Survival of the Fittest

Send Help

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien, Dennis Haysbert, Edyll Ismail

Released: January 30, 2026

If Cast Away were a horror movie and it was two people stranded on a desert island instead of one, it would be this movie. I'm not really a horror movie person (as you've probably noted from my lack of horror movie reviews), but I am a Survivor person and the main character is a fan of the reality show. I wouldn't call myself a Survivor Super Duper Fan, but I would refer to myself as a Survivor super fan. I've watched the show since the first season in 2000 and there are only two episodes I missed while watching live: the very first episode and some random episode during season 4, Marquesas. I missed the very first episode because I didn't have any intention on watching it, but my parents saw it and told me about it and I was intrigued so I watched it and I was hooked. I can't remember why I missed the Marquesas episode. It might have been because the weather was bad and it kept getting interrupted by the stupid weather man. God, how the hell did we ever survive without streaming? I mean, seriously? How did we do it? Considering I just wrote that sentence, I would not be long if I were ever stranded on a deserted island! Anyway, back to Survivor: I could name you all the winners from all the seasons (though I don't know everybody's last name!). I even found about the Survivor connection in this from a Survivor podcast (Rob Has a Podcast). 

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is the Survivor aficionado. Actually, I would say she's more of a survival aficionado and a Survivor casual fan. She seems more interested and well-versed in the survival aspect (like making fire or building shelter) than the strategic and social aspects of the game. We see she is socially inept at work where she is the strategy and planning manger of a company where she's been promised a big promotion, but after her boss dies his swarmy son, Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien) takes over and gives the promotion to one of his bros. 

I do think they did a good job of making Rachel McAdams look unappealing and socially awkward. Regina George would eat Linda for breakfast. Sure she has the glasses and ponytail which is Hollywood's favorite way to make a girl look ugly, but her hair is greasy and she has this mole on the side of her face which isn't exactly a Cindy Crawford beauty mark and she doesn't even try with her appearance or her clothes. She comes off as someone with zero self awareness and it's a bit cringe. What she lacks in social skills, she makes up in her job which she is very good at, hence why she's been promised this big promotion.

When she finds out she's been passed over for the promotion and marches into Bradley's office and demands to know why, he basically tells her she's lacking the social skills. He invites her to join him and the rest of the team on a business trip to Bangkok for a meeting. (I have to be honest...I'm not exactly sure what business they're in.) 

While on the flight, Linda is working on some important document for the meeting (she's pretty much doing al the work) and has her earbuds in. When she takes them out, she can hear laughter in another part of the plane and she realizes everyone is laughing because they found her Survivor audition tape online. I'm confused: does Survivor just upload everyone's audition tape online? I highly doubt that, so how did they even find this? Did she upload her audition tape online? Judging by her horrified reaction, I highly doubt it. She hits the delete button and everything she's worked on completely disappeared in a matter of seconds. We'll never get to see how she handled that because the plane crashes into the sea and the only survivors are Linda and Bradley. Of course. 

Luckily (I guess, I mean lucky for this situation, I guess) they're not too far from an island. Bradley is unconscious and Linda sees him washed up on the shore. His leg has been badly cut and she basically saves his life. She stops the bleeding and has built a shelter that would make Boston Rob proud. (You know he'd take her to the end!) When Bradley wakes up, his first priority is to get the hell out of there and is annoyed that Linda has been making shelter and fire and catching fish and gathering rainwater. She tells him she had to do all that stuff for their survival. 

Because of his leg, he is unable to walk so he's completely dependent on Linda. He gets a little snippy with her, telling her he's the boss and she walks away leaving him without water for an entire day in the hot sun. When she comes back with water, she reminds him that the power dynamics have shifted and they're not in the office anymore and he's going to have to listen to her. He knows she's right and he needs her help especially after he's starving and tries to eat a disgusting bug that just turns into goo into his mouth (we know this because he immediately spits it out) and she's a few feet over eating sashimi in frond leaves. She's cutting it with a knife which she tells him she found washed up on the beach. 

The two of them actually do seem to get along. At first. After she's made a spear to kill a boar (a very obvious CGI boar) they're both very happy that they're eating meat and she makes a joke that she's the one that brought home the bacon. I'm glad they're enjoying the meat because it was quite the ordeal for her to kill this boar. She had to stab it about three or four times before it finally died and it was coughing up phlegm and blood in her face. 

While Linda is exploring one day in another part of the beach, she sees a small boat and is about to call out to it, but then quickly hides from the boat, obviously not ready to be rescued. This is a place where she can thrive and she's not ready to go back home. I have to say, if I were stranded on a desert island with someone and I later found out they saw a boat and didn't say call out for help, I would be a little ticked off! 

When Bradley's leg gets better, Linda suggests they go for a walk for him to exercise his leg. She takes him up and around this very precarious path that is carved out on a cliff face. It is very steep and very narrow and very high up. I wouldn't want to walk that with two good legs, sheesh! There is no way you would get me to walk that path, I'll take the long way around, thank you very much! Bradley is hobbling around with a stick as a cane and I thought for sure (even though we were only halfway through the movie) Linda was going to push him off or he would fall to his death. But instead, she points out to a couple of large rocks in the distance and tells him to stay clear of that part of the island because it's covered with poison ivy or some kind of vegetation that will cause his skin to flare up. I knew she was lying and didn't want him there because that was the area of the island where she spotted the boat. I just assumed that was a part o
f the island where a boat could get close enough to land. She also points out some berries that they can eat and those that would be poisonous to them. When they're walking back across the cliff face, there's a piece of rock that's jutting out and when Linda steps on it, she falls. Of course I gasp! Bradley is able to grab her and pulls her up. They are high up! Again, I would avoid walking this cliff at all costs! 

One evening, Linda makes "wine" by fermenting some tropical fruits and they get drunk. I'm not really sure how she made it because she just tells him she made "toilet wine" (yuck!) and she had it ready. I think the script just wanted her to have an excuse to be drunk so she could reveal some dark secrets about herself. She tells Bradley she was married once, about ten years ago, but her husband died. He had been an alcoholic who wasn't a very nice person and whenever he got drunk, Linda would hide his keys so he couldn't drive. One time when he was being particularly cruel to her and asked for his keys, she took them out of her purse and laid them on the table. She tells Bradley that she poured her husband his last drink then after he took the keys, she never saw him alive again. 

Bradley is itching to get off the island. He has a beautiful fiancée, Zuri, back home, who Linda had met because when she barged into Bradley's office, Zuri came in a few minutes later wearing her humongous diamond engagement ring. He says it's been two weeks and there's been no sign of help so he wants to build a raft and find a ship, but Linda quickly nixes this idea. Again, if I were out there with her and found out she had already seen a boat, I would have throttled her. I don't think Linda is against the idea of making a raft for the same reason I would be: the ocean is a vast place. Trying to find a ship would be nearly impossible and the ocean is no place for a makeshift raft. But I'm guessing Linda just wants them to stay on the island. 

Bradley tells her he's made dinner for her. He wanted to do something nice for her since she's been making island life so easy. His intentions become clear when after a few bites, she collapses on the sand. He runs into the jungle and seconds later he reappears, dragging a wooden raft behind him. He shouts, "F*** you, Linda!" and hops onto his rickety raft. I honestly don't know what he's thinking. It's pitch black and the waves are rough. He's okay at first; the first two or three waves are rather gentle, but then the next wave he hits is large and crashes over him. He's relieved because his raft is still intact, but that doesn't last long and the next wave (even bigger than the one before) completely demolishes his raft. He really didn't put any thought in his escape plan. He is soon taken under the water. Linda, who has been poisoned by the berries she told him they couldn't eat, is throwing them up. She pulls Bradley from the water and while attempting to save him, keeps throwing up the berries in his face, so every thirty seconds this yellow goo keeps getting on his face. It was really gross, but also really funny. I mean, he kind of deserved it. She tells him he didn't serve her enough berries to kill her.

There's some tension between them the next morning and the tension will only rise. She offers him some octopus the next morning which he takes. Personally, I thought it looked disgusting You could see the tentacles. I feel confident that even if I were starving, there are some things I wouldn't eat, that included. She tells him she's still feeling queasy from the poisonous berries, so her stomach can't handle anything right now. It doesn't take long before he realizes something is wrong after he takes a bite of the (absolutely disgusting looking) octopus. (And it's not just that it looks disgusting, it looks like it would be chewy! Ugh! I guess what I'm saying is that I don't buy that anyone would voluntarily eat that!) Linda calmly informs him that he's just eaten blue-ringed octopus that has paralyzed him. She tells him it's not deadly and the effects will wear off in a couple of hours. She adds that he won't want to feel "this" and we see her put the knife in the fire to disinfect it. Immediately, I'm having images of Misery and I'm thinking for sure she's going to hack his foot off, though I'm not sure if that little knife can saw through bone, so maybe she's going to cut off a few of his toes so it's difficult to walk, therefore it will be difficult for him to try to escape again. But, no, that's not exactly what she has in mind. She tells him a story about how growing up, she used to have a dog who would keep running away and they solved that problem by having him "fixed." I was like, Oh no, she's not really going to - is she? We see a close up of his face (with tears streaming down) as she takes off his underwear (completely filthy; now I'm sure dirty underwear is the least of your worries if you're stranded on a desert island (and it certainly is the least of Bradley's worries at this very moment!), but eww! It would driver me crazy if I didn't have a clean change of underwear/clothes and had to wear the same thing days on end! :::shudder::: Again, another reason why I wouldn't be able to hack it alone on a deserted island!), then takes the knife. Even though I don't have the same anatomy as Bradley, I was squirming during this scene. We see blood cover his face (ughgughgh!) and Linda jokes that he's "a bleeder". Then she holds up a dead rat and it becomes apparent where the blood came from. She tells him the next time he tries to pull a stunt like the one from last night, "it won't be a rat." Yeah, I think both Bradley and the audience are relieved that she didn't go through with castrating him! 

