in a classic flick from the '50s. Finnegan continued, explaining Cage's inspiration: "Then, I think it was the next day, he was telling me he had this idea that's related to Sabrina, the Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart movie. "There's a scene where Humphrey Bogart takes an olive out the jar and puts it into another guy's mouth and says 'Eat it!' "He'd rewatched that film just before coming to Australia and thought it was just hilarious, so he had this weird connection and wanted to take the rat and shove it into Pitbull's mouth during the fight and say 'Eat it!' So that was another bit of Cage magic. "I think there are little lines he'll give the film if he loves the process of it because he feels like it needs a little bit of something." Film enthusiasts can celebrate as Sabrina is now available for streaming on both NOW and Paramount+, offering an opportunity to delve into the roots of Nicolas Cage's most recent bout of inspired madness.
Irish Times
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Surfer review: Nicolas Cage, after too many wipeouts, catches a great wave
The Surfer Director : Lorcan Finnegan Cert : 15A Starring : Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Finn Little, Nic Cassim, Alexander Bertrand, Rahel Romahn, Miranda Tapsell, Justin Rosniak, Charlotte Maggi Running Time : 1 hr 40 mins 'It will come again. It will be a swell so big and strong it will wipe clean everything that went before it.' So says a character in Big Wednesday, John Millius's masterpiece from 1978. That tale of California surfers – a macho cadre chewed up by the 1960s in Millius's view – exemplifies US culture's tendency to mysticise the business of riding waves. You got it in the underrated TV series John from Cincinnati. Brian Wilson's sacerdotal approach to the activity reached its peak with The Beach Boys album Surfs Up, in 1971. Now Lorcan Finnegan, the Irish director of Vivarium , fattens the theology with a fascinating, weird, freaky drama set in an unforgiving corner of Australia. The poetry is of a more abrasive stripe than Wilson's soothing gibberish. This often brutal entertainment, shot in blotched light by Radek Ladczuk, kicks its protagonist to the brink of death as circling antagonists point and chuckle. READ MORE But we are always reminded that surfing is an exalted way of wasting a man's time. This film wouldn't work if it were about train spotters or stamp collectors. There are some signs of Nicolas Cage, older and more American than seems likely, being shoehorned into the title role, but such is his commitment and presence that no sane viewer will object. Indeed, the film is inconceivable without him. This is how we now roll with the Cagester. He makes half a dozen straight-to-streaming duds and then hits the motherlode with Mandy, Pig ... or The Surfer. Here he plays an unnamed businessman returning, after many years in the United States, to the beach where he surfed as a kid. (It was probably as well not to have Cage attempt an Aussie accent.) He takes his son and his board – a gift from his own father – down to the sea, but is immediately rebuffed by the butch locals. 'Don't live here, don't surf here,' he is tartly informed. This doesn't bode well for his plans to buy a house in the old neighbourhood. What follows has the quality of fantastical nightmare. Our surfer meets an older fellow, now living in his car, who tells him that the gang, led by a charismatic thug, Scally (Julian McMahon), killed his son and his dog. The tough guys steal our hero's surfboard. His car is soon out of action. He cannot charge his phone and, as all his credit cards are stored there, he is unable to buy any food. Out here in the rational world there would be ways of resolving these issues. But the Irish screenwriter Thomas Martin, who has worked on series such as Tin Star and Ripper Street, forges us an allegorical space that abuts the absurd. He admits the influence of John Cheever's story The Swimmer – and of the film version with Burt Lancaster – and, sure enough, there is similar interest in the pressures of masculinity. The current film is, however, considerably more at home to the crunch and squelch of the outsider life. Scally's gang could hardly offer a more obvious stand-in for contemporary alpha-male toxicity, the social-media bully made sunburned flesh. The film does, perhaps, lose the run of itself in a slightly desperate final act that sees the protagonist's resolve weakening in unsatisfactory, inconsistent directions. Some viewers may crave a little more conventional plot from a film that revels in pinballing masochistic chaos. But The Surfer, for all its unpleasantness, offers encouraging evidence that there is still room for existential awkwardness in contemporary cinema. No better, odder man than Nicolas Cage to act that out as the catechism of surfism gains another worthy chapter. In cinemas from Friday, May 9th
News.com.au
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Perfectly cast King of Weird Nicolas Cage loses the plot in Aussie thriller The Surfer
