Dead Calm (1989)

Phillip Noyce sailed Nicole Kidman from the Australian small-time to the Hollywood big screen with his adaptation of Charles Williams' Dead Calm, a nautical thriller about a couple, Kidman's Rae Ingram and her husband John (Sam Neill) - characters who first appeared in Williams' Aground - on a sailing trip to recover from tragedy, but while becalmed they spot a yacht in distress and make the mistake of stopping to help the yacht's sole survivor (Billy Zane, in 1989, youthful and smouldering) - the confined-space thrills-at-sea has a beautiful simplicity with the three characters in a sphere of action no larger that just the speck of a yacht in the ocean..

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SEMTENCE REVIEWS

Ghost Ship (1952)

Rumours of a ghost don't stop a couple from buying a ship but after their crew members flee their jobs, the couple hire a paranormal investigator whose arrival on board the ship marks the point this low-budget nautical thriller becomes really, really scar...ily bad - none of the actors has any choice but to bear with stoic faces the paranormal investigator's awful explanations and the acting from that point becomes more wooden and more hollow than the ship's hull. 

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Dangerous Voyage (US: Terror Ship) (1954)

A yacht is abandoned with nothing but a man's shoe on board in this fairly wooden, fairly badly written mystery adventure that moves from England to France and back, and from courtrooms to the open seas and, to quote the movie itself, it "is [a story] alright for a train journey."

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS