Live, Die, Repeat: THE OLD GUARD

For a comic book action film, The Old Guard keeps its scale smaller than you’d expect, the better to remain atypically attuned to its characters and the consequences of their actions. Adapted by Greg Rucka from his own comic book, the screenplay about a quartet of immortal warriors is relatively down-to-earth for its outlandish premise. The tone is set early when we see Charlize Theron, as the haunted leader of the group, gunned down, contemplating if this is the time she dies. Smartly, the movie knows we might not care if invulnerable characters get hurt, and so makes them vulnerable in other ways. For one, we’re told that at some point, centuries in, they won’t wake back up after a fatal blow. They just don’t know where and when. Worse, they’re not exactly dreading that day. After hundreds of years alive, doing great violence at little physical cost, the psychological cost is weighing on them. Not to mention having to see humanity’s patterns of ugliness cycle again and again. Theron, taciturn and chilled, seems particularly worn down by this. She and the others (Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, and Luca Marinelli) want to fight for justice, to make the world a better place. But one look at the news, and Theron wonders if all their fighting has actually made a difference.

Among these characters, there’s this palpable sadness and boredom with their long lives and strange powers; they’ve been there, done that. One spark of life comes from a potential new recruit (KiKi Layne), a solider who survives a surely fatal cut to the neck and starts communicating psychic visions with our lead quartet. That it's all new to her, giving her reluctance a different flavor, is a good contrast. When she marvels at their unflinching violence meted out against bad guys, she’s told Theron has “forgotten more about killing than entire armies will ever learn.” And yet, for all the action — blood and bullets spraying freely, at least when there’s not a battle ax around to do the job — the movie dreads it. How terrible that it has become old hat. How hard it is for our heroes to think all they’ve done is ultimately to little effect. Their newest member looks upon all this and wonders if she could ever be like them. After all, spectacular violence may come easy, but living with it is difficult. Credit for this unusual sensitivity to the effects of comic book violence surely goes to director Gina Prince-Bythewood. Up to now, she’s blessed us with warm, sensitive dramas like Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights, beautiful, romantic movies closely attuned to their characters emotions, every catch of breath, or shift of gaze. Here death may be old hat to her heroes, but it’s no laughing matter to the filmmaking. Every gun shot or blade slice hurts, even when it seals back up in time to keep the fight moving. She weaves in some horrific concepts in their backstories, and is keenly aware of how much they can lose in the present.

And yet the genre has its demands. The central action conflict of the film comes when an evil pharmaceutical company — led by a callow young tech (Harry Melling) — hires an investigator (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to capture these ageless warriors and drain them for research. That explains the waves of armored goons arriving periodically, and sets up a few fine set-pieces. But it all comes back to that mood, so well sustained throughout. Sure, the dialogue is frosty pulp, with a few terse one-liners sprinkled throughout. And the world it sets up has its intrigue. But it’s not in a hurry to balloon to apocalyptic stakes. Instead it sits with these characters and understands their reluctance, their pain, their confusion. It thinks somberly about the toll it takes to kill and be killed over and over and over. Sure, it’ll slay the bad guys with some style and choreography. But it’s committed to a low minor-key and small, contained sequences. In true modern comic book movie fashion, it sets up more than it knocks down, and even has a little teaser of a scene before the end credits that promises a sequel could be bigger, wilder, and deeper. What does feel complete is Prince-Bythewood’s vision, which extends her sense of thoughtful interiority to a genre that often lacks it.

Stranger Things: DOCTOR STRANGE

Behold Doctor Strange, the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to grow significantly better in its action sequences. This massive franchise of interlocking superhero series tends to stuff appealing comic book conceits full of bantering character actors for fun setups that dim through endless pro forma digital destruction. The best keep the same light touch from zinging dialogue in the violence choreography, but they often err on the side of wearing out their welcome. Strange, though, finds itself dealing with cosmic transdimensional threats above the Avengers’ pay grade, so the movie is free to spiral out into wild visual invention. And somehow Marvel has allowed director Scott Derrickson – shifting tone from his usual horror beat – enough room to create some appealing, mind-boggling popcorn adventure images. Maybe the entire creative team was carried away by the intoxicating silliness of sorcerers, ancient magic, enchanted relics, pulpy gobbledygook jargon, and loopy fantasy. This isn’t a great film, but it’s a pleasant surprise to see Marvel’s ossifying superhero formula find some glimmers of new life.

