You guys!!! I’m so sad and happy at the same time to bring you my final Sam Neill Netflix Marathon update! I watched the last movie today, and I’m glad Brian was there to help me through this emotional time. I will be doing a big wrap-up post I have special plans for, but this is the last time I’ll review Sam Neill movies, since I’ve run out of them! Here we go:
This one wasn’t available on Netflix for awhile, so I’m glad I finally got to see it!
Dead Calm (1989)
Featuring Nicole Kidman as That Girl From Brave
The Movie: Nicole Kidman was just in a car accident that killed her young son, and to recuperate, her husband takes her on their yacht out on a journey through the Pacific, just the two of them. But when they come across an abandoned ship and take aboard its one survivor, Billy Zane, the dickish fiance from Titanic, Sam Neill KNOWS something is up. He goes across to the other ship to investigate, leaving Billy Zane to knock out Nicole Kidman and take over his own boat, sailing blithely away. Nicole Kidman ineffectually tries to wrest control back from him, completely refusing to shoot him even though she has both a rifle and a harpoon gun on board. Eventually after all kinds of shenanigans (and sleeping with him!), she manages to tie him up and turn that boat around! Of course he gets free, and she has to harpoon-shoot him again, abandoning his body on an inflatable life raft for some reason. Then she rescues her husband and they sail off into the sunset…
Except of course Billy Zane wasn’t really dead! Pan down to see bloody handprints on the side of the boat! An indeterminate time later, Nicole Kidman is chillaxing on deck when THERE HE IS AGAIN trying to strangle her to death. Luckily Sam Neill doesn’t seem to have her weird hang up against shooting him and FLARE GUNS HIM IN THE FACE. The end.
Did I tell you Sam Neill is also an intrepid Australian Navy Captain? Because he is
The Character: I am kind of surprised that Billy Zane even tried to come aboard Sam Neill’s yacht in the first place, because it was completely obvious from the beginning that he could beat this guy armed with nothing but a compass and his own steely resolve. Abandoned to his fate, Sam Neill manages to fix the sinking wreck of the other boat, totally nonchalant about all the corpses he finds there. Apparently Billy Zane is a photographer who was taking “model shots” of topless girls at sea when there was some kind of fight and whoops! everyone got murdered. Even after there’s a bad storm and the ship starts sinking again, Sam Neill totally manages to escape and build a makeshift raft to hang out on while waiting for Nicole Kidman to finally get her butt in gear and pick him up. Probably the only reason he didn’t flare gun Billy Zane in the face from the start was to give him a fighting chance.
Thing I Learned: When trapped in the water-filled hold of a sinking ship, always blow out of a potential air tube first to dislodge the cockroaches. Ew.
Should You Watch This?: This is a pretty solid thriller movie. The setting of alone at sea adds a new dimension of suspense.
The Simpsons, Season 5, episode 11: Homer the Vigilante (1994)
I feel like I don’t have to explain the Simpsons to you
The Episode: A cat burglar has come to Springfield, and seems to be making off with everyone’s most treasured possessions regardless of actual value, including Lisa’s saxophone. Homer starts a vigilante group to keep the neighborhood safe and hopefully catch the criminal, but refuses to let Grandpa Simpson join because he’s too old. After Homer fails to keep the world’s largest Cubic Zirconia safe from the thief, the town is about to turn against him when Grandpa solves the mystery! The thief is Molloy from the retirement home! In prison, Molloy tells everyone where he’s hidden all the money he’s stolen, and as they rush off to find it, he escapes. The end! Old people have value.
Especially if they have awesome facial hair
The Character: Sam Neill voices Molloy, the cat burglar. He is super suave, and so graceful in defeat that he almost talks his way out of being arrested. Plus he has some sneaky sneakers.
Thing I Learned: The Simpsons is actually still pretty funny. I haven’t watched an episode in probably a decade, but this one was really enjoyable, maybe because I remembered it from my childhood
Should You Watch This?: If you like the Simpsons!
