2012«««½ PG-13, 158m., 2009 Cast & Credits: John Cusack (Jackson Curtis), Amanda Peet (Kate Curtis), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Adrian Helmsley), Thandie Newton (Laura Wilson), Oliver Platt (Carl Anheuser), Thomas McCarthy (Gordon Silberman), Woody Harrelson (Charlie Frost), Danny Glover (President Thomas Wilson), Liam James (Noah Curtis), Morgan Lily (Lilly Curtis), Zlatko Buric (Yuri Karpov), Beatrice Rosen (Tamara). Screenplay by Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser. Directed by Roland Emmerich.
If The Towering Inferno, Irwin Allen’s 1974 all-star pyrotechnic three-hour epic about a raging fire in a 135 story high-rise was considered the big daddy of disaster movies of the 1970s, director Roland Emmerich’s 2012 is definitely the great grandfather of all doomsday flicks.
Everything that’s been made up to now that’s threatened humanity’s existence featuring giant meteors (Deep Impact and Armageddon both from 1998), aliens with bad attitudes (Independence Day & Mars Attacks both from 1996, War of the Worlds - 2005), nuclear war (The Day After - 1983, Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe both from 1964), and meteorological disturbances (The Day After Tomorrow - 2004) pale when compared to the cataclysms that happen in 2012.
Picture someone ordering a Big Mac, fries, and coke and instead of it being at a local McDonalds, you are asked by Emmerich at the theater if you would like your disaster movie “super-sized.” On that level, I can’t say he didn’t deliver.
What aliens did to the White House leaving the nation’s capitol in ruins in Emmerich’s Independence Day he returns in 2012 to finish the job sending a giant tidal wave along with the remains of the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier hurtling towards the Commander In Chief’s place of residence.
“I’m coming to join you, Dorothy,” President Wilson (Danny Glover) says watching the oncoming wave as he prepares to meet his late wife in the afterlife.Practically nothing is safe in 2012 from complete destruction. Viewers get a taste of what could happen to California when “The Big One” hits as the state sinks into the ocean. Yellowstone National Park erupts into an active volcano much to the joy of Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), a conspiracy/doomsday nut who delivers his end of the world sermons from his trailer home.
“It’s kind of galling when you realize that the nutbags with the cardboard signs were right all along,” says White House Chief of Staff Carl Anhauser (Oliver Platt).
Forget REM’s song “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.” 2012 is “Apocalypse Now!”
Like the disaster movie genre that began with a bang in the early 70s with such Oscar nominated all-star box office hits as Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), and Earthquake (1974), the same genre reinvented itself back in the mid-1990s that started with Twister (1996) thanks to the digital wonders filmmakers can conjure up now using computers.
The 70s catastrophic genre, however, went out with a whimper with the such laugh riots as the Airport sequels, The Hindenburg (1975), and courtesy of Michael Caine, The Swarm (1978) and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979). It’s one thing if the acting and dialogue are awful. They can be forgiven so long as filmmakers supply the audience with the visual effects. Fail on that promise and they’ve lost their audience.
By comparison, I wondered if the reinvented genre has not begun to run its course watching 2012. The story has practically the same opening setup as Deep Impact (1998) where instead of an astrophysicist learning a giant meteor is on its way to Earth, it’s a geologist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who learns in 2009 that radiation from the Sun is melting the planet’s core that will ultimately cause earthquakes and tidal waves and alerts the president, who in turn, alerts all the world leaders. To the viewer, thankfully all this happens within the first half hour which is how long it takes for three years to go by as the big screen becomes black and boasts the year “2012” in big giant numbers.Somewhere along the way, if audiences are not familiar with the film’s doomsday premise already, or have never heard of the internet much less the controversy surrounding the date Dec. 21, 2012, they’ll learn this has to do with the end of the Mayan calendar. Instead of a new era beginning, the film’s events are a disaster of epic proportions, much to the viewer’s delight thanks to those damn Mayans.
At its worst, 2012 wreaks of familiar soap opera plot clichés done in countless other recent disaster movies. The filmmakers would be neglecting their duties if they didn’t give us such type casted characters here that we’ve seen in other films like John Cusack as Jackson Curtis, a divorced father of two and skeptical science writer, not to mention chief rescuer who is estranged from his wife (Amanda Peet) and her new husband (Thomas McCarthy).
