Tag: Disaster

There are a lot of quick disaster films out there. Big ass earthquakes. Polar vortexes. Tornadoes. A lot of them are straight to DVD nonsense.

But the famous ones, that have a big budget, and aren’t necessarily great, just have big names in it? Well, apparently they just have to keep getting bigger and bigger.

“What if…what if…what if the moon…fell, on Earth? That would suck right?”

I mean, I assume that is how we got Moonfall. I am ready to be surprised going in to it, but it would need a lot of work. Need to see more big budget science fiction disaster films where black holes open and stars explode, personally.

If the moon was that close, people would still doubt we have ever been.

Back in 2011, on a SPACE mission, Astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) was working on a tether with a crew mate, when the power went out, and a huge swarm of black, small metal things flew by their ship and made things very rotational. Not good. He was able to make it back in, where Astronaut Jocinda Fowl (Halle Berry) was unconscious, their third member gone. He was able to land the shuttle back on earth with no power, and was a hero, until he said what he saw, and then was disgraced.

Well, ten years later, turns out he was telling the truth and people were warned. Because the moon has been knocked off of its orbit, which shouldn’t happen. Megastructurist/conspiracy theorist KC Houseman (John Bradley) was “doing research” and found out that the moon was coming closer, and leaked that information to the public because no one would believe him. NASA at the time was finding this out as well, and then? Panic.

Looks like the moon is going to be spiraling closer and closer to Earth. Causing tide changes, gravity awkwardness, and parts of it will for sure be breaking off to crash into the world. How can they fix the issue? What is that mysterious black swarm? How many aliens are there? Should we just nuke everything?

Also starring Carolina Bartczak, Charlie Plummer, Chris Sandiford, Donald Sutherland, Eme Ikwuakor, Jonathan Maxwell Silver, Kathleen Fee, Kelly Yu, Michael Peña, and Stephen Bogaert.

Spoilers: This phrase written on the spaceship is different in the movie.

I definitely went in to Moonfall thinking it would easily be one of the worst movies of 2022. And that is fair. The trailer was super dumb.

But I also want to at least point out things that worked well. I appreciate that this movie went as weird as it did. It could have played it safe. But it went into some out there, science fiction theories and science, and it went out there hard. In general, big budget Hollywood films try not to make the audience think too much, so they will often dumb things down and go for simple theories. It still explained things in a more dumbed down way, which is fair, but I just think it get points for trying. Especially because of how ridiculous things get, it is easy for claims for it to be very dumb are, when it involves a lot of theory and potential in terms of futuristic technology.

I did enjoy John Bradley’s character immensely, and I am so happy that Josh Gad had to drop out for him to come in, because I don’t think Gad would have been good for this. His scenes with his mom were his worst scenes, but they were minor.

Now in terms of things that are pretty bad for this film? Well, the entire Earth plot of family members while our leads are in space is pretty bad. The CGI gets terrible, especially in the unnecessary car chase/shoot out scene. One character dies very dumbly, when it was unnecessary, and it still made me cry despite that. And honestly just all of the thief characters. I don’t care about people stealing cars and being a recurring antagonist when the moon is about to wipe everyone out, you know?

The film was also rushed throughout it. It finally slows down near the end. Once a character gets the knowledge dump in space, I expected it to end pretty quickly, but we instead got a long drawn out space chase scene, just so we could splice it with the bad earth drama.

I will also point out that early on, I feel like it is heavily implied that Berry’s character, after divorcing her husband, seems to be in a relationship with a Chinese women. And I was thinking, damn, that’s progressive, you go you. And nah. It is just a foreign exchange student she is hosting. How old? Is she meant to be high school? She seems like an adult in the movie (and the actress is my age). It feels like she is in the house purely to watch the kid while Berry’s character can work, and honestly the whole set up is just uncomfortable for me.

