After their ship is sunk, Professor Pierre Aronnax (Paul Lukas) and his assistant Conseil (Peter Lorre), along with harpooner Ned Land (Kirk Douglas), find themselves guests of the mysterious Captain Nemo (James Mason) aboard his submarine the Nautilus. Before everything was put behind the Disney+ paywall, this adaptation of Jules Verne's classic 1870 novel was one of those films that was on TV so much that I pretty much grew up watching it. Even all these years later I still retain a lot of affection for it and Mason's mesmerising performance as Nemo, despite the unfortunate white washing (a common problem in most adaptations). It also has, in my humble opinion, the all time best version of Nautilus, a truly brilliant work of steampunk design.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Straw Hat Pirates arrive at a festival being attended by pirates from all over the world and take part in a hunt to find a treasure belonging to Pirate King Gold Roger, only to fall into a trap orchestrated by a vengeful member of Roger's crew. Like most of the One Piece movies this is a non-canonical standalone adventure that takes place at an unspecific (and inconsistent) time in the show's chronology. It was released to celebrate the anime's 20th anniversary and is really just a big fight scene with a lot of fan service. The film tries to cram in as many cameos as it can, quickly giving up even slightly plausible explanations for why everyone is there by the time Sabo just randomly appears. If you're a fan then there's certainly some fun to be had from seeing all these characters getting to interact for once, but not much else.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable), first mate on the merchant vessel HMS Bounty, leads a mutiny against his tyrannical commander, the cruel and crooked Captain Bligh (Charles Laughton). Cast adrift in a lifeboat with those loyal to him, Bligh vows to survive and take revenge against Christian and the other mutineers. Really drags after the mutiny, which is over far too quickly. Bends the truth as much as it can to exaggerate Bligh's cruelty and paints him as one rotten apple who is shunned by his fellow seamen in the end, when the truth is he was no different than all the other officers in the Royal Navy. The whole system was rotten, but this film lets it off the hook and ends with roaring rendition of 'Rule Britannia'.
Rating: ⭐⭐
Notorious pirate Morgan Adams (Geena Davis) teams up with con man William Shaw (Matthew Modine) to find and translate all three pieces of a map leading to a huge stash of hidden gold on Cutthroat Island. One of cinema's most infamous flops. It tanked so badly it killed an entire studio, although to be fair the studio was in such bad shape it probably would've still collapsed even if this had turned a profit. Like so many action directors, Harlin mistakes being bombastic for being exciting and badly miscast his then wife Geena Davis in the lead role.
Rating: ⭐⭐
Geoffrey Thorpe (Errol Flynn), a dashing privateer in the service of Queen Elizabeth I (Flora Robson), attacks a Spanish ship and soon uncovers a conspiracy to invade England. This was the tenth of eleven films Flynn made with director Michael Curtiz and their third swashbuckler after Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Curtiz obviously tried to get the whole band back together, but while Flynn and composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold said yes, Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathbone said no and their absences are deeply felt. An unapologetic pro-British piece of WWII propaganda, it starts off big with a massive navel battle, but then slumbers along towards a rather limp conclusion.
Rating: ⭐⭐
During the Battle of the Atlantic, Lt. Commander George Ericson (Jack Hawkins) is given command of the corvette HMS Compass Rose, with its inexperienced crew, and assigned to protect convoys from enemy U-Boats. Unlike most navel warfare movies, The Cruel Sea isn't concerned with grand heroics, duelling captains, or epic battles. This is more of a slice of life drama about what it was really like for sailors on those harsh seas, the difficult conditions they faced, the hard choices they had to make, and how even returning home could offer little comfort. Hawkins heads up a strong cast and gives one of the best performances of his career.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Soviet navel captain Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) is given command of the Red October, the newest Typhoon-class submarine equipped with a prototype stealth propulsion system. Once at sea, Ramius defies orders and sets course for the American east coast. The Russians convince the Americas that Ramius is mad and planning a nuclear attack, but CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) believes that Ramius is trying to defect. This was the first adaptation of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels and remains the best, although I will concede that Harrison Ford is a better Ryan. Thanks to excellent direction from John McTiernan, Jan de Bont's slick cinematography, and a classic score by Basil Poledouris, this is a cracking Cold War thriller, the last great one to come up before the final fall of the Soviet Union. Connery proved once again that when you have true movie star charisma you can pretty much get away with playing any nationality with a thick Scottish accent. He's backed up by an impressive supporting cast including Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, Sam Neill, Joss Ackland, Tim Curry, Richard Jordan, Stellan Skarsgård, and Courtney B. Vance.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011 More Mark Greig
Love 20,000 Leagues and Red October. Both brilliant movies that I fully enjoyed watching.
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen the rest, although I do know that the treatment of sailors at the time of Bounty was horrendous as standard practice as you point out. Bligh wasn't a unique bad actor but more of the standard for those times.
Oops, hit rely too early! I wanted to add Charles Laughton was great in The Old Dark House as one of the guests.
DeleteBligh may have not been Jack Aubrey, but he was a phenomenal seaman; he navigated the dinghy in which he and 18 loyalist crewmen had been placed by the mutineers, some 4,000 miles across open water to the Dutch East Indies.
ReplyDelete20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is one of my favourite films, despite what Roger Ebert called the ‘semi-obligatory musical interlude’ that tended to bring many 1950s films to a grinding halt midway. Not a fan of the seal, either, but Peter Lorre is great, and James Mason is just awesome, as is Nautilus.
There are just so many seafaring films to choose from! I love the 4-star ones you’ve listed, but will likely ignore the others; there are great films out there that I can spend my time with instead. If I had to recommend some older candidates, I might add Sink the Bismark!, The Bedford Incident, Run Silent, Run Deep, and The Caine Mutiny.
More recent favourites are Crimson Tide, Das Boot, and Master and Commander — the last two being perhaps the best naval films ever made.