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L-R: Barkhad Abdi, Tom Hanks and Faysal Ahmed in Columbia Pictures’s Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass

Captain Phillips, the thriller by the reliable Paul Greengrass, is excellent. We know exactly what’s going to happen, but we sit there clenched for two hours anyway. Based on actual events, the film stars Tom Hanks, who returns from a long series of blah projects (Though we really liked Cloud Atlas). Our only beef with the movie: A ship with no Filipino crew?? Is there such a thing?

We’re seeing a mini-trend in Hollywood cinema: the protagonist struggling to survive in a hostile environment using only their wits. Earlier there was Gravity, in which Sandra Bullock as the survivor of an accident in space tries to get back to earth. (You can bitch all you want about the scientific errors; it’s magnificent). Now there’s Tom Hanks’s Phillips, whose ship is boarded by Somali pirates. The actual crew members in that pirate attack are contesting Phillips’s version of events; the dispute doesn’t make the movie any less gripping.

Coming up: Robert Redford as the lone sailor steering a damaged boat on the stormy seas in J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost. (Chandor’s previous project was Margin Call, a Wall Street drama with a terrific ensemble and lots of talk. His second movie has one actor and very little dialogue.)

Alone against terrifying odds. Is that America’s mood at the moment?

L-R: John D’Leo, Robert De Niro and Dianna Agron in Relativity Media’s 2013 film The Family, directed by Luc Besson

The Family stars mob movie veterans Robert De Niro (if we have to name his mafia movies…) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Married to the Mob) as Americans in the witness protection program, living in France with their two teenage children. It’s funny in parts, but mostly just odd. We missed the opening credits, and given the movie’s abrupt shifts in tone, we thought it was a first film by someone with a beef against the French. Then we find out that it’s by Luc Besson.

The Family is a predictable culture clash comedy in which the French condescend to the Americans but the Americans’ dexterity with violence wins in the end. Basically De Niro is doing a parody of his career highlights, but he seems to be enjoying himself. Dianna Agron is very good as a young girl in the throes of first love, but she seems to be in a different movie altogether (not her fault). Pfeiffer is fabulous in the scene where she explains the difference between olive oil and butter—we suddenly recalled the bit in Scarface where she snorts coke off her fingernails.

The result is a slightly awkward yet enjoyable homage to American mob movies. You can’t get more homage-y than De Niro’s ex-mobster attending a French film society screening of Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese is credited as producer). This is the kind of movie where you wish the mobster’s family would beat all their neighbors to a pulp.

We sense another mini-trend in the current cinema: Americans fighting to survive in a world that hates them. If it’s any consolation, they still save the day.