Apparently, there must be some unwritten law in Hollywood that says it’s perfectly ok to kill off as many characters as they want, so long as they spare the dog. You know no matter how perilous the situation is you can always count on “Man’s best friend” to either escape a fiery conflagration from an alien laser beam as in Independence Day or make its way on a metallic tightrope that connects to a giant ark carrying humanity’s survivors in 2012.
Perhaps I should quote the dog. After all, he or she is a character too in this film. “Arf, arf!”At the same time, you can almost tell which characters are likely to survive before the film is over. Hint: It usually always is the ones who think only of themselves.
I suspect all there is left for filmmakers to pursue if they are to make any more films where humanity bites the big one is if they do one about the Sun dying out that engulfs the entire solar system. For all I know that idea is probably already in the works and if not, I want story credit and a share of the profits when they do one. Then again, humanity did go up in flames in Knowing earlier this year.
At its best, what 2012 offers is the emotional element. Yes, I admit I shed a tear or two as “Nearer My God to Thee” was being played as the Titanic was sinking in James Cameron’s 1997 epic. I also shed a tear for the assortment of type casted characters waiting for death near the end of Deep Impact. As silly as it may be, seeing various characters in 2012 bidding farewell to loved ones and looking back regretting at how they didn’t make things right with family members in the past as the end drew near left me with the notion at how short life is and how one shouldn’t wait until the last minute to tie up loose ends. I swore I saw a guy sitting a seat away from me wiping his eyes, but I could be wrong.
If that’s the best piece of originality 2012 could come up with, then I got my money’s worth.
Such was the line from that famous Bob Dylan song. When it comes to the variety of options consumers now have to rent movies, the times really are a changin’, especially for Dallas-based Blockbuster Video.
If the video retailer’s announcement Sept. 15 that it may close as many as 960 of the more than 4300 stores Blockbuster operates in the country as a result of continuing low profits and the massive beating from competitive rivals Netflix, Inc. and Redbox is any indication, it looks like “the Buster” is well on its way to becoming a dinosaur.
Of course, it wasn’t always like this.
Working for “the Buster” from 1988 to 1996, I can’t tell you how many times I heard the comment that Blockbuster’s days of being one of the top video store chains, were numbered thanks to upcoming technology that would make renting movies easier.
What amazed me was every time someone made such a comment, the Blockbuster CEOs and executives managed to prove the naysayers wrong.
I equate working for Blockbuster those eight years to being a member of a successful, long-running sitcom. I looked at Blockbuster like working at a popular bar, like Cheers.
At the Town East Blvd. location, where I worked, which is no longer there, we had our regular customers who were the equivalent of Norm Peterson, Cliff Claven and Frasier Crane. I could almost set my watch as to when they’d show up. If they didn’t, you knew something was up. They’d gather at the front door at 9:45 a.m. every morning, especially Fridays and Saturdays. Their lives depended on them getting their hands on that copy of Die Hard or Bull Durham (both from 1988) or that only copy of Millennium (1989) the company stupidly ordered when demand for lousy box office flops was always high.
One customer named Howard McGinnis had rented over 3,000 movies. When he passed away in 1995, the priest at the funeral said the one question Howard will ask St. Peter as he passes through the pearly gates is, “Where is the nearest Blockbuster?”
When the video retailer was big on protecting children by shooting identity videos of them, one customer had one of the employees set up the camera to propose to his girlfriend.
She said yes.
In addition to the Norm Petersons, there was even a Carla Tortelli, behind the counter, who didn’t get off on being chained to the front register for eight hours checking out customers. She (it could have been a "he") referred to customers as cattle and it was her (or his) responsibility to get the herds out the door by any means necessary. Customer service was not high on her (or his) list.
When customers weren’t at the front door waiting to be let in, they would hang around at the drop boxes, whether they were inside or outside. Sometimes they’d bother other renters near the outside drop box, asking them what movies they were returning. Instead of serving drinks, the clerks were serving movies.
The last time I was inside a Blockbuster Video store was last summer and that was to return some late DVDs I had sitting in the car for a couple weeks. I didn’t pay the late fee either. Sure, there are several movies I’d like to see that I missed at the box office this year, such as Defiance, He’s Just Not That Into You, or Revolutionary Road.
