As L’Atalante is re-released, we count down the best movies set largely on ships, boats, barges, yachts, steamers and trimarans. Submarines banned, as they’re under water
Stephen Sommers’ sci-fi horror pulp follows a bunch of scene-stealing character actors playing mercenaries hired to destroy the cruise ship Argonautica for insurance purposes. But a giant mutant octopus has got there first! Among the potential cephalopod fodder are Treat Williams, Kevin J O’Connor, and Famke Janssen as a jewel thief.
A baby, abandoned on the transatlantic liner SS Virginian, grows up to be a gifted pianist (Tim Roth) who never steps off the boat. The highlight of Giuseppe Tornatore’s whimsical hokum is Roth fighting a piano duel with Jelly Roll Morton, rather unfairly depicted as a smug bastard.
Kevin Costner plays a samurai-like drifter with webbed feet and a souped-up trimaran in this megabudget sci-fi B-movie, set in a future where melting polar ice-caps have flooded the planet. Everyone is searching for mythical Dryland while fending off Dennis Hopper and his band of chain-smoking pirates.
Two hours of tiresome canoodling between a posh chick (Kate Winslet) and an itinerant yobbo (Leonardo DiCaprio) are redeemed by James Cameron’s spectacular recreation of one the 20th century’s most infamous catastrophes. You have to admire the chutzpah of a film-maker who manages to twist a death toll of 1,500 into an emotionally uplifting tale of emancipation.