Moonfall is going to be shit on, likely, by a lot of people, and be an easy punching bag. That is fair. But if I had to compare it to Roland Emmerich‘s other films, I would say it is easily better than 10,000 B.C., Independence Day: Resurgence, and Godzilla. But I don’t think this one will enter the pop culture stratosphere that a lot of his other disaster films have reached.

I am a goddamn geophysicist, and it took me until almost half of a year later to watch goddamn Geostorm.

IT IS ABOUT EXTREME WEATHER. AND THE EARTH. AND I AM A GEOPHYSICIST.

It would have been unacceptable for me to watch San Andreas way late, like I did with Geostorm.

And hell, I have been relatively kind to natural disaster films on this site. I liked Into The Storm, and you already forgot it existed! Bring on the disaster, especially if it is fun.

Are those ice zombies? What are those soldiers going to do to those poor popsicles?

The Climate is fucked. After the storms started getting worse and worse, these extreme weather events began to get out of hand. Heatwaves killing thousands in an afternoon. Parts of NYC getting flooded. It just needed to stop. So the world finally came together. They couldn’t stop the climate change. But they could try to curb it.

With all nations actually working together, they developed technology, and put satellites into the orbit. Using science or whatever, these satellites around the globe can disrupt big weather events and counter act them through…I dunno, science/technology stuff. Just trust us, it works.

Hurricanes be gone, droughts be gone, whatever. The world is now a happy and prosperous place. The main creator Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) was taken from his design though, because he was hard to work with. The US Government wasn’t a fan, especially because he wanted it to be perfect enough for the technology to be controlled by the UN, not the USA. Once he is kicked out, and his brother (Jim Sturgess) is put in charge, he feels like it is still fine, but nope. Time for exile.

He is just going to be needed years later, when the satellites begin to malfunction. Now these big storm events are starting to occur, people are dying, and bad things are happening. If these storms continue, they will start to cause other storms, until they get big enough that the whole world will be under weather advisory. A Geostorm.

Also starring a lot of other people: Like Abbie Cornish, Alexandra Maria Lara, Daniel Wu, Eugenio Derbez, Amr Waked, Adepero Oduye, Andy Garcia, Ed Harris, Richard Schiff, Robert Sheehan, Zazie Beetz, and Mare Winningham.

Surprise! Half of this film takes place not even on the geo!

Goddamn it. I wanted to watch a terrible nature disaster movie. But Geostorm isn’t really a terrible disaster movie. It is really just a terrible political thriller, that has climate disaster consequences.

Fuck that.

I mean, if it was a good political thriller and about climate change, it would be one thing. But it is terrible at explaining the disasters, and a terrible thriller, with terrible action. Everything about it is terrible!

Well then why isn’t it a zero? You know, if I hated it, and the acting was bad, and the plot was bad, and the disasters were bad?

Well, they called the satellite program the Dutch boy. You know, referencing the fable about him sticking his finger in a dyke. That makes me chuckle. That is a solid nickname. That is worth a slight price of admission.

And unfortunately, Butler is a scientist in this movie, and mostly in space. So we don’t get to see him fighting a tornado or anything cool. Very disappointing.

One of the main reasons to become a film reviewer is the search for the perfect film. Sure, many contenders exist, but for every person it is their own unique quest.

I for one think that the perfect film already exists, and it is called O Brother, Where Art Thou?, so the perfect film is no longer my goal. I have to get more specific now. The perfect musical. The perfect super hero film. And of course, the perfect film for the geologist in your life.

Geologists in films are all over the place. Usually they are buffoons but sometimes they can be bad asses. My two most recent good Geologist performances have to go to Adam Scott in Piranha and Paul Giamatti in San Andreas, but both arguably bad films.

So why don’t we have a well acted geologist in a well acted film? I don’t know. America has failed. We have to turn to Norway. We have to turn to The Wave (or Bølgen) to see if they can do better.

Yep, this is 100% scientifically accurate. I can confirm that this is a wave.

