Movie Review: The Surfer


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: Longlegs


For the new horror movie “LongLegs” the one standout is the perfect environment for a movie like this. Dark depressing town, every house has dark walls, always either raining or about to rain.

The character Longlegs is played by a completely unrecognizable Nicolas Cage, who must have had hours of makeup every day to get him to look like this horrific mass-murdering character.

The depressing reality of the life of an FBI agent who has to investigate horrendous murder scenes, see autopsy pictures, and deal with mass murderers like the one represented in this film. After seeing this movie, it makes you wonder why anyone would want to be an FBI agent with a job like the ones depicted in this story.

The main character and FBI agent is Agent Lee Harker, played by Maika Monroe. Monroe does a good job at playing a shy, slightly autistic, genius crime investigator with her boss Agent Carter played by Blair Underwood in one of his first movie roles in a long time. The entire story is weird, involving devil worship and a series of hand-made life-size girl dolls that lead to a convoluted and insane ending that does not make enough sense to provide a satisfying conclusion.

The Rotten Tomatoes critics rating of 87% is too high, with a more correct 65% audience rating that I agree with. This movie is a pass, despite seeing Nicolas Cage in the most insane makeup I have ever seen.

Movie Review: Dream Scenario


The new movie “Dream Scenario” is an extreme example of being a different at-all-costs movie. If the goal was to make a massively different-never-been-done-before film, this one is a 10 out of 10. Unfortunately extremely different is very often not any good and as far as entertainment and quality this movie is only a 3 out of 10. The strange and too often incomprehensible dream sequences and scenes of murder and insanity get very boring and annoying far too quickly.

The entire idea of this story is about a college professor Paul Mathews, played by Nicolas Cage, who throughout this story, finds out that he is becoming part of the dreams of just about everybody he knows. Throughout this movie, Mathew’s dream problem becomes worse and more violent, to the point where Mathew is not allowed to be anywhere around the other people in his town because they are both terrified and hate him. Then towards the end of the movie, there is the revelation about a device that allows people to be part of other people’s dreams. However, this device is not part of the current storyline that represents about 3 quarters of this film. What is the point or even the need of a device like this? Could it be to one day, to produce a weird strange, and rather bad Nicolas Cage movie?

This film is one of those weird try to be different art movies, that the critics find a way to love and the audience mostly hates. The Rotten Tomatoes critics number is 92%, with the audience a low 69%. My rating is 50% and a big time run from this insane mess of two hours, unless you are on high on weed.