Guilty Pleasure No. 122: 2012 (dir. by Roland Emmerich)

Posted on July 6, 2026 by Arleigh

Roland Emmerich has a reputation that precedes him, and it’s not exactly a glowing one. When his name pops up as the director of a new blockbuster, it’s easy to let out an audible groan. He’s not quite in the same league as Uwe Boll for sheer cinematic atrocities, but he gives Michael Bay a serious run for his money in the “most frustratingly inconsistent big-budget filmmaker” category. This is a guy who once showed real promise with cult sci-fi action flicks like Universal Soldier and Stargate, then hit his commercial and creative peak with the wildly entertaining Independence Day. But ever since that 1996 high point, Emmerich’s films have followed a disappointing trajectory, each one seemingly more bloated and less satisfying than the last. Godzilla was a mess. The Day After Tomorrow had its moments but collapsed under its own ridiculousness. So when 2012 rolled around in late 2009, expectations were, to put it mildly, low. Yet somehow, against all odds, Emmerich delivered his most purely enjoyable disaster flick since Independence Day—a film so gleefully, unapologetically over-the-top that it transcends its many, many flaws.

2012 takes the idea of apocalyptic cinema and cranks it up to eleven, then snaps the dial off and sets it on fire. The premise is simple: the Mayan calendar wasn’t just a quirky ancient artifact—it was a warning. The world, as we know it, is set to end in the year 2012, thanks to a series of cataclysmic events triggered by solar neutrinos heating up the Earth’s core. The film spends its first act methodically setting up this global doomsday through two very different perspectives. On one side, you’ve got Dr. Adrian Helmsley, played with quiet intensity by Chiwetel Ejiofor, a scientist who discovers the impending disaster and tries to warn world leaders. On the other, there’s Charlie Frost, a conspiracy theorist radio host played by Woody Harrelson with the kind of manic energy that suggests he might actually believe the world is ending—or at least that his next cup of coffee is. These early scenes are a mix of pseudo-science and doomsday preaching, but they serve their purpose: by the time the first real disaster strikes, you’re primed and ready for the chaos.

And oh, what chaos it is. 2012 isn’t just a disaster movie—it’s a full-blown disaster epic, a nearly three-hour spectacle of global annihilation that feels like Emmerich finally decided to stop holding back. This is a film where entire continents are reshaped, where cities crumble into the sea, and where billions of people meet their end in the most visually inventive ways possible. The destruction of Los Angeles is a particular standout, a sequence so relentless and well-executed that it’s hard not to watch with your jaw hanging open. John Cusack plays Jackson Curtis, a limousine driver and failed novelist who finds himself in the middle of the carnage while trying to pick up his kids from their mother’s new boyfriend’s mansion. As the ground literally splits open beneath him, Curtis has to outdrive an earthquake that’s turning the San Andreas Fault into a real-life game of Frogger. Buildings collapse, freeways pancake, and the entire city slides into the Pacific Ocean in a scene that’s as thrilling as it is absurd. It’s the kind of moment that defines 2012: completely ridiculous, yet undeniably impressive in its sheer audacity.

But Los Angeles is just the appetizer. From there, the film takes us on a world tour of destruction. Yellowstone National Park erupts in a supervolcano explosion that turns the American Midwest into a smoldering wasteland. Mega-tsunamis, some as tall as the Himalayas, crash over entire landmasses, swallowing cities whole. Air Force One gets caught in a pyroclastic flow. And through it all, Cusack’s everyman hero is trying to get his family to safety, which in this case means boarding one of the massive arks built by the world’s governments to preserve humanity—or at least the rich and well-connected. The arks, a last-ditch effort to save a sliver of civilization, become the film’s most fascinating and frustrating element. On one hand, they’re a clever narrative device, forcing the characters into a high-stakes race against time. On the other, they highlight the film’s most glaring ethical and logical inconsistencies. Why are only certain people allowed on board? How did they build these things in secret? And why does Danny Glover’s President Wilson, a man who seems perpetually one step behind the crisis, get to be the moral compass of the story? The answers, of course, are “because the plot demands it” and “who cares, look at that explosion!”

