"Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea" Review

 In January 2012, the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia was run onto rocks near Giglio Island off the coast of Italy, causing the boat to sink, flipping over onto it side killing 32 passengers and crew. The Netflix documentary Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea is the typical exercise using videos taken during the disaster with interviews of survivors - passengers and crew - detailing how it went down for them.

While they use graphics to show where various areas of the ship where people were located, they really whiff on zooming in to show exactly where they were like when a family with an infant child have to slide down a hallway to access the only lifeboats able to launch.

When the inquest, recriminations and charges are covered, details are introduced then never adequately followed-up. One surprising detail is that one of the interviewees was convicted of....something, it's never specified, and he never addresses it. They also omitted a ton of interesting and should've-been-included details as tallied in this Entertainment Weekly story.

Overall, Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea falls short of the much lighter Trainwreck: Poop Cruise episode also on Netflix last year, but is worth watching as a warning against 2nd-rate cruise lines. (Not reviewed because TV episode.)

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"Deep Water" Review

Pardon the pun, but the only reason the airplane disaster film Deep Water appeared on my radar was because one of the dozen producers was KISS bassist Gene Simmons who hit the interview circuit wearing a baseball cap with the title on it. Since it's been a couple of months since we'd had a trashy shark movie like Thrash (4/10, Skip) we decided to unplug our brains for some dumb (hopefully) fun.

 Aaron Eckhart is Ben, a pilot who is avoiding going home to cope with a very ill child by working a haul between LA and Shanghai. He's co-piloting with Captain Rich (Ben Kingsley, slumming) when during the flight where we kill the first act getting to know a bunch of people who will either die or we're supposed to care about surviving, a defective battery power bank wrongly checked into the hold by a raging a-hole, Dan (Angus Sampson), eluding the scrutiny of a distracted X-ray technician, catches fire causing a cascade of system failures leading to the plane having to ditch in the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles from land. Unfortunately, there's a coral reef which tears the plane into three sections leaving the 30-odd survivors separated in variously precarious situations.

And there's a bunch of hungry sharks. Dun-dun-DUHN!!!!

Director Renny Harlin, coming off the trio of The Strangers movies, had directed the camp shark classic Deep Blue Sea so I suppose we're supposed to expect great shark action, but Deep Water is just dumb tedium. Perhaps there's a few surprises as to who gets eaten, but it completely drops the ball when it comes to disposing of Dan, whose battery triggered this whole disaster. He's been a complete bag of dicks the entire movie, implying that of all the kills, his will be the most visceral and satisfying. Well, it's not. Yeah, he gets his, but it's not like in The Lost World where the guy gets snacked on by two T. Rexes. (I was banking on four sharks grabbing a limb and ripping them off while a fifth shark swallows the torso, but apparently I'm more creative than the FOUR credited screenwriters.)

You can also tell this was a Chinese co-production because of the prominent casting of Chinese actors and the fact a small Chinese fishing boat rescues the survivors after the American helicopter crashes in a ridiculous sequence. China always saves the day in multinational productions. (Ironic that Simmons would be flogging this considering his love for the USA.) 

Score: 3/10. Skip it.