Netflix And Chill: The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

While it is a silly and entertaining blockbuster, The Day After Tomorrow also does a good job of showing idiots why global warming is still a major problem, even if it feels like our weather is generally getting colder and wetter. Climate change deniers like to point to bad weather as an argument against global warming. It is, in fact, actually a strong indicator of the way things are headed.

Things get very bad for us humans as the weather gets a lot worse and temperatures plummet. This is an exaggerated scenario, of course, but it’s all done to show humans trying to overcome overwhelming odds to survive a snap ice age. Dennis Quaid is the scientists who has been warning about this kind of thing happening for a long time, and Jake Gyllenhaal is his son, stuck in New York City with a mixed group of people all trying to stay warm and stay alive. There is some very bad weather, there is a need for penicillin, and there are some escaped zoo animals adding to their problems.

Few people, if any, have enjoyed destroying our world as much as Roland Emmerich. He used to be content with aliens and monsters, but has now used the environment numerous times to create tales of humans struggling to survive in increasingly inhospitable conditions. Having co-written this screenplay with Jeffrey Nachmanoff, Emmerich delivers a fantastic mix of spectacle and human interest. It's cheesy, it's ridiculous, it's increasingly unbelievable as we head to the big ending, but it's damn entertaining.

The special effects, mostly created using CGI, hold up surprisingly well, even the wandering and vicious wolves that I used to point to as the weakest part of the film. If there's one thing that Emmerich is good at then it's creating at least one unforgettable movie moment/image, and this film has more than one. Whether it's a tidal wave looking to flood a major city, a major bit of tornado damage, or the Statue Of Liberty covered in snow and ice, The Day After Tomorrow fills out the 124-minute runtime with one great movie moment after another. 

Quaid and Gyllenhaal are both very good as they take turns carrying the film on their shoulders. Both actors have an innate appeal, and both give performances that never seem to be winking or implying that they are "slumming it". There's also some decent support from Emmy Rossum (who ends up in need of that penicillin), Austin Nichols, Dash Mihok, and Jay O. Sanders, even if you suspect that not everyone is going to make it to the end credits. Elsewhere, familiar faces like Sela Ward, Adrian Lester Sasha Roiz, Kenneth Welsh, and Ian Holm (a real highlight here) do their bit to sell the unfolding apocalyptic scenario.

You will see many people dismissing this as a spectacle movie that hasn't aged too well, but I would strongly disagree. I think it is, quite frankly, a brilliant blockbuster that takes the standard Emmerich template (small set-pieces interspersed with character moments on the way to more and more spectacular destruction) and applies it to numerous weather anomalies that are as well-utilised as they are well-realised. Maybe not as good as the director's high point, Independence Day, but it's only a step or two behind it, in my opinion.

9/10

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Ghost Chase (1987)

Also known as Hollywood-Monster, apparently.

Before making his name with big-budget fare that often saw the world, or at least major cities, being completely devastated, director Roland Emmerich made some strange, but entertaining, horror and sci-fi films that feel largely forgotten about nowadays. Ghost Chase is perhaps his strangest, and it's yet another film I had wanted to see ever since I was a kid (having been won over by the VHS box art and the trailer).

Fred (Tim McDaniel) is an amateur film director, trying his best to make a film starring his cousin, Warren (Jason Lively). Unfortunately, Warren keeps trying his luck with the leading lady, Laurie (Jill Whitlow), which leads to her leaving, which then leads to the production grinding to a halt. About to drown in debt, things don't look good for Fred and Warren. Their fortunes may change, however, when Warren is asked to attend a reading of his grandfather's will. This is where things get weird. Warren inherits an old clock. That clock contains the spirit of Louis, the man who was the butler to Warren's grandfather. The spirit of Louis inhabits an animatronic butler dummy, built by Fred after a dream vision he had, and he soon starts trying to convince our leads that there should be much more for Warren to inherit, but a scheming producer named Stan Gordon (Paul Gleason) is trying to keep it all to himself.

In case you aren't sure from that plot summary, Ghost Chase is bonkers. It's very silly, it's all over the place (in terms of tone and brief plot tangents), and it seems to have been created by someone wanting to soundtrack scenes with the song "Imagination", as performed by Belouis Some. Emmerich directs from a screenplay co-written by himself and Thomas Kubisch, and it's clear that he's more about enthusiasm and homage than minor things like believability and logic. It's a fantasy horror adventure movie about a ghost butler that makes an animatronic dummy butler come alive, therefore believability and logic don't have to place high on the list of priorities, but it's a shame that things never feel as if they are part of a properly flowing narrative. What you get here is a selection of decent bits, all stuck in between moments of surprising dullness. This should be a blast throughout. It isn't.

