Disaster Movie Review

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10.5

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-12-18 | CATEGORY : Movies Note to movie directors: I give a half-star bonus to any movie that starts out with extreme BMXing in downtown Seattle. For disaster movies, another half-star goes to those who dare to take out a major American landmark that is not located in NYC or LA. In 10.5, Director John Lafia gets full marks for taking the X Games approach to knocking...

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28 Days Later

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-12-13 | CATEGORY : Movies Never have I seen a horror movie more driven by its music than 28 Days Later is. As the instrumentals dramatically build, we never know where they are going to take us. Sometimes, it's just a false alarm and the tempo slows back down. Other times, the music takes us right into the next freaky action scene. Not knowing which will come adds to the uneasiness that...

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Airport

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-12-10 | CATEGORY : Movies My favorite part of the movie happens to be the crazy, criminal granny played by Helen Hayes. Whoever decided to make a rude, elderly stowaway one of the movie's heroes is a genius. She's laugh out loud funny and is unlike any movie character I've ever seen, which is saying a lot. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast kind of pales in comparison. I honestly had trouble...

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Apollo 13

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-12-08 | CATEGORY : Movies Just about every actor and actress in the film has either won or been nominated for an Academy Award, so it is no surprise that the acting is superb. With director Howard at the helm, the cast balances humor, tension, fear, and hope in just the right amounts to make this an emotional and gripping experience throughout. There is something about the spaceship/command center...

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Armageddon

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-12-04 | CATEGORY : Movies If you are the type of person who spends all winter and spring watching trailers of next summer's blockbusters on your computer, you will enjoy Armageddon. With a big budget, big effects, big stars, and a big soundtrack, this movie typifies the box office heavyweights that roll around each July to huge numbers and mixed reviews...

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Category 6: Day of Destruction

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-29 | CATEGORY : Movies Whenever TV movies try to beat Hollywood at its own game, they are doomed to fail. There is simply not enough money, experience, or talent behind these films necessary to deliver the same level of polish, especially in an effects driven genre. With that in mind, it is no surprise that Category 6 is at its best when it dares to things a little bit different. For one thing...

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The Core

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-28 | CATEGORY : Movies Jon Amiel's The Core stars the overqualified Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart as the leaders of a ragtag group of astronauts, professors, geeks, and scientists charged with burrowing to the center of the earth to detonate a few nukes and restore the planet's electromagnetic field. A true disaster on paper, Amiel's film somehow maintains its charm and holds its own as a solid...

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Dante's Peak

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-27 | CATEGORY : Movies To be nice, I'll start with the good stuff. For a movie made in 1997 the special effects are pretty awesome. As an early entry in the modern era of disaster movies, Dante's Peak tries to dethrone the reigning king Twister by targeting a bigger and deadlier type of natural disaster and ripping off most everything else. Visually, the makers of this film pull that off pretty well...

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The Day After Tomorrow

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-24 | CATEGORY : Movies Within the first hour, Emmerich gives us glacial fissures, tornadoes in Los Angeles, deadly hail in Tokyo, snow in New Delhi, and a tanker floating down the flooded streets of Manhattan. When the film runs out of traditional natural disasters it starts to make up new ones, such as hurricanes over land and super cold air sucked down from the stratosphere. No expense...

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The Day the Earth Stood Still

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-20 | CATEGORY : Movies Released: December 12, 2008 Budget: $80 million US Box Office: $79 million Global Box Office: $231 million Director: Scott Derrickson Cast:Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jaden Smith, John Cleese Synopsis: Keanu Reeves decides to save Earth from humans. Best Quote: "Whoa" (just kidding!!) Review: 2.5 stars...

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Deep Impact

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-18 | CATEGORY : Movies Deep Impact is a little like a model home, it looks pretty and is well staged, but a closer inspection reveals that they cut too many corners and it's not somewhere that you'd really want to stay. In plain English: Deep Impact's $80 million budget wasn't enough to make the movie the screenplay called for but Paramount and Dreamworks decided to go ahead with it anyway...

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Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-16 | CATEGORY : Movies I would like to tip my hat to director Robert Lee for putting out a B-movie that has at least some pacing and a nice ensemble of characters. I will also never complain with the use of either sleazy politicians or mad scientists as bad guys (this one has both). What did bother me about this movie was the uncanny similarity to 1997's Volcano. Let's review the...

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Dr. Strangelove

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-13 | CATEGORY : Movies I'm not sure quite how he does it, but Stanley Kubrick manages to infuse this Cold War satire with the perfect amount of absurdity. If it got much goofier the movie would risk slipping into Airplane! territory...hilarious but nevertheless meaningless. As it stands, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is laugh-out-loud funny and still worth...

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Final Days of Planet Earth

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-11 | CATEGORY : Movies The first two characters we meet in this movie are an archaeologist and a entomologist. Given that little piece of information, the fact that it takes a solid 90 minutes of film before we see that the big threat to humanity is a bunch of bugs who are breeding underground is a little sad. When miniseries are good, it's because they really get to spend time laying a foundation...

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Independence Day

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-10 | CATEGORY : Movies In terms of special effects, this movie really represents the birth of a new era for Hollywood. Provided they can get the budget to handle the CG work, directors no longer have to shy away from the big shots and can really put things on the screen as the are written. Few things in this genre are as iconic as the aliens blowing the White House into smithereens. While some of the explosions...

