Surfing Movies

Follow along with one girl's obsession as she truly discovers what it takes to stay afloat in the world of women's surfing in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ride the waves with a true professional. Featuring remarkable footage of Melanie Bartel in action, revealing interviews, and a pulse-pounding soundtrack, A Girl's Surf Addiction will make you want to wax your board and run for the coast. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

This surfing classic from Bruce Brown features wave riding action from Ala Moana, Makaha, Classic Trestles, Huntington Pier, Steamer Lane, Waimea, and other surfing hot spots. Original soundtrack from jazz artist Bud Shank.





~ Heather M. Fierst, Rovi

Philip Boston directs the extreme surfing film Billabong Odyssey. A team of surfers tour the world's best beaches looking for the toughest waves. Features some of the top names in West Coast surfing, including Mike Parsons, Brad Gerlach, Flea Virostko, and Barney Barron. Also contains profiles of innovators in the sport (Ken Bradshaw, Rush Randle) along with the women's surfing world champion Layne Beachley. Footage comes from the coast line of California, Washington, Hawaii, Mexico, Spain, France, and Australia. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Move over, Gidget -- a new breed of female surfers with style, guts and attitude hit the screen in this feature, which combines romance with a sports drama. Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) is a young woman living in Hawaii who has been surfing since she was a little girl, and over the past year has been training for the prestigious Pipe Masters surfing competition. But Anne Marie is still dealing with emotional baggage that's holding her back -- her mother abandoned her years ago, leaving her to raise her younger sister Penny (Mika Boorem) while having to guide herself through adolescence, and Anne Marie nearly drowned while trying to surf the famous Maui Pipeline three years ago, and has yet to shake the anxieties of this traumatic event. Anne Marie and Penny share a house with Anne Marie's friends Lena (Sanoe Lake) and Eden (Michelle Rodriguez), both fellow surf enthusiasts, and the three friends work as maids at a hotel, a job which offers them flexible hours for riding the waves. When a pro football team checks into the hotel, Anne Marie meets Matt (Matthew Davis), a promising quarterback who has his eye on her. Anne Marie is just as attracted to Matt as he is to her, but will Anne Marie have to choose between the man of her dreams and the recognition as a surfer she's worked for years to receive? Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sanoe Lake did all their own surfing in Blue Crush; Bosworth and Rodriguez went into training to learn the sport before shooting began, while Lake, a native Hawaiian, was already a confirmed surf enthusiast. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The Brady Bunch Movie pays tribute to the 1970s TV show while poking gentle fun at it. The Brady family, led by father Mike (Gary Cole), still live in their suburban, split-level home and are still throwbacks to the era that spawned them. Eternally perky wife Carol (Shelley Long) is the perfect homemaker, while the kids' behavior is as wholesome as their loud, time-warp pastel clothes. Meanwhile, the greedy, selfish modern era swirls dangerously around them, embodied in next-door neighbor and real estate agent Ditmeyer (Michael McKean), who wants to buy the Bradys' property and turn the neighborhood into a giant mall. But no amount of money or prodding can persuade the Bradys to give up their home. Director Betty Thomas contrasts the overlit sitcom look of the Brady house interiors (faithfully recreated from the series) with real locations and natural grit for the modern L.A. scenes. The result is a satire that deftly spoofs the idea of staying true to old-fashioned values without ever passing judgment on those values.

*With The Brady Bunch Movie, this set also includes A Very Brady Sequel!*

Like its lively predecessor, The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), this mild comic send-up takes its characters and situations from the popular family sitcom of the 1970s, The Brady Bunch. Set in the '90s, it is filled with in-joke references to American pop culture. However, one need not be familiar with the original series in order to enjoy this film. Bad guy Trevor Thomas (Tim Matheson) is posing as supermom Carol Brady's long-dead first husband Roy Martin. He claims to have been amnesiac and made unrecognizable by plastic surgery after suffering disfiguring injuries, but in truth, he is on the hunt for a very valuable artifact, an ancient Chinese horse carving which Roy sent to his family from the field. Because of the family's sheer niceness, they could never imagine such deception, and husband Mike Brady (Gary Cole) welcomes him into their midst. This causes Roy no end of frustration, as not only must he live with this incredibly sweet and cheerful family while he searches for the carving, but he must endure having his ill-tempered sarcastic jibes go completely unrecognized. When Carol (Shelley Long) is kidnapped, the whole family goes a-hunting.

