Deep Rising

This will give you an idea of what movies I'm drawn to, even though I know they're not good for me. I should be seeing The Sweet Hereafter or some other "important" movie. Nope, when Deb's out of town, I'm renting that movie about the nasty sea monsters. The biggest surprise is, it's actually pretty good, as long as you know what you're getting yourself into. Pop some popcorn, grab a brew and shut the brain off.

Treat Williams is a boat captain for hire who sells himself and his crew (a nondescript Asian girl and her boyfriend, who whines a lot like Hippy did in The Abyss or Bill Paxton did in Aliens) to a group of thugs on their way to sabotage a boat in the middle of the south Pacific. The boat they're after turns out to be a cruise ship, and when they get there, they find that everyone is gone. Eventually, they find some survivors (including thief Famke Janssen, Xenia Onatopp from GoldenEye) and, um, the people who didn't survive. What is attacking the ship? I wouldn't begin to tell you. But it's pretty creepy. And very thirsty.

Written and directed by Steven Sommers (No, I haven't heard of him either, but his next movie is Universal's early summer entry The Mummy, starring Brendan Fraser), this is a B-movie with an A budget, and who knows, if they had given this a better release date than last January, it may have been a sleeper hit. The dialogue is pretty snappy if not witty, and the special effects are quite good. Williams, who's been a favorite of mine since I saw Hair all those years ago, plays the role of the straight man/action hero better than Bruce Willis ever could. The big kick for me was seeing Djimon Hounsou, who was in the previous month's "important movie" Amistad, playing a baddie here. A word to the women: the squeamish need not apply. You might want to get together with that girlfriend you don't see much anymore and rent some Jane Campion movie instead. Guys, this is the underwater Alien that Leviathan tried to be, plus it has a sense of humor.