With a crazy homegrown surfing thriller, a quality biopic and a fun but forgettable fright-fest, there's something for everyone on the big screen this week. THE SURFER (MA15+) Director: Lorcan Finnegan (Vivarium) Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Finn Little ★★★ Cage becomes a wave-ing lunatic Take the 1970s Australian classic Wake in Fright and, while you're at it, grab the equally excellent 2017 adaptation of the Tim Winton novel Breath. Now upload the two of them to the AI platform of your choice, and instruct the program to generate a third movie from the pair. The end result should be something just like The Surfer: a disturbing psychodrama about a stranger in a strange land, in which the stranger is played by Nicolas Cage, and the strange land just happens to be the sunburnt country in which we all live. The casting of cinema's reigning King of Weird makes perfect sense in the particular case of The Surfer. It is difficult to think of anyone else but Cage coping with (and then fully meeting) the peculiar demands asked of him here. The movie opens on a single stretch of West Australian coastline that becomes a complete and combustively dangerous obsession for Cage's unnamed protagonist. All this bloke wants to do is take his teenage son (Finn Little) out into the water to ride some of the beautiful waves rolling into shore. However, the local surfers who spend every waking minute watching or wading into this spectacular swell do not take kindly to the presence of outsiders. In fact, the moment any foreign foot lands on their patch of sand, this unruly mob (on the instruction of a cult-leader-ish dude played by Julian McMahon) assume an attack formation that banishes any would-be rider straight back to the car park. Quite rightly and quite worryingly, Cage's character isn't having any of this. Despite copping a severe beating and the subsequent theft of his prize board, our hard-pressed hero refuses to let the matter rest. He sets up home in the aforementioned car park and devotes all of his attention to somehow catching that one wave he originally had in mind. Needless to say, as this is a Nicolas Cage movie, there's a high chance this fellow will lose his mind by the end. If all of this makes The Surfer sound like an acquired taste, be assured your reading of the situation is bang on the money. However, Cage's appropriately addled performance and some unconventional flourishes from Irish director Lorcan Finnegan guarantee The Surfer will get inside your head and stay there. The Surfer screens in special previews from this weekend (check local listings) and opens in full release next week. MONSIEUR AZNAVOUR (M) Selected cinemas Just as Frank Sinatra's unique combination of voice and attitude proved irresistible to the English-speaking world for several decades, those of a French persuasion never once fell out of love with Charles Aznavour. This classy biopic of the French crooning legend takes a safe, yet always interesting route through a long and winding career that eventually saw Aznavour sell over 200 million albums around the world. Of course, there are some sizeable hurdles that had to be cleared by Aznavour (played with great conviction by Tahar Rahim) before he made it to the big time, and the movie is at its strongest while its subject is still getting a foothold on the ladder to success. After countless rejections in his early days (many a theatrical agent thought his looks were too ethnic and his vocals sounded too nasal), a chance meeting with the legendary chanson singer Edith Piaf provided the break Aznavour had impatiently waited for. Once ol' Charlie gets to the top, we encounter a familiar formula we've seen countless times before, particularly in those biopics centring on single-minded artists who do anything to establish, exploit and extend their time in the spotlight. However, the music sequences (sung live by Rahim) pay their way handsomely throughout, to the extent you'll probably stream yourself a repeat listen afterwards. CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (MA15+) ★★★ This ultra-disposable horror-comedy hybrid has one thing going for it: energy. This ain't the kind of horror movie to sit on its hands for minutes at a time while we wait for another wave of dread to build, crash and then subside. No, once Clown in a Cornfield gets on its ridiculous roll, there's just no stopping the thing. While it falls short of the high ha-ha levels set by that recent cheeky chiller The Monkey, there's still enough well-crafted laughs and genuinely grotesque shocks to the senses to justify attendance for those so inclined. The villain to be loathed, feared and secretly cheered here is Frendo the Clown, the former mascot for a corn syrup factory that had to be shut down in controversial circumstances. The teen buddies who have Frendo reaching for the nearest crossbow, pitchfork or chainsaw are partially responsible for the closure, which has not made them very popular in their small Missouri hometown. However, once their numbers start diminishing in kinetically gruesome ways, the threat posed by the icky sicko that is Frendo rises exponentially to all in this rural hamlet. Fun while it lasts, though forgettable once you're home.