Curren and Slater: Surfer's Journal Biography documents the career os two beloved surfers, Tom Curren and Kelly Slater. In addition to offering footage of both of them in action, the program showcases how each came to dominate the sport during their respective heydays. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Escape from L.A. finds Kurt Russell once again in the role of Snake, which he played in the 1981 film, Escape from New York. Los Angeles has finally had the really big earthquake everyone was afraid of, and what remains is now an island. Because the country's ultra-righteous President-for-Life (Cliff Roberton) wants it that way, all the weirdos and freaks that previously inhabited New York in large numbers, and the rest of the U.S. in smaller concentrations, have been quarantined on the island of L.A. The president has Snake taken from the nice, decent prison he was living in for a special mission in L.A. The president's daughter has joined the resistance movement determined to overthrow his one-man rule, and has stolen his secret "black box" (a doomsday machine) to boot. Snake is given a poison which will kill him in a few hours unless he returns to the president for the antidote. His mission is to recover the black box and kill the president's daughter. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Gidget began life as a novel by Frederick Kohner, who used his own teenage daughter as inspiration. The novel was filmed in 1958 with Sandra Dee as California high-schooler Francie Lawrence, known to her friends as "Gidget" because of her diminutive size ("girl midget"). According to both novel and film, Gidget lived only for surfing and boys, in that order. The property proved popular enough to yield two additional theatrical features, with Deborah Walley and Cindy Carol succeeding Sandra Dee in the title role. Finally in 1965, Gidget was transformed into a weekly, half-hour ABC sitcom starring a 19-year-old newcomer named Sally Field. Fifteen-and-a-half-year-old Gidget narrated most of the episodes, in which she spent the bulk of her time swimming and surfing off the California coast and hanging out with her best friend Larue (Lynnette Winter). Don Porter co-starred as Gidget's widowed father, Professor Russ Lawrence, who would have preferred that his daughter spend more time with her schoolwork and less time on the high waves. Others in the regular cast included Betty Conner as Gidget's overprotective older sister Anne, Peter Deuel as Anne's bookish psychology-student husband John Cooper, and Mike Nader as another of Gidget's surfing chums, Peter "Siddo" Stone. The Gidge's steady boyfriend Moon Doggie, aka Jeff Matthews (played by Steven Miles), wasn't seen too often because he was away at college. Although Gidget posted respectable ratings, it ran only for one season, from September 15, 1965 through September 1, 1966. Reportedly, its cancellation came about because ABC had decided to pick up only one of its Screen Gems-produced sitcoms for renewal, and that one was the proven favorite Bewitched. However, Gidget performed extremely well in off-network syndication, its 32 episodes remaining in active circulation well into the late '70s. Later incarnations of the Gidget package starred such actresses as Karen Valentine and Monie Ellis; and in 1986, a long-overdue sequel to the original TV series, The New Gidget, debuted in syndication, starring Caryn Richman as the now-grown, now-married Francie "Gidget" Lawrence. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Created by the same team responsible for the quirky, iconoclastic HBO western series Deadwood, John from Cincinnati was a magical mystery tour of the California surfing scene. Set in the town of Imperial Beach, the story focused on the multigenerational Yost family, led by Mitch Yost (Bruce Greenwood), a onetime surfing legend who had been forcibly retired (except for a few early-morning forays into the waves) by a serious knee injury. The fall of the Yost fortunes had a deleterious effect upon Mitch's son Butchie (Brian Van Holt), who had become a seemingly hopeless druggie; conversely, Butchie's own son Shaun (Grayson Fletcher) was a surfing phenom who bade fare to surpass his grandfather's celebrity--if he ever got the chance. Holding the family together was Mitch's levelheaded wife Cissy (Rebecca De Mornay), owner of the surfing-goods store that provided their income. Into this dysfunctional family unit came a fabulously wealthy and truly bizarre dude known as John Monad (Austin Nichols), who when pressed for details identified himself as "John from Cincinnati." Outwardly a boorish dimwit with an annoying habit of repeating everyone else's conversations, John