In a burst of procrastinatory creativity, I’ve written a short ‘review’ of the The Surfer (Lorcan Finnegan, 2024). (Originally published over at Letterboxd.com, but reproduced here.)

There’s an apocryphal story about an early Australian screening of Wake in Fright, supposedly attended by one of the film’s stars, Jack Thompson in 1971. Legend has it that local audiences had been rankling at the representations of Australians thrown up on screen, prompting a man to stand up and shout “that’s not us!”, to which Thompson replied: “yes it bloody well is, now sit down!” Maybe I’ve been too long on this side of the planet, but this particular Aussie country boy – who recognised every single frame of Wake in Fright’s sun-scorched and dustblown picaresque, and the violent hospitality that governs small, isolated Australian towns – felt an abiding urge to stand up during The Surfer and make a similar declaration of denial.