The plot itself is standard origin story stuff, with quippy arrogance humbled by exposure to great power and great responsibility. Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a hotshot brain surgeon who struts onto the operating theater like all his life is a show devoted to his brilliance. He plays his medical prowess as a Sherlockian neurologist, like Dr. House crossed with Tony Stark. So of course he’s distraught when a hyperbolic car crash – his sleek sports car pinwheeling off a cliff, down a ravine, through a shack, and into shallow water – leaves his hands smashed to bits. Recovery is slow, and will likely never allow him to wield a scalpel again, let alone with anything remotely approaching his former skill. Out of options, he journeys to Katmandu where he’s heard tell of a magical healer, a guru known only as The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton, otherworldly as ever, bald and beautiful, and maybe the best, coolest MCU performance yet). He’s initially put off by her ideas about astral projection, chakra alignment, and infinite alternate dimensions, but soon can’t deny the power she offers him. Open your mind, she says. He doesn’t even hesitate long enough to ask if she takes his insurance.

Moving through the typical training montages, Derrickson (from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jon Spaiths and C. Robert Cargill) finds hallucinogenic imagery. As Strange trains with The Ancient One and her talented acolytes (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Benedict Wong) in the ways of the Sorcerer Supreme, he encounters glowing spells floating in the air, energy fields, swirling portals, glowing martial arts weaponry, mirrored dimensions fracturing the world in front of his very eyes, and abstract flourishes of phantasmagorical, mind-bending, reality-contorting travel. Marvel steers into the visual possibilities opened up by this concept, letting Derrickson and crew stage creative adventure. You can see in the effects’ department’s talented kaleidoscopic manipulation of matter – a city bending and warping in on itself, time moving backwards for some and forwards for others in the same frame, doorways to anywhere – Inception’s topsy-turvy hallway fight and Matrix bullet time plus Fantastic Voyage’s titanic molecules and 2001’s trippy wormhole. Here landscapes shift, tile patterns double and redouble, reality blurs and slurs, slips and slides. This isn’t dull shooting and punching interrupting fun characters’ hangouts. It’s, well, a visual Marvel much of the time.

And yet as much as it is fun to watch, it’s still in service of business as usual plot machinations. Strange’s training is about to come in handy, and the groundwork the early going lays for the imaginative imagery will pay off, when the villain (Mads Mikkelsen, with his eyes surrounded in a craggy dark glitter) appears, threatening the entire world with total destruction. He’s the type of bad guy who is splintering our dimension in exchange for immortality promised to him and his followers by an alternate universe ruled by a writhing purple goop monster. The conflict plays out like you’d expect, with fun side characters cycling in and out seeding future entries and forthcoming conflicts. (No less than Rachel McAdams, Benjamin Bratt, and Michael Stuhlbarg appear in such foreshortened subplots I couldn’t help but wonder if they’re only there for the promise of sequels.) But the details of the narrative, and the regular Marvel blend of light humor and apocalyptic stakes, take a back seat. It’s their usual crowd-pleasing formula done up with a genuinely pleasing visual snap. Compare it to their flat, dishwater grey, CGI airport tarmac in Civil War and it’s even more like a whole new dimension of possibilities opening up in a dull world.