What do I need Blockbuster for when I’ve got a wireless Internet/cable service provider and can just order the titles from them off their Video-On-Demand stations, record them on DVR and watch them later?
Or if I want, I can just drive to the local Walmart and get the titles from their Redbox machine. Walmart is now the new Blockbuster. With such websites as youtube, Hulu, and IMDB making older movies and television shows available for download off the net, all one needs is just to open up an account. Since they show R-rated movies at no cost, who needs Blockbuster?
I predict the day will come when that video store I referred to as the place “where everybody knows your name” will play out a scene similar to the one in the last episode of Cheers (1982-1993). Except in this case, the store will never reopen.
Instead of a patron at the front door wanting a drink, I can easily picture a customer after closing time wanting to check out a movie and like Ted Danson’s bar owner, Sam Malone, the video store manager will come out of his office for the very last time to say, “Sorry. We’re closed.”
Like most, if not all Americans, who whenever a national tragedy hits home looks to their president for consolation that things are under control and that we, as a country will prevail, I was actually proud of President Obama responding so quickly to reporters in the hours after the Nov. 5 massacre at Fort Hood that left 42 wounded, 12 servicemen and one civilian dead.
That pride lasted less than 24 hours.
Those who know me, and know how fed up I am with President Obama and his socialist agenda would probably call that a world record in terms of how long I spent not criticizing his actions and decisions.
That all ended around 10:30 a.m. Friday morning when a military serviceman called in to WBAP’s The Mark Davis Show to say how embarrassed he was at the President’s remarks Nov. 5. The serviceman said President Obama didn’t even address the shootings late Thursday afternoon until two minutes into his speech at The Tribal Nations Conference.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The moment I got home I immediately went to youtube.com to see if there was any videos of the entire press conference.
Watching the Thursday news conference, I couldn’t believe my ears. There was President Obama at 5:02 p.m. EST opening his comments from the transcript I got off a website saying, “Let me first of all just thank Ken and the entire Department of the Interior staff for organizing just an extraordinary conference. I want to thank my Cabinet members and senior administration officials who participated today.”
“I hear that Dr. Joe Medicine Crow was around, and so I want to give a shout-out to that Congressional Medal of Honor* winner,” President Obama said. “It's good to see you.”
This was followed by applause in the audience.
“My understanding is, is that you had an extremely productive conference. I want to thank all of you for coming and for your efforts, and I want to give you my solemn guarantee that this is not the end of a process but a beginning of a process, and that we are going to follow up.”
More applause.
“We are going to follow up. Every single member of my team understands that this is a top priority for us,” the President went on to say. “I want you to know that, as I said this morning, this is not something that we just give lip service to. And we are going to keep on working with you to make sure that the first Americans get the best possible chances in life in a way that's consistent with your extraordinary traditions and culture and values.”
It is after these comments that President Obama discussed the Fort Hood shootings. The serviceman who called in to The Mark Davis Show Friday said he almost expected the Obama to start giving high-fives.
If you check out any online news article written Nov. 5 about the shootings, you will find the President’s consoling remarks saying “These are men and women who have made the selfless and courageous decision to risk, and at times give, their lives to protect the rest of us on a daily basis. It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil."
Now if I were editor or a writer for that matter covering this story, I definitely would have put in there somewhere about how Obama didn’t respond immediately at the conference about Fort Hood until two minutes later. This is the equivalent of those mock news conferences I attended for the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association years back when I was serious about pursuing journalism. I signed up to cover a fake news conference and sometime during that conference, something unexpected would happen that would make everyone go cover that instead. Why? It’s because that was the more important story.
Fort Hood was the most important story here Mr. President!
I guess I should not be surprised about President Obama’s delayed response to the Fort Hood incident, nor am I the least bit surprised at how the Obama controlled state run media are not reporting much about it, if at all. They love this guy and to the drive-by’s, he can do no wrong.
