Swell

5/6/2026

**_Poignant coastal trip from Santa Cruz to Astoria, Oregon_** While the movie poster suggests this is a surfing film, it’s actually a road movie, although there are a couple of short surfing sequences. It comes in the tradition of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Rain People” from fifty years earlier, just involving route 101 and the coast of the Great Northwest. It’s similar to “Big Sur” (2013) minus the funereal tone, as well as “The Lucky Ones” (2008), “The Way” (2010) and “A Walk in the Woods” (2015). While it’s not nigh-great like “The Lucky Ones” it’s at least on par with the best of the other three. The writer/director, Justin Lee, likes to include iconic actors in peripheral roles. Here it’s Corbin Bernsen and Adrienne Barbeau. Yet the story focuses on two best friends (Summer