Tag Archives: disaster

PLANE action movie mini-review

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Not too plane; this non-stop action-adventure has some flavor. Received my annual dose of mindless disaster movie fun in the Gerard Butler captained Plane. Schlocky movies work best when they know precisely what they are, and rock it. Which is precisely what we have here, a sufficiently entertaining over-the-top disaster/rescue movie that understood its flight plan, and stuck to it.

Pilot Brodie Torrance (Butler) saves passengers from a lightning strike by making a risky landing on a war-torn island — only to find that surviving the landing was just the beginning. When dangerous rebels take most of the passengers hostage, the only person Torrance can count on for help is Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter), an accused murderer who was being transported by the FBI.

From takeoff to landing, Plane is exactly what you need to reset your cinema palate from the awards contender-heavy autumn to prepping for what 2023 cinema has in store for us. Strap in for Gerard Butler and Mike Colter to take you on a white knuckle adventure filled with CG squibs and death defying action. To be honest, as moderately enjoyable as the movie was, with some Die Hard dialogue and one-liners thrown in there, it would have increased the entertainment value significantly. All you need to know is that the movie is fun! Also, never forget that it’s perfectly fine for a movie to be entertaining for an hour-and-a-half and that’s it. Not everything needs to be deep, inspirational, thoughtful, avant-garde, or provocative. It’s when movies that are clearly schlocky try to be something grander, that they crash and burn. Think of Plane as some good ol’ junkfood. Perfect for one of those weekends wherein the weather is cold, snowy, or rainy.

Ryan teaches Film Studies and Screenwriting at the University of Tampa and is a member of the Critics Association of Central Florida and Indie Critics of America. If you like this article, check out the others and FOLLOW this blog! Interested in Ryan making a guest appearance on your podcast or contributing to your website? Send him a DM on Twitter. If you’re ever in Tampa or Orlando, feel free to catch a movie with him.

Follow him on Twitter: RLTerry1 and LetterBoxd: RLTerry

MOONFALL disaster movie mini review

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Set your expectation meter for Emmerich, and you’ll find it sufficiently mindlessly entertaining; that is, until it takes a wackadoo alien turn that no suspension of disbelief, with a modicum of intelligence, can accept. It’s a patchwork of The Abyss, 2021, and Armageddon stitched together with sophomoric dialogue and slapdash plotting. When George Bailey told Mary that he would “throw a lasso around [the moon],” little did he know what that would mean for the earth. Roland Emmerich’s newest disaster porn movie is MOONFALL, starring Patrick Wilson, Halle Barry, and Game of Thrones‘ John Bradley. Emmerich’s offering is everything you typically expect from a disaster movie, and then some. And it’s the and then some that may lose your interest in anything that is going on. What works? The disaster porn and the chemistry between our three leads. What doesn’t? About everything else. But we don’t watch these melodramatic disaster movies for the story, plot, or characters; we watch them for the sheer ridiculousness of it all, and a chance to turn off our brains for a couple of hours. While you won’t care about any of the supporting characters, you will be interested in what fate has in store for our three leads. The press screening I attended was in IMAX, and a premium format is precisely how you should watch this movie. Do not wait to watch it on streaming (on which, it will likely soon be available), because most of the fun of this movie is the entertainment value of the larger than life disaster effects.

Oh, for my fellow Star Trek: the Next Generation fans, you’ll appreciate the Dyson Sphere reference.

Ryan teaches Film Studies and Digital Citizenship at the University of Tampa. If you like this article, check out the others and FOLLOW this blog! Interested in Ryan making a guest appearance on your podcast or contributing to your website? Send him a DM on Twitter or email him at RLTerry1@gmail.com! If you’re ever in Tampa or Orlando, feel free to catch a movie with him.

Follow him on Twitter: RLTerry1