No surprise, Bradley gives her the silent treatment after this! 

Okay, I may have bit a little bit spoiler-y in some of the things I already shared, but trust me, I'm about to spoil some major things so if you haven't seen this movie yet and do not want to be spoiled, don't read beyond this!

Spoilers ahoy! You have been warned! Don't say I didn't warn you! 

Linda is back in the area where she first saw a boat and lo and behold, she spots another boat! But this time she recognizes one of the people on it. It's Zuri, Bradley's fiancee (it's hard to miss that giant rock on her hand!) and she's with a Thai man who brought her on the boat. Linda doesn't have time to hide. Zuri is thrilled she's found her. She tells Linda the officials gave up the search a while ago, but she never gave up. I feel like the odds are one in a million that you would find someone like that. Unless there was only one island in that area where they could have washed up to, but I highly doubt that's the case. 

Immediately I know this is not good for Zuri and the Thai man. Zuri has already spotted Linda. We all know Linda doesn't want to be rescued (at least not yet!) and she can't just tell her two visitors to go on their merry way. When Zuri asks about Bradley, Linda tells her he's doing great and offers to take him to her. Linda has her handmade woven backpack with her (seriously, she could make a killing on Etsy selling those!) that she has put bananas and other fruit in. The man tells her there's plenty of food on the boat and she doesn't need to take that back, but she tells him she still wants to take it back. This probably should have been the first red flag for him and Zuri, but I can understand them for overlooking that. They're probably thinking Linda is just used to gathering and bringing back food; perhaps she's hasn't quite grasped the fact that she's being rescued!

However, when Linda asks them if anyone else knows that they're there, that should have been a huge red flag! Also, whenever somebody asks you this questions, even if it isn't true, always say yes! This goes into my life rules I learned from movies along with never help a stranger haul stuff into a van or never help somebody find their dog. They tell her exactly what she wants to hear: that nobody else knows they are here. 

Linda takes them on the perilous trek across the dangerous cliff face. Zuri does not seem like the type of girl who would be okay with this so I find it a little unrealistic she doesn't have qualms about this, but she must have been so relieved that she found her fiancé that she doesn't care she has to cross this scary path to get to him. Right before they get to the unsteady part of the path (you know, the one where Linda fell!), Linda bends down to tie her shoe (or pretend to tie!) and tells the others to go around her. They do and Zuri is the first to step on that piece of the path. Down she goes, but the man is able to grab her. He pleads for Linda to help him because he can't pull Zuri up on his own. 

The next scene is back at the camp. We didn't see the outcome, but considering that neither are with her, I think we all know what happened. It's this part of the movie where it's hard to root for Linda anymore; she just killed two innocent people. This is definitely weighing heavily on her conscious because she just sits around, not wanting to do anything. She tells Bradley she's sick and needs a day off from gathering food. That night, she hears a female voice moaning her name and when she walks towards the beach, she sees a tall, gangly figure emerge from the water. It's Zuri, hunched over, walking towards her asking her why she did it. I'm thinking, There's no way she could have survived that fall...and as soon as I think that, we see Linda wake up from her nightmare. But wait...she's still dreaming because we get a jump scare of Zuri as a zombie, THEN Linda finally wakes up. We will see what happened on the cliff later. Linda grabbed a rock and smashed the guy's head with it and he and Zuri fell to their deaths.

The next morning (or maybe it's a few days later...I'm kinda cloudy on how much time has passed), Bradley has seen a boar and decides he's gong to hunt it since it's been awhile since they ate meat. Ha! Good luck with that, I say. Linda had a hard enough time killing one and she is definitely more adapt at island life than he is. Bradley is sneaking up on the boar who is on the beach, sniffing at something and digging around at the sand. The boar hears Bradley and runs off. Bradley sees a hand sticking out of the sand with the glint of a giant diamond ring blinding him. He runs over to it, knowing immediately whose hand it is. He confronts Linda about it and she has to come clean and tell him that Zuri was on the island and that she accidentally slipped on the cliff. It's obvious he doesn't believe her. He asks her why she didn't tell him, which is a good point. 

This results in the two of them getting into a pretty nasty fight which you know was eventually going to happen. Linda had always kept the knife close to her, but while she was sleeping, Bradley had taken it. She runs into the woods and he follows her. I don't know how she had time, but she took off her shoes and unlaced them and when he found her shoes by a tree, she pops up behind him and starts to strangle him. He takes a big chunk of her hair and yanks so hard a part of her scalp falls off. Ughhh - ugh, no, just no. They continue to viciously fight until he runs off. He's headed towards the direction she told him not to go and instead of following him, she takes another way. (Presumably over the dangerous cliff which is a short cut.) 

Bradley keeps on running until he stumbles upon a huge house! Okay, that was a twist I did not see coming! Now I see why Linda didn't want him in that part of the island - it had nothing to do with seeing a boat! He runs up to the house and bangs on the door and window, but it's obvious no one's home. When he looks around there kitchen, he finds a fridge stocked with water and he notices there are no knives in the drawer. Hmm, I wonder where Linda got that knife! 

The movie goes back to the moment Linda saw the boat and this time we watch her watch the boat dock at the house and two men get out and stock the house with essentials (probably all that bottled water). She's close enough to see them punch in the numbers of to the door and now she's able to come and go as she pleases. Apparently some billionaire lives there and didn't notice when she disabled the security. She is talking to Bradley over the intercom. 

He walks cautiously around the house, trying to find her. He's in a room when she rounds the corner with a gun in tow. He holds up his hands in surrender and tells Linda his bs lie about how much he loves her and wants to stay on this island with her. She seems to believe him because she's crying and softening her defenses. I felt this was a little unrealistic that she would actually believe him after all that's happened. But then she notices a statue of a bull or something and it's missing its horns and she knows he has them. Bradley somehow gets the gun and when he turns it on her and pulls the trigger, nothing happens. She overpowers him, grabs a golf club and swings it, but before it reaches his head, we are now on a golf course with Linda dressed in a cute golf outfit with a stylish pony tail and visor. We learn that she was the "only survivor" who was rescued and has written a book about the ordeal. She tells the woman interviewing her, "No help is coming, so you'd better start saving yourself." 

I like the last shot of the movie which is her driving away in her convertible and she gives the camera - and the audience - a knowing look. I bet she would have been a shoo in to be on Survivor after all that! 

Sam Raimi directed this. He's probably best known for directing the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, but I really loved A Simple Plan. I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember thinking it was quite good. I'll have to review that movie in the future. 

Frozen

The Day After Tomorrow

Director: Roland Emmerich

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Ian Holm, Sela Ward

Released: May 28, 2004

Viewed in theaters: May 31, 2004

So an amusing little tidbit before I begin my review: while I was taking notes for this movie, I could not, for the life of me, remember anyone's name so I would refer to them as "DQ" or "Jake" or "Emmy" or "Sela" until I figured out their character's name. I did figure out Dennis Quaid's characters's name was Jack and Jake Gyllenhaal's character's name was Sam within the first half hour, but it took me a long time before I figured out Emmy Rossum's character's name was Laura and I'm still not sure what Sela Ward's character's name is...Helen, maybe? I'll have to double check that. Also, it wasn't till the last half hour of the movie that I figured out Sam's nerd friend's name was Brian, and not Charlie, which is what I referred to him as for some reason while I was taking notes. It just cracks me me up that I couldn't remember anyone's name. 

This movie, about severe climate change that causes a new Ice Age across the globe, has a few different storylines going on at once as certain doom (and a blanket of snow) covers the Earth. We have three members of the Hall family, two of which we are mostly following. There is Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), the paleoclimatologist, who predicts the Ice Age and is the one to brief the POTUS about what they need to do. His high school-age son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is in Manhattan (I think the Hall family lives in D.C, but I wasn't 100% sure about that) with some fellow classmates to compete in an academic decathlon. Then there's Dr. Lucy Hall (Sela Ward - yeah, I don't know where I got Helen!), Jack's wife, or maybe she's his ex-wife. I wasn't really sure. There's this scene that made me think that they might be exes, but it's never brought up. I mean, it honestly really doesn't matter. We have a snowstorm to worry about! We also follow a British scientist and two of his colleagues, but they will die respectfully towards the middle of the movie. Oh, and we see a few scenes with astronauts on the ISS, but they're just there so they can send photos back to NASA and we, the audience, can see the entire planet just covered in snow and ice.