The cast of 2012 is what you’d charitably call an ensemble, though “B-list all-stars” might be more accurate. Cusack is fine as the reluctant hero, though he’s never fully convincing as a man who can outsmart the apocalypse. Amanda Peet plays his ex-wife, Kate, a woman so perpetually exasperated by her former husband that you wonder why she ever married him in the first place. Their kids, played by Liam James and Morgan Lily, are mostly there to scream and look terrified, which they do adequately. Chiwetel Ejiofor brings a much-needed dose of gravitas as the scientist trying to sound the alarm, though even he can’t sell some of the film’s more outlandish scientific explanations. Danny Glover’s President Wilson is… well, he’s Danny Glover as the President, which is about as convincing as it sounds. And then there’s Woody Harrelson, who steals every scene he’s in as Charlie Frost, the conspiracy theorist who may or may not be onto something. Harrelson’s performance is so delightfully unhinged that it almost makes you wish the film had focused more on his character and less on Cusack’s family drama.

And that’s the thing about 2012: the human elements are almost uniformly the weakest part of the film. The dialogue is often clunky, the character arcs are predictable, and the emotional beats frequently fall flat. But none of that matters because Emmerich and his team have crafted a film that’s so visually stunning, so relentlessly paced, and so committed to its own absurdity that you can’t help but get swept up in it. This is a movie that understands exactly what it is: a guilty pleasure, a spectacle, a chance to watch the world end in the most extravagant ways possible. It doesn’t ask you to think too hard or invest too deeply in its characters. It just asks you to sit back, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the ride. And on that front, 2012 delivers in spades.

What’s most impressive about 2012 is the sheer scale of its ambition. This isn’t a film content with destroying a single city or even a single country. Emmerich wants to tear down the entire planet, and he does so with a level of detail and creativity that’s hard not to admire. The visual effects are top-notch, and the film’s destruction sequences are some of the most memorable in the disaster genre. The mega-tsunami that crashes over the Himalayas is a particular highlight, a moment so awe-inspiring in its scope that it’s easy to forget you’re watching a movie that’s otherwise filled with groan-worthy dialogue and one-dimensional characters. And then there’s the final act, where the arks become the stage for a last-ditch effort to save humanity. The sequences aboard the ark are a mix of tension and spectacle, as the characters navigate the chaos of a world literally coming apart at the seams.

Of course, 2012 isn’t without its share of head-scratching moments. The science is, to put it kindly, questionable. The idea that solar neutrinos could heat up the Earth’s core to the point of global destruction is pure fantasy, and the film’s explanation for how the arks were built and funded is so flimsy it might as well not exist. The pacing, too, can be uneven. The first act drags a bit as it sets up the various plot threads, and the final act feels rushed, as if Emmerich realized he had to wrap things up before the runtime hit the three-hour mark. And then there’s the film’s tone, which can be wildly inconsistent. One moment, you’re watching billions of people die in horrific ways; the next, you’re supposed to laugh at a joke from one of the side characters. It’s a balancing act that doesn’t always work, but somehow, it doesn’t derail the film either.

At its core, 2012 is a throwback to the disaster movies of the 1970s, films like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno that were more concerned with spectacle than substance. Those films were often criticized for their thin plots and wooden acting, but they endured because they delivered on the one thing that mattered: thrilling, large-scale destruction. 2012 is cut from the same cloth. It’s a film that knows its audience and knows exactly what they want. And what they want, it turns out, is to watch the world end in the most spectacular ways possible. In that sense, 2012 is a resounding success. It’s a bad movie, sure, but it’s a bad movie that’s an absolute blast to watch. It’s the kind of film you put on when you want to turn off your brain, crank up the volume, and lose yourself in the sheer, unadulterated joy of watching everything burn.

So, is 2012 a good film? By most traditional measures, no. The plot is silly, the characters are thin, and the dialogue is often laughable. But as a piece of pure, unfiltered disaster porn, it’s one of the best. Emmerich has always been a director who prioritizes spectacle over subtlety, and 2012 is the purest expression of that philosophy. It’s a film that doesn’t just meet expectations—it exceeds them, if only by virtue of its sheer, unrelenting ambition. And in a world where so many blockbusters feel like they’re playing it safe, there’s something refreshing about a movie that’s willing to go this big, this bold, and this unapologetically over-the-top. 2012 may not be high art, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Review: Independence Day (dir. by Roland Emmerich)

Posted on July 4, 2026 by Arleigh

“We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!” — President Whitmore

If you were around in the summer of 1996, you already know exactly where you were when you first saw the trailer for Independence Day. There was this massive shadow creeping over the moon, followed by that terrifying, booming sound effect, and then the White House just absolutely getting vaporized by a giant laser beam. It was a cultural moment. Director Roland Emmerich hadn’t really made his mark on Hollywood yet, but with this one movie, he essentially invented the modern summer blockbuster template of destroying famous global landmarks. Looking back at Independence Day almost three decades later, it is honestly wild how well this movie holds up, not as a piece of high art, but as a perfectly calibrated, ridiculously entertaining popcorn machine.

The premise is beautifully simple: massive alien spaceships suddenly appear over Earth’s major cities, they don’t come in peace, and humanity has to figure out how to fight back before we go the way of the dinosaurs. What makes the first act of the movie so effective is the slow build. Emmerich doesn’t just start with explosions; he lets the dread simmer. We see the massive ship hover over New York City, casting a shadow that blocks out the sun, and the sheer scale of the thing is awe-inspiring. Then, when the ships finally initiate their attack sequence, the payoff is spectacular. The practical effects combined with early CGI create these massive, rolling walls of fire that tear through iconic buildings. It is destructive poetry, and as a kid watching it, it was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. Even now, the destruction feels heavy and tactile in a way that modern, entirely computer-generated action sequences often don’t.

But a movie is only as good as its characters, and Independence Day has arguably one of the greatest ensemble casts of the 1990s. You have Will Smith playing Captain Steven Hiller, a fighter pilot who is desperately trying to get promoted while also dealing with his girlfriend, her son, and their dog. Smith is at the absolute peak of his early movie star charm here, delivering some of the most quotable one-liners in action movie history. Punching an alien in the face and yelling “Welcome to Earth!” is the kind of ridiculous machismo that only Smith could pull off without making you cringe. Then you have Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson, an MIT-educated cable repairman and environmentalist who figures out the alien signal is a countdown. Goldblum is basically doing his classic Goldblum thing—stuttering, eccentric, highly caffeinated—but it works perfectly because he serves as the perfect foil to Smith’s brute physicality.

The supporting cast is so deep that it feels like an Ocean’s Eleven of sci-fi tropes. Bill Pullman plays President Thomas J. Whitmore, and he gives the role an earnestness that elevates the material. He’s not an action hero; he’s a former fighter pilot who is clearly in over his head but steps up when his people need him most. You also have Judd Hirsch as Goldblum’s cranky, kvetching father, providing fantastic comic relief. Randy Quaid plays Russell Casse, a traumatized former pilot who was abducted by aliens years ago and is written off as a drunk by his small town, giving the movie an underdog storyline. And you can’t forget Brent Spiner as Dr. Okun, the wildly eccentric Area 51 scientist who gets way too excited about the alien biology. Every single one of these actors is fully committed to the bit, no matter how absurd the situation gets.

Now, if we are being completely honest, we have to talk about the plot, which is essentially held together with scotch tape and sheer willpower. The entire third act revolves around Goldblum and Smith flying a captured alien spacecraft up to the mothership to upload a computer virus using a 1996 Apple PowerBook. Yes, an Earth laptop somehow interfaces perfectly with an advanced extraterrestrial operating system, and yes, the aliens apparently don’t have McAfee, Norton or any kind of firewall to prevent a rudimentary human virus from crippling their entire defense grid. It is monumentally stupid if you think about it for even five seconds. But the secret to Independence Day is that it moves so fast and has so much momentum that you simply do not have time to care. The movie dares you to roll your eyes, but then it immediately distracts you with another massive explosion or a great quip from Will Smith, and you just go along for the ride.