Like the Thor movies, Doctor Strange is swept up in its terrifically silly/serious concoction. Moments like a slapstick fight involving a sentient red cape or a head-spinning M.C. Escher chase through a scrambled sideways New York City are right up there with Asgardian rainbow bridges and pseudo-Shakespearean Norse god mythos as the closest the whole MCU behemoth gets to massive pop art spectacle, eye-popping splash-page fantasy filmmaking driven by an imaginative use of screen space instead of the overused and overfamiliar slam-bang drudgery. Strange is best when it lets its visuals overpower its plot, taking off into uncharted cosmic wilderness. No wonder it leaves behind its characters’ emotional journeys and down-to-earth formulaic interactions by the end, consigning their mortal problems to get sorted out later. It has a multicolored psychedelic lightshow to stage, stretching out across a 3D IMAX screen every which way and then some. Its spectacle may be no more or less empty than any other MCU smash-‘em-up, but at least it’s entertaining spectacle used strikingly, surprisingly, and enjoyably down to the last pixel.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars: THE MARTIAN

Remember the great scene in Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 where, desperate to find a way to save stranded astronauts in a failing spaceship, NASA engineers are presented with a box of spare parts and told to figure out how those fit together as a makeshift solution? The Martian is that scene for over two hours. In its opening sequence the first astronauts on Mars evacuate the planet during a sandstorm that knocks one of their crewmates off the medical signals and into the deadly dusty darkness. They think he’s dead and leave him behind, where he wakes up alone and afraid with a desolate lifeless planet all to himself. He has to find a way to make 60 days worth of supplies last up to four years, the time it could take to get someone back to pick him up. And that’s only if he can make contact with Earth sooner rather than later.

It’s a surprisingly absorbing experience to watch one man think his way through complicated story problems. Sure, it’s the sort of mystery that’s impossible to think through faster than the characters on screen. But there’s a certain convincing popcorn logic to the whole string of science thought experiments presented for our Robinson Crusoe on Mars in a relatively hard sci-fi premise. No alien twists or sudden water-filled oasis on the horizon, he can only stay in the pressurized makeshift lab or wander out with his spacesuit to scavenge whatever mechanical bits he can to make his unexpected extended stay survivable. Though it wouldn’t be hard to root for anyone’s survival in that situation, it helps that he’s played by Matt Damon, a likable enough presence on screen, equivalent to stranding peak James Stewart or Tom Hanks. He’s corn-fed Americana aw-shucks smart, putting one foot in front of the other.

We watch as he tries to power his life support systems, grow crops, and phone home. Back on Earth his NASA colleagues (Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mackenzie Davis, Sean Bean, Donald Glover) quickly notice movement in satellite photos and start working on ways to get in touch, and get him back. In between are his traveling crewmates (Jessica Chastain, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie), unaware the man they’re mourning is alive and might be calling on them to help, too. All those actors are great, believable in their competence and drive, with great timing delivering complicated dialogue. It’s one of those big Hollywood ensembles where the characters are the sum total of their job descriptions (their titles pop up on screen at each intro) and the recognizable faces are meant to fill in the unspoken rest. No one has time for backstory, personal problems, or emotional appeals. There’s not even a token villain. It’s all can-do cooperation and high-stakes business.

I’m sure the armchair rocket scientists in the crowd could still quibble with the results, but at least the filmmakers have a nuts and bolts commitment to showing their work. The characters walk through each new option or development with lots of technobabble patter and math lab/science center jargon, talking through variables, calculations, and equations, triangulating timetables and press releases while weighing the needs of the many with the needs of the few. This could be dull, especially in the relentless exposition and talky narration cutting down on potential poetry of space flight and lonely unearthly vistas of red-tinted desert. But what makes it work is the crisp tick tock editing, cutting for suspense and propulsion between people crowding around computers and white boards and the lonely plight of the one man they’re mobilizing brainpower to save.

Drew Goddard (Cabin in the Woods) has adapted Andy Weir’s book into a screenplay balancing determined problem solving, often clever and surprising, with a mild but charming wit cutting through the heavy material. It’s not glib banter. It’s the light needling and gallows humor of serious smart people who are good at their jobs, but feeling the pressure. It plays into director Ridley Scott’s interest in world building, process, data displays, and men on missions, allowing him to turn this Cast Away meets Gravity by way of Randall Munroe's What If? into something his own, an easily tense space survival story, even if the end is not once in doubt. The Martian has some visual overlap with his Alien/Prometheus world in cinematographer Dariusz Wolski’s unfussy 3D views of production designer Arthur Max’s functional worn-down tech and austere sand-swept Mars terrain. But Scott also has relaxed fun with it, making amusing tension out of, say, Damon struggling to duct tape a depressurizing suit shut, or finding room for a fun disco soundtrack. It’s an efficient and entertaining workmanlike brainteaser of a movie.