Let's start with Jack's storyline first since he's the one to warn about the upcoming doom. The movie begins in Antarctica with Jack and two of his colleagues (and I had a hell of a time remembering their names so I would refer to them as "younger guy" and "older guy", but now I know that Frank is the older guy and Jason is the younger guy) drilling in the snow and ice. I don't know what they're doing, but while they're drilling, the ice cracks and a huge chasms appears. In a really ridiculous scene, Jack jumps from one side to the other to retrieve some tubes which I'm assuming hold very important information, but so important to risk your life? Of course, the chasm is growing even wider, so he will have to jump a wider distance with all these metal tubes in his arms. What a dumbass. He should have died right here. Of course, since Dennis Quaid is first billed in the movie, I knew he wouldn't. I had seen this movie before, but not for a very long time and couldn't remember if he died at the end of the movie. I knew they wouldn't kill his son, it would definitely be the father sacrificing his life if anyone had to die. But five minutes into the movie? Yeah, he's not dying here. Even though he can't use his arms for momentum, he manages to jump over this wide, gaping hole that not even a gold medal-wining long jumper could leap over. Settle in, gang! You're in for a Roland Emmerich disaster movie! Now, they do make it "suspenseful" because after he lands on the other side, he immediately falls, but he's able to use his ice pic to hang on and have his friends pull him back up. There's no way that thing would have held him. He should be dead....he actually should have fallen because there's no way he could have made that jump in the first place. 

Next, we see him presenting at a UN conference on global warming in New Delhi and tells them "what we have found locked in these ice cores is evidence of a cataclysmic climate shift which occurred around 10,000 years ago. The concentration of these natural greenhouse gases in the ice cores indicates that runaway warming pushed the planet into an ice age which lasted two centuries." I promise that will be the nerdiest sentence that I quote from this film! He goes on to say that global warming can trigger a cooling trend and that the northern hemisphere gets its temperate climate from the North Atlantic Current and they could see another Ice Age. When asked when he thinks this could happen, he replies, "Maybe in a hundred years, maybe in a thousand." Something tells me it could happen a lot sooner than he thinks! He says if they don't act soon, their children and grandchild will have to pay the price. The Vice President, who is clearly supposed to be based on Dick Cheney, tells him this will cost the world's economy "hundreds of billions of dollars" and who will pay for that and Jack reports that "the cost of doing nothing could even be higher" and the VP says the economy is just as important as the environment (but you know he was thinking it was more important, lol). 

Outside, we see that it is snowing, which is a bit unusual for New Delhi. Could it be foreshadowing? A man introduces himself as Terry Rapson (Ian Holm) and asks Jack if he could talk to him about his theory on "abrupt climate shift." Jack knows him from the Hedland Climate Research Center in Scotland (not a real thing; I know cuz I Googled it!) and says he read his work on ocean currents. That must have been a riveting read! 

Terry has his own (much smaller) storyline with his two colleagues. Some of his storyline correlates with Jack because he's keeping him up to date on their findings. For instance, the temperature has dropped 13 degrees not far off the eastern coast of the U.S. Rapson calls Jack to tell him his theory is coming to fruition (much sooner than he thought!). 

So the scene where I thought Jack was divorced from his wife is when Lucy calls Jack to tell him she wants him to pick up Sam (their son) and take him to the airport since he's competing with the Scholastic Decathlon Team in New York. Jack is in an apartment when he answers the call and why would he need to pick up Sam if he lived at home? Again, it really doesn't matter, but just found it interesting. There also seems to be a strained relationship between Jack and his son. We find out that Jack travels a lot for his job (hell, we just saw he was in Antarctica and India in the first ten minutes of this movie!), so I'm guessing he's not always around when his son needs him and perhaps Sam resents him for that.

So now things are starting to look grim around the world, or at least in Tokyo and L.A. In the Japanese capital, huge chunks of hail are falling and in L.A., a bunch of scary tornadoes are forming. I admit that I laughed when the Hollywood sign is wiped out in five seconds by one. Two people in a helicopter are reporting about/filming the tornadoes. Are they really that stupid? Why would you be in a helicopter when there are five or six huge tornadoes going on at once? 

L.A. has been completely destroyed. The news anchor announces that the FAA has ordered all planes to land, though it was too late for two planes that crashed in the Midwest due to turbulence. I know this isn't terrorism, but this feels a little too close to 9/11, especially since this movie came out only three years later.

At a meeting with important figures, we find out "The Canadians are reporting tremendous circulation moving down from the Arctic" and "Australia saw the strongest typhoon ever recorded." Everyone's wondering what could cause all this and Jack tells them how he thinks the current has changed. At this, everyone starts murmuring. He says that because of melting polar ice, a lot of fresh water has been dumped into the ocean, which is bad, but things are going to get worse and they're "on the verge of a major climate shift." Again, more murmuring from the crowd. All the murmuring in this scene cracks me up! Every time he says something dramatic, everyone just starts murmuring! 

Jack is told by the President...or maybe it was the Vice President, I don't remember, that he has forty-eight hours to come up with a presentation to prove his theory. Is this referring to the movie's title? The day after tomorrow is 48 hours.  

After some quick research with some help, Jack tells the VP that they're looking at a 6-8 week time frame and they need to start thinking about a large scale evacuation especially in the northern states and that if they "don't act now, it's going to be too late." 

Jack has managed to reconnect with his wife/ex-wife and they are both upset because they can't reach their son, but Sam will eventually call home from a payphone and Jack is going to get him. Keep in mind it's snowing everywhere and the entire northern hemisphere is covered in snow and ice. 

But before he can go fetch his son, he needs to brief the President. He tells the leader of the free world and his cabinet that the "superstorm will last seven to ten days" and when it's over, "ice and snow will cover the entire Northern Hemisphere. Well those Southern Hemisphere residents sure are lucky! He says they need to head south as soon as possible. When he said that, I was thinking he meant the Southern Hemisphere, but no, he means Mexico...which is in the Northern Hemisphere. I guess it's only the northern Northern Hemisphere that's gonna get really bad? Jack draws a line right through a map of the U.S. that's hanging on the wall and tells them they need to evacuate everyone south of it and that it's too late for the people north of it. Of course I had to pause the movie to see if I had a chance, and nope, Omaha was above the line so I would be f***ed! But New York is even more north than Omaha, so good luck to Jack trying to rescue his son! I went back to read my review of Deep Impact to see if I would survive the asteroid and I do, so at least I'm not dead in both of these scenarios! 

When it's time for Jack to go get his son, Frank and Jason join him. One of them has a compass to tell them where they are. And it's one of those old fashioned ones that I certainly wouldn't be able to use. I mean, it's still an electronic one. It's not one that has a magnetic needled that points to N, E, S, W. It's NOT that archaic! No Google Maps in 2004! I guess it's a good thing they have a compass because everything looks the same outside since everything is blanketed in snow. They're around Philly when their truck crashes in a snow bank. I know they have 4WD, but how are they driving in all this snow? Guess they'll have to walk the rest of the way! Good thing Jack brought snowshoes! According to Google Maps (which they didn't have!), it takes one day to walk from Philly to New York. (Not sure why anyone would want to walk between those two cities!) 

There's so much snow, that at one point we see the three men walking across the roof of a shopping mall. They are all clipped together on a rope with Jack leading the way and Frank (the oldest) bringing up the rear with all their equipment in a bulky duffel bag behind him. Because of all the weight, the glass roof starts to crack and Frank and the luggage go down. Jack manages to stop himself or Jason from falling by using his trusted ice pick to stop them from sliding as well. He calls out to ask Frank if he's okay and the older guy replies that he "dropped in to do a little shopping." I'm so happy he can makes jokes at a time like this. He cuts the rope so the excess weight of the large pack drops, but unfortunately the ice is still cracking as Jack and Jason make their way to help Frank up. Frank can see the glass cracking and knows the weight isn't going to support him. At the last minute, and I mean, the very last, he cuts the rope and falls to his death. Before he does that, Jack yells at him to stop because he can get him out. Uh, dude, no you can't. There's no way. That glass was cracking all over. He's lucky that he and Jason didn't also fall to their deaths.

They move on without their older colleague and without their equipment. (But, yet, they still have their tent, so I guess all their stuff wasn't in that huge duffel.) The weather is getting worse, but hilariously, neither of their faces are fully covered. Jack's attempt at covering his face is at least better because he has goggles and is wearing something over his mouth and nose, but the other guy is just wearing goggles. Nothing to cover any other part of his face. He would get frost bite in five seconds! Uh, I'm pretty sure in a situation like this, you would want your whole face completely covered. The elements have gotten so bad that they seek shelter in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant where they turn on the stove to get a fire going. Everything else is covered in ice and snow. At this point, they're forty miles away from Manhattan and Jack is a-rarin' to go! 

