You’ll be shocked, I’m sure, to hear that for his latest role, Nicolas Cage has opted to portray an unhinged, overheated character whose id and superego do visible battle on the landscape of his face until, inevitably, the former overwhelms the latter. I’m as much a fan of the memeable, self-consciously meta vibe that Cage has become identified with as the next guy, but sometimes it’s enough to make one long for the recognizably human characters he’s tackled in Moonstruck, Leaving Las Vegas, or Pig. Heck, even H.I. McDunnough has more depth than most of his recent work.

That said, The Surfer is not without its generic charms, and director Lorcan Finnegan’s visual style situates its story in a hyper-real universe where the heightened intensity of its leading man feels right at home. Cage’s unnamed protagonist arrives at a remote Australian beach with his teenaged son (Finn Little) so he can share his childhood experience of surfing its waves. (Don’t worry, Cage doesn’t attempt an Australian accent—it’s explained that he moved away when young.) Unfortunately, the place is marked as for locals only, and the locals in question turn out to be a violently hostile band of macho yahoos led by a Down Under version of MRA Jordan Peterson called Scally (Julian McMahon).

Once these meatheads make it physically clear they have no intention of allowing this (admittedly self-entitled) American and his spawn to sully their scene, Cage sends the youth packing and proceeds to embark on a determined plan that eventually pits him against the local teens, the parking lot coffee vendor, and even the town deputy. In addition to this stress, he’s also frantic to complete a deal to purchase his nearby childhood home, a process that sends him even further over the edge when his cell phone dies while he’s waiting for financing to come through. As these crises spiral into an existential dilemma, how much of what we’re seeing is real and how much is just the demented perspective of an unreliable narrator gets foggy.

Cage has always been one of cinema’s great masochists, whether eating cockroaches in Vampire’s Kiss or drinking out of puddles at his character’s nadir in The Surfer. His characters often find themselves reduced, by choice or circumstance, to pathetic shadows of themselves, and this one is no exception. All of these familiar tropes should please the Cage cult, but they keep Finnegan’s film (efficiently scripted by Thomas Martin) from being more than a sweatily satisfying, B-grade thriller with some metaphysical pretensions. Honestly, that’s enough. (Hollywood Theatre, Lloyd Center, Regal Fox Tower, Cinema 21, Clackamas Town Center)

Bonjour Tristesse: While it’s probably in the Top 10 most mellifluous movie titles, Otto Preminger’s 1958 adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s international sensation of a novel is mostly remembered today for one of Jean Seberg’s early performances. That’s exactly what makes it such a ripe candidate for this compelling remake from Canadian director Durga Chew-Bose, who makes an impressive feature debut with a controlled, visually splendid melodrama. Teenaged Cécile (Lily McInerny, completely comfortable in her second film role) lives a dreamy, unstructured life with her widowed father Raymond (Claes Bang) and his current lover Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune) in the idyllic south of France. Their equilibrium is disturbed by the arrival of Anne (Chloë Sevigny, fabulous as ever), a friend of Cécile’s mother. As Anne quickly insinuates herself into this unconventional family dynamic, and Cécile pursues a relationship with the eager neighbor boy, the stage is set for a coming-of-age saga that will lay bare the tragic consequences of well-intentioned romantic meddling. Sagan penned Bonjour Tristesse when she was the same age as her main character, and was lauded for her authentic take on precocious adolescence. But Preminger’s version has been roundly condemned for abandoning that perspective and for the cruel treatment he subjected Seberg to during the film’s production. Here, under the hand of a female writer-director, Cécile’s experience is re-centered, and Chew-Bose serves up impossibly blue waters and crisp summer lassitude reminiscent of René Clément’s Purple Noon. As in that film, and so many others, the perfection and precision of both the natural landscape and the beautiful, sharply dressed characters who inhabit it serve to obscure the sometimes-ugly truths beneath. The story has been updated to the iPhone-ubiquity of the present, which clashes with and subverts the sense of unvarnished frankness that made Sagan’s novel such a cause célèbre. Put more plainly, it may have been shocking in 1958 that a teenage girl harbored sexual desires and complicated paternal loyalties, but in the age of Euphoria (to name but one) it’s not exactly a revolutionary concept. Still, with performances, costumes, and vistas that range from intriguing to intoxicating, there’s plenty here to like. (Regal Fox Tower)

