Which Films have you seen lately? Number K'. Someone was spreading lies about Joseph 20

[Kyriakos]

C'mon, Negative Review Witch , we wanna know

Armageddon had the only bad Buscemi performance I've ever seen. Actually, I think I recall it being panned by critics pretty badly though I think it made money. Mildly entertaining, but hokey.

How about Moonfall? Which features the memorable line: "What would Elon do?"

 

[Fippy]

C'mon, Negative Review Witch , we wanna know

It's shocking but i agree with RT there.
Even Clint Eastwood felt sorry for Hilary Swank and signed her up for Million Dollar Baby.

 

[lymond]

How about Moonfall? Which features the memorable line: "What would Elon do?"

Kinda like what My said below about Swank and Core. Felt bad for actors like Wilson and Halle being in a mess of a movie like Moonfail.

Even Clint Eastwood felt sorry for Hilary Swank and signed her up for Million Dollar Baby.

lol...def would not defend that movie. So many eye-rolling moments. Million Dollar Baby was awesome.

 

[EgonSpengler]

My favorite Big, Dumb Disaster Movies:
Backdraft (1991) - I'm not sure I consider this to be a disaster movie, but I do see it mentioned on these lists once in a while. If we're gonna call it a disaster movie, I'm definitely putting it on my list. But if not, that's okay. Regardless, if you ever need a jolt of testosterone without all the violence, this movie will grow you a whole mustache.
The Core (2003)
Dante's Peak (1997)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Outbreak (1995)
The Towering Inferno (1974) - I think this is probably the movie that set me on my lifelong path of destruction.
Twister (1996)
Volcano (1997)

My favorite Legit-Good Disaster Movies:
Children of Men (2006) - Unlike Backdraft and Take Shelter, below, I almost never see this mentioned in lists of disaster movies, and it's not because people didn't like it. Go figure.
The China Syndrome (1979)
Cloverfield (2008) - Why this and not other kaiju movies? Because the protagonists never fight the monster. They just scream and run and die. Even in the scenes where our heroes see the Army fighting back, it's not stirring or invigorating, it's still just terrifying and our heroes do what most of us would do and keep running. It's also a parable (fable?) about 9/11, so in that sense you could say it's about terrorism, and I'm not including any other movies about terrorism. I wouldn't stop you from calling this an alien invasion movie, and I haven't got any of those here, either. So, okay, if for any of those reasons you want to strike this from your list of disaster movies, I won't hold it against you.
Contagion (2011)
Deep Impact (1998)
Greenland (2020)
Hours (2013) - Not to be confused with The Hours. Heh.
The Last Days / Los últimos días (2013)
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Take Shelter (2011) - Like Backdraft, I don't know if I really think of this as a disaster movie, but I see it referred to that way sometimes. If it's gonna be called a disaster movie, I have to have it here. If not, that's fine, it'll show up on other lists.
These Final Hours (2013)
The Wave / Bølgen (2015)

I know I'm forgetting some. I also decided that disastrous events that affect only a small number of people are Survival Movies, and constitute a whole separate list. Apollo 13; The Martian; Castaway; etc.

 

[EgonSpengler]

How about Moonfall? Which features the memorable line: "What would Elon do?"

Okay, but the real question is, if you had a gun to your head and had to choose, would you rather watch Moonfall or The Happening?

 

[Fippy]

Outbreak was a bit strange imo. There were some genuinely quality moments in there (no surprise with Dustin Hoffman tbh), while the movie focused on it's main topic (killer virus).
That whole saga about the evil general, going ape hunting while dodging jet fighters etc u-turned it into B movie vibes.

Deep Impact was similar imo..focusing on a couple peoples personal drama isn't what i want from big scale disasters like a meteor.

Would you consider The Mist as disaster film?
Main category horror ofc but with apocalypse vibes.

 

[EvaDK]

Okay, but the real question is, if you had a gun to your head and had to choose, would you rather watch Moonfall or The Happening?

Can I choose the bullet?

Would you consider The Mist as disaster film?
Main category horror ofc but with apocalypse vibes.

Nah, The Mist doesn't really have the tropes of a disaster film; it's sci-fi/monster horror with a religious nutcase as the villain. The supermarket becomes a micro cosmos with the human archetypes teaming up and turning against each other; that's the main point of King's novel and the film.

 

[Kyriakos]

Maybe a decently done Attack on Titan live action could be a disaster film. But it's trash enough character/dialogue wise to not even work as film even if the cool parts of it would.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Maybe a decently done Attack on Titan live action could be a disaster film. But it's trash enough character/dialogue wise to not even work as film even if the cool parts of it would.

That's already been made a while ago.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, it's why I said "decently done"

 

[EgonSpengler]

Outbreak was a bit strange imo. There were some genuinely quality moments in there (no surprise with Dustin Hoffman tbh), while the movie focused on it's main topic (killer virus).
That whole saga about the evil general, going ape hunting while dodging jet fighters etc u-turned it into B movie vibes.