In a tent they set up outside with the wind blowing (and that tent must have amazing insulation because I don't see a fire or anything that would keep them warm and dry and they've also shed their coats), Jason asks Jack what he thinks is going to happen to civilization and Jack replies, "Mankind survived the last Ice Age. We're certainly capable of surviving this one." Well, that's uplifting. 

So they do eventually make it to Manhattan, but before I reveal if they rescue his son and his friends, let's now talk about Sam's storyline. Like I mentioned earlier, he's in New York to compete in an academic decathlon. The other members on his team are Brian (who I kept referring to as either "nerd kid" or, for whatever reason, "Charlie" - I seriously thought that was his name until the very end!) and Laura (Emmy Rossum), who he has a crush on and she's the only reason he joined the team even though he's super smart and I'm sure he would have been recruited to join anyway. 

When they arrive, they see thousands of birds flying (probably south!); the animals seem to know something is up. At the zoo, we see many of them are in distress and the wolves are howling. Yep, total foreshadowing. Even if you've never seen this movie, you probably at least know about the wolves! 

While they're competing in the competition, the mass destruction is going on in L.A. and later we see them watching it all as it unfolds on TV.  A storm's a-brewin' in Manhattan and Sam calls his dad to tell him the school is finding them a place to stay. Jack tells him he wants his home now and Sam assures him he'll be on the next train tomorrow. Yeah, don't think that's happening! 

One of the members they were competing against is a rich kid named J.D. (who I called "rich kid" because I didn't figure out his name until the end) who also has a crush on Laura. But don't worry, he realizes Sam likes her and tells him to tell her how he feels. Really unnecessary drama. He has invited Sam, Laura, and Brian to stay at his place. 

Even though the worst storm on record is happening outside, the kids go to the Natural History Museum. Makes perfect sense. 

Lower Manhattan is starting to flood and we see the timber wolves have escaped. Ruh-row! Earlier, J.D. had told the others he had to drive to Philadelphia to pick up his brother from boarding school and offered to give them a ride, but now, as they're walking through nearly waist deep water, Laura says there's no way they can drive anywhere and they should go back to the apartment. Yeah, no sh*t, Laura! Sam insists they go to the library because they need to get higher. At first I was confused by this, because J.D. lives in the penthouse of his apartment, but now I realize that the library must have been more of a higher elevation than the kid's apartment. Maybe? IDK, but that's what I'm going with. 

As they start trudging their way through the water to get to the library, Laura sees a woman with her baby stuck in a taxi. A cop is telling her what to do, but she doesn't understand him because she speaks French. Luckily, Laura does too so she goes over to communicate with the woman and hep her out. On the way there, she slips and cuts her leg on something under the water. Sidenote: I bet this movie helped prepare Emmy Rossum for Poseidon! 

We see the sea level is so high now that waves are crashing up over the Statue of Liberty and the water is covering nearly everything but her extended arm holding the torch. They can ruin the Hollywood sign, but don't you dare touch Lady Liberty! 

Now there's a literal wall of water coming for everybody. I mentioned earlier that this movie coming out only three years after 9/11 still felt raw, but also keep in mind that it came out months before the terrible 2004 tsunami. This depressing movie just reminded me of how depressing our world is.  

After the woman is rescued and they're nearly towards the library steps, she says she left her bag and passport in the car, so Laura volunteers to get them for her. I really don't think they need to worry about something so trivial at this moment, but to be honest, if I were in an apocalyptic situation and left my purse or phone somewhere, I'd probably panic and want to get them back! I guess Laura didn't see or hear the huge wall of water gushing right for her as she's retrieving the items from the taxi. Sam does and grabs her right before they can be swallowed by the water. Many people head into the library as the water crashes through the windows and they head for a higher elevation. 

The library is packed with people and cell service doesn't seem to be working (what a surprise!) so Sam asks an employee (I love how people seem to still be working there even though there's total chaos going on outside; she's literally at her desk when he goes up to her) if there are any pay phones on the upper floor. She tells them there are some on the mezzanine, but they're underwater. 

When Laura asks where he's going, he tells her, "older payphones draw their power directly from the telephone line." I'd be like..."okay, and...?" The two of them go down to the payphone (remember, this is 2004!) where the water is waist deep, but the phone is working. He gets through to his dad and Jack tells him to forget what he said about trying to get home. He warns him the storm is going to turn into "a massive blizzard" and not to go outside and to burn whatever he can to stay warm and to "try to wait it out" and that he will come for him. When he says that, his wife/ex-wife (who's there with him) gives him an "are you crazy?" look. Sam asks his mom if she can call his friends' parents to tell them that they're okay (at least for now!).

We get this absolutely ludicrous scene of a huge ship passing right by them outside. Would a ship really be able to get through the streets of New York? Because I seriously have my doubts. Underwater we see it stop when a bunch of submerged cars and busses halts its movement. Keep this ship in mind because it will come back later (well, duh, otherwise, what would be the point of it?). 

One of the many people who are inside the library is a homeless man (although I'm sure he's not the only homeless person who's seeking shelter there) with a dog. When he takes the dog outside to do his business (I thought Jack said that if anybody goes outside they would freeze to death...or maybe he meant that would happen later....there's a lot of information to digest in this movie), the dog starts barking and the guy sees many people walking. He runs back inside to inform everyone that he sees hundred of people outside. Everyone looks out the windows and assume they're getting out of the city "before it's too late." Okay, but where are they gonna go? Manhattan was way above that line Jack drew on the map. A police officer asks when was the last time anybody got a signal on their phone and someone tells him she got through to her cousin in Memphis an hour ago and they're being evacuated. The officer says they should move out too and that "the water is frozen over enough to walk on." Sam doesn't think this is such a good idea and announces this to everyone, saying when he talked to his dad, they should stay inside. Nobody gives a hoot what his climatologist dad said! They start heading out because they want to get a head start before the storm gets worse. I bet they're all gonna die because they didn't listen to the smart kid with the dad who's a climatologist and knows everything about storms. Just a prediction! 

At this moment, we get news reports saying that Mexican officials "closed the border" because "so many U.S. refugees are fleeing south in the wake of the approaching storm." I see what you're doing there, movie. Eventually, Mexico will allow Americans to cross because "the president was able to negotiate a deal to forgive all Latin American debt in exchange for opening the border." When we see the refuge camp in Mexico, it's snowing. The VP gets word that that President's motorcade was caught in the storm and they didn't make it. Well, no sh*t. Who can drive in this weather? So now Dick Cheney-lite is the President. (Are you surprised that I couldn't tell you the name of the President of VP in this movie?)

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, we see a bunch of helicopters from the Royal Air Force go down as they're flying through a terrible blizzard. I'm pretty sure they are picking up the Royal Family to bring them to safety. Looks like they're all screwed now. Poor Queen Elizabeth; dying eighteen years before the Good Lord was supposed to take her. At least at this point neither William or Harry have children (and aren't married) so at least those young lives are spared (although they were pretty young in '04!). What happens if the entire Royal Family is wiped out? Does the monarchy just go away? To be fair, they never explicitly say that the Royal Family didn't make it and even if some members did die, I doubt everyone died because plenty of people were rescued.

One of the pilots is still alive when they crashed, but when he opens the doors, he instantly freezes....okay. We later learn that "they crashed because the fuel in their lines froze" as it was -150 F. Ahh, that sound terrible and there's no way it could get that cold. That sounds like hell which is ironic because hell is hot!

 Okay, back to New York. Only a handful of people have stayed at the library with Sam and his friends, including the homeless guy and his dog, thank God. I swear, if anything happens to that dog...  Sam starts gathering books to burn. The librarian he had asked where the phones are is still there too and she is aghast that he's burning books, but Sam tells her they need to or they will freeze to death. Yeah, I think this is the only time when it's acceptable to burn books. Their only source of food are snacks from a vending machine. (I've never seen a vending machine in a library, but I know the NY Public Library is huge, so it's possible it has them.)

There's a funny moment when Brian and two other random people are gathering books to burn and the two others are auguring over whether they can burn a book by Friedrich Nietzsche, but Brian tells them there's a "whole section on tax law that [they] can burn."

Earlier, Brian had found an old radio that he was able to fix and he hears snippets on the radio and informs everyone that the storm is in the entire Northern Hemisphere and that "Europe is buried under 15 feet of snow." Meanwhile, the people in the Southern Hemisphere are sitting pretty! Laura's cut on her leg is also starting to give her problems and nobody knows about it except for a girl she told. Sam is concerned about Laura because it looks like she has a fever. They start chatting and he admits that he likes her and they start kissing. I guess when the apocalypse is upon you, who cares if you start making out with someone who is flushed and sweaty and appears to have a fever? 