It doesn’t help that the cast don’t really feel like a good fit for their roles. Neither Lively nor McDaniel are good enough to carry the film, while both Whitlow and Gleason are sorely underused. Other slightly familiar faces include Ian MacNaughton and Chuck Mitchell, the latter arguably most famous for being Porky in the Porky’s movies.

There’s still a charm to this, it’s a film in which you can see the creativity and sweat used to get anything even half-decent onscreen, and the animatronic dummy is both odd and delightful, but you can tell that it’s made by someone yet to find the focus and vision to match their determination. Still, I am sure many will prefer it to Emmerich’s folly AKA Godzilla.

5/10

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Moonfall (2022)

Despite strong competition from a couple of other blockbusters from the past decade or so, including at least one other film also from director Roland Emmerich, Moonfall is the dumbest mainstream release you will see this year, and perhaps even the dumbest mainstream movie you will ever see. It is so dumb that it at least makes it easier to forget about following the plot and just concentrate on the spectacle of the whole thing. In fact, I think it might be dangerous to try keeping your brain fully switched on while watching this.

Basically, in the way of almost all Emmerich movies, something happens at the start that teases the mass devastation due to come along later in the movie. The very basic premise is, as the title tells you, the moon changing orbit. Earth has about three weeks to figure out a solution. The only hope for humanity lies with Jocinda Fowler (a top bod at NASA, played by Halle Berry), Brian Harper (a disgraced ex-astronaut, played by Patrick Wilson), and KC Houseman (an amateur . . . skywatcher, a label I will use to avoid spoilers, played by John Bradley). Meanwhile, tsunamis start destroying major cities, gravity is changing, and people seem remarkably unconcerned about the threat of super-werewolves.

Co-written by Emmerich, Harald Kloser, and Spenser Cohen, here is a film that almost gets things so right, but ultimately ruins the third act with an overdose of CGI madness that makes it genuinely hard to see, or even know, what is going on. The fun ideas set up in the opening act become less fun as things met become more relentless. And there are only so many times you can look at a supermoon in the sky before it becomes worthy of little more than a shrug (once, one time is all you need).

Emmerich can direct this kind of stuff in his sleep, but he seems to get very easily distracted by the toys at his disposal. He is a man who doesn’t believe in “less is more”. More is more, and more on top of that, and even more. It’s tiring, especially by the time you get to a final act that manages to be overlong and surprisingly unsatisfying.

The cast do what is asked of them, and their performances are in line with the material. Berry comes out of it best, having to be the level-headed lead of the mission, and Wilson tries hard, despite being weighed down by the many clichés that he’s given (washed up, no money, a beer in the morning, a son he hasn’t always been as close to). Bradley is a mixture of comic relief and Mr. Exposition, he does well enough in his role, but his character is an odd one to turn into a hero, for obvious reasons. Charlie Plummer plays the son of Wilson’s character, Michael Peña is the stepfather you suspect may end up moonstruck to pave the way for a reconnection between Wilson and Carolina Bartczak (as his ex-wife), and Wenwen Yu is absolutely wasted in a role that feels horribly undefined.

If you need something that will provide spectacle without taxing your brain then this might just fit the bill. Personally, I would recommend (re)watching past glories, pick from either the fantastic The Day After Tomorrow or the silliness of 2012. Pick Independence Day (not exactly the same kind of movie, but the template is similar enough). This isn’t as good as any of those. But it still isn’t as bad as Geostorm.

5/10

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June-Claude Van Damme: Universal Soldier (1992)

I'm always surprised that Jean-Claude Van Damme didn't spend more time mixing his action with either sci-fi or horror because some of his better, or at least more interesting, films (Cyborg, Timecop, Replicant, and this one being the main titles I can think of). This is a sci-fi action movie with one or two moments that feel very much lifted from the horror genre, and it's superbly entertaining stuff.

JCVD and Dolph Lundgren are two soldiers who die in combat. Unfortunately, they each died at the hands of the other. Lundgren went crazy, see, and was killing innocent people, cutting off their ears, and using them to make a necklace. When the two are given a second life in the military UniSol project, all goes well for a while before memories start floating back to the surface and causing glitches. Van Damme goes on the run with a plucky reporter (Veronica Roberts, played by Ally Walker), and Lundgren starts killing anyone who gets in between him and the traitor he is determined to fatally punish. And he still has his thing about ears.

