As usual when I've finished a retrospective, I'll be doing a little debrief/ranking of the movies I've seen.

Ultimately, most of the movies were pretty mediocre. A lot of them relied on Hollywood formula, which sometimes brought the movie down or just made the story incredibly bizarre (like the psychic captains in The Enemy Below.) Generally, ( Read more... )

To close out Sub Month, I'll be ending with what many consider to be the greatest submarine movie of all time: Das Boot.

Das Boot is considered by many submarine buffs to be the definitive sub movie. As a relative outsider to the genre, I wasn’t sure how accurate that would turn out to be, especially given some of the things people were telling me ( Read more... )

This Weekend's Review: U-571.

In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to watch U-571 with a friend of mine, who happens to be a WWII buff and who suggested the idea of Sub Month in the first place. On it’s own, the movie is a clichéd but relatively action packed movie. When you have someone slapping their forehead and explaining exactly why what’ ( Read more... )

Today's review: Below.

Below could very easily have been a decent little horror movie. Trapped in an enclosed space, deep underwater no less, could have added some real-life phobia to any supernatural elements they wanted to throw in. But the movie, in trying to allow for multiple interpretations, sort of undermines itself on that front, so that ( Read more... )

Today's review: Crimson Tide, the only other movie in all of Sub month that's not going to be WWII based.

Crimson Tide has a very good premise, and in other circumstances, might have managed to be an action/thriller that really made you think. However, the “dilemma” turns out to be ridiculously one-sided (even when it shouldn’t be), and the action ( Read more... )

Today's review: Operation Petticoat.

Operation Petticoat is just all around fun. While there was potential for things to have descended into cringe comedy, instead it’s basically a lighthearted romp, which is bizarre given some of the things that happen in it. Would that more comedies could walk that balancing act.

( Read the rest of the review here... )

Today's review: Run Silent, Run Deep.

On the one hand, Run Silent, Run Deep does a much better job at having the character interactions add to instead of detract from the story, as was the case in The Enemy Below. On the other hand, the character interactions are sort of all the movie has going for it. Despite the movie’s title, there isn’t much ( Read more... )

Today's review: The Enemy Below.

The Enemy Below should have been an exciting game of cat-and-mouse, with both sides having victories and setbacks. Instead, it actually feels somewhat routine, as if everything was being done by the numbers. It really does take a great deal of effort to make what could be an exciting war movie feel mostly dull.

( Read the rest of the review here... )

While this movie isn't technically a "submarine" movie, it does feature one of the more famous fictional submarines in all of literature, and so I was ok with including it in the retrospective. I speak, of course, of the Nautilus and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

From what little I know of the original 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a movie could ( Read more... )

For those of you who didn't have the time (or, admittedly, the patience) to hunt for Red October, I'm pleased to officially open my new retrospective. For the month of October, I will be reviewing a number of movies that revolve, in some way, around submarines. And we begin, appropriately enough, with The Hunt for Red October(And I know that ( Read more... )