Another Simple Favor: If the Australian sands of The Surfer and the Riviera sights of Bonjour Tristesse aren’t enough seaside spectacle, this sequel to the 2018 (has it been that long?) comic thriller A Simple Favor offers the bucolic setting of the isle of Capri (emphasis on the first syllable if you want to fit in). Wincing Anna Kendrick and haughty Blake Lively return as, respectively, mom-blogger-turned-true-crime-expert Stephanie Smothers and the sister-killing sociopath she helped send to prison, Emily (not her real name) Nelson. Following the events of the previous entry (which may warrant a rewatch, since there’s no real effort to recap here, and it has been seven years), Stephanie is about to launch a book tour for her memoir when Emily, out on appeal, pops back into her life, announces her impending marriage to a hunky Italian named Dante (Michele Morrone), and asks Stephanie to be her maid of honor. Of course, no judge in the land would sanction contact between an accused murderer and the prime witness against her during any sort of supervised release, but this movie does not take place in anything close to reality, thank goodness. Our plucky viewer correlative soon finds herself in the middle of the Mediterranean, along with Emily’s ex-husband Sean (Henry Golding) and son Nicky (Ian Ho), for the lavish nuptials. When Dante’s mother invites Emily’s mother (Elizabeth Perkins, taking over for Jean Smart) and aunt (Allison Janney), the contingent needed for a madcap mélange of absurd pantsuits, predictable revelations, incest jokes, and frenemy banter has been fully assembled. Director Paul Feig brings the same lack of visual panache he did to this film’s predecessor, while the screenplay takes a superficial approach to the potentially interesting mix of envy and revulsion that prevents Stephanie from breaking free of Emily’s hold. Fortunately, Kendrick summons enough charm, and Lively dons big enough hats, to save this goofy, oddly nihilistic comedy from complete disaster. (Streaming on Amazon Prime.)

On disc

College Confidential: The first legit home video release ever, amazingly enough, of this 1960 exploitation “classic” is an opportunity to appreciate a pair of neglected but fascinating figures in post-war American pop culture. And that doesn’t even include Woo Woo Grabowski. This unofficial followup to 1957’s High School Confidential! is another hot-blooded, cartoonish take on Eisenhower-era sexual mores, starring none other than Steve Allen as a sociology professor who’s obsessed (but only academically, of course) with the mating habits of his barely legal (but played by 30-year-olds) students. Allen, best known as the original host of The Tonight Show, was in fact a hyper-productive polymath who wrote over eight thousand songs, wrote over fifty books, and became a well-known voice in the secular humanism movement in his later years. This is in addition to being a familiar presence on TV for decades and occasionally acting in films. His wife Jayne Meadows (sister of The Honeymooners’ Audrey) co-stars as a New York Times reporter investigating the scandal that ensues after Allen distributes a sex survey to the “kids” and later accidentally shows them a porno during a drunken rager at his apartment. This all culminates in a closing-argument speech from the beleaguered, freethinking prof that defends sex (only academically, of course) as a perfectly valid field of human research. The other auteur here is director Albert Zugsmith, who produced not only High School Confidential! and a raft of other B-movies, but also truly great films such as Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil and Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind. (He was also the first lawyer hired by Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster when they tried to get the rights to the character back from DC Comics in the 1940s.) But wait, that’s not nearly all! College Confidential features one of the most mind-altering casts you could hallucinate, starting with sex kitten Mamie Van Doren as the daughter of frequent film noir gunsel Elisha Cook Jr. Future country star Conway Twitty shows up to belt out a couple tunes, 1930s leading man Herbert Marshall plays the college dean, boxer Rocky Marciano has a small role as a cop, and Walter Winchell leads a coterie of journalists playing themselves. Which brings us to Norman “Woo Woo” Grabowski, the son of Polish immigrants who gained fame as a hot rod designer and parlayed that into a mostly uncredited acting career ranging from low-budget Zugsmith specials to The Towering Inferno and The Cannonball Run. Only in America. This Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber include the expected, entertaining commentary from historians David Del Valle and Stan Shaffer, who offer appropriately dishy, campy tidbits that enhance one’s appreciation of this loony relic of the first stirrings of the sexual revolution.

