10.5: Apocalypse (2006)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

I literally got nauseous trying to watch this film because of the constant zooming in and out. Had to turn it off.

I think the critics of this movie must have spent the entire time of over two hours watching this movie while playing with their mobile phones.This was a really very good film, exiting, passionate, excellent script and excellent special effects and the acting was also, great.My wife and I sat through the entire time on this film sitting virtually on the edge of our streets, because once this film gets going, it doesn't stop.The special effects are first class.From all the earthquake movies my wife have seen, this is up there with the very best, no doubt about it.So, you go ahead whomever is reading my review, rent or buy this film, and just expect to be entertained with an earthquake fiction movie, full of great performances, great action, great special effects, and a bit of emotion thrown in for good measure.10 out of 10 from my wife, and myself.

....is the last line that Dr Earl Hill/Frank Langella utters in this saga. And therein lies the best way to sum up this telemovie that is catastrophic, but for all the wrong reasons.Pity he didn't pay more attention to it when he read this thing & agreed to do it!Apparently, more lines are required to make this review valid! Really? What else is there to say? Not bad enough to be "so bad, it's good". Every clichéd piece of dialogue that has ever graced a bad telemovie, gathered together & trotted out one after the other. Is that enough now??!!!

I won't belabor the same things that others have said (eg, the headache-inducing zooming, the stiff dialog, the poor special effects, the grade 2 science, etc.) Instead, I want to talk about the unrealistic way most people reacted in this move. Remember 9/11? The country stood still for weeks watching the event on TV. But in this movie entire cities (or states?) are destroyed and most people in the rest of the country act oblivious, still going about their normal lives, like the people in Las Vegas. Or how about the earthquake expert who is on the phone with his daughter and says, "I think we're about to have a big earthquake here in Las Vegas in a few seconds" then calmly gets on an elevator(!) while the tremors are going on around him. (Wouldn't he pull the fire alarm? Or take the stairs? Apparently nobody thought of fire alarms in this movie. Or fires.) Or how about the helicopter pilot who is watching the water spill over the top of Hoover Dam and then decides to get a great picture by flying 50 feet below(!) the peak of the dam. (Even flying 200 feet above the dam would be fatal because when the dam breaks the air currents might sink the copter.) In summary, my main gripe is the totally unrealistic human reactions in this movie. Which, I guess, you could blame on the script writer.