The World's End, Again: Z FOR ZACHARIAH

Here we are again after the end of the world. Some unknown calamity has befallen the earth an unknown time before our story begins. There are few survivors. The world they left behind is contaminated, perhaps irreparably. All that remains is a haunted landscape of abandoned places. We’ve been here before, the post-apocalyptic narrative being one of our most common lately. Maybe we’re preparing ourselves for the worst. Maybe we think we’re already living in the early stages of our own apocalypse and need doomsday prepping. Or maybe we’re captives of a pessimism that’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (See Tomorrowland for the corrective there, I suppose.) Director Craig Zobel’s Z for Zachariah takes this familiar premise into tiny intimate spaces, finding the subgenre simply a convenient excuse to strip away society and all but a few characters, the better to focus on the slightest and narrowest of interpersonal conflicts.

Zobel’s films are about marginalized characters. Think of his low-level con men in Great World of Sound and fast food workers in Compliance. But you don’t get much more marginal than Margot Robbie in Zachariah who, as the movie begins, may as well be the last person on earth, for all she knows. We see her head into town in a HAZMAT suit, scavenge some essentials, then trudge back to her isolated farmhouse where, miraculously, the radiation levels remain at hospitable levels. This has been her life for who knows how long. She credits her survival on her faith in God, praying and playing the organ in a chapel built on her property. We learn she had a family who left to find other survivors and never returned. It’s just her, a dog, a rifle, and God. Zobel treats her daily existence with a deliberate pace and a bright digital glaze.

Soon enough, another person enters her solitary life. He (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is in almost every way her exact opposite. She’s a young white southern Christian farm girl. He’s a middle-aged black northern big city scientist. He left his relative safety on a quest of curiosity, to find the state of the world since the crisis that decimated it. His trip through contaminated spaces has left him half-dead. They’re surprised to see each other, and form a tentative alliance. She lets him stay on her property, nurses him back to health, and accepts his help with survivalist tasks. Together they forage, farm, and plan ways to improve their lives. They maybe even fall in love a little bit, but it’s also clear they’re not sure how much the affection they feel is more a factor of the slow ebbing of overwhelming loneliness.

This is all well and good, an intimate if schematic character study nestled in picturesque uninhabited lush green natural spaces. Taking inspiration from Robert C. O’Brien’s cult classic sci-fi novel of the same name, the story plays out by running softly along the natural fault lines in the characters’ relationships, letting interactions of tabula rasa impressions drift backwards. Into this dynamic arrives a third character, a man (Chris Pine) who stumbles onto the farm desperate for water and shelter. He, too, has gone looking for survivors. He, too, is accepted into their isolated commune. But now that there are three, petty jealousies encroach. What was a restrained two-hander becomes a spare and wan love triangle, so softly and delicately played it may as well be a slight chill on the breeze. It makes for a much less interesting second half, as overfamiliar as it is uninvolving.

Zobel’s commitment to a slow and steady pace keeps the plot’s thematic interests slowly boiling, despite the obvious directions it’s headed. It’s admirably restrained, feeling no need to adhere to what an audience might expect from post-apocalyptic stories. The problem is just that it’s ultimately all so slight and inert. A finely acted drama, it lacks narrative tension or character insight deeper than first glance assumptions, playing out like a didactic Twilight Zone knockoff with the broad strokes in which characterization is painted never becoming a satisfying larger picture. It’s the sort of film that’s just barely compelling enough in the moment, setting up its variables with reasonable control, but concludes with the distinct feeling of neglecting to add up. Where it ends is hardly worth the trouble getting there. We’ve not only been here before, but it’s been far more satisfying, too.