The climax of the movie is a masterclass in cheesy, triumphant blockbuster filmmaking. Before the final aerial assault on the alien ships, President Whitmore gives a speech to the troops that has become completely ingrained in pop culture. “Today we celebrate our Independence Day!” he yells, and it is so incredibly corny, but I challenge you not to get at least a little bit pumped up when the music swells. The dogfight that follows is chaotic and thrilling, culminating in Randy Quaid’s character making the ultimate sacrifice by flying his jet directly into the alien weapon. It is exactly the kind of melodramatic, heroic moment that Emmerich excels at, and it hits the emotional beats it needs to hit, even if you saw it coming from a mile away.

You also have to appreciate how unapologetically intense the movie feels despite skating by with a PG-13 rating. People get vaporized, cities are leveled, and there is a genuine sense of apocalyptic dread that permeates the middle of the film. When the aliens first attack, Emmerich actually takes the time to show the aftermath, including cars blowing up in tunnels and people desperately trying to outrun the fireballs. Harvey Fierstein’s character dramatically dying while just sitting in his car, rolling up the window as if that’s going to stop a giant wall of alien fire, is a weirdly specific, dark comedy beat that you rarely see nowadays. The movie has real stakes, and you genuinely feel like humanity is on the brink of extinction.

It is crazy to think about the legacy of Independence Day and how it changed Hollywood. Before this, disaster movies were mostly relegated to B-movie status or Irwin Allen productions from the 1970s. Emmerich proved that you could blend disaster spectacle with sci-fi action and make an absolute fortune. This movie paved the way for Armageddon, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, and essentially the entire concept of the modern cinematic destruction porn genre. They did eventually make a sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, in 2016, but it completely missed the point of the original. It was too slick, too reliant on weightless CGI, and it lacked the ragtag, underdog charm that made the first one so special.

At the end of the day, Independence Day is just pure, unadulterated cinema comfort food. It does not demand anything from you as a viewer other than to sit back, suspend your disbelief, and enjoy the fireworks. It captures a very specific mid-90s vibe where movies could be big, dumb, loud, and incredibly fun without taking themselves too seriously. Roland Emmerich has directed a lot of movies since then where he has destroyed the world in various different ways, but he has never quite managed to capture the lightning in a bottle that he did here. Whenever the Fourth of July rolls around, or whenever you just need a reliable, edge-of-your-seat action movie to kill a couple of hours, Independence Day is always there, waiting to welcome you to Earth one more time.

Film Review: The Patriot (dir by Roland Emmerich)

Posted on July 4, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in the year 2000, The Patriot stars Mel Gibson (back before the arrests and scandals) as Benjamin Martin.

Benjamin Martin is a planter living in colonial-era South Carolina. When he was younger, he fought in the French/Indian War and was infamous for his ferocity as a combatant. However, in the year 1776, he is devoted to working the land and peacefully caring for his children. When, as a member of the South Carolina General Assembly, he is called upon to cast a vote for or against independence, he abstains. He’s no fan of the British but he’s also seen the harsh reality of war and doesn’t want his sons to have any part of it. However, the Assembly still votes for Independence and Martin’s oldest son, Gabriel (Heath Ledger), is among the first to enlist in the army.

Four years later, the British come to the Martin farm and demand that Benjamin had over a wounded Gabriel to them. When Benjamin resists, the arrogant Col. Tavington (Jason Isaacs) kills one of Benjamin’s other sons. After Tavington has Gabriel arrested, Benjamin and two of his remaining sons track down the British convoy transporting him. While his two youngest sons look on in horror, Benjamin savagely shoots and hacks to death all of the British soldiers and rescues Gabriel.