Until the End of the World (1991)
Don’t listen to this cover, you are not prepared at all
The Movie: I don’t even know how to explain this movie to you. It is ridiculous and amazing and more than two and a half hours long. It was made in 1991 and set in 1999 so you know all the fashion and technology were completely bizarre!
Exhibit A
That is Claire. When everyone else is freaking out about an Indian nuclear satellite falling to earth, she is hanging out, wandering around France, and eventually getting mixed up with some bank robbers. In the process she meets a guy who is on the run from someone, and he steal some of her money. Rather than just keeping the rest of the bank robbery loot, she decides to track him down, to Germany, Spain, Russia, China, Japan… sometimes she’s working with bounty hunters also trying to find him, for stealing opals, other times she’s on her own and getting questioned by another bounty hunter who only uses “truth serum drugs” to solve cases. What? One time she sleeps with this elusive fugitive (awkwardly, while they are handcuffed together), but he still leaves her (handcuffed to a bed and a bounty hunter) because she is endangering his mission. Eventually he trusts her enough to tell her that he is on the run from the US government because his father invented a camera that takes pictures blind people can see. They want the camera, but his father didn’t trust them with technology that can take pictures out of people’s heads. Right now he’s traveling all around the world taking pictures of things to show his blind mom.
Eventually every character ever ends up in Australia around the same time as the nuclear satellite explodes and all electronics stop working. Except… for some electronics.
Also they end up on a dessert hike while she is handcuffed to a plane door
The camera works, but the stress of it ends up killing his mom. Then his dad reconfigures the machine to capture dreams and everyone becomes obsessed with watching their dreams all the time. The US government arrives and takes Science Dad away, only to die soon after. His son wanders around in the wilderness for awhile, and Sam Neill cures Claire of her obsession by locking her in a pen in his yard and then letting her read a book he wrote about her. It works, and she goes to work on the space station, where Sam Neill, the bank robbers, and the bounty hunter sing her happy birthday by video card. No one knows what happened to Truth Serum Guy. NO ONE KNOWS.
Sam Neill spends most of this movie kind of down, but stoic
The Character: Sam Neill is Claire’s (ex-?)boyfriend, whom she goes to whenever she needs help. He obviously still loves her, following her all over the world, but she mainly just runs away from him to be with the elusive fugitive until she needs something from him again. Maybe it’s worth it for him in the end because he writes a book about their experiences, on an old school typewriter after “all” the world’s electronics stopped working. I guess they started working again, since Claire ends up on the space station? THIS MOVIE. SO MANY QUESTIONS.
Thing I Learned: This movie was originally 8 hours long, but the director finally cut it down to 286 minutes. The theatrical release is 157, so even then, a lot of stuff was cut. I like to imagine it wouldn’t make any more sense with those added scenes, just more random gunfights in Tokyo pod-hotels.
Should You Watch This?: “Let me put on some music while we drive… it’s Pygmy children chanting, recorded by my mother in Cameroon.” If you like crazy, unexplained nonsequiturs like this, you will LOVE this movie. Also, if you love silly “future” technology. Here is a selection:
Claire’s dashboard computer
This thing is actually a lot like our modern GPS in that it talks to her in a robot voice and provides maps and directions. It also cautions her to drive the speed limit (by name) and looks like a portable TV, but points for effort, movie.
Public video phones!
It’s like a public telephone, but with video! And everyone around you can hear your conversations.
Sam Neill’s laptop
I don’t really understand the screen size to laptop size ratio.
A portable video phone
Nice one, Sony.
A portable video phone IN CHINA
Sam Neill is on the other end holding what looks like a desktop computer in one hand and a phone headset in the other.
Fugitive Tracking Computer
This software tracks people FOR you! With what look like a series of ridic 8-bit animated GIFs.
This movie was insane and bizarre and to tell you all the parts of it that confused me would take a post twice as long as this. What a great end to the Sam Neill Netflix Marathon! Can you believe it’s been about one year and eight months since this started? Look for a super fun wrap up post/awards show next week!
It’s a good feeling, seeing 100% on thespreadsheet
Previously: Middle of Nowhere Edition