THE CRITIC-AL LIST
Reviews by Alan Jones
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

Season Of The Witch
Amer
Tron: Legacy
Machete
Let Me In
Resident Evil: Afterlife
Salt
The Expendables
The Last Airbender
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Inception
Predators
The Twilight Saga:Eclipse
Toy Story 3
Hot Tub Time Machine
Iron Man 2
Repo Men
The Collector
Clash of the Titans
Shelter
How To Train Your Dragon
Kick-Ass
Shutter Island
Alice In Wonderland
The Crazies
Case 39
The Wolfman
Legion
The Lovely Bones
Black Death
Daybreakers
Avatar
Ninja Assassin
The Descent: Part 2
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
The Box
2012
Disney's A Christmas Carol
The Horseman
Solomon Kane
Pandorum
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
District 9
An Education
G.I. Joe: The Rise Of The Cobra
Orphan
A Perfect Getaway
The Imaginarium Of
Doctor Parnassus
Up
Harry Potter
And The Half-Blood Prince
The Taking of Pelham 123
Transformers
The Revenge Of The Fallen
Antichrist
Terminator Salvation
Last House On The Left
Inglorious Basterds
Angels & Demons
Adventureland
Star Trek
Crank: High Voltage
Coraline
Dragonball Evolution
Let The Right One In
Drag Me To Hell
Race to Witch Mountain
Knowing
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Not Quite Hollywood
Lesbian Vampire Killers
Martyrs
The Children
Surveillance
Watchmen
The Unborn
The International
Friday The 13th
Franklyn
Push
Punisher:War Zone
The Good The Bad And
The Weird
Hush
Underworld
The Rise OF The Lycans
My Bloody Valentine
Bolt
Slumdog Millionaire

Directed by Roland Emmerich. Starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton and Oliver Platt. Action/Adventure USA, 155 minutes.

Take EARTHQUAKE, DANTE”S PEAK, TITANIC, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, AIRPORT, DEEP IMPACT, AVALANCE and WATERWORLD, throw them all together in a blockbuster blender, and it’s the DAY AFTER TOMORROW again.

INDEPENDENCE DAY director Roland Emmerich outdoes himself, and all former Hollywood mega special effects displays, with 2012, a disaster movie on such a stupendously massive scale thanks to spectacular CGI imagery it’s a continually impressive sight for sore eyes. Impossible to take seriously, yet seriously impossible not to be thrilled and amazed by, Emmerich’s latest take on the End of the World is definitely his best yet. Sticking rigidly to the template of Irwin Allen’s classic disaster pictures like THE TOWERING INFERNO – who will live, who will die, as an interconnected all-star cast fight for survival against all odds – it’s down-on-his-luck novelist John Cusack who discovers the world as we know it is coming to an end. But can he get his family to one of the Arks being built in China in time before the earth’s tectonic plates shift and split wide open completely, thanks to neutrino sunbursts heating the core like a microwave, causing catastrophic tsunamis and flooding. It was all predicted by those clever Mayans centuries ago of course as Woody Harrelson’s bonkers DJ tells us just as Yellowstone Park erupts in lava bombs. Instantly gripping as Jimi Mistry’s Asian scientist informs Pentagon’s Chiwetel Ejiofor about the imminent danger seething beneath the earth’s crust, which immediately makes President Danny Glover put the Ark projects into action, 2012 thankfully doesn’t waste too much time on setting up the fantastic premise. Or on the love affair that’s a given between Ejiofor and First Daughter Thandie Newton. And once Los Angeles falls into the San Andreas Fault, a truly astonishing sequence destined to redefine the ambitious action epic, the excitement levels never dip. From the liner-revolving tidal wave and crushing of Washington DC to the collapse of St Peter’s in Rome and the climactic Mount Everest Ark hazards, the pulse-pounding invention never lets up. Camp humour peppers the scenario – digs at California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the laugh-out-loud moment the Queen and her corgis are seen boarding an Ark, the sly nods to hold-your-breath Shelly Winters in THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE – keeping everything hugely entertaining, ultra populist and enjoyably suspenseful. Even so, the whole One World message, with Emmerich and co-scripter Harald Kloser (10,000 BC) ensuring even the Russians and Chinese get their flash in the ‘We’re all in this together” spotlight isn’t such a bad thing for this credit crunch moment in G8 time.

Emmerich hits the nail on the head again with this zeitgeist bonanza and if this doesn’t make shed loads of money then I’ll sit through STARGATE again for the sixth time.

Alan Jones

© London FrightFest Ltd. 2000-2009
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