The next morning, Laura has gotten worse. The girl (if you think I had a hard enough time remembering main characters' names, I sure as hell didn't learn the ancillary characters' names!) tells the others Laura said she had a cut on her leg and they see the nasty gash and it looks severely infected. The librarian looks up her symptoms in a medical book and says she needs penicillin before it gets worse. Remember that huge ship right outside the library? I told you it would come into play because Sam decides he's going to check it out to see if there's any medicine on it and Brian and J.D. join him. They are able to find penicillin and find a mess hall where they start gathering food. Well, those four wolves who have escaped from the zoo have also come to roam the ship. This storyline is so stupid and it reminds me of season 2 of 24 with Kim Bauer and the cougar. All y'all 24 viewers know what I'm talking about! One of the wolves bites J.D.'s leg (good thing they have that penicillin!) but they manage to escape. I really thought J.D. was going to die by sacrificing himself so the other two could escape, but nope. 

Now it's starting to get so cold that we see a waving American flag just freeze midwave. Sam and Brian are running to the library, dragging J.D. along. The floor behind them is starting to ice over and they manage to get in the room where the others are and slam the door shut and from the outside we see the door ice over. They throw more books in the fire, trying to stay as warm as possible.

Okay, now let's go back to Jack and see if he's able to rescue his son. He and Jason have reached New York and the snow is so high, it's covering the pedestal the Statue of Liberty stands on. They realize the library is almost completely covered in snow, but they're able to get in through a window that's only partially covered. They see the dim glow of a fire from under closed double doors. He opens the door to see the fire has died down and everyone seems to be passed out on the couches, but they're just sleeping. I really thought they were all unconscious. Father and son hug and it's a sweet moment, aww. Now everyone just has to wait for a chopper to rescue them and there are many helicopters arriving because many people in New York have been bunkering down. Oh, yeah, remember those people that were originally in the library, then left to start walking who knows where? Yeah, they're all dead. But at least none of our main characters are dead! Except for the POTUS, but he really wasn't much of a character anyway. Most importantly of all, the dog is still alive! That was the only character I was concerned about! 

Oh, wait, I probably shouldn't tell you that all the main characters survived because that's not true. I totally forgot about Dr. Terry Rapson and his two colleagues in Scotland. They know the clock is up on them and with a bottle of twelve-year-old Scotch, they propose a toast to "England, mankind, and Manchester United." It's really sad because one of the guys has a young child and says he wishes he could see him grow up. The generator dies and you know they soon will too. 

Oh, crap, I totally forgot Frank died. Sorry, Frank. How soon we forget. 

I haven't forgot about Jack's wife/ex-wife (okay, maybe I did a little), Dr. Lucy Hall. She has a young cancer patient named Peter (who seems to be her only patient). Everyone (patients, nurses, doctors) have left. Peter needs an ambulance so she waits with him, wondering if one will come. So I guess no other patient in this hospital needed an ambulance? But don't worry; everything works out and they both make it to Mexico and she is able to reunite with her son and husband/ex-husband. 

One of the last scenes we see are the astronauts starting to see land as it was once completely covered by the storm, so everything is going to be okay. 

AND THANK GOD THE DOG SURVIVED! THAT'S THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS! 

Wanderlust

Adrift

Director: Balastar Kormakur

Cast: Shailene Woodley and Sam Clafin

Released: June 1, 2018

Viewed in theaters: June 7, 2018

I first saw a preview for this film when I saw Ready Player One and at first I thought it was the latest Nicholas Sparks novel to be adapted to film because it showed a young couple being all lovey-dovey and about to set sail and I was like, hard pass. But that was only the first thirty seconds and the rest of the trailer continued to show that it was NOT based on a Nicholas Sparks novel (or any fictional novel for that matter...it is based on a memoir called Red Sky in Mourning) and that it was based on a true story about a couple, Tami Oldham and Richard Sharp who go on a sailing expedition where there's a nasty storm and their boat capsizes. I love survival stories so I was sold on seeing it. 

I never did look up the story it was based on before watching it. I figured I would remember it once the movie got going because I just assumed it was a recent (like within the last ten years at least) thing that happened. However, when it is revealed that the movie takes place in 1983, I didn't feel so bad for not having any recollection of this event at all! 

The film opens up right after the storm (which we will learn was a Category 4 hurricane) and we see a banged-up Tami (Shailene Woodley) in the flooded cabin with debris all around her. She's screaming for Richard, who, at this point of the film, is her fiance. When she makes her way to the outside of the boat, she will find the sail has been completely torn. The film goes back and fourth from the characters being shipwrecked to five months earlier when they first met each other and how they found themselves going on a sailing expedition. 

Twenty-four-year-old Tami hasn't been home to San Diego since she left after graduating high school. She and a friend headed to Mexico where they made salsa and surfed. She thought she would only be there for six months, but it turned into seven years and now, in 1983, she finds herself in Tahiti after spending time working on a schooner. She meets Richard, who is nine years her senior and a sailor from England. Tami is very impressed that he made his own boat and he takes her out sailing. One thing leads to another and the two quickly fall in love. He asks her to sail around the world with him and both agree they've always wanted to sail to Japan. However, their plans are thwarted when an elderly rich British couple who know Richard ask him if he can sail their 44-foot yacht, the Hazana, to San Diego. They have also offered to pay him $10,000 and a first class ticket back to Tahiti. When Richard asks if they can make it two tickets, they don't even blink. Tami isn't too thrilled about this because she's not ready "to go home yet" and I'm thinking, girl, are you kidding me? You're going to be sailing halfway around the world in this luxury sailboat, the two of you are going to have plenty of money to take a year off and sail around the world, and they're giving you tickets back to Tahiti so you don't have to stay in San Diego. Just see your mom and say hello, then head back. Everything sounds great in theory, but of course, the voyage to sail the Hazana doesn't go as planned. But she does agree to go with Richard when he says he won't do the trip without her because he loves her. He makes her a ring and proposes to her. By this time they've known each other for five months, so they've fallen pretty hard for each other. Tami writes a letter to her mom to tell her she'll be in San Diego in a few weeks and she's bringing her boyfriend and that "he might be the one" (she wrote the letter before he proposed, btw!).

After Tami accesses the damage to the boat and starts fixing up it and herself up (she has a nasty gash on one of her temples), she sees Richard limply hanging from a lifeboat and screams to him that she's coming to get him. She falls off the boat as she's attempting to fix the sail and the boat is moving away at a scary pace (not to mention moving even further away from Richard), but she proves herself to be a strong swimmer and catches up to the boat, though she is panting and heaving. We see her fixing the damaged boat as best she can; good thing she's had experience! When it's good as can be under the circumstances, she sails toward him. It should be mentioned that all the radios to contact anyone have stopped working and she is unable to get any help. 

She swims out and rescues Richard whose leg is in pretty bad shape and he is unable to move, so Tami has to do all the work and steering of the ship. Math is not her strong suit so she is worried about getting the coordinates right. She knows they are in a search area way too big for them to be found and they aren't even in any flight zones or shipping zones. She believes her best best is to head toward Hawaii. 

She finds as many rations as she can which includes peanut butter and alcohol hidden under a seat (which she also uses on Richard's leg), but they don't last too long and soon realizes that she's going to have to use the spear to catch fish. Richard is adamant about this, but Tami is a vegetarian because she loves all living things and doesn't want to any creature to suffer. Girl, I hear you, but I think in cases like this, you need to think of yourself first and get the food so you don't die. She is unable to do it the first time, claiming it too hard, but eventually she gets the hang of it and forces herself to eat the fish. 

At one point she wakes up to find a huge barge baring down them and it looks like the thing is going to steamroll right over them. Tami is shooting her flare gun, but it just passes them and disappears into the night. Tami wonders if she actually saw the thing or if she was hallucinating and starts crying, wondering if they will ever be rescued. 

The movie keeps us update to date how many days adrift they've been (and it will be a total of 41 days). Richard tells Tami he wishes that she had never met him because then she would never be in this mess and she tells him she doesn't regret a single moment. 

All right, about to get in spoiler territory so continue at your own risk! 

SPOILERS AHOY! 