Deep Impact was similar imo..focusing on a couple peoples personal drama isn't what i want from big scale disasters like a meteor.

Yeah, there were a few that could have qualified for either list, and I had to decide which list a given movie looked better on. Twister, for example, is a top-shelf Big, Dumb Disaster Movie, but it's just okay as a Legit-Good Disaster Movie. Conversely, if you judge Deep Impact as a Big, Dumb Disaster Movie, it's taking itself much too seriously.

Would you consider The Mist as disaster film?
Main category horror ofc but with apocalypse vibes.

It's definitely horror. I think I away from including it on a list of disaster movies, because the mist itself isn't really the challenge the protagonists face. It's creepy, but it's not really the problem. Same with The Fog (1980).

Can I choose the bullet?

I might.

 

[PhroX]

I remember watching Twister with a couple of friends when it came on TV. We'd had a few (or maybe more than a few...) drinks at the time, and every single ad break seemed to feature an ad for Tetley. Which we started playing up by suggesting that the film was taking place in the bottom of a giant tea cup and the tornados were caused by God stirring his tea. I don't really remember anything about the film itself, so I can't corroborate or deny it being a good big dumb disaster movie, but I do remember being drunk enough that tea was hillarious....

 

[Fippy]

I just cannot watch films with ads anymore now..all channels with them are on ignore pretty much.

 

[PhroX]

Same these days, but that was probably 20 years ago when we had 5 channels, three of which had ads....

 

[Kyriakos]

I didn't even know this existed. Cities on wheels.
Makes perfect sense, of course.

 

[EvaDK]

Talk To Me - excellent tight occult horror film. Fine performances by a cast of unknowns aside from Miranda Otto. The Australians are pretty good at making these small budget effective thrillers.

 

[Snerk]

Got around to Oppenheimer. I liked it. Feared it might be too pretentious but I don't think so.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I loved Licorice Pizza (2021). I was a PTA-head about 20 years ago, having seen and liked his first four movies, and then I fell off, and this is the first movie of his I'd seen since Punch-Drunk Love. I like seeing talented non-moviestars, and Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman were both great. I was a big fan of his father's work, but I never found myself thinking about that while watching this. I thought Cooper really flew on his own. I'm completely unfamiliar with Haim, the band, so I had hardly laid eyes on Haim, the actress, before and I thought she had tremendous charm. Some of the shots of her face were almost startling, given how little experience she has acting for a camera. The pacing flagged a little in the middle, and I did find myself checking my proverbial wristwatch. With a running time of 133 minutes, I think maybe some more could have been cut in the edit. There were 1 or 2 supporting characters I didn't understand the need for. It was jarring to be reminded that Tom Waits is 73, but that's more my fault. My favorite of the supporting cast was Harriet Sansom Harris (Gary's agent). It passed the Six Laughs Test and has a great soundtrack that had to have been carefully curated, probably by the director himself.

Spoiler :

I didn't even realize until the final seconds that I had been bracing myself for the movie to take a cynical turn, somewhere. I guess I sort of thought that Alana breaking Cooper's heart would be de rigueur, and spent the entire film waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I'm not normally a slapstick guy, but the prat-fall at the end did make me laugh, and I thought it was a nice physical metaphor for how clumsy the two of them had been the entire time.

I didn't love seeing Bradley Cooper and Sean Penn. Such well-known movie stars felt a little out of place, while I was enjoying the 'indie movie' feeling. I had more fun recognizing Emma Dumont and John Michael Higgins, although Higgins' character was one of the ones I'd have dropped, in the interest of cutting the running time. If PTA was trying to make some point or gag with that character, I didn't get it. When he showed up the 2nd time, I think I literally groaned and slumped down in my chair.

I liked the episodic nature of the film, which reminded me of other romcoms over the years, like When Harry Met Sally.

My sense of time passing was completely screwed. I don't know if this movie takes place over 2 months or 2 years. I guess it has to be closer to the latter than the former, but I get the feeling we're not supposed to know, precisely, and I can't decide if I liked that. I found myself thinking about it too much, rather than just rolling with it.

I was off-balance wrt the ages of the characters the entire time, too. I think that was by design. My sense is that Gary really was 15 at the beginning of the movie, and that Alana was lying about her age. It reminded me of Almost Famous. I liked not really knowing how old she was.

The record aficionado inside me, who prowled 2nd-hand stores from the '80s to the '00s, was mildly disappointed not to see a recreation of the actual Licorice Pizza.

 

[lymond]

I loved Licorice Pizza (2021).

Yep, I really enjoyed LP too. Kinda that quirky indie I'd been missing for some time. I

 

[EgonSpengler]

Yep, I really enjoyed LP too. Kinda that quirky indie I'd been missing for some time. I

I recommend Rye Lane (2023), if you haven't seen it. Probably my favorite film of the year so far, although I haven't seen many 2023 movies yet.