was clearly operating on some Higher Plane or other, implicitly possessing the ability to heal the sick and revive the dead, and holding out the hope of redemption for the fractured Yosts. With John in the vicinity, no one found it odd that, for example, Mitch suddenly developed the ability to float in the air; everyone seemed to accept the newcomer without question or prejudice. Only the Yosts' friend Bill Jacks (Ed O'Neill), a fancier of birds and pro wrestlers, distrusted John and his motives, suspecting that he was more Satan than Saint. The series' events--subtly but inextricably linking each character with the other--unfolded in a leisurely, day-by-day "need to know" basis, with small, tantalyzing clues as to the story's outcome (Rapture? Armageddon? The Perfect Wave?) buried within each episode. Cocreated by Deadwood's David Milch and "surf noir" novelist Kern Nunn, and featuring Luke Perry and Deadwood alumnus Jim Beaver in key supporting roles, John from Cincinnati began its HBO run on June 10, 2007. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The true story of the kids who created modern skateboard culture is recreated in this drama. In the early '70s, skateboards were seen as a fad of the 1960s that had all but died out, but in a rough-and-tumble Venice, CA community known as "Dogtown," that was about to change. Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk), Stacy Peralta (John Robinson), and Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch) were three guys who liked to surf the rugged beaches around Venice and hung out at the Zephyr Surf Shop, a store run by Skip Engblom (Heath Ledger) that stocked gear for adventurous surfers and skateboarders. With the advent of new urethane wheels that connected with concrete in a way old metal and rubber wheels could not, Tony, Stacy, and Jay began exploring ways to translate radical surf style to skateboarding, and the guys invented a new way to skate inside the smooth, round surfaces of empty pools, employing vertical moves and edge flips that added a new and dramatic spin to skating. It didn't take long for word to spread about the wild new style of the Z-Boys, and they quickly became local celebrities, and later nationwide skating stars, though sudden fame took its toll on these young men. The true story of Lords of Dogtown was previously the basis of the acclaimed documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, directed by former Z-Boy Stacy Peralta, who like Tony Alva served as a consultant on this project. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Following in the tradition of The Endless Summer and utilizing some of the experts seen in Blue Crush, Out of Order: The Surfers' Documentary follows a host of professional surfers as they travel around the world searching for the choicest waves to ride. Featuring such surfing figures as Cheyne Magnusson, Randy Welch, and Danny Fuller, the film offers a look at their unusual lifestyles, as well as footage of them putting their special skills to use. Some of the exotic locations utilized during filming include Tahiti, Japan, and the legendary North Shore of Hawaii. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Kathryn Bigelow's fourth action film follows FBI agent Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) as he goes undercover to infiltrate a cache of Southern California surfers suspected of robbing banks. Utah, a former football player, is assigned to Los Angeles. There, four bank robbers, who wear rubber masks and call themselves "Ex-Presidents," have executed a series of successful robberies which embarrassingly have the FBI stumped. Utah, and his partner Pappas (Gary Busey) suspect that the robbers are surfers and hatch a plan for catching them. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi

With the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, skater-cum-filmmaker Stacy Peralta introduced viewers to the history of the West Coast skateboarding culture and made a huge splash at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, taking home both the Documentary Directing Award and the Documentary Audience Award. For this follow-up effort, Peralta leaves the land for the sea, focusing his lens on the world of surfing. Narrated by Sean Penn, just as Dogtown and Z-Boys was, Riding Giants attempts to trace the origins of surfing and also explore the growth and progress of surf culture. Among the surfing luminaries who chime in on topics varying from the business of the sport to "the big wave" are Laird Hamilton, Greg Noll, and Jeff Clark. Hoping to find the critical success akin to its predecessor, Riding Giants premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi