1968 Dir: Robert Stevenson Walt Disney 107 mins Talk like a Pirate Day is on September 19 and, if you’ve any inclination to pull off more than a few “aarrs” or a “Jim-m’-lad” or two, then this is defo the film for you. Prepare for a tutorial from the best, as Peter Ustinov delivers some [...]
The famous Beken Calendars for 2019 are available now from Nautcalia. They make ideal Christmas gifts and there are five different calendars to chose from priced from £9.99 to £16.99 (plus £4.99 p&p). Find them on Nauticalia's website: HERE Christmas Guide The Nauticalia Christmas Gift Guide is also out now. It’s brimming with the [...]
1937, Dir Victor Fleming, B&W, MGM, DVD, U, 112mins It’s not just the star-studded cast that brings this movie to life – much of the footage takes place aboard real working Grand Banks schooners of the American north east fishery which gives it superlative reality. Based on Rudyard Kipling’s excellent novel of the same name [...]
1956, Dir: John Huston, Moulin Productions, PG, 110 mins Several versions of this film have been made, and the most recent was in 2010 starring William Hurt, Ethan Hawke and Donald Sutherland. There is also a 1998 two-part made for TV version, starring Patrick Stewart as Captain Ahab, which we’d recommend and the recent 2016 [...]
2013 Dir: JC Chandor 106 mins This is a contentious review because many sailors just hate this film. It has a cast, of one – Robert Redford, who has about one main word of dialogue – the F word, but we have to wait one hour twelve minutes before he manages to explete it. Well, [...]
1962, Dir Roman Polanski, B&W, Anchor Bay, DVD, PG, 90 mins This black and white film from behind the iron curtain in 1962 is quite a revelation. Like: they had yachts in Communist states? Who knew? And of course when Roman Polanski first showed it the censors shelved it for over a year as celebrating [...]
1944 Dir: Alfred Hitchcock 97 mins In the genre of Hitchcock’s “limited setting” films (think also Rear Window, Rope) this is an underrated classic. It’s set entirely on a lifeboat full of, at the beginning, nine WW2 survivors, including women, of several ships one of whom is a German, possibly the German U-Boat Captain who [...]
2000 Dir: Wolfgang Petersen 130 mins This is a film, based on a true story that sits in a certain time spot. People with no interest in the sea went to see this film in droves partly because it has a dramatic understory of struggling sword-fishermen and the perils they face on land and sea [...]
2003, Dir Peter Weir, Universal Studios and Miramax, PG-13, 138 mins Sailors and fans of Patrick O Brian’s series of novels of the Georgian Navy love this film and it’s one to buy and re-watch every so often. The screenplay (by weir and John Collee) delivers a cracking storyline and draws from other novels in [...]
