When Worlds Collide meets Day After Tomorrow meets Twister meets…you get the picture?  I had an excellent time with this, but then, I’ve always suffered from a weakness for disaster porn.  The story is a checklist of disaster cliches, but the tsunamis and earthquakes and volcanoes are amazing.

FF=1

When my cable was out I popped in my DVD of Carpenter’s version.  After almost 30 years, still one kick-ass film. I hope nobody tries to remake it. (This, btw, was not a remake. It went back to the original story – Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” – which the Howard Hawks film ignored.)

FF=0

With Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman headlining, I thought this might be a typically crappy Hollywood biopic, but it has a documentary feel and Freeman brings tremendous dignity to the Mandela role.

FF=2 (some of the rugby sequences go on too long)

About a floating pirate rock radio station off the UK coast in 1966 and their battle with the British government that wants to shut it down.  A super ensemble cast and a ton of fun.  Really…see this.

FF=0

See, here’s what happens: Someone says see this film, so I add it to my long Netflix queue.  By the time it arrives and I watch it and realize it’s a huge steaming pile of doo-doo, I’ve forgotten who recced it, so therefore I cannot strangle him, thereby leaving him free to rec more doo-doo.  Awful.

FF=6

Based on Richard Matheson’s very short story, “Button, Button,” which I recall as a riff on the old TV series “The Millionaire” – there the money came with no strings; in Matheson’s story, someone, somewhere will die if you accept it.  I’m usually a sucker for moral dilemmas like this, but the movie seems terribly jumbled and lacks a single interesting character.  I was not engaged.

FF=3

Scandinavia gave us the existential musings of Soren Kierkegaard and the cinematic wonders of Let the Right One In, and now…Dead Snow.  I think it wanted to be a cross between Shock Waves and Evil Dead 3, but it turned out to be just another gorefest. Yawn.

FF=3

Who knew what John Woo could do? (I could =not= resist that sentence.) “Do” would be an historical epic, and he did a great job.  I confess to knowing next to nothing about Chinese history and all the various Emperors and dynasties, but I learned something here.  The clashing armies and fleets must have been awesome in the theatre, but even on my home screen they’re impressive.

FF=2 (as with most Asian directors, Woo lets his martial arts sequences run too long)

Got a feeling this film was trying to out bloody Kill Bill, but a lot of the blood was CG, and that doesn’t count.  Nowhere near Kill Bill as a film, but not a bad way to kill 96 minutes.

FF=2

Any film with Gary Oldman and Denzel Washington can’t be bad, and this isn’t.  But it could have used a more coherent plot. The book in question is a bible and the tagline goes: “Some will kill to have it. He will kill to protect it.” But it’s never clear what good it’s going to do for whoever possesses it.  Some good Mad-Maxish action sequences though.

FF=2