BEFORE: After learning that "Hell or High Water" is now on that list of "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", I decided to take a spin through the updated list (on IMDB, not in book form) to see what has changed since the last edition I checked, which was in 2013. In the first (almost) 800 listings, nothing has changed. But 22 of the newer (2007 and later) films are gone, replaced in order to keep the list current.
So, the bad news is that 10 films that I've seen are now gone from that list: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", "Slumdog Millionaire", "Black Swan", "Drive", "Django Unchained", "Life of Pi", "American Hustle", "Inside Llewyn Davis", "Nebraska" and "The Wolf of Wall Street". This is confusing on a couple levels - were these films only "Must-See" for a couple of years, like did their relevance expire or something? Or did was there a sudden influx of super-great movies in 2015 and 2016, and these just had to be jettisoned because they paled in comparison to the new, hipper films? Hey, if something needed to go, why wasn't it the old foreign films that today's audience has no interest in seeing? Dropping these 10 films (along with 12 others I haven't seen) brought my total down from 410 to an even 400, as I feared.
However, there is some good news - because I've spent so much time catching up with the films of 2015 and 2016, of the 22 films added since my last check-in, I've seen 13 of them! So my stats actually went UP when you factor in these newer films: "Boyhood", "Birdman", "The Grand Budapest Hotel", "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", "The Revenant", "Spotlight", "Mad Max: Fury Road", "La La Land", "Hell or High Water", "The Jungle Book (2016)", "Jackie", "Manchester by the Sea" and "Arrival". So my total viewed jumped back up from 400 to 413. I made progress after someone else did some list maintenance!
Of course, it's all arbitrary - is "Jackie" a better or more relevant film than "Black Swan"? In my opinion, no, but it's not up to me. Is "La La Land" better than "Drive"? They both got a score of "6" from me. What about "The Revenant" replacing "The Wolf of Wall Street"? OK, so I agree with that one. Is the recent "Jungle Book" remake better than "Life of Pi"? It's debatable, since I liked a lot of the films that got replaced, but I also liked a lot of the added films, so I guess it's a wash.
Two actors carry over from "Hell or High Water", Chris Pine and Ben Foster.
THE PLOT: The Coast Guard makes a daring rescue attempt off the coast of Cape Cod after a pair of oil tankers are destroyed during a blizzard in 1952.
AFTER: I'm back on Netflix tonight, which of course does not reduce my main watchlist at all, though it does make a dent in the larger list, which is the films available to me on streaming services and Academy screeners. (The next step is to make a list of the new screeners that came in this January, but there are so many of them, so I've been avoiding this.) I can't ignore a link that allows TWO actors to carry over between films, that's just too perfect. And the goal is to get to these films on Netflix before they all start to disappear.
I watched a number of films in 2017 that were set in Massachusetts - see the 2017 wrap-up post for that list, and here's another one. It's a true story about a Coast Guard (or Coast Gaahd) rescue from 1952, and since it took place during a January blizzard, that couldn't be more timely. I saw the footage from last week's weather in Massachusetts, where incredibly high waves were causing floods in the coastal towns of Hull and Scituate, and it's not too much of a stretch to get from that to tonight's film. I think this is a great reminder that while most people have the option to stay home and hunker down during a winter storm, maybe miss a day's work while they watch TV and drink some hot cocoa, there are people who HAVE to go to work, even in the middle of a storm, because other people's lives are on the line. Doctors, nurses, police, firemen, and yes, the Coast Guard. Those of us whose jobs are not critical thank you for your service.
(News and weather reporters, I have much less admiration for. The people who report on the weather should be smart enough to not do so while standing outside, in the thick of it. They'll tell everyone to stay off the roads unless travel is vital or emergency-based, then they'll head out in the Channel 6 "Mobile Weather Center", which is really just a SUV crossover with cameras in it, just to get some great footage to demonstrate how hard the roads are to navigate. Does anyone else see the irony here?)
But let's get back to "The Finest Hours". For the first 1/4 of the film, we see Chris Pine's character doing exactly what his other character did in "People Like Us". He's supposed to talk to his superior about getting married to his girlfriend (he's under the mistaken belief that he needs "permission" from the Coast Guard to get engaged) and yet time and time again, he can't quite bring himself to say the words. So it's delay, delay, delay until thankfully there's an emergency at sea and he can head out. Dude, if you're not ready to SAY the word "marriage", you're really not ready to do it.
Meanwhile, on an oil tanker there's a bunch of manly men who are suddenly wondering what happened to the other half of their ship. Ah, that propably explains why they haven't heard any orders from the bridge in a while.... But then this leads to other questions, like how long can a half-ship stay afloat, and should they try to leave the half-ship in lifeboats, stare bailing water futilely, or just sit quietly and prepare to drown? Thankfully the quiet guy who knows the most about the ship has another solution. And it sounds crazy, but it just might work...
The problem with rescuing these men is two-fold - nobody knows exactly where this half-ship is (it seems that radar was in its infancy back then) and to get there, a ship has to cross the Chatham Bar (pronounced "Chattem Baah" in the local parlance). This is a series of shoals on the southern part of Cape Cod that is notable for having extremely high waves during a storm - so it's very nearly a suicide mission. But Bernie Webber ("Webbah") headed out with three other men in a 36-foot wooden lifeboat, which had the advantage of being self-righting, into this wicked winter storm, in the hopes of finding the rapidly-sinking half-tanker and getting any surviving crewmen to safety.
The ending, with the town pulling together to help the lifeboat find its way back to land, is one of those inspiring moments - I haven't seen the film "Dunkirk" yet, but perhaps this is somewhat reminiscent of that event, let's call this one "Dunkirk Lite" for now. I suppose this is tempered somewhat by the reminder that back in 1952, women's opinions didn't seem to matter much, at least on perceived "manly" things like sailing and military operations.
Also starring Casey Affleck (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), John Ortiz (last seen in "Going in Style"), Holliday Grainger (last seen in "Cinderella"), Eric Bana (last seen in "Lone Survivor"), Graham McTavish (last seen in "Creed"), Kyle Gallner, (last seen in "American Sniper"), Michael Raymond-James (last seen in "Black Snake Moan"), John Magaro (last seen in "Unbroken"), Abraham Benrubi (last heard in "Big Hero 6", Keiynan Lonsdale, Beau Knapp (last seen in "The Nice Guys"), Josh Stewart (last heard in "Interstellar"), Rachel Brosnahan (last seen in "Patriots Day"), Matthew Maher,(also last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Benjamin Koldyke (last seen in "Stuck on You"), Jesse Gabbard, Alexander Cook (last seen in "Black Mass"), Danny Connelly (last seen in "Bride Wars"), Angela Hope Smith,
RATING: 6 out of 10 life-jackets
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