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Movie Review: The Surfer

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Another one of those, “quality means nothing, story means nothing, let’s be strange, weird, never been done before”.

This time, the movie is called “The Surfer,” starring Nicolas Cage as “The Surfer”, somewhere on the coast of Australia, about to surf with his son and running into a group of lowlife local Australian surfers. Then a series of events that involve theft, bullying, and intense violence, leaving The Surfer battered, dirty, and looking like a homeless man. While watching this too-long, depressing movie, you can’t help but think. Why doesn’t he just drive away? Why does he stay in this parking lot overlooking a beach that is loaded with criminals who might kill him?

What is so strange about this film is that The Surfer spends almost this entire movie hanging out, sleeping in his car in a parking lot, on his cell phone trying to get the funding for a house he wants to buy on the coast, calling his boss, trying to save his job, in a downward spiral into homelessness and depression for this entire two hours. What is the point of all this?

Aside from all these problems, the majority of this movie makes no sense and eventually degrades into constant attempts to trick the audience, wondering what is real, what is fake, and what is just a hallucination. Is this man now really homeless, imagining all that happened before? Is all this happening because he has been in the sun too long, or is he on drugs or just drunk? One hour into this and it is impossible to care about what is going on, we just want it all to end.

I have never seen a greater difference of opinion on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critics giving this bad movie an 86% rating, and the audience 50%. What are the critics thinking here? Perhaps they are all on the same drugs that The Surfer is using in this film? This time around, the critics are once again dead wrong, with the audience correct at 50%, and a run for your life, miss this movie at all costs.

Movie Review: The Accountant 2

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The new movie “The Accountant 2” is the sequel to “The Accountant”, released in 2016. Considering how good the original movie was, it is surprising that it has taken nine years to release this sequel. Even more astonishing is how convoluted and insane the screenplay is, looking like it needs about 5 more rewrites, just to make the story coherent. One of the best reviews on Rotten Tomatoes is from critic Charles Koplinski:

“As for the ridiculous nature of the mystery that brings them together, it defies logic, the final solution an insult to the audiences’ intelligence. This situation would be right at home only in the most absurd soap opera. It also doesn’t play fair with the audience, the out-of-left-field answer likely to induce an epidemic of eyerolls“.

How can it be that nine years did not uncover a better idea and screenplay, realizing the potential future money that can come from this franchise, and a very good idea about an extremely high-functioning Autistic man who is a super genius and has impressive martial arts skills?

The good news about this new movie is that there is much more humor with good scenes involving Christian Wolff, played by Ben Affleck, and many more bonding scenes with Christian’s brother Braxton, played by Jon Bernthal. All of the original main characters return for this sequel, including Marybeth Medina, played by Cynthia Addai-Robinson, and Ray King, played by J.K. Simmons, with the exception that Anna Kendrick, who was very good in the original movie, unfortunately does not appear in this sequel.

The ending of this movie was an over-the-top, not believable gun battle scene with Christian and Braxton outnumbered 20-1 in an attempt to rescue about 50 young children from being assassinated, that I thought was largely unnecessary and too disturbing to put into the conclusion of a movie like this.

I mostly agree with the middle-of-the-road Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 76% for a movie that should have clocked in at 95% or higher. I give this movie a marginal recommendation mainly for some of the humor and not for the plot, which was disconnected, hard to follow, and way too convoluted.

Movie Review: Drop

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The new movie “Drop” succeeds in creating a different kind of story, definitely never seen before.

As this movie begins with a flashback, Violet, played by Meghann Fahy is lying on the floor, about to be shot by her ex-husband while her young son looks on. We find out later that Violet’s insane ex-husband is dead and now it is about 3 years later, and Violet is ready to start dating again and has a blind date at a highrise restaurant in downtown Chicago.

With Violet’s sister babysitting her son, Violet arrives at the restaurant and meets her blind date, Henry, played by Brandon Sklenar. At first, the blind date is going smoothly, until Violet starts getting insane and then threatening cell phone messages, followed by videos showing her sister and son in her house. A terrorist is trying to force Violet to kill her blind date, and the constant threats with Violet desperately trying to find help, dominate the rest of this film.

There is an unusual side story with the appearance of an extremely annoying waiter, who makes too many appearances in this film, which I thought was an unnecessary distraction that lessens the story’s overall effectiveness.

There is a surprise and trick ending that I thought was well done, but not really that much of a surprise, with a climax that mostly worked.

The Rotten Tomatoes for Drop are a mostly high 83% and I agree with this rating and do recommend this movie.