Slave Narrative: 12 YEARS A SLAVE

Solomon Northup was a talented violinist who was hired to play for parties and other social gatherings near his home. He lived in upstate New York with his wife and three children. Because he was born in 1808 and was black, it is important to note that he was a free man. But that would not always be the case. British director Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, based on Northup’s memoir of the same name, tells the story of how, in 1841, this free man was kidnapped, taken to the South, and sold into slavery. It is not a film about slavery, but about a slave. In the process it becomes a catalogue of injustices that can only hint at the depths of depravity the American slave trade contained. Told wholly from a black perspective, the film belongs to a rich history of slave narratives, a harrowing literary genre that has rarely made the leap to the movie screen so intact. Too often softened and glamorized by interjecting noble white presence into the core of the narrative arc, this film finds at its center simply, powerfully, Mr. Northup. The kidnapping is only an extra layer of injustice, to most fully embody the tragedy of slavery and make thoroughly real how dehumanizing an institution it is.

Slavery is something that many Americans understand historically and academically, but here is a film that says look, feel the pain, understand. This is a film of unrelenting brutality. Though I sat through the whole film, I must admit to averting my eyes at the worst of the violence. A scene late in the film lingers on flesh torn from a slave woman’s back as the plantation’s master whips her. The bloody ripping and slicing is a monstrously effective visual that’s uncomfortable and upsetting. It feels honest, not exploitative of real world violence nor mean-spirited towards the audience. It’s simply presented, raw and exposed. It at times recalls Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ with its commitment to showing battered bodies, torn flesh, and logging blows of whips and cudgels. The sound design blasts these strikes out of the speakers loudly, rattling the audience’s eardrums with their force and violence. When Northup is first captured, he pleads for his freedom, citing his free man status. “Show us your papers,” the kidnappers snarl. When Northup cannot – nor could he move his manacled hands even if he had papers – his back is bludgeoned in one long take, each smack one of terrifying force, physically and aurally.

Viewed in conjunction with McQueen’s other films, the prison hunger strike procedural Hunger and sex addiction drama Shame, it’s clear he’s a director interested in the human body in relationship to the human soul and the limits past which both can be pushed. In 12 Years a Slave, the sins of the country’s moral negotiations are raked across the bodies of the enslaved, while others go about their business, aware, but unable or unwilling to help. In a harrowing moment of sustained painful suspense, McQueen’s camera watches for an agonizingly long period of time as a slave hangs from a noose on a low branch, saved only by standing and shifting on his tiptoes slipping in mud. On all sides, those who live on the plantation – black and white alike – continue their routines, eyes averted. In the distance, we can hear the sound of children playing.

There are no dates placed on screen to mark the passage of time. The title plainly states the narrative’s duration. We know that Solomon Northup will remain enslaved for 12 long, painful years, but we’re as lost in the accumulation of incident as he is. Time is a blur of terrors and anxiety that slowly gives way to reluctant resignation. He is trying to survive. At the center of the film is a monumental performance from Chiwetel Ejiofor, long a welcome screen presence in films as diverse as Inside Man, Love Actually, and Children of Men. Here, Ejiofor shows remarkable restraint, never overplaying the emotional journey, trusting the facts of the narrative and subtle shifts in his behavior and expression to sell the depths of horror Northup saw and the resilience Northup displayed. John Ridley’s script follows him from a slave market overseen by Paul Giamatti to several different plantations owned by the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Fassbender, Sarah Paulson, and Bryan Batt. Though there are some differences between them – some moderately kinder, others ruthlessly cruel – they all are doing their part to perpetuate poisonous beliefs and uphold a horrendous institution.