Geiranger is a small Finnish village right in a fjord. It is a mountain village with beautiful scenery and a giant coast. And of course, it is a dangerous place to live. No real crime of course. This is a happy place, no one is mean in Norway. But should the plates shift too much and a landslide occur, then it will cause an enormous tsunami that would wipe out most of the village in mere minutes.

That is why it is important for them to have people watching out for them. People like Kristian (Kristoffer Joner). He is good at his job, monitoring squiggles and minor movements. He is so good at his job, that he has been offered a better job in a bigger city working for an oil company. Heck yeah!

And so he is about to move out of Geiranger, his home for many years. He has raised a family here. His wife, Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) works at the hotel. He has an older boy Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) and a little girl Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande). But they are ready to get out and move. Until some movements start to worry Kristian. He doesn’t want to jump the gun, but with the water table dropping, he has to do more research. He was supposed to take his kids on the ferry out, but he made them stay just to get more research.

Which is bad, because shit is about to go down. Large mass is about to go down. Down into the fjord. A tsunami. And once it starts they will only have about 10 minutes to get everyone up the mountain and in shelter.

Laila Goody, Arthur Berning, and Herman Bernhoft also play geologists and Thomas Bo Larsen and Mette Agnete Horn as a couple of hotel guests. Of course, also, Fridtjov Såheim as Arvid the Geology Boss.

Fuck your hotel. This wave isn’t some bitch ass tourist. It is here to stay!

Yay Kristoffer Joner! The man who can play a geologist and seem like a normal person, like a hero. So the criteria for a bad ass geologist was definitely met, as it was just a guy who wanted to protect his friends and family.

But how about the science? For the most part, the science was also accurate and not exaggerated. A nice plus that they could keep the thrills and excitement up without going “Hollywood” with it.

But the crew themselves were a bit disappointing. They shouldn’t have had to wait til the last moment to issue the siren to warn the town. Ineptitude for the sake of moving the story along. Not that they don’t seem like competent workers, it is just that if they have one job, they should know what their numbers mean.

The movie is well shot with good practical effects. The story itself isn’t new at all either. It doesn’t mean the movie isn’t good, just not entirely groundbreaking material. Heh heh heh.

Also, I thought Ane Dahl Torp did a fantastic job.

Get out of the way, motherfuckers. We got a GEOLOGY MOVIE to talk about. YEAHHH.

Sure, as a professional (in the case that I make fat stacks of cash), geo-scientists, I could use these movies to bemoan the lack of good science in film and to talk about everything that they got wrong. But in reality, Geologists don’t give a fuck and love the shitty geoscience movies. (Honestly, this could be true for most scientists, but I am not them so I don’t know). We haven’t had a decent CGI science fest in awhile though, mostly stuck with crappy intentionally bad movies which aren’t as fun.

BUT EARTHQUAKES ARE CLEARLY MUCH COOLER. So in San Andreas we should get shit breaking apart, people freaking out, presumably parts of California drifting off to sea. I can only hope. This is a geo-nightmare! One I am fully ready to embrace.

And if you came in here expecting a GTA movie, then get the fuck out of here right now.

We don’t have time for any more wise cracks.

In California, if your life is in danger, there is only one man you want to save your life. Ray (Dwayne Johnson) and his helicopter crew met and flew together in Afghanistan and now work for the LA Fire Department and rescue people everywhere all the time like the polished rocks they are.

But not everything is smooth in his life. No, cracks are forming in his personal life. His wife, Emma (Carla Gugino) wants a divorce. Their lives haven’t been the same since they lost a daughter in a drowning accident. At least they still have one more, their family bubble not completely eroded, in Blake (Alexandra Daddario). Emma is about to move in with Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd) who has a much more solid foundation. A famous architecht, rich.

But fuck all that. Earthquakes. The team at CalTech, lead by of course seismologist Dr. Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) and Dr. Kim Park (Will Yun Lee) have been testing out a hypothesis that will allow them to predict earthquakes. Thankfully in Nevada there has been a series of miniquakes to hopefully test their theory out and hey, it works! Just in time, or not just in time, because it looks like all of their recent work stress is about to be tested when the earth’s stress gets released. All along the San Anreas fault. Through small towns, close to LA and right smack dab through San Francisco .

