Thursday Movie Meme: Nautical Movies

It's time for another Thursday Movie Meme! It's hosted by Wandering through the Shelves and if you haven't joined in, I suggest you hop on over to her site and join in the fun. This week's theme is nautical movies. The theme encompasses a wide variety of movies, so I decided to go with three of my favorites - one or two of them might be considered hidden gems as well.

Steve Zissou is an oceanograher who vows to capture the jaguar shark, the animal that devoured his best friend during their time in sea. The entire film basically documents this expedition, from an avid admirer declaring himself as possibly Zissou's son (his mother and Zissou had an encounter years ago), to getting themselves captured by pirates, and to finding the creature they were looking for. The movie was a bit slow at some parts, but their voyage at sea was filmed really well, and the jaguar shark scene was amazing. 

This one stars Colin Farrell as Syracuse, a recovering alcoholic and a fisherman who finds a woman called Ondine drifting at sea and takes her in. When he tells the story to his daughter, she mistakenly believes Ondine to be a selkie (a mythical creature who can turn human). Syracuse also believed that the woman brings him luck in his fishing expeditions (further proving his daughter's claim). However, there is more to Ondine that meets the eye. Besides the annoying daughter, Ondine was a pretty decent film. I like his chemistry with Alicja Bachleda, and how the three of them fit together. It was a charming film, and one of Farrell's best. 

So there's this rare time when Gerard Butler was a really good actor. His performance here was  one worth the praise, considering the other movies I've seen him in. Dear Frankie stars Emily Mortimer as a single mother with a deaf-mute son who constantly relocates in order to escape her ex-husband. Her son, Frankie, keeps in touch with his father through mail, thinking that his father is a seaman. His correspondence, however was perpetuated by his mother, in order to throw Frankie off about his real father. Her charade was about to come to an end when the ship Frankie's "father" worked was to dock in their town, so she hired someone to pretend to be the said father and spend time with Frankie. Both Butler and Mortimer give great performances, but I really have to hand it to Jack McElhone. He was quite charming as Frankie, and his performance was terrific.