Category Archives: Movies

The first of 1997’s volcano disaster movies (the second being Volcano) was arguably the better of the two, but both of them made for passable entertainment with some spectacular special effects to serve as icing on the stale cake. After all, Dante’s Peak doesn’t pretend to be anything more than an updated variation on a […]

Loud, violent, and proudly derivative, the post-apocalyptic action-thriller Doomsday is the latest from UK cult director Neil Marshall, who impressed horror fans with his previous efforts, Dog Soldiers and The Descent. Both pictures established Marshall as a director with a knack for reinventing well-worn genre pictures, but here, he seems more interested in stitching together […]

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis belongs to legend as much as to cinema. It’s a milestone of sci-fi and German expressionism. Yet the story makes minimal sense, and the “theme” belongs in a fortune cookie; to experience the film’s pagan power, you have to see the movie. But for decades we couldn’t, not really–not with so many […]

Nine small rag dolls, stitched together from burlap and clock workings and lenses, are all that stands in the way of the world being overtaken by the Machines. Actually, as 9 begins, it looks like the Machines have already had their way with Earth: this is one of those post-apocalyptic landscapes without life, hope, or […]

The Postman Falling from the Oscar-winning glory of Dances with Wolves to the opposite end of the critical and box-office scale, Kevin Costner must have been deeply humbled when this three-hour postapocalyptic tale–his sophomore effort as a director–was greeted with a critical thrashing and tepid audience response.

Truly ridiculous but somehow moving, this right-wing paranoid fantasy by John Milius (The Wind and the Lion) from 1984 concerns a Soviet takeover of the United States and a band of ragtag adolescents who metamorphose into freedom fighters.