The Patriot may be a film about the American Revolution but it’s also definitely a Mel Gibson film. That means that Benjamin is man driven as much be revenge as by a desire to win his country’s independence. The British killed his son and burned down his house. Benjamin responds by grabbing his musket and packing his axe and soon, it’s more common than not to see Benjamin covered in blood. Benjamin attacks like a feral beast who is determined to dominate anyone and anything that would invade his territory. Two of his sons go from being honored to be asked to come along to being terrified at the sight of their father murdering soldier after soldier. It’s probably the most emotionally honest moment you’ll ever find in a Roland Emmerich film. Of course, whether Emmerich meant for it to be so is open to debate.

And indeed, it should be noted that The Patriot is very much a Roland Emmerich film. The running time is an epic 165 minutes. The battle scenes are long and loud and carefully choreographed. Gibson was still rugged and handsome when he played Benjamin Martin. (Both before his downfall and after, Gibson has always been best cast as people who just want to be left alone and who finally snap once it becomes obvious that’s not going to happen.) Heath Ledger almost appears beatific in his scenes. The film looks great without ever quite looking authentic. It’s like a fever dream that is less about how the American Revolution was actually fought and more about how we imagine it was fought.

And you know what?

The film works for me. This is one of Emmerich’s best films, which admittedly is not a high bar to clear. Yes, it’s a bit simplistic. Yes, it’s not historically accurate. Yes, all of the British are portrayed as being one-dimensional villains. Who cares? Whether he realizes it or not, Roland Emmerich has always been a B-movie maker at heart and The Patriot is effective in much the same way that many crude but shameless B-movies are. The mix of Mel Gibson’s madness, Heath Ledger’s beatific earnestness, and Jason Isaac’s arrogance transforms The Patriot into a triumph of the pulp imagination. Much like America itself, The Patriot is big and loud and it makes absolutely no apologies.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Flag Day Edition

Posted on June 14, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Happy Flag Day! It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Films For Flag Day

Patton (1970, dir by Franklin J. Schaffner)

Rocky IV (1985, dir by Sylvester Stallone)

The Patriot (2000, dir by Roland Emmerich)

Marty Supreme (2025, dir by Josh Safdie)

Film Review: Stargate (dir by Roland Emmerich)

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1994’s Stargate, James Spader plays Daniel Jackson, a nerdy Egyptologist who is recruited to decipher some hieroglyphics on some ancient stones that are being studied in a secret government facility in Colorado. Kurt Russell plays Colonel Jack O’Neill, a Special Operations officer who has been suicidal ever since the accidental death of his son. (He shot himself with Jack’s gun. Yikes!)

Together …. they solve crimes!

Well, no, not really. Instead, by deciphering the hieroglyphics, Daniel discovers how to open up a stargate, a wormhole that leads to another planet. Daniel, Jack, and a group of soldiers go through the stargate to see where it leads. Daniel is interested in discovering a new world and perhaps coming to understand how the pyramids were built. Jack just wants to get things over with. He’s been given a nuclear bomb and told to blow things up if the stargate leads to a hostile world. Jack doesn’t care if he lives or dies.

That changes once everyone finds themselves on a desert planet where the inhabitants are being exploited by Ra (Jaye Davidson)! It turns out that Ra actually does exist. Rather than being the God that the ancient Egyptians believed him to be, Ra is actually an alien who feeds off of the life forces of others. Every sacrifice that is performed for him allows Ra to extend his life. When Ra discovers that Daniel and Jack are on the planet and that Jack has a nuclear warhead with him, Ra takes that as a sign of aggression. He decides to make the warhead even more powerful and send it back through the stargate so that it can blow up the Earth. Normally, Jack wouldn’t care but fighting for the planet’s oppressed inhabitants has filled him with a renewed purpose.

Stargate is a film that I like almost despite myself. There’s a lot of reasons why Stargate would seem like the type of film that I would normally dislike. With the exception of a few films (Starcrash, the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy), I’m not normally a huge fan of science fiction. I’m not really a fan of anything that takes place in the desert because I know I would be miserable if I was there. (Redhead don’t tan, we burn.) I’m not really a fan of Roland Emmerich as a director. I’ll never forgive him for Anonymous, which I realize was made decades after Stargate but it was still annoying all the same.

