A pointer from Peter Sobczynski's review of The Surfer (2025) to a less hinged performance by Nicolas Cage. Directed by Robert Bierman from a script by Joseph Minion who also wrote the similar After Hours (1985). In two sittings. I should have known better.
As everyone knows NYC is full of office jobs but really it's about the nightlife. For unclear reasons literary agent Cage is going nuts and imagines he has a mutually-satisfying thing going with vampire Jenifer Beals (Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) etc.). Maria Conchita Alonso (The Running Man (1987)) plays his secretary, Elizabeth Ashley (Happiness (1998)) gamely and gravelly his shrink. Throughout I felt I was laughing at more than with when I wasn't bored. The misogynistic violence is misguided, uninspired, tasteless. There is no point.
Caryn James. Peter Travers. IMDB trivia: a source book for Christian Bale's performance in American Psycho (2000).