Before they became known as world-destroyers, director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin made some fantastic little b-movies that had the benefit of either a great pool of talent or a great blend of ideas, or both. Devlin wrote the screenplay here, he wasn't in full producer mode yet, and Emmerich was moving up from the likes of Ghost Chase and Moon 44, and this already shows some signs of how their future careers would pan out. You get that great central idea, you get some fantastic set-pieces, there's a supporting cast that features a number of familiar faces I will mention below, and they're not worried about squeezing everything into a tight 90 minutes (which works here, but doesn't necessarily work for all of their movies).

Van Damme gives one of his best performances here, mixing his favoured naivete with great fighting moves and some fleeting nudity to please a large portion of his fanbase. Having said that, Lundgren steals the show with his maniacal villain. His enjoyably over the top performance is what helps to keep this near the top of the JCVD pile. Walker also does very well, she's one of the quirkier female leads to work alongside our action star, and she has a nice balance of vulnerability, bravery, and comedic line delivery. Ralf Moeller is another UniSol, Ed O'Ross is the man in charge of the whole operation for a short while, Jerry Orbach is a doctor who helped create the soldiers, and Tommy 'Tiny' Lister is hard to miss in his small role (can you ever describe his screentime as a small role, considering the size of the guy?).

If you haven't seen Universal Soldier by now, and if you are a fan of action movies, then you owe it to yourself. It holds up almost as well today as it did back in the early '90s, remaining a top-tier outing for both Van Damme AND Lundgren.

8/10

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Stargate (1994)

My fellow Flickfeaster, Tue, recently rewatched Stargate and this reminded me that it was available for my viewing pleasure. Despite trying to make my way chronologically through the filmography of Kurt Russell I felt that I owed it to myself to watch this movie ASAP and see how it held up years after I first saw it.

Back in 1994 when Stargate was first released it was a surprise hit. Nobody could have envisioned that the film would spawn a number of popular TV shows and build further upon the mythologies mentioned. Yet here we are almost 20 years later and most people have at least heard of Stargate in some form or another.

Revisiting the movie is a strange, but rewarding, experience. I remember being underwhelmed when I first saw the film at the time of release. That's entirely my own fault. I was young and I saw a sci-fi/action movie that didn't have quite enough sci-fi spectacle and far from a satisfying amount of action. Watched again nowadays, however, I have to admire the focus on brains over brawn and the way in which the film comments on the downside of soldiers who blindly follow anyone giving the orders. A little knowledge goes a long way, as the film shows.

Directed by Roland Emmerich (who co-wrote the movie with Dean Devlin), this is an interesting precursor to the sci-fi and disaster movies that they would give audiences in their future careers. These guys have been responsible for a number of films that have thrown as much as possible onscreen (including Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow) while also continuing to use heroes who save the day with their smarts as opposed to just muscle and weapons.

The story goes as follows - a bunch of smart folks and army folks are gathered around a large stone thingummybob, that becomes known as the Stargate (of course), and don't know how to make it work until the supersmart Dr. Daniel Jackson (James Spader) deciphers the symbology and sets things in motion. A team, led by Col O'Neil (Kurt Russell), is then sent through the Stargate, ending up on a faraway planet not unlike the ancient Egypt of Earth. They eventually find signs of life there, people who are kept ignorant and ready to do the bidding of the might Ra (Jaye Davidson). Perhaps an uprising is needed.

Stargate has everything in place to provide a perfect slice of entertainment. It's relatively smart (certainly in the core idea and the way things are tied together), the script gets everything over easily without feeling too clumsy, the cast and the characters are slightly more complex than usual for this type of fare and the SFX work holds up reasonably well. In fact, the overall design of the movie is excellent.

Spader is an excellent lead here, his character is slightly eccentric, believable in his intelligence and more full of awe at the sights around him than fear. Kurt Russell, seen at the start of the movie in an unkempt and suicidal state, is superb as the main soldier given his mission for a very specific reason. Then we have the androgynous Jaye Davidson giving another superb turn as Ra. The supporting cast includes Alexis Cruz, John Diehl, Mili Avital, Djimon Hounsou (billed as just Djimon), Erick Avari and Viveca Lindfors with every person doing what's required of them. You may not know their names but their characters are made real for the duration of the film and that's what counts.

The music by David Arnold fits nicely with the visuals and nothing here lets the movie down. I do think that many aspects could have been improved slightly - some better editing/pacing with one or two more action beats would have been nice, for example - but Stargate remains a very enjoyable and interesting film for sci-fi fans.

7/10

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