You guys are going to think I'm a total moron. Okay, so I was totally duped by the movie. I should have seen it coming. It should have been so obvious. Richard was dead the entire time. Well, not the ENTIRE time...he was certainly alive and real pre-storm, but was killed during the storm. Watching this, it suddenly made sense to me why the pre-storm scenes and the post-storm scenes alternated and why we didn't see the actual storm until near the end of the movie. When they realize they are in the path of a category 4 hurricane, they decide to alter their route, but it's not enough to diverge from the path of the storm. They are caught in the storm with 160 mph winds and 50 foot waves (I looked up some info on the incident). That has to be the scariest thing ever, even for the most experienced of sailers like Richard was. He tells Tami to go in the cabin as he's trying to steer the boat out of the storm...or something. I'm not sure what he's trying to do, but it seems like nothing would really help them at that point. A huge wave crashes over them and the boat just turns over and over and Tami is flung around in the cabin. Apparently she was unconscious for 27 hours, though we never get that from the movie; I found that out while doing research. It's amazing she wasn't even more banged up than she was or didn't have any broken bones. Richard is swept out to sea and we see him sinking in the ocean. At this point, I'm thinking, huh. We go back to Tami being adrift and at this part, she's probably nearing forty days of being lost at sea. We see a close up of her and she's crying and she says "It's time to let you go now" and the camera pans back to reveal the area behind her is empty, the area where Richard was. This whole time he was dead and she was imagining him there. Sure, we get that scene earlier where she thought she had hallucinated that barge, but I don't believe she was hallucinating that Richard was there, even though it seems that's what the movie wants us to believe. For one thing, the real person this is based knew right away her fiance was dead. This was just a detail they added to the movie to make it more compelling for those who weren't familiar with the story. Also, she never freaks out about him being "gone" all of a sudden. She seems to be well aware that he wasn't there the whole time and was just imagining that he was there to help her guide her to rescue, which she eventually does when a land bird flies to her boat and when it flies off again, she steers the boat towards that direction where she will eventually see a Japanese cargo ship and is rescued. It appears in the real story, she sailed to Hawaii and was rescued there. 

Despite the obvious clues, I really should have figured this love story was going to end tragically. You have one half of the couple from Me Before You and one half of the couple from The Fault In Our Stars - this is just asking for a calamitous ending. 

By the way, the poster for this movie (Google it) totally rips off Titanic...another love story that ends tragically! 

A Dive to Remember

47 Meters Down

Director: Johannes Roberts

Cast: Mandy Moore, Claire Holt, Matthew Modine

Released: June 16, 2017

Let's play a quick game of Would You Rather? Would you rather be Blake Lively in The Shallows or would you rather be Mandy Moore in this movie? Obviously, any rational human being would choose to be neither as both young women are attacked by huge great white sharks, but that's not a choice! You have to choose one or the others, that's how the game works! I would, one hundred percent, rather be in Blake Lively's scenario. True, she has a nasty fight with a huge shark, but at least she is above water at all times. If memory serves right, she gets attacked by a shark while surfing, then swims to an island and has to make it back to the shore while going from a big rock to a buoy in the process. True, she is by herself while at least Mandy Moore is with her sister, but they have the added disadvantage of worrying about running out of air. I feel like most people would rather be in the Blake Lively situation from The Shallows for that reason, but if you disagree with me, let me know!

The movie begins with older sister Lisa (Mandy Moore) and younger sister Kate (Claire Holt) on vacation in Mexico. Lisa was supposed to go with her boyfriend, but she later reveals to her sister that he left her because she was too boring. Nice guy. They meet two local guys who tell them about a boat that will take them out and they can get into cages to watch sharks. Seriously, who the f**k would want to do that? Lisa isn't too crazy about the idea, but Kate tells her it will prove to her ex that she isn't boring and it will show him. Are they thinking this will make him come running back to Mandy Moore? Why does she want to get back with this loser jerk, anyway? But Lisa agrees and they head out to their adventure the next day. I thought for sure the two guys they meet were going to die, and, well, I'll get to that when I get to my spoiler section. The boat captain is played by Matthew Modine and he assures the girls (especially Lisa) that everything is safe and uh-huh, sure, right. While Kate has been scuba diving before and knows a lot about it, this is Lisa's first time, but they lie and say she's experienced so she can go. However, when the captain is explaining to them some very basic things, shouldn't he be suspicious that Lisa doesn't seem to know what he's talking about? I guess he just thinks she's nervous because of the sharks. When they get situated in their scuba gear, he tells them they should begin with 200 bar and once they reach 100 bar, they need to let him know and at 50 bar he will pull them up. Now as someone who's never scuba dived in her life and doesn't plan on ever scuba diving (I know for a fact I would drown if I ever went scuba diving because I would just freak out and use up all my air, so no scuba diving for me!), this means absolutely nothing to me. All I know is the lower the number is, the less time for air you have. He tells them they'll be going down five meters (which is 16 feet) and I'm thinking, Wait a minute...this movie is called 47 Meters Down...something is gonna happen here! He also tells them, "Once you're down there, you're not going to want to come back up." Uh-huh, sure! 

The two guys have already gotten in one cage already and I don't know if this is a spoiler or not, but we really don't see or hear from them for quite a while. I had just assumed, when they told the two sisters about the shark cages, the four of them would be in one together, but nope, the two guys are in one cage and the two girls are in another one. I guess the only point of having them there is that they are the ones who tell the sisters about this adventure. 

Lisa and Kate are lowered into the water and once they get settled in, they feel fine and are excited by how much they can see around them. Kate asks her sister how deep does she think the ocean floor is, and, if only, they knew they would soon find out the answer in a matter of minutes. An answer they probably didn't want to know that bad! Kate has borrowed a water camera from someone who works on the boat and, in like, ten seconds, she drops it. Nice going. I guess Lisa's scummy ex will never see the proof of what she did! From the bottom of the cage, we see a shark swoop up and swallow the camera. It's at the moment I think I would want to get the hell out of there. The bars of the cage aren't wide enough for the shark to get through, obviously, but they do seem wide enough they could get their jaw through...and I would be freaked out a shark could come up from the bottom and grab my foot or leg. In fact, in a later scene, a shark does get its nose pretty far into the cage and almost snaps it open! The cage, which looks pretty rusty and old, and is hanging by a thin rope attached to a cable, drops a few feet and freaks out the girls, especially Lisa. She has voiced her concern about the safety of this, but her sister and the captain reassure her it's perfectly safe. Sure, right. Lisa wants to come up, but Kate doesn't. I'm on Mandy Moore's side here. I would want to come up right away too if the cable started to drop the cage. They do start to bring up the cage, but alas, the cable snaps and the cage plummets to the bottom of the ocean floor and it is no longer attached to the boat. Not good. Not good at all. That would be my worst nightmare. The girls scream for help, but their transmitters are cracking and they can only hear about every third word the boat captain is telling them so they know they are out or range. Their depth gauge tells them they are at 47 meters which is about 154 feet. Kate tries to get out of the top of the cage to swim a little further up to get into range to contact the captain, but the cage door is stuck and she can't open it. She tries to get out of a wide portion of the cage, but has to take her oxygen pack off to do so. She still can't fit through because of her mask and against Lisa's protests, takes it off so she can fit through the bar and puts the mask and tank back on, though it was probably easier to put them on when she was on the boat. If I were in that situation, my first instinct would just be to swim to the surface, sharks be damned! But the girls are told by the captain, once they are able to communicate with him, that the safest thing for them to do is stay in the cage. Even if there were no sharks around, it would be dangerous for them to come up to the surface because they could get "the bends" or decompression sickness, which is when if you ascend rapidly to the surface, nitrogen comes out of your blood quickly forming bubbles. The only way to safely get to the surface is to take five minute breaks (called decompression stops) every certain meters until they safely reach the surface. Kate explains the bends as having nitrogen bubbles in your brain to her sister who wants to swim up.

When Kate communicates with Taylor at 40 meters, he tells her that Javier (I think the same guy who gave her the camera) is coming down with a spare winch to hook the cage up to the boat and pull them up. She tells him she's at 55 bar which means nothing to me other than that it is significantly lower than the 200 bar she had started with. I have no idea how many minutes of air she has left, although I guess that depends on how fast you're using the air. The more you panic (like Mandy Moore did when she realized they were trapped) or the more you exert yourself (like Kate did when she was using a lot of energy to try to get out of the cage) the more air you're going to use up. 

We have a few scary moments with sharks around the cage to remind the audience that they are still a real threat. I mean, it's bad enough you're at the bottom of the ocean with a very low amount of air, but let's just thrown in two or three huge 28-feet great white sharks. Because why not, right? Kate goes out to contact the captain again and she gets nearly attacked by a shark. She is fine, but she is a bit injured. She tries to contact them again because they hear the boat motor and think the boat has left them. I was confused by this scene because, as we later find out, the boat hasn't left them. So what were they hearing? 

Lisa has 80 bar of air left which means at that depth she has about 20 minutes of air. It's even bleaker for Kate who only has 30 bars, so what's that? Like seven minutes? Pretty sure we have more than seven minutes (and twenty, for that matter!) of this movie left! They see a light in the distance and figure it must be Javier with the extra winch cable to hook up the cage. They bang on the cage with rocks, but Javier can't hear it. (I'm surprised it didn't attract more sharks). I thought for sure he was dead and the flashlight was just (somehow) floating in the water. Since Kate is injured, Lisa goes out to swim towards the light and keeps to the ground since sharks attack from below. This works out fine until she reaches the edge of a cliff and has to swim over a deep abyss which would be terrifying with sharks all around you. She does reach Javier who is alive (at least for the next three seconds) and he tells her to get back to her cage because a shark swoops by and grabs him. She is very disoriented because everything is pitch black and she doesn't know where she came from. She takes the flashlight and the cable winch and has to hide from the shark in a cave and we see huge crushing jaws trying to get her in the cave, blocking her exit. She manages to get back to the cage, though, with Kate helping her know where she is by banging on the bars. So if Javier was alive during the time the girls were trying to get his attention, what the hell was he doing? Did he not hear them banging on the cage. This and the hearing the boat motor confused me. 