If former President Bush had opened up with remarks about a Tribal Conference when this happened, the drive-by media, late night talk show hosts, and the entertainment industry would have had a field day. It would be the My Pet Goat incident on 9/11 all over again and all the untruths many people, the young in particular liberal high school and college students stupidly embracing Michael Moore’s 2004 laugh fest riot, Fahrenheit 9/11, which I call the funniest film since Airplane (1980).
I have heard a lot these past few months from the hard right who have said President Obama is a narcissist. Up until Nov. 5, I refused to believe it. Now I believe otherwise. Even if he isn’t a narcissist, he sure as Hell doesn’t know how to cover it up. Not when he fails to address a national tragedy immediately. Not when he is off in Denmark in hopes of landing Chicago the Olympics when the Derrion Albert incident was making national headlines at the end of September.
Not when he promised during his presidential campaign last year that the situation in Afghanistan would be top priority and he has yet to commit to anything. In the meantime, we have soldiers there in harm’s way, the death toll is rising and the American people, most of who now say they are not for the mission, have forgotten the entire reason we’re there to begin with started on Sept. 11, 2001. Somewhere in that region, Osama bin Laden is loving every minute of this.
If I were president and this had happened on my watch, I would have immediately been on the phone to the top military officials at Fort Hood to find out how soon I could visit the base, the troops, the wounded, and perhaps even the families of the dead on that Friday, maybe even Thursday night if possible. President Obama, however, was too busy to do so. He spent the weekend staying on top of Congress making sure his health care bill was passed and then went off to Camp David for some much needed rest and relaxation.
So who visited Fort Hood in the hours following the tragedy? President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush that’s who. But don’t worry America. President Obama did delay his trip two days in Japan so he can attend the funeral services for the Fort Hood victims Nov. 10 and as an added bonus ordered all American flags to half staff through Veteran’s Day, which is something any president would have done. There is nothing extraordinary about this unless you call him signing a $24 million bill to extend jobless benefits a good thing, which I DO NOT.
If this is how the President of the United States handles a national tragedy where over fifty people are killed or wounded, I can’t help but wonder what his response will be if terrorists hit the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington during a Sunday football game where hundreds are killed.
Will he start out his press conference on the golf course thanking his staff for the opportunity for some recreation that was ruined by another terrorist attack worse than 9/11?
Cast & Credits: Cameron Diaz (Norma Lewis), James Marsden (Arthur Lewis), Frank Langella (Arlington Steward), James Rebhorn (Norm Cahill), Holmes Osborne (Dick Burns), Sam Oz Stone (Walter Lewis), Gillian Jacobs (Dana), Celia Weston (Lana Burns), Deborah Rush (Clymene Steward). Written and directed by Richard Kelly based on the short story “Button, Button.”
The plot build-up of The Box is equivalent to the kind of mass media entertainment hype that gets people excited about an upcoming movie set to open months from now. I equate this kind of hype with the excitement Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) unleashed almost a year before it came out. Upon the film’s release, fan and critical reaction to the movie wasn’t exactly positive.
By comparison, The Box offers up lots of intriguing little subplots and twists that begin just before the opening credits as a memo from an unseen person is typed out. The memo explains that a missing person who left a military hospital has been reported leaving a mysterious box on the doorsteps of people’s homes.
I was hooked right from the beginning and couldn’t wait to see how The Box would end. In addition to the alarming memo, there is mention of National Security Agency experiments, NASA missions to Mars, notions about Heaven, Hell, and how life on Earth is humanity’s Purgatory, wind tunnels, lightning strikes, nosebleeds, and government agents in big black cars. At least I think they are government agents. This is the kind of film where just when you think you have the story all figured out, something else occurs and you are back to square one.
There are also dazed humans with accusingly blank stares who say nothing and reside at an out of the way hotel. When they aren't milling around a swimming pool at night that boasts a bright blue light, they are reading at the public library and get distracted the moment someone, who is not one of them like NASA engineer and husband Arthur Lewis (James Marsden), walks in. There the head librarian is some sort of angel, (again, I think) who tells Arthur to pick from three watery time portals. One could lead to damnation, the other leads to eternal bliss.
This film got so weird early on that when a rude student asks Arthur’s wife and private school teacher, Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz), during a class discussion if he could see her bare foot, I wondered if screenwriter/director Richard Kelly had the same kind of foot fetish that director Quentin Tarantino employs in just about every violent movie he makes.