Though the film is pitched at a relentlessly grim and miserable abusive level, one can never feel prepared for the cruelty to come. McQueen’s use of carefully composed, sleek cinematography and studied framing (with his usual cinematographer Sean Bobbitt) doesn’t get in the way of the impact. When a plantation owner’s wife suddenly hurls a glass at a slave woman’s head, object making contact with skull with a sickening crack, it is startling. This is a world where that doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. And that’s what horrifying. The writing for and acting of the ensemble has a sense of overwhelming specificity. The film never stoops to viewing either blacks or whites homogenously. Much like the owners have their differences, we see here slaves who become favored (Alfre Woodard), who agitate for rebellion (Michael K. Williams), and who are singled out for specific abuses (Lupita Nyong’o). There’s a variety here in a film that finds much diversity in corners of history that too easily are reduced into types. It helps keep the film from finding false notes of victory. When Northup’s 12 years are up and he’s finally freed, he finds no retribution and only his own personal victory. As he’s driven away, he leaves every other character behind, still slaving or enslaved. 

We’re currently living through a time in this country in which a great many people find it politically convenient not to know things about our history, to play fast and loose with facts and behave cavalier towards context. We’re living in a time when people of a certain political persuasion can not only seriously speak lies like slavery was “a blessing in disguise” or that the South’s economy was not built on the backs of slaves, but have a great many people believe such erroneous sentiments. Here is a film that lays out the facts of history unblinking, in all its horror and heartbreak, in all its soul-draining sinfulness and tells us to look at just one story, to feel just a fraction of centuries of pain, and to see anew our history as it is recreated in front of our eyes.

Scary Spice: SALT

If nothing else, Salt proves that movie star driven filmmaking can still work when given a tight script, solid craftsmanship and an exciting premise. Luckily, it’s also an elegant, exhilarating spy movie, a throwback to simpler times when the Russians were our clear-cut Cold War enemies and a wholehearted embrace of cutting-edge techno-gadgets and shiny modern surfaces. But it’s mostly about the movie star who fills nearly every scene with megawatt presence.

Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a C.I.A. agent who is accused of being a Russian spy. She claims innocence, but then takes off running. She’s not an easy protagonist, distant and uncommunicative once the action gets going. We don’t see her in many soft moments, nor does she explain herself on the rare occasions that she stops to catch her breath. She always seems to be one step ahead of us, and it’s fun to try and catch up. Jolie is much different here than her last solo action effort, the two Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movies from nearly 10 years ago in which she was called upon to do little more than fill a tight T-shirt while posing her way through elaborate special effects. Here Jolie delivers layers of ambiguity and holds her own in striking close ups that play up her high cheek-bones and her ability to look severe one moment and fragile the next. She’s a remarkably nuanced action hero, made all the more remarkable by how the movie is so willing to make her look so cool.

Evelyn Salt is a mix of LeCarre’s career spies and Jason Bourne, with a dash of The Manchurian Candidate for added flavor, but none of the above were clever, fashionable, capable women. She’s a striking image to see dashing across the screen. She’s running full speed through dangerous stunts, delivering punches and kicks while bouncing off the walls or darting through traffic. She’s clever and resourceful, pulling off surprising escapes. Salt is undeniably awesome. The movie may not always let the audience in on her plans, but I still really wanted her to succeed. Salt is pursued by C.I.A. agents played by Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who happen to be two consistently undervalued performers. They bring weight and shades of gray to what could easily have become nothing more than a pair of forgettable foils. The way they balance out the conflicts in the movie (they have to catch her, but could they trust her claim to innocence?) reminded me of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. They’re not quite up to that level – the script doesn’t allow them that opportunity – but they’re close.

The film careens through tense action beats and all kinds of twisty spy skullduggery. (Even Lee Harvey Oswald is name-dropped). All the while, it makes good use of Jolie’s simultaneous vulnerability and distance, her essential apparent unknowableness. She’s both our anchor and our source of doubt. We care about her survival even though we don’t even know if we can believe her. Director Phillip Noyce has made films across different genres over the course of his career while never enforcing a strong auteur vision on the projects. He has a fine eye for action and a good sense of narrative clarity. Here, he’s working from an enjoyable and efficient script from Kurt Wimmer. It’s a film with hardly any wasted space; the whole thing’s over in barely 100 minutes. This is solid, engaging action filmmaking.

