2012 movie review
Coronavirus response: We have free resources to support you through the pandemic. Skip to Content. Despite the relentlessly depressing, gruesome subject matter and millions billions? Several characters risk their lives or well-being for family members, and one character tries tragically to contact his family too late.
When the World Hangs in the Balance, a Reliable Calendar Is Needed
It's not so much that the Earth is destroyed, but that it's done so thoroughly. This is fun. It even has real actors in it. Like all the best disaster movies, it's funniest at its most hysterical. You think you've seen end-of-the-world movies? This one ends the world, stomps on it, grinds it up and spits it out.
It also continues a recent trend toward the wholesale destruction of famous monuments. Roland Emmerich , the director and co-writer, has been vandalizing monuments for years, as in " Independence Day ," "The Day After Tomorrow" and " Godzilla. In all disaster movies, landmarks fall like dominos.
The Empire State Building is made of rubber. The Golden Gate Bridge collapses like clockwork. Big Ben ticks his last.
The Eiffel Tower? Quel dommage! Memo to anyone on the National Mall: When the Earth's crust is shifting, don't stand within range of the Washington Monument. Chicago is often spared; we aren't as iconic as Manhattan. There's little in Los Angeles distinctive enough to be destroyed, but it all goes, anyway. Emmerich thinks on a big scale. Yes, he destroys regular stuff. It will come as little surprise because at this writing the film's trailer on YouTube alone had more than 7,, views that the aircraft carrier John F.
Kennedy rides a tsunami onto the White House. When St. Peter's Basilica is destroyed, Leonardo's God and Adam are split apart just where their fingers touch the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel having been moved into St.
Peter's for the occasion. Then when Emmerich gets warmed up, the globe's tectonic plates shift thousands of miles, water covers the planet, and a giraffe walks aboard an ark. Also on board are the humans chosen to survive, including all the characters who have not already been crushed, drowned or fallen into great crevices opening up in the Earth.
Many gigantic arks have been secretly constructed inside the Himalayas by the Chinese, funded by a global consortium, and they're the only chance of the human race surviving. Along with the animals on board, there's the maybe well-named Noah Liam James. In theory, ark ticketholders represent a cross-section of the globe, chosen democratically.
In practice, Carl Anheuser pulls strings to benefit the rich and connected, and wants to strand desperate poor people on the dock. I'm thinking, Emmerich often has a twist when he names villains, like Mayor Ebert from "Godzilla. What does "Anheuser" make you think of? Such questions pale by comparison with more alarming events. The tectonic plates shift so violently scientists can almost see them on Google Earth.
This havoc requires stupendous special effects. They're impressive. Not always convincing, because how can the flooding of the Himalayas be made convincing? And Emmerich gives us time to regard the effects and appreciate them, even savor them, unlike the ADD generation and its quick-cutting Bay-cams.
Emmmerich also constructs dramatic real-scale illusions, as when an earthquake fissure splits a grocery store in half. Cusack is the hero in an elaborate sequence involving his desperate attempts to unblock a jammed hydraulic lift that threatens to sink the ark. He does a lot of heroic stuff in this film, especially for a novelist, like leaping a van over a yawning chasm and riding a small plane through roiling clouds of earthquake dust.
The bottom line is: The movie gives you your money's worth. Is it a masterpiece? Is it one of the year's best? Does Emmerich hammer it together with his elbows from parts obtained from the Used Disaster Movie Store? But is it about as good as a movie in this genre can be? No doubt it will inflame fears about our demise on Dec. I'm worried, too. I expect that to be even worse than Y2K. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from until his death in In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
Rated PG for intense disaster sequences, some strong language and apocalyptic violence. John Cusack as Jackson Curtis.
Amanda Peet as Kate Curtis. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Adrian Helmsley. Oliver Platt as Carl Anheuser. Woody Harrelson as Charlie. Danny Glover as President. Thandie Newton as Laura Wilson. Reviews The late, great planet Earth: A thoroughly destroyable show. Roger Ebert November 11, John Cusack gets an aerial tour of the apocalypse in " Now playing. Spaceship Earth. On a Magical Night.