Also this week

The Portland EcoFilm Festival: Oikos: Regional premiere of four new ecological films (from Sierra Leone, Ukraine, Colorado, and the Mohawk Nation) about different ways of being at and returning to home. (Hollywood Theatre, Friday 5/2)

Art and Life: The Story of Jim Phillips: Documentary portrait of the graphic artist who revolutionized the designs on rock posters, surfboards, and skateboards, chronicling his rise to prominence, personal struggles, and eventual triumphs. (Saturday 5/3, Cinemagic)

The Portland EcoFilm Festival: Ecology, Animated!: Eight new animated shorts with a green message, from around the world, with some directors on hand for post-film discussion. (Hollywood Theatre, Saturday 5/3)

The Witch: Revenge: Filmed in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this bloody folk horror centers on a woman who uses ancient sorcery to take vengeance on the soldiers who have ravaged her country and killed her fiancé. All proceeds to benefit Ukrainian aid efforts. (Hollywood Theatre, Sunday 5/4)

A Wu-Tang Experience: Live at Red Rocks: In 2021, the Wu-Tang Clan collaborated with the Colorado Symphony to perform a live score to their favorite film, 36th Chamber of Shaolin, at the nation’s most vaunted outdoor concert venue. This documentary captures the prep and the result. (Hollywood Theatre, Monday 5/5)

Björk: Cornucopia: The Icelandic icon performs live in Lisbon, captured in a “unique cinematic experience” that promises to immerse viewers in the show’s stage production, which involves bespoke instruments such as a magnetic harp, a circular flute, and something called an aluphone. Sound pretty darned Björky to me! (Wednesday 5/7, Cinema 21, Salem Cinema, Kiggins Theatre, Eastport Plaza, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village; also 5/10 & 5/11 at Cinema 21)

The Portland EcoFilm Festival: Queer Ecology: Encore presentation of a triptych of films by queer filmmakers on topics including biology’s blind eye towards homosexuality in the animal kingdom, indigenous Finnish oral traditions, and the quiet glory of living in moss-time. (Tuesday 5/6, Cinema 21)

White With Fear: Director Andrew Goldberg explores the strategic efforts by right-wing politicians and their media enablers to create and exploit race-based fear and anxiety among white voters. Producer Eric Ward in attendance for a post-film discussion. (Cinema 21, Wednesday & Thursday 5/7 & 5/8)

Tall Tales: With trippy animation from visual artist Jonathan Zawada, a score by Mark Pritchard, and chanted lyrics by Thom Yorke, this unique audiovisual experience is a companion to the album being released the following day. (Cinema 21, Tomorrow Theater, Thursday 5/8)

Also opening

Thunderbolts*: “After finding themselves ensnared in a death trap, an unconventional team of antiheroes must embark on a dangerous mission that will force them to confront the darkest corners of their pasts.” (Wide release)

Rosario: “A young woman tormented by a supernatural familial curse must confront the past she swore was buried before it buries her.” (Regal Fox Tower)

Banned Together: “Visionary teenagers, public protests, threats, criminal charges, and drama-filled school board meetings: this is the explosive world of BANNED TOGETHER, the first feature documentary about fighting book bans and censorship in the U.S.” (Living Room Theaters)

Repertory

Friday 5/2

• Cabaret [1972] (Academy Theater, through 5/8)
• Evolver [1995] (Cinemagic, on VHS)
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off [1986] (Kiggins Theatre, through 5/5)
• House of Flying Daggers [2004] (Academy Theater, through 5/8)
• Persepolis [2007] (5th Avenue Cinemas, on 35mm)
• Swamp Thing [1982] (Clinton St. Theater, w/Ray Wise in attendance)
• They Live [1988] (Academy Theater, through 5/8)
• The Warriors [1979] (Cinemagic, also 5/3, 5/6, 5/8)

Saturday 5/3

• The Conversation [1974] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)
• Laura [1944] (Cinema 21)
• A Serious Man [2009] (Salem Cinema)
• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me [1992] (Clinton St. Theater, w/Ray Wise in attendance, also 5/4)
• Volver [2006] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown [1988] (Tomorrow Theater)

Sunday 5/4

• After Hours [1985] (Tomorrow Theater)
• The Fifth Element [1997] (Cinemagic, also 5/5 & 5/7)
• Pitch Black [2000] (Cinemagic, also 5/5 & 5/7)
• Singles [1992] / You’ve Got Mail [1998] / She’s All That [1999] triple feature (“Romcomathon”) (Hollywood Theatre)
• Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope [1977] (Kiggins Theatre)
• Thank You Very Much [2025] (Tomorrow Theater)

Monday 5/5

• The Last Days [1998] (Cinema 21)
• The Poseidon Adventure [1972] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Robocop [1987] (Clinton St. Theater, w/Ray Wise in attendance)

Tuesday 5/6

• 16mm Nyback Showdown (Clinton St. Theater)
• The Night Comes for Us [2018] (Cinemagic, also 5/8)
• Special Silencers [1982] (Hollywood Theatre)

Wednesday 5/7

• Beyond Hypothermia [1996] (Hollywood Theatre)

Thursday 5/8

• The Masque of the Red Death [1964] (Clinton St. Theater)
• The Public Enemy [1931] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)