That particular “foot scene” also has something to do with the story here as well, which I won’t explain here. All this will no doubt feel strange to the viewer but I am sure these plot elements are right at home in director Richard Kelly’s world.
Other than The Box, which is based on a short story by Richard Matheson called “Button, Button”, Kelly has also done Donnie Darko (2001) which has become a cult favorite featuring Jake Gyllenhaal as a troubled teenager whose visions of a macabre looking bunny rabbit make him commit murders. I did not know what to make of that film when I saw it and am scared to see the extended director’s cut out of fear my still not understanding it will only aggravate me further.
I am still debating on whether or not to see Kelly’s critically panned end of the world-apocalyptic mess of a supposed comedy called Southland Tales (2006) that featured The Rock’s Dwayne Johnson. I suppose I will see both one of these days when I have time trying to make sense of the film’s storylines.
At least with The Box, I was able to follow along in what at first seems like a simple story where a mysterious gentleman named Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) leaves a box on the Lewis’ doorsteps. Inside is just a finely, crafted wooden “box” with a big red button. Steward later arrives to make Arthur and Norma an offer too good to refuse. They can push the button and upon doing so, receive one million dollars cash, all in crisp $100 dollar bills. The gist is someone they don’t know will die.
If the Lewis’ had said no this film would have been over within thirty minutes, the normal length of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959-1964). I don’t think I need to tell you the decision Norma makes except to say I am reminded of that line a character says in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987) about money.
“The thing about money is it makes you do things you don’t want to do.”
What follows are all those little plot elements I mentioned. As I said, I was hooked, almost right from the beginning. In addition to that, I loved the setting which takes place in 1976. We see people sporting long sideburns and wearing multi-colored slacks to work. The Lewis’ kitchen is covered with laughably bad spotted circled wallpaper that would give anyone a headache just looking at it. This is like taking a trip down memory lane to the way things were back then where people watched Johnny Carson on late night. The shot of the couple’s living room television set shows just how much has changed in terms of technology where most everyone now has flat screen high definition TV sets. There is even a commercial of the World Trade Center as the Star Spangled Banner is playing.
What I didn’t care for is the way the film fell apart in the final third act. I am still not certain if what happened was really the climax. I thought everything I had seen was going to lead to some big unexpected surprise. My only response to all this near the end was “Huh?” “This is it?” The Box exhibits almost the same issue I had with Knowing released earlier this year, the end of the world mystery thriller that also boasted notions about religion, faith in God, and aliens. The religion and faith in God issues I could deal with. I am not going to buy what filmmakers are selling when they start bringing aliens into the mix as reasons for the upcoming apocalypse.
By comparison in The Box’s third act when the Lewis’ home is flooded with water, I have a hard time accepting that it was all the result of a time portal Arthur stepped in versus the fact maybe the upstairs toilet had a massive back up or someone left the bathroom water on for days. From that moment on, The Box lost me. Now I know how all those die-hard fans of the original Star Wars trilogy felt after sitting through The Phantom Menace and having all their hopes and dreams shattered that Episode I would be as good as Star Wars (1977) was.
I can’t argue, however, that for almost two hours, The Box did not take me on an enjoyable little roller coaster ride as it played with my mind and wondered where this film was going. I enjoyed the ride. I just didn’t care for the solution.
On that note, I better stop here and give The Box my recommended three star rating. If I irritate myself any further about how this film screwed me over in the end, I’ll award The Box the two and a half star rating it really deserves.
Practically nothing is safe in 2012 from complete destruction. Viewers get a taste of what could happen to California when “The Big One” hits as the state sinks into the ocean. Yellowstone National Park erupts into an active volcano much to the joy of Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), a conspiracy/doomsday nut who delivers his end of the world sermons from his trailer home.
Somewhere along the way, if audiences are not familiar with the film’s doomsday premise already, or have never heard of the internet much less the controversy surrounding the date Dec. 21, 2012, they’ll learn this has to do with the end of the Mayan calendar. Instead of a new era beginning, the film’s events are a disaster of epic proportions, much to the viewer’s delight thanks to those damn Mayans.
At the same time, you can almost tell which characters are likely to survive before the film is over. Hint: It usually always is the ones who think only of themselves.