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It's not so much that the Earth is destroyed, but that it's done so thoroughly. "," the mother of all disaster movies (and the father, and the. Disaster movie maven Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) crafts this apocalyptic sci-fi by the ancient Mayan calendar, which says that the world will come to an end on December 21, Rate And Review.
It's not so much that the Earth is destroyed, but that it's done so thoroughly. This is fun. It even has real actors in it. Like all the best disaster movies, it's funniest at its most hysterical.
Directed by Roland Emmerich. Now playing in New Jersey.
At one stage Woody Harrelson's wild-eyed radio preacher rolls up to explain that "something like this could only originate in Hollywood". And in this, as in all things, he preaches the truth.
'2012': Disaster Strikes (And Strikes, And Strikes)
Latest entertainment articles and reviews. Weekly CBN. In providing movie reviews on our site, CBN. Our goal is to provide Christians with information about the latest movies, both the good and the bad, so that our readers may make an informed decision as to whether or not films are appropriate for them and their families. According to the movie, the Mayan calendar ends on Dec.
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Sign In. Hide Spoilers. I was well aware that this movie would be about over-the-top action and CGI only and so I decided to shut down my brain to stand-by and direct all available blood to the eyes and ears. A technique that works perfectly for classic Bruce Willis or Arnie films giving you 2 hours of entertainment and fun. Unfortunately this time it did not work. Then the real suffering began. You don't expect to get a good script with witty dialog and good storytelling in movies like this - and you don't get it. You don't expect the best and most convincing actors in the world in movies like this - and you don't get them.
Franco , and written by Kloser and Emmerich. The plot follows geologist Adrian Helmsley Ejiofor , who discovers the Earth's crust is becoming unstable after a massive solar flare caused by an alignment of the planets, and novelist Jackson Curtis Cusack as he attempts to bring his family to safety as the world is destroyed by a series of extreme natural disasters caused by this.
Bob Mondello. Jackson Strive: The movie might be shorter if he were just a little slower, but John Cusack's bookish Jackson Curtis always manages to stay a step ahead of the advancing abyss. Columbia Tristar Marketing Group hide caption. Granted, for maybe an hour of its running time, is a reasonably kinetic catastrophe.
The late, great planet Earth: A thoroughly destroyable show
Finding newish ways to cram large-scale carnage into a PG package is tricky. You need enough verisimilitude to hook the audience, but not enough to freak it out: the collapsing high-rises have to look real enough to be plausible, as do the itty-bitty computer-generated figures falling from them. Swirling dust and flying debris serve that commercial purpose, not rivers of blood and body pulp. Emmerich will surely be disappointed. That gives the movie a cheap frisson, though the larger shivers are supplied by the onslaught of pricey special effects, which have grown predictably snazzier since his last cataclysm. In truth, the central family here is as disposable as the billions of computer-generated humans that soon pile up after disaster hits. Written by Mr. Despite the frenetic action scenes, the movie sags, done in by multiple story lines that undercut one another and by the heaviness of its conceit. Humanity is dying, after all, as the television talking heads keep repeating, and while most of the dead are specks on the screen, Mr. Emmerich occasionally brings you close to the calamity. Closer to the ground, another patriarch John Cusack plays his part as a divorced dad who will be enlisted for the usual heroics, while Amanda Peet rolls her eyes as his embittered ex. Depending on your tolerance for Mr.
D isaster-blaster Roland Emmerich serves us up another of the globally apocalyptic extravaganzas he has made his own, applying his trademark CGI wrecking ball to various iconic buildings. The statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio takes a tumble and an awful crack appears in the Sistine Chapel ceiling, running directly between the fingers of God and Man. Oh lordy. As ever in Hollywood pictures with urgent "international" settings, the opening scene is set somewhere in Notamericaistan, where the first signs of trouble are detected. Then we whisk to the real action: the West Wing. A copper mine is overheating somewhere in a far-off country. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays an earnest government scientist who realises that the earth's core temperature is overheating, as apparently smugly predicted by the ancient Mayans. It has incidentally zilch-all to do with global warming. Anyway, the world is going to end — in ! Thus substantially buggering up the London Olympics and all our medal-table hopes!