Also featuring a few British folks from up the river. Namely, Hugo Johnstone-Burt as an engineer looking for a job, Art Parkinson his younger brother, and KYLIE MINOGUE as a small role that totally wouldn’t normally be noted but it is Kylie Minogue people.

Hide! Kylie doesn’t like it when you call her roles small!

It has been awhile since there has been an earthquake movie released. The last two I can remember are Aftershock and Aftershock. And when I compare all three, I would put this a step below Aftershock, but one step above Aftershock.

That’s right. I liked a disaster movie. And I will only briefly talk about the science.

From my knowledge, the whole magnetic pulse to predict earthquakes thing is a solid hypothesis running around the community and relatively new. So that is fine. I think they made up a big fault that doesn’t exist as part of the main San Andreas fault having it go through Nevada, but honestly, I don’t know. But my biggest complaint science wise is the Tsunami. Part of the climax involves a tsunami post all the big earthquakes hitting the city. Buuuuuut, that seems silly. Do giant ass earthquakes cause giant ass Tsunamis? Sure! But not at the same place the earthquake hit. See, the giant displacement event would cause the water to shift away from the epicenter, not towards. A giant ass tsunami would totally head towards Asia/Australia, but it didn’t make sense for it to hit San Francisco.

Back to the earthquakes! I cried. I legit cried near the end of this movie. Because overall, this is a story about a man trying to save his family. A man who tries to save everyone but couldn’t save his daughter those years ago. A man who is a rock in real life, facing a force that literally breaks rocks.

I was surprised at the amount of action this movie provided. They went high with their Earhtquake and aftershock count and had the damage affect at least 3 cities separately, plus tsunami, so there was tons of near death (and death?!) scenarios. Shit, the body count on this movie is so incredibly high. Millions and millions of people die thanks to tall buildings falling over and streets ripping apart. It’d be a bloodbath if it was just rated R and we could show all the bodies in the flood.

There was also disappointment when douche looking Ioan Gruffudd ended up being exactly that, a douche. I was really hoping he would be a good guy, despite being the “new rich man” in their lives, and make it a bit more complicated of a love dynamic. But alas, if it looks like a douche…

San Andreas has everything I’d want in a disaster movie. Some extremely ridiculous scenes of survival. Some crazy deaths. Trillions of dollars of damage done to infrastructure. Ample cleavage because you have to have that in movies about geology for pun reasons. Not completely terrible CGI. Some actual factual science. Some extreme cringe worthy dialogue (including the most obvious ending dialogue to end the movie. Much cliche). And of course, last but not least, Paul Giamatti’s face representing my literal profession.

Buy it now from Amazon now on Blu-Ray or DVD.

Sharknado 2: The Second One — Because people think that the first Sharknado was a bad B Movie.

That isn’t true of course. It was just a bad movie, worse than a B movie, and it tried too hard to make itself be funny bad, and instead was just terrible.

But forwhatever reason, the internet decided to run with this as a joke it definitely needed, and it got way too popular for no reason.

So now we have Sharknado 2.

Reviews of this are pointless, because I am under the impression that anyone who was going to watch this movie, already did. I do in fact believe I am the last person to watch this movie.

And if not, uhhh, spoilers.

The last movie was set in LA and starred some people. This time, it is set in NYC and the idea of a Sharknado is an actual thing. Hell, even the book How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters: Fight Back When Monsters and Mother Nature Attack is in this movie, though written by one of the main characters from the last movie, April Wexler (Tara Reid).

April and Fin (Ian Ziering) are no longer together, but they are flying to NYC to visit family and friends, when, of course, a bunch of crazy weather shit happens. Huge storm, winter icy blast, and for whatever reason, a shit ton of Sharks, means NYC is about to get fucked up and a whole lotta people gonna die.