And yet, I do like Stargate. I like that James Spader gets to play something other than a sinister creep for once. Nerdy Spader is a very appealing Spader. I like that Kurt Russell gives a fully committed performance, even if the film itself is somewhat silly. He doesn’t just go through the motions with his role, that I’m sure the temptation was there to do so. When Jack is depressed, you believe it. I like that Jaye Davidson gives an enjoyably bizarre performance as Ra. (Davidson, who was offered the role after The Crying Game and was shocked when the producers agreed to pay him a million dollars to play Ra, retired from acting after this film.) I liked the fact that, for once, the aliens truly seemed like aliens as opposed to coming across like stuffy Earthlings in a flying saucer. And I appreciated that, with this film, Emmerich actually seemed to be having fun with the story as opposed to just stolidly moving the action from one trailer-ready moment to another.

Stargate is silly. Wow, is it ever silly! But it’s silly in an enjoyable and entertaining way. James Spader, Kurt Russell, and Jaye Davidson make the film worth watching.

Horror Film Review: Godzilla (dir by Roland Emmerich)

Posted on October 15, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s a giant lizard rampaging through New York, the result of a mutation that happened as a result of being exposed to radiation. The military tries to stop the lizard but it turns out that stopping a giant lizard is not that easy. Scientists try to understand the lizard and how it came to be a destructive giant. The media breathlessly reports from the scene as two wisecracking cameramen do their best to record every second of the mayhem. The reporters call this lizard …. GODZILLA!

But is it Godzilla?

No, it’s not. Oh, it may be called Godzilla. And the movie itself may be called Godzilla. But the creature at the center of the 1998 American film Godzilla is definitely not Godzilla.

Godzilla was released with a great deal of fanfare in 1998, with commercials and toys and a lot of hype. Diddy, back when he was still calling himself Puff Daddy, recorded a song for the soundtrack and upset thousands of Led Zeppelin fans like my Dad who found themselves having to deal with kids who thought Kashmir was called Follow Me. (Diddy singing, “Follow me?” AGCK! How cringey is that!?) But, like many of the film of Roland Emmerich, it’s been almost totally forgotten in the years since.

And why not? It’s a forgettable film. It’s the epitome of an assembly-line action blockbuster, the type of thing that Roland Emmerich is known for. There’s comic relief, in the form of Hank Azaria. There’s a nerdy scientist hero in the form of Matthew Broderick. Broderick’s scientist has an ex-wife and yes, Godzilla’s invasion of New York gives them a chance to get back together. There’s a mysterious Frenchman who is played, somewhat inevitably, by Jean Reno. The Mayor of New York is a fat guy named Ebert (Michael Lerner) and he has an assistant named Gene (Lorry Goldman) and they get a lot of screentime because Emmerich wanted to make fun of two films critics who didn’t care much for his work. In fact, the Mayor and his assistant get so much screentime that it distracts from the rest of the film. Emmerich was directing a multi-million dollar reboot of a beloved franchise and he was more concerned with a petty feud.

He certainly wasn’t concerned with Godzilla. Personally, I like the giant lizard and one of the only effective moments in the film is when the lizard discovers that its children have been killed by the military. But that lizard is not Godzilla and the fact that Emmerich made a Godzilla film without Godzilla indicates that he didn’t really care about the monster or its fans. This film has no love for its source material and that’s a shame. The Godzilla films are fun! And the fact that the majority of the ones made up until the release of this film looked kind of cheap and featured a Godzilla who was obviously a man in a rubber suit only added to the fun. There’s not much fun to be found in this version of Godzilla. The movie looks great without ever making much of an impression.

And you know what? Having gotten this review out of the way, I’m ready to get back to reviewing the true Godzilla films. They may not have cost as much as Emmerich’s film but they’ve got heart.

Previous Godzilla Reviews:

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Kurt Russell Edition

Posted on March 17, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, we wish a happy 69th birthday to the patron saint of all thing that are cool about the movies, the one and only Kurt Russell!

