Roland Emmerich has displaced Irwin Allen as king of the disaster movies. His two recent forays into this genre (many consider 10,000 BC to be one) and The Day After Tomorrow were mostly entertaining, but 2012 reaches a new milestone. Based on the Mayan prophecy that the world as we know it will end in December 2012 (saves on Christmas shopping!), 2012 offers up one cataclysmic disaster after another with some stunning digital effects. John Cusack does his usual yeomanlike everyman rising to the situation against a green screen, and Oliver Platt is entertaining as a smarmy politician. Formulaic in parts (the children always get saved), this is still fast paced entertainment. The Blu ray picture quality and sound are exemplary, and if you crank up the volume enough in your home theater, you might have neighbors with pitchforks visiting. All in all, a great popcorn movie experience!Read full review
I had heard some pretty bad things about this movie. I was prepared for the worst. Yes, the dialogue is hokey. Yes, the plot is implausible (as far as we know). Yes, there are some AMAZING coincidences that take place. Yes, everyone on the planet (except the makers of this movie) knows that jet airplanes can't fly through volcanic ash -- yet they do anyway, several times. Yes, it is a bit preachy all the way through the movie. Yes, according to this movie, white people are pretty bad and black people and people of color are mostly good. Yes, it's a convenient, symbolic, cheesy, bordering-on-racist ending ("The whole African continent has risen several thousand feet and most likely, never even flooded!"). The rest of the world was flooded. For those of you who haven't read The Bible, God flooded the Earth because it was filled with evil (this movie seems to forget that He promised he would never do it again). Yes, it's two-and-a-half hours long, when it really didn't have to be (as usual with 2.5 hour long movies). Having said all of that, all-in-all, it was a fairly entertaining movie. The special effects were pretty damn good. The story is fairly compelling. The acting is marginal, but the actors didn't have much quality dialogue to deal with. The direction was a little sketchy too, but with a guilty "pleasure" like this movie, you can even excuse that. I know it sounds like I'm talking you out of the movie, but I'm actually trying to talk you into it. It's worth seeing.Read full review
The film starts in the then present year 2009. American geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) travels to India to meet his friend Satnam, who has discovered that neutrinos from a massive solar flare have penetrated the Earth and are causing the temperature of earth's core to increase rapidly. Adrian returns to Washington D.C. to inform White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt) and US President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) that this will soon culminate in a chain of events that will bring mass destruction to the earth's crust, which, in turn will snuff out man completely. After attending the 36th G8 summit in 2010, other heads of state and heads of government are made aware of the situation. They collaborate on their efforts on a secret project intended to ensure the continuity of human life, strategically choosing 400,000 people for admission on a series of gigantic ships (called arks) soon to be secretly constructed in the Himalayas. To help fund the venture, additional individuals are allowed to purchase tickets for a billion euro-dollars each. Roland Emmerich really knows how to connect the audience with the characters in this film. We even seem to care for the oddball character that Woody Harrelson plays at the Yosemite National Park, Charlie Frost. Charlie comments upon the crest, "This marks the last day of the United States of America. And, by tomorrow, all of mankind. And we will be visible from the Milky Way as a tiny little puff of smoke. I'm watching the earth crumble before my eyes. The giant ash cloud created by this super-volcano will first envelop Vegas and then St. Louis and then Chicago and then, at long last, Washington, D.C. will have its lights go out!" I was indeed not disappointed when I finally saw this at the movie theater even still a month after it was released to DVD. Viewing on the big screen gives you a much greater perspective about the total annihilation of the planet on the large screen. Some would argue that the film was presented over the top, but Roland wanted to make the biggest disaster film of all and said since it would be his last, that he wanted the film to be the biggest. Much humor was used in making this film thrown in with a sense of irony and even surprise. The subtle nuances of total secrecy, unfairness, and self preserving greed were used perfectly to play on your inner anger and extreme imaginings of conspiracy theories you find hard to swallow, yet with 2012, you can see now why anything is possible and believable first hand. John Cusack was just likable enough to believe that indeed he could get swallowed up by a crack and climb out of it. We also had a sense of satisfaction several times along the way and at the end when the story-line turns a twist and decides that death should indeed befall certain people that we may a may not have liked our even related to. This is not a children movie at all and I would not even recommend traumatizing your child with all this calamity. Even adults sometime have a hard time dealing with this sort of subject, yet most are willing to watch this kind of genre with a bit of unbelief, but still wish to know what might be the worst way for mankind to perish. The whole psychology of apocalyptic films drive us either away from our beliefs or toward them. Some may say "So what" and some may say "Oh No". Regardless, it's always best, in my opinion, to face your fears at any cost. IF YOU LIKE MY REVIEW, PLEASE VOTE.Read full review
John Cusack and Amanda Peet star in this End of the World thriller. As predicted by the Mayan Calendar, a series of events will take place on 12-21-12 that lead to the destruction of the earth. This movie is about the lives of those who will make it and those who will not. The acting is pretty good and the movie does a very good job of handling the lives of all those involved. The only down side is some of the special effects could have been a little better (Not a lot) there are a few things that take place that are just to much beyond belief. It is an excellent movie that really does show a way that the world could end. Get this one for your library.
Great movie! 2012 is a science fiction disaster film, directed by Roland Emmerich and released in 2009. The film stars John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, and Woody Harrelson. It was distributed by Columbia Pictures. Filming began in August 2008 in Vancouver. The film briefly references Mayanism, the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, and the 2012 phenomenon in its portrayal of cataclysmic events unfolding in 2012. The film was promoted in a marketing campaign by a fictional organization, the "Institute for Human Continuity"; this entailed a fictitious book written by Jackson Curtis titled Farewell Atlantis, and streaming media, blog updates and radio broadcasts from the apocalyptic zealot Charlie Frost at his website This Is The End. This campaign was subjected to numerous criticisms, and was regarded as a form of viral marketing. The film received mixed reviews from film critics, but topped the international box office in its first weekend with $225 million.[3] It ultimately grossed over $769 million worldwide, becoming Roland Emmerich's second highest grossing film, behind Independence Day. The film is Emmerich's first feature film to be shot using high-definition video cameras, specifically the Panavision Genesis.Read full review
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