And that is all you really have to know. A lot of cameos of random people, but if I told you who, you’d know they would probably just end up dying.

The non cameo real roles include Vivica A. Fox, Mark McGrath, Kari Wuhrer, Courtney Baxter, Dante Palminteri, Judah Friedlander and Judd Hirsch.

Another maybe spoiler, but this one is cooler.

And there it is, a bad sequel to a bad movie. HOWEVER.

And it hurts me to say this. It hurts me so much.

Sharknado 2 > Sharknado. Sharknado felt like I was getting hit in the head with a shovel for an hour and a half. Shaknado 2 merely felt boring and you know what? I laughed occasionally.

The beginning of Sharknado 2 was just as bad as Sharknado, but it got a little bit better. Their jokes are bit funnier. Especially one Shark hopping scene, I down right smiled.

It is still just as cheesy, just as poorly conceived, but you know what. Just a tad bit better.

And thus, I do declare, that Sharknado 2 is not the worst movie of 2014.

Yay disaster movies!

They are a very polarizing. For the most part, they will never really be scientifically accurate. They also have been getting further and further into B-Movie territory, thanks to The Asylum and SyFy making intentionally shitty disaster flicks. But for the most part, it is has been awhile since an actual disaster movie has been released.

Before Into The Storm, maybe 2012 was the last one? At least natural disasters based on natural occurrences. None of that zombie disaster movie shit. Just straight up angry weather and earth.

I will admit, for the pre-screening of Into The Storm, they did throw a little party together. Free food (and it was good), drinks (alcohol too), a lot of prizes for tweeting things, and a “4D” experience. Basically, they had a 2 minute scene from the movie turned into a video game thing, hooked up to an Oculus Rift, with fans blowing hard at you. And honestly, that was really cool. I would like to think this event didn’t effect my bias any, but throwing it out there just in case. And here is me looking cool in the booth.

I need some sort of sucks joke here. Scott, don’t forget to put a joke here.

Silverton, Oklahoma. A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Not just because of what happens to it in this movie, but because it’s a made up town and I don’t want to live in LA-LA land.

On this tragic almost end of Tornado season, a high school graduation is taking place! This doesn’t effect our main family too much, in that the boys are in Junior and Sophomore years. Donnie (Max Deacon) is our closest thing to a main character, so let’s start with him. He is shy and nerdy, likes a girl Kaitlyn (Alycia Debnam Carey). Kaitlyn is freaking out about an internship, her video for it is corrupted, so she has to reshoot it TODAY. Donnie is supposed to record it with his brother Trey (Nathan Kress), because their dad is the vice principal (Richard Armitage). But hey, he has a chance to help a hot girl out. So hell yeah, abandoned old factory time.

We also have storm chasers!

Led by Pete (Matt Walsh), a storm documentary guy who has gone almost all season without a single tornado. Pete has made a tank on wheels, bulletproof glass, steel plating, braces that can help stabilize the vehicle up to 170 mph winds, and a 360 turret camera. His goal is to record the inside of a tornado. But his hired meteorologist, Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies) has been miss after miss. They have lost their funding, but he is willing to try one more. There are two storm fronts that seemed to have merged and Allison’s gut is telling her Silverton. They also have camera crew people / helpers with various personalities (Arlen Escarpeta, Jeremy Sumpter, Lee Whittaker).

But that isn’t enough comedy, damn it. So we have two local rednecks, one a self proclaimed dare devil (Kyle Davis) and his brother who forced that title upon him (Jon Reep). Yes I know what I just said. Fuck danger, they are going to be famous on YouTube.

“Johnson! How are we going to make this tornado movie more threatening?”
“I don’t know, make a tornado 1000x its normal size?”

Notice how I didn’t really mention that tornadoes fuck up some shit? Mostly because that is obvious. Figured telling you the plot, because this movie surprisingly has plot, would be way more informative.

