2012

Fulfills every expectation of a Roland Emmerich disaster flick: big, noisy, national monuments in the firing line, totally infused with Emmerich's talent for presenting spectacular CGI destruction as flatly as Powerpoint, and killing billions of people and failing to make you care for any of them. But if it's dumb spectacle you want, he's your man, there's a nice twist in the story, and I can't help but having a sneaking regard for a film whose hero is a failed SF writer.

Most interesting aspect of these films, for me, is the use of found media footage to titivate the mise en scene. We're already in the middle of an apocalypse, and like the frog in the pot on the stove, don't realise the water is growing fatally warm.

Bonus Awful Warning: the Stephen Somers remake of When Worlds Collide due next year: 'Alpha Centauri is on a collision course for Earth, and mass hysteria of biblical proportions breaks out in the streets...'