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Knowing

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-08 | CATEGORY : Movies If the existence of this site hadn't done it already, this review will likely reveal my inner nerdiness. You see, I love numbers and I love puzzles. I love them both enough that when I see a preview for a movie involving numbers or puzzles I get excited. Invariably, I'm disappointed when I find out the movie wasn't made for number lovers. Jake Gyllenhaal's Zodiac was one such disappointment...

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Last Man on Earth

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-07 | CATEGORY : Movies It's hard to pinpoint why this low-budget sci-fi disaster flick doesn't let its own cheesiness bring it down. The script is corny, the acting is non-existent, and the directing is nothing to speak of. Nevertheless, this movie is something of a classic and I highly recommend it. Vincent Price stars as a highly capable scientist who somehow lives on as the rest of humanity has...

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Mars Attacks!

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-06 | CATEGORY : Movies There are a number of reasons that this movie is just plain fun. Let's start with the cast: there is a wonderful mix of seasoned comedic actors (Michael J. Fox, Martin Short) and respected actors willing to poke fun at themselves (Pierce Brosnan, Annette Bening). Top it off with a Bob Jones cameo and Jack Nicholson having the time of his life as President and you really can't go...

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Meteor

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-05 | CATEGORY : Movies While Meteor is ambitious and has its fair share of charm, it winds up being a quite forgettable disaster flick. Definitely the best thing this movie has going for it is Sean Connery. Shot during the peak of his awkward fight with father time before he embraced the white hair, Connery plays a genius scientist who swears like a sailor and always has time to take a break from saving the...

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Poseidon

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-04 | CATEGORY : Movies One thing that water based disaster movies always have going for them is the fact that drowning is possibly the scariest form of death. Director Wolfgang Peterson does well to capture this terror and the underwater scenes are consistently the most captivating for the audience. The rest of the action is visually impressive but nothing that we haven't seen before. Sure, the ship...

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The Poseidon Adventure

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-03 | CATEGORY : Movies That said, the strength of this movie is undoubtedly its cast. Forgoing tried and true genre character-types like the young hotshot, the wise old guy, the know it all scientist, etc, this movie presents us with a Reverend who doesn't take shit from anyone, a detective and his ex-prostitute wife, a brave chubby old woman, a depressed middle-aged bachelor, a brave chubby old woman...

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Spill/Virus

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-02 | CATEGORY : Movies The scariness of a disease can generally be measured using two criteria: how contagious it is and how deadly/nasty it is if you do catch it. The 28 Days Later disease is pretty scary because it is fairly contagious and off the charts on the deadly/nasty scale. The bioweapons in Spill, on the other hand, are sorta/kinda contagious and only..

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Tidal Wave: No Escape

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-11-01 | CATEGORY : Movies The first few minutes of Tidal Wave: No Escape feature some serious usage of stock footage and the green screen. I can't say I'd do anything different if I were charged with producing a disaster film for less than $1M, but my point is that this one doesn't let you forget that it is a B-movie. If that's your kind of thing, it is definitely worth a watch...

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Titanic

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-10-31 | CATEGORY : Movies I personally feel that Titanic deserved all of the accolades that it received. The movie took a genre traditionally reserved for campy, ensemble flicks and turned it on its head. I have this theory that only a small fraction of movies actually deserve to be over 2 hours in length. At 194 minutes, that stacks things against Titanic pretty heavily. The fact of the matter is, I don't mind Titanic's...

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Twister

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-10-30 | CATEGORY : Movies Instinct. You can't buy it, only good guys have it, and it sure as hell comes in handy when going head to head with natural disasters. When it comes to tornadoes, Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) has more instinct than he knows what to do with. The "human barometer" is certainly fun to root for, but his supernatural instincts keep us from ever really worrying whether or not things...

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Volcano

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-10-29 | CATEGORY : Movies Although I kind of like the idea of a volcano sprouting out of the ground in the middle of L.A., there is one major problem with the concept: Los Angeles is FLAT. With no mountainside to run down, the lava in Volcano trickles down the boulevards at a snail's pace. You'll constantly ask yourself how Tommy Lee Jones keeps getting himself trapped by the stuff. To be fair, there are a number of...

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War of the Worlds

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-10-28 | CATEGORY : Movies Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds is a little like a runner going out too hard in a mid-distance race: it fires off the blocks fast on a wave of energy and bravado, but its own enthusiasm isn't enough to keep it going as it stumbles to a mediocre finish. While it does not always live up to its own lofty ambitions, Spielberg's foray into disaster films is a visual...

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The War of the Worlds

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-10-27 | CATEGORY : Movies Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds is a little like a runner going out too hard in a mid-distance race: it fires off the blocks fast on a wave of energy and bravado, but its own enthusiasm isn't enough to keep it going as it stumbles to a mediocre finish. While it does not always live up to its own lofty ambitions, Spielberg's foray into disaster films is a visual spectacle...

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Waterworld

WRITER : Admin | DATE : 24-10-26 | CATEGORY : Movies One of my motivations for creating this site was to provide a different perspective on disaster movies than most critics provide. My rationale was that traditional criteria like acting, dialog, and plausability shouldn't weigh too heavily in judging this genre. Instead, I propose alternate criteria like ambitiousness, originality, and watchability be factored...