All aboard ship as Movies.ie counts down its top ten maritime movies!
(10)Violets are Blue
Sissy Spacek and Kevin Kline star in this endearing and well-crafted love story set in a small town on Maryland’s eastern shore. Sissy Spacek portrays a young, competent sailor, with sailing as an important element in both the plot and in the relationships between the characters. It also excellent small boat sailing sequences, including a pretty exciting Hobie cat race!
(9) Cutthroat Island
Made by Renny Harlin, the director of Die Hard (and Geena Davis’ then-husband), there’s lots of action and explosions; some not very believable ships and sailing sequences, and the coast of Thailand passing as the Caribbean. Geena Davis has the physical size to be believable brawling and swordfighting, and Matthew Modine in his second “sailing” movie tried hard to be swashbuckling, but needed a better-written role. The only redeeming feature of this movie was Frank Langella hamming it up as the “bad” pirate. Davis reportedly has been quoted as saying “we were having so much fun, we forgot we were making a movie.” Still, certain age groups, raised on Die Hard and Terminator will think this is just great.