As the bloodiest natural disaster of the aughts, the 2004 tsunami on the west coast of Asia needs a better movie than The Impossible. It had a much better one, in fact, in 2010’s Hereafter, of which Clint Eastwood’s expert rendering of the massacre was one of three sensitive stories connecting wayward souls. This time, there is no grace, no art, no intelligence, no cultural … [Read more...]
‘2012’ a wretched exercise in disaster porn
Director Roland Emmerich is expert at conditioning his audiences to delight in human suffering. A purveyor of the most soulless brand of disaster porn, Emmerich’s lowbrow forte is the special-effect-hemorrhaging eradication of masses of ant-sized people, their exterminators ranging from aliens (Independence Day) to Japanese monsters (Godzilla) to global warming (The Day After … [Read more...]