And here to help us do that are:

4 Shots From 4 Films

Used Cars (1980, directed by Robert Zemeckis)

Escape From New York (1981, directed by John Carpenter)

Stargate (1994, directed by Roland Emmerich)

Death Proof (2007, directed by Quentin Tarantino)

Here’s The Trailer For Midway

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier today, the first trailer for Midway was released. Based on the famous World War II battle, Midway will be in theaters on November 8th. Judging from the trailer, it would appear that this adaptation has more in common with Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor than Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.

Of course, we shouldn’t be too surprised by that. Midway is the latest film from Roland Emmerich and that’ll probably mean a lot of action, not a lot of character development, and maybe a half-assed debate about whether or not Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. (I have to admit that I have never forgiven Emmerich for Anonymous, a film that not only promoted a silly conspiracy theory but which also accused Shakespeare of murdering Christopher Marlowe.) Of course, Midway could still be a good film, even if it is a typical Emmerich production. Sometimes, you just want to spend a few hours watching stuff blow up.

Midway does have a big cast: Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Luke Evans, Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, Mandy Moore, Dennis Quaid, Darren Criss and Woody Harrelson. I don’t know if I’d say that was an intriguing cast, if just because Woody Harrelson and Dennis Quaid appear to be legally required to appear in ensemble war films like this. Still, it’ll be interesting to see if Midway can do for Nick Jonas what Dunkirk did for Harry Styles.

Here’s the trailer:

Here’s The Trailer for Geostorm, which is apparently a real movie

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This trailer only needs a few more cats to look like a heavy-handed YouTube parody but apparently, Geostorm is a real movie that will be opening in October. It was directed by Dean Devlin, who is a frequent partner of Roland Emmerich’s.

(In other words, expect a subplot about how Shakespeare didn’t actually write Twelfth Night.)

Geostorm will open in October and I imagine it will make its SyFy debut the following June.

2016 In Review: Lisa Picks The 16 Worst Films of 2016!

Posted on January 9, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, here’s the time that I know we’ve all been waiting for! It’s time for me to reveal my picks for the 16 worst films of 2016!

(Why 2016? Because Lisa doesn’t do odd numbers!)

Now, I should make clear that these are my picks. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other writers here at Through The Shattered Lens. In fact, I know that a few of them most definitely do not!

What type of year was 2016? It was a pretty bad one. There weren’t many memorable films released but there was a lot of mediocrity and disappointment. Do you know why 2016 was so bad? I think it’s because, if you add up 2 plus 1 plus 6, you end up with 9, an odd number. For that same reason, 2017 is going to be much better. If you add up 2 plus 1 plus 7, you end up with 10, which is an even number that can be cleanly divided.

So fear not! 2017 is going to be a great year!

For now, however, here are my picks for the 16 worst films of 2016!

16. The Girl on the Train (dir by Tate Taylor)

15. The Fifth Wave (dir by J Blakeson)

14. Alice Through the Looking Glass (dir by James Bobin)

13. Jane Got A Gun (dir by Gavin O’Connor)

12. Mother’s Day (dir by Garry Marshall)

11. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (dir by Burr Steers)

10. The Sea of Trees (dir by Gus Van Sant)

9. Money Monster (dir by Jodie Foster)

8. Me Before You (dir by Thea Sharrock)

7. Independence Day: Resurgence (dir by Roland Emmerich)

6. Zoolander 2 (dir by Ben Stiller)

5. The Purge: Election Year (dir by James DeMonaco)

4. Paradox (dir by Michael Hurst)

3. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (dir by Zack Snyder)

2. Yoga Hosers (dir by Kevin Smith)

And finally, the worst film of 2016 … drum roll please ….

HARDCORE HENRY! (dir by Ilya Naishuller)

Seriously, Hardcore Henry is one of the few films that I have ever had to walk out on. I literally got physically ill while watching the film, largely due to the nonstop shaky cam. Seriously — when your film’s selling point is a technique that literally induces nausea, you’re going to have some problems. Now, before anyone leaves any angry comments, I did make it a point to go back and watch the rest of Hardcore Henry before making out this list. Not only does Hardcore Henry feature a nausea-inducing gimmick but it’s also a rather uninspired and dull action film.