I will say that I don’t think the type of things that happened in this film are scientifically accurate at all, but then again, I don’t study bitchy weather. If there had to be one big issue with the movie it is that it is rated PG-13. With that rating, the death count ended up being a lot smaller than one would expect. Now there were some pretty awesome and well shown deaths, don’t worry on that. Just. The number was small.

The film is also highly entertaining. Only about 90 minutes in length, but for the most part it is action packed. Outside of character introductions early on, and one particular touching moment from Max and Alycia mid movie (which yes, I might have shed a tear for), there was always some sort of panic/danger/tornado to cause some thrills and drama. And what more can I want from a disaster movie?

I will note that Richard Armitage is supposed to be a 65 year old man in this movie. What? He looks like he is 40 at most. Regardless, his career path is terrible if he is still just some high school VP.

Here is an additional note. A lot of people seem to complain about this style of film. Hand cameras and what not filming the entirety of the scenes. However, just because a movie is filmed that way does not make it Found Footage. Complaining that the footage is never found our pieced together afterwards is stupid, if the movie never claims to be a found footage movie. It is just a different style of film making that can be incredibly unique. Remember that.

Roland Emmerich. You all know him. He brought us the new Godzilla, Day After Tomorrow, and 10,000 BC. Sure, he also brought us Independence Day, but some people don’t like that (I do!). But not really the others. All over CGI’d disaster films (like ID4. Shh) or just overly CGI’d mess, if not a disaster. So, as expected, 2012 is pretty much the exact same thing.

“Welcome to Earth!” – Will Smith, narrating the movie.

Plot of the movie is simple enough to grasp. 2012 in December is the end of the world. Why? Mayans “predicted” it. Or they just stopped caring at least. Oh shit though. Large solar flares fucking up the earth. I think melting the core (err) or something, causing crustal shifts and other problems. Oh man, the poles end up switching, land breaks apart, and so many earthquakes guys. This leads to Yellowstone blowing up (a supervolcano) and a lot of tsunami’s from the earthquakes.

There ya go.

Some people knew this may happen a long time ago. So they began making “Arcs” to hold the rich, the powerful, and the brilliant, to recreate the world once all this shit happens. John Cusack, who was camping with his son and daughter in Yellowstone, heard crazy old Woody Harrelson talking about it all, and started to believe him. Similarly, GEOPHYSICIST played by Chiwetel Ejiofor is trying to get DC to evacuate and stuff.

We also have Danny Glover as the president, who is getting two old for this evacuation shit, and his daughter, Thandie Newton. Who else? None other than Oliver Platt as vague political guy who wants to save himself. Amanda Peet plays Cusack’s ex wife and Thomas McCarthy as new husband, boob doctor.

That is probably enough.

So as expected, this movie is a mess. It is actually 2.5 hours long, so you will get your disaster on hard and you will get it on long. I am a big fan of a geophysicist not only being an important part of the movie, but also a strong moral leader for the other characters. Normally since geophysicist are usually seen as godless people anyways, its good that this one could be that and a good person.

What else was kick ass? Woody Harrelson as crazy conspiracy nut.

Neither left nor right wing, this guy isn’t even a bird.

So what was the bad parts? I could do a long article about how scientifically some stuff is stupid. But I won’t. But seriously? The supervolcano was actually UNDER exaggerated when it exploded. Which is crazy for any movie to do, but I guess they wanted to have a plot afterwards as well.

But a bigger complaint to have, that in terms of “Disasters” they used the same device three times to show panic and running away. Meaning, on three separate occasions, with the same group of people, there was a panic to hurry and have their plane take off with not much runway. Three. Times. In a row, actually. Every place they went, until the final “oh now its hard to land” scene. There wasn’t much creativity there at all. Very aggravating.

Effects were okay. Kind of got tired of them killing off people just for the sake of killing someone, instead of any good real disaster reason. (See: When they first get on the Arc).

Oh well.