The flashlight drove me absolutely crazy because Mandy Moore would wave it around wildly. Look, I understand why they need a flashlight because it came in handy when she was in the dark and needed to find her way back, but, my God, must she wave it around like a spotlight so much? She's only attracting the sharks to them! Have these girls never seen Jurassic Park?? You NEVER shine a bright light when a large blood-thirsty animal with many sharp teeth is in the vicinity! Oh, and not to mention both girls are bleeding from their wounds they've acquired so far, so a bright light AND blood, what a great combination for the sharks to find them! 

Lisa is able to get in contact with the captain (who is still there, so apparently they never left...maybe they just moved the boat a little?) and hook up the cable and the cage starts to be lifted from the ocean floor and the girls are elated as they see they are moving up. (Wait...do you still need to make a decompression stop even if you're in a cage?) However, I know something's up because there's still half an hour of the movie left and what are they going to do with that extra half hour once they are rescued? Is Lisa going to go back to the States and make her loser ex take her back? However, when it reaches 27 meters, the cable breaks AGAIN and down they go. What the f**k, what kind of sh***y company is this where they have the worst gear? Like, what are the odds that they would have TWO cables that would snap in half? When the cage falls, one of Lisa's legs gets pinned between one of the bars and the ocean floor. Kate makes contact again with the captain to tell him that Lisa is trapped and that she (Kate) only has five bar left on her gauge...which is probably like two minutes of air left. Taylor tells her he's going to send down a couple more oxygen tanks. I have no idea how they could be so accurate when they threw them down because how can they know exactly where they are? They don't end up right next to the cage, but they're pretty close. He also tells them he's notified the Coast Guard and that they should be arriving within the hour to do a deep dive rescue. Uh, why didn't he notify the professionals as soon as they knew there was a problem? Unless he did, but from the way it sounds, I think he just notified them a few minutes ago. 

Kate gets her new oxygen tank on, but is quickly snatched up by a shark. It happens so quickly that you're not really sure what happened. Lisa uses a spear gun to grab the other oxygen tank and manages to get it on just as her old one has run out. She is ecstatic when she hears her sister on the radio because she thought she has died. However, Kate tells her she's bleeding a lot and is attracting more sharks and she's running low on oxygen because her tank has been punctured. Lisa manages to unpin her leg and finds her sister. She knows the only way to save her is to come to the top and tells this to the captain who doesn't bring up too much of a fight with her and just tells her to make sure she makes a decompression stop.

Okay, I think now is a good time to tell people to stop reading right here if they don't want to be spoiled by the movie if they do want to watch it. I will be telling the fates of the main characters and if you don't want to be spoiled, I advise you to stop reading now! But first, check out this video I made of my ten favorite Mandy Moore songs:

SPOILERS START NOW!

Okay, so the girls start heading towards the surface and they have flare guns to scare the sharks off. They get a point to where they need to make a decompression stop and they're just surrounded by sharks. I'm pretty sure they didn't stay there the whole five minutes! They make it to the surface and everyone on the boat (which includes the two guys they met the night before, so I guess we know they didn't become shark bait) start screaming for them to swim and throw them a life preserver. The girls reach the boat and they're being helped up, but then a shark comes up and snatches them again. They do manage to get on the boat, but both of them are badly mangled. Their wounds are being treated as they lie next to each other. Lisa puts her hand up where she has a nasty gash and notices the blood is just floating in the air and thinks that's weird. She also starts to hear the captain's voice coming in and out, almost like it's coming from the transmitter and tells him that he sounds funny. Well, guess what? Turns out the whole thing was a hallucination! Well, not the WHOLE thing, just everything that happened after she got the second tank. You see, there's something I didn't mention before I started my spoilers because, well, I thought it might be considered a spoiler. The captain warns Kate that he didn't give them an extra tank before because going from one to another could cause severe nitrogen narcosis and he wanted the girls to watch each other closely so they could see if the other was behaving strangely or having hallucinations which was likely to happen. Well, after Kate was snatched by a shark (and if she wasn't killed by that shark, then she definitely drowned), Lisa started having hallucinations when she got her new air. She never heard her sister on the radio, she never got her leg unpinned, she and her sister never came to the surface and were never on the boat. The deep sea divers do come and are able to rescue her and take her back to the surface and this is when she realizes that her sister is long gone. Poor Mandy Moore. She loses her husband in a fire, she loses her sister in scuba diving accident, can't the poor girl just stop losing family members! I will say the movie did get me and I was not expecting the ending at all, even though they as plain as day tell the audience that hallucinations were likely to happen, so good job for fooling me, movie!

Off the Grid

Cast Away

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy, Chris Noth

Released: December 22, 2000

Viewed in theaters: December 22, 2000

Oscar nominations:

Best Actor - Tom Hanks (lost to Russell Crowe for Gladiator)

Best Sound (lost to Gladiator)

Yeah, spoilers, obviously! So if you've never seen this and don't know what happens, don't read if you ever plan on watching this in the future! 

Not since Rosebud in Citizen Kane has there been another well-known inanimate object in a film until Wilson the volleyball came along in Cast Away. Watching this movie is probably the only time I will ever cry over a volleyball (let's hope so, anyway, or else I have some serious issues!), but we'll get to that later.

I had seen this movie a couple times before. I saw it in the theaters and I've also seen it since then, but it has been awhile. I didn't remember the fate of Wilson and I thought most of the movie takes places when Tom Hanks is stranded on the island. While that is a good chunk of the film, there is a good portion that takes place in the civilized world before and after the island life, but it is a two and a half hour movie.

We first meet Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) in Moscow where he works for Fed-Ex as the person who makes sure packages are getting to their destinations on time. Because of his busy schedule and constant traveling, he doesn't get to spend much time with his girlfriend, Kelly (Helen Hunt). Even the Christmas holiday they're spending together with family is interrupted when Chuck has to fly to Malaysia. Chuck and Kelly exchange Christmas gifts in the car before Chuck gets on the Fed-Ex plane. Kelly gives him a pocket watch that's been in her family for generations with a photo of herself on the inside. Not just any photo, but Chuck's favorite photo of her. Chuck gives Kelly a pager, a journal, and hand towels. It's not until the last minute when he gives her a small wrapped box that is clearly an engagement ring and tells her she can open it when he gets back home. (And pretty much tell him her decision). As he walks to the plane, his last words to her (for awhile, anyway!) are "I'll be right back!" Uh, not quite!

The only other people onboard with Chuck are four pilots. Chuck is in the bathroom when the plane starts diving down and we will learn later in the movie that it is never resolved why the plane went down. There was a pretty nasty storm going on, so that most definitely didn't help matters! The most terrifying part of the crash is that Chuck, who is holding on for dear life in the back of the plane, can see the ocean getting closer and closer as the plane descends at a rapid speed. How he survived the impact, I'll never know (the pilots all seemingly died instantly), but the plane breaks apart and he manages to swim away. He is smart to think to grab the raft, but the cord gets caught on one of the plane parts and he has to swim down to untangle it. Just keep in mind he's been underwater for a few minutes already. If that were me, my instincts would have been to just leave the raft because my brain would have been screaming at me to get to air. That is just the first of many reasons why I would never survive in a scenario like this! There is a scary moment where one of the plane's (still moving!) propellor is right behind him and if it doesn't kill him first, it most defintely is going to shred his raft. He starts paddling very fast, but the propellor explodes and blasts Chuck from his inflatable raft. At first, I thought it had gotten the raft, but he manages to get back on it and it's still in one piece, luckily! He has a very harsh ride on the raft with large waves crashing over him while the storm is still raging. The camera pans away so we can see just how vast the ocean is and how there is no land in sight. No land for Noland! Oh, I get it now!

He has washed up on an uninhibited island (which we will later learn was 600 miles south of the the Cook Islands) and his first priority is to get the hell off the island. He traces the word HELP in large letters in the sand only to have it washed away by the tide, then he uses logs to spell it out, but that is to no avail either.

There is a moment during the first few days of his strandedness when he sees a ship's light in the very far distance during the night and gets his puny flashlight to signal SOS (which he sort of makes up on a whim). Does he really think anyone will be able to see that? He gets his raft and starts paddling out, but the waves are too powerful and they puncture the raft and he gets a nasty gash on his leg from some coral.