Irish Times
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Surfer review: Nicolas Cage, after another batch of duds, hits the motherlode
The Surfer Director : Lorcan Finnegan Cert : 15A Starring : Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Finn Little, Nic Cassim, Alexander Bertrand, Rahel Romahn, Miranda Tapsell, Justin Rosniak, Charlotte Maggi Running Time : 1 hr 40 mins 'It will come again. It will be a swell so big and strong it will wipe clean everything that went before it.' So says a character in Big Wednesday, John Millius's masterpiece from 1978. That tale of California surfers – a macho cadre chewed up by the 1960s in Millius's view – exemplifies US culture's tendency to mysticise the business of riding waves. You got it in the underrated TV series John from Cincinnati. Brian Wilson's sacerdotal approach to the activity reached its peak with The Beach Boys album Surfs Up, in 1971. Now Lorcan Finnegan, the Irish director of Vivarium , fattens the theology with a fascinating, weird, freaky drama set in an unforgiving corner of Australia. The poetry is of a more abrasive stripe than Wilson's soothing gibberish. This often brutal entertainment, shot in blotched light by Radek Ladczuk, kicks its protagonist to the brink of death as circling antagonists point and chuckle. READ MORE But we are always reminded that surfing is an exalted way of wasting a man's time. This film wouldn't work if it were about train spotters or stamp collectors. There are some signs of Nicolas Cage, older and more American than seems likely, being shoehorned into the title role, but such is his commitment and presence that no sane viewer will object. Indeed, the film is inconceivable without him. This is how we now roll with the Cagester. He makes half a dozen straight-to-streaming duds and then hits the motherlode with Mandy, Pig ... or The Surfer. Here he plays an unnamed businessman returning, after many years in the United States, to the beach where he surfed as a kid. (It was probably as well not to have Cage attempt an Aussie accent.) He takes his son and his board – a gift from his own father – down to the sea, but is immediately rebuffed by the butch locals. 'Don't live here, don't surf here,' he is tartly informed. This doesn't bode well for his plans to buy a house in the old neighbourhood. What follows has the quality of fantastical nightmare. Our surfer meets an older fellow, now living in his car, who tells him that the gang, led by a charismatic thug, Scally (Julian McMahon), killed his son and his dog. The tough guys steal our hero's surfboard. His car is soon out of action. He cannot charge his phone and, as all his credit cards are stored there, he is unable to buy any food. Out here in the rational world there would be ways of resolving these issues. But the Irish screenwriter Thomas Martin, who has worked on series such as Tin Star and Ripper Street, forges us an allegorical space that abuts the absurd. He admits the influence of John Cheever's story The Swimmer – and of the film version with Burt Lancaster – and, sure enough, there is similar interest in the pressures of masculinity. The current film is, however, considerably more at home to the crunch and squelch of the outsider life. Scally's gang could hardly offer a more obvious stand-in for contemporary alpha-male toxicity, the social-media bully made sunburned flesh. The film does, perhaps, lose the run of itself in a slightly desperate final act that sees the protagonist's resolve weakening in unsatisfactory, inconsistent directions. Some viewers may crave a little more conventional plot from a film that revels in pinballing masochistic chaos. But The Surfer, for all its unpleasantness, offers encouraging evidence that there is still room for existential awkwardness in contemporary cinema. No better, odder man than Nicolas Cage to act that out as the catechism of surfism gains another worthy chapter. In cinemas from Friday, May 9th