It’s not often that a movie of any kind leaves me anxious for a follow-up, especially a non-franchise property like Salt (though I’d bet Sony is hoping for a Bourne-style franchise in-the-making), but I would have watched the sequel right then and there when the end credits stopped rolling. This movie has such a strong sense of momentum that it flies right into the credits while still speeding forward. Leaving the multiplex, I practically jogged to my car.

The Sky is Falling! And the Seas! And the Mountains! And theaaah!

Back in the 1970s, when Irwin Allen was the master of disaster, filmmakers regularly trotted out the same old creaky tropes by grouping together a hodgepodge of celebrities, of varying renown and talent, and then throwing them in harm’s way. The formula didn’t always work, but it did work often enough for moviemakers to keep trying. Allen produced two of the best examples of the disaster film with these tropes: the capsized-ship story The Poseidon Adventure, and, my favorite, the burning skyscraper story The Towering Inferno. Those two films are prime examples of expertly crafted cheese and the reasons that I have such a goofy affection for the entire disaster movie genre. I love the way the varied cast members interact amidst the effects, especially Inferno’s parallel plotlines starring Paul Newman and Steve McQueen that build to the inevitable meeting of these two very cool men. To this day, I get excited when I see one of those posters with the line of little portraits revealing the cast in peril.

Since the mid-1990s Roland Emmerich has been making big-budget explosion films that are mostly of the disaster persuasion, staking out a corner of contemporary cinema that looks an awful lot like Allen’s 70s pad. But Emmerich has been wildly inconsistent. There’s the passable Independence Day (1996), which, despite its exploding landmarks, is actually more of an alien-invasion movie. He followed that with Godzilla (1998), a horrible half-hearted movie. But somewhere around the middle of this decade, Emmerich went full-disaster with The Day After Tomorrow (2004), a flawed but enjoyable popcorn flick that found weather raining down destruction on New England (elsewhere too, but our ensemble is exclusively East Coast). Now, with 2012, Emmerich has used a misreading of the Mayan calendar as the jumping point to top all of his movies, and all disaster movies, in premise, not always in quality. He exploits the same kind of whiplash-inducing “thousands are dying, but save the dog!” mentality that has long served peddlers of schlock well, and here it is done very well. Forget escaping a boat. Forget putting out the fire. Forget staying warm. There’s nowhere to run when the whole world is coming to an end. (But don’t worry too much; some of the cast will still have a happy ending).

Speaking of the cast, it’s an odd mix that’s suitably eclectic, with two very likable actors, John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor, as a sci-fi writer and a scientist, respectively, doing most of the earnest heavy-lifting. (It’s nice to think that someone, somewhere, might think Cusack and Ejiofor could be our Newman and McQueen). Ultimately we need to think that the problems of the small ensemble cast do amount to at least a hill of beans on this hemorrhaging planet and Emmerich was lucky enough to get an ensemble that would work hard to elevate the horrendous dialogue that he co-wrote with his composer, Harold Kloser. There’s Amanda Peet, as Cusack’s ex, and Tom McCarthy as her new man. There’s Danny Glover as the U.S. president and Thandie Newton as his daughter. There’s Woody Harrelson as a kooky conspiracy-nut and Oliver Platt as a slimy bureaucrat. There's also some cute child actors and a little dog. Even George Segal shows up in an extraneous subplot, but then again, anything that isn’t a crumbling landmark is sort of extraneous.

Let’s get back to the disasters. Earthquakes! Volcanoes! Tidal waves! There’s nothing but destruction happening here and it’s played out with incredible special-effects that are sometimes scary, sometimes silly, but always enjoyable. Emmerich has perfected a kind of industrial-strength filmmaking here in an entertaining blend of silliness and suspense from the ominous title card to the perfect deep-fried cheese that is the end-credit-caterwauling of Adam Lambert. Other than a lame half-hearted nod towards a social conscience, the movie proceeds with a determined desire to let us marvel at the effects, to let us revel in his amiably dumb light-and-sound show. I was never bored, occasionally thrilled, and often amused. Emmerich finds a good spot between camp and cool and rides it for two-and-a-half hours.