Packages from the downed Fed-Ex plane start floating ashore and instead of opening them right away which I thought he would do, he keeps them organized. I guess he is still optimistic that he is going to be rescued soon and will still be able to deliver the packages. He does start opening them a few days later, though, and a few items prove to be helpful. He uses the bubble wrap from the packages and laces of an ice skate to wrap around his gash. The blades of the ice skate help him open coconuts. We see him trying to open one before he has the skates and it is a chore. I have only seen coconuts with the round brown husk, but they are also covered by a green shell. I usually only get my coconut shredded, so it comes in a plastic bag! They just seem like a pain in the ass to to open, especially when you don't have any tools. He even breaks the rock he's hitting it with and only gets a teaspoon of coconut milk when he opens it because most of it spills out. He learns to create a funnel and uses that to drink the liquid from the coconut. The blades also come in handy when he's sawing branches off of trees. There's a really ugly dress (brown and black...who would wear that thing, whoever it was for is lucky she never received it!), but it does have netting which comes in very handy when trying to catch fish. The tape from many video tapes also proves to be useful for later events. It is 1995 when the movie begins so we are in that transitional period of people still watching videos, but DVDs are just around the corner. I know it is 1995 because the body of one of the pilots washes onto shore. Chuck takes his flashlight and his shoes because he lost his in the crash. They don't fit him properly so he has to cut off the top so he has room for his toes. He buries the pilot (not sure where he got the shovel...) and puts a photo he finds in the pilot's wallet of him with his two sons in his shirt pocket. On a large rock wall he writes the pilot's name and the years of his birth and death.

And, of course, one of the packages he opens is a Wilson volleyball which was intended to be the birthday present for a young boy from his grandparents. We don't see the volleyball again until Chuck is trying to make fire. He's tried to eat fish and crabs, but since he has no fire to cook them with, he has to eat them raw and he is disgusted by that. Now as we all know from watching Survivor, unless you have flint or your torch from Tribal Council, it is very difficult to start fire. There have been a couple people on the show who have started it by using their glasses, but Chuck appears to have 20/20 vision. While he is rubbing two sticks together, he gets a very nasty gash on his hand and in frustration he grabs the volleyball and throws it. The bloody handprint looks like a face and Chuck etches in the eyes, nose, and mouth and the rest is history. Haha, I found a meme of a scene of the movie with Tom Hanks and the volleyball and it said, "Still a better love story than Twilight." That made me laugh, because really, it's pretty much true! Also, Tom Hanks and Wilson were nominated for Best Duo for a MTV Movie Award (they lost to the ladies of Charlie's Angels, which doesn't even make sense since there's three of them, but whatever). Wilson got snubbed for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar!

After rinsing his hand in the ocean (and wouldn't that sting with the saltwater? He wasn't wincing in pain or anything) and wrapping his wound with the fabric of the ugly dress, he attempts to make fire again, this time with Wilson "watching" him. Chuck looks at the volleyball and says, "You wouldn't have a match on you, would you?" He finally manages to create fire and is extremely ecstatic. ("FIRE!!!") He is now able to cook his seafood delicacies and enjoy them without gagging.

He does some quick calculations (which is pretty impressive without having a calculator and comes to the conclusion that they're in a search area of 500,000 square miles which is an area twice the size of Texas. Basically he realizes he's f***ed!

Worrying about how to get off the island and making a fire has taken his mind off the tooth that has been giving him pain since even before he flew to Malaysia, but he never make an appointment with his dentist and now that he's not distracted anymore with how to find food or start a fire, the pain is the first thing in his mind and is getting more excruciating by the day. He uses the blade of one of the skates as a mirror to look at the tooth and, in a scene I remember the most from viewing it in the theaters mostly for how much it made me cringe, he uses a rock to knock the ice skate's blade toward his mouth and it knocks out his tooth. It also knocks Chuck out and he hits his head hard on the ground very close to the fire. That part was almost worse for me than the actual knocking out of the tooth, but I remember just cringing and covering my eyes during that whole sequence!

The movie has a time lapse and four years have gone by, now making it "present day" 2000. So he has basically missed out on all the current events that happened in the late '90s. That would be so weird to not know what's going on at all in the world. That would be like if someone had just been rescued from being stranded on an island since 2013 and they'd be like, "Wait, Donald Trump is the President now? How in God's name did that happen?" (That's what I would say!) And then I'd say (half-jokingly, of course!), "Take me back to the island!"

Chuck has lost a lot of weight and has a full grown beard and unruly long hair which has been lightened by the sun. They filmed the movie in two parts where Tom Hanks gained fifty pounds for the first half of the movie, then they took a year hiatus where he shed the weight and grew out his hair and beard and filmed the second part. He has now seemed to adjust to island life, catching fish with ease and maintaining a fire. I think the most difficult part of being in a situation like this would be the lack of social interaction. Even though I only go out with friends about four times a year, I still see people every day with work or going to the grocery store or a coffeehouse or just walking around my neighborhood. I think you're just used to having people around you every day. Wilson represents the only "person" he has and while working on a raft to escape, they have a "conversation". Wilson represents the part of Chuck that thinks it is too dangerous for him to leave and Chuck gets angry and tells Wilson he'd rather risk his life on the ocean than stay on this s**thole island for the rest of his life and talking to a damn volleyball and kicks Wilson out of the small hole in the cave he has made home. Even though only a volleyball, Wilson still represents Chuck's only friend and Chuck feels bad the minute he tosses Wilson out and goes out to find him.

The doors from a portable toilet wash up on shore and Chuck uses them as sails / a windguard for his raft which he has fashioned together with logs tied together by the tape from the videotapes. When he has deemed the wind good for sailing, he secures Wilson to a post with the tape and tells him, "I'll do all the paddling. You just hang on!" With his sails he is able to get past the worst part of the ocean with all the twenty foot waves that crash down on him. However, during a nasty storm, he loses the makeshift sails.

During the film there are three instances when the viewer notices something before Chuck. The first is the ship's light in the distance during the first week he is marooned on the island. The viewer is aware of the barge that will eventually rescue Chuck before he is. And, before that moment, the viewer sees Wilson drop from his secured perch and into the ocean while Chuck is asleep on the raft, his back turned to the volleyball. When he awakes a few minutes later, he is scanning the water frantically and when he turns around, he sees the volleyball has floated several feet away. He starts swimming to retrieve his one and only companion, but as he gets further away from the raft (and Wilson is being carried even more further away from him by the waves), he knows he has to let Wilson go. Not gonna lie: this scene made me cry. I felt so bad for Chuck when he gets back on the raft and just starts crying and saying, "I'm sorry, Wilson!" I found this scene to be much more emotional than the eventual reunion he will have with Kelly. Like I mentioned earlier, I had forgotten the fate of Wilson, but I think this is the only way to continue the movie. You need this scene. Wilson is representing a part of his life he has to let go. It just wouldn't work if he still had Wilson when he's rescued and took him home with him. That might be a tad weird.

I don't know how long after that Chuck continues to float before he is rescued, but luckily he is because his raft is starting to fall apart and he is looking like he is knocking on death's doors. It takes four weeks for him to get back to his home in Tennessee. There he discovers Kelly has married another man (Chris Noth) and has a young daughter. Now, if you think about it, four years really isn't that long (unless you're stranded on an island!) so she seemed to move on pretty quickly despite telling Chuck he was her one true love and she always knew he was alive. Think about it: she had to meet the guy, then date him, then get engaged to him, then get married, then have a child and I'm pretty sure the kid is at least two...so yeah, she moved on pretty fast! Maybe if she was only engaged to the guy, then maybe that would have made more sense. I guess they just wanted to let the audience know for certain that they are never, ever getting back together since Kelly has a family now. All this time, Chuck still has the pocketwatch Kelly gave him and is able to return it to her since he thinks it should stay in her family.

Chuck's friends have a welcome back party for him and they serve crab legs! Seriously, the guy has been stranded on an island for four years with nothing to eat but fish and crustaceans and they think crab legs is the way to go? The movie ends with Chucks at a crossroads (and what a great metaphor because he is now at a crossroads in his own life) and a woman stops and tells him where each road leads and it is up to him to decide where he's going to go.

This movie came out the same year Survivor premiered and I was reminded of that show while watching it. Can you imagine if Chuck Noland was on that show? I can just see him now in a confession: "These other people have no idea how to survive. They've never set foot on a tropical island. I was stranded on an island for FOUR YEARS. I can make fire without flint. I can catch fish without winning fishing gear." I can also see him getting irritated with the contestants whining about how hungry they are. "We've only been out here for three weeks and everyone is complaining about how "starving" they are! Ha! Try doing this for FOUR YEARS! And we just had a huge feast two days ago!" Oh, and if he gets hurt and the medical team try to take him out of the game, he would tell them, "When I was stranded on an island, I didn't have any doctors to fix me. I couldn't get medical treatment because of some sand in my eye or because I was dehydrated. I got a huge gash on my hand, a huge gash on my leg, I had to knock out a painful tooth with a rock myself. If I get an injury in this game, no way any doctor is going to tell me I have to leave the game." I can see Jeff Probst asking him about his experience on the island in comparison to playing the game at every single Tribal Council. As far as he would get in the game, I think he would make it past the merge because people would want him around because he has experience with the island life, but after that people would get rid of him because his "story" is way too good. If he made the final two (or three depending on which season he would play on!), he would win because people would want to award somebody who literally did survive on an island! Oh, and his luxury item? A volleyball, of course!