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: Thunderbolts

There have been more than a few bad Marvel movies released in the last few years, most recently "Captain America: Brave New World" (2025) and "The Marvels" (2023). The release of the new Marvel movie "Thunderbolts" was an opportunity to greatly improve the quality of this franchise. Unfortunately, mainly due to the crazy and mostly boring screenplay, this movie cannot be considered a step in the right direction.

The story starts with the main Marvel characters Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, Bucky Barnes played by Sebastian Stan, John Walker played by Wyatt Russell, Ava Starr played by Hannah John-Kamen and a new superhere they call "Bob", played by Lewis Pullman all trapped in a warehouse, for the first 10-15% of this film. There is no real way to make scenes where several people are trapped in a large series of rooms - interesting, especially in a film that is supposed to be a superhero action movie.

We later find out that Bob has superpowers that greatly exceed the powers of all the other superheroes, and later Bob turns to the dark side and has evil forces that can send people into some other dimension. All this does create several scenes of extreme special effects, but not enough to cover what I thought was a surprisingly bad screenplay.

There are some good father-daughter scenes between Velena and her father, Alexei Shostakov, played by David Harbour, but once again, not enough to fix what could have been a far better story.

I was surprised that Julia Louis-Dreyfus took the part of politician Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, after reading this script. She seems completely miscast in this role, regardless of the mostly ridiculous story.

I have no idea why the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are on average 88%, with the most accurate review from critic Jeffrey Harris:

"The film exemplifies how The Multiverse Saga constantly stumbles and fails to find its footing, with the entire narrative amounting to little more than a groan-inducing, bait-and-switch joke."

Due to the many flaws, and mostly bad screenplay I do not recommend this movie.

Movie Review: The Accountant 2

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.