Good Bad and Ugly

I want to tell you about the good, the bad and the ugly. No, not the Clint Eastwood western, but a trio of disaster movies I watched with my wife last Friday evening.

The good was San Andreas (2015) starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson in the lead. It's all about the San Andreas fault wrecking California. This is the best disaster movie I've ever seen, no contest. It absolutely has it's cheesy moments, no question about it, but it's very well made and the acting is good. It also contains some events I've never seen before, so that was cool. If you hate disaster films, you won't like it, but otherwise I really recommend it.

Now for the bad: San Andreas Quake (2015). If you're wondering about the similarity of the titles here, it's not a coincidence. It's Asylum Films doing their usual “homage” to a more popular movie. A more cynical person than myself would call it a ripoff, but since they almost always are so much worse than the originals, it's actually more of a spoof. Surprisingly this film, bad as it is, had a couple of moments that weren't all horrible, though most of it is really lousy. The saving grace here is that they tried. They really did. The end result may not be good, but the makers put some effort into it unlike:

The ugly, or Fire Twister (2015) starring Casper Van Dien of Starship Troopers fame. This movie is abysmal on every plane and in every way. Somehow it has a higher IMDB score than San Andreas Quake, which is unbelievable since these guys just phoned it in, and lost connection half way through. We have a semi sentient fire tornado that changes size all the time, chases people and apparently teleports at will. We have ex-CIA killers who can't hit anything they try shooting at. The only thing they effectively manage to destroy are a couple of mobile phones. Even if you like ultra cheesy movies, I'd say leave this one alone. It's terrible in every way and I could go on describing the horror, but I won't.

So in conclusion, watch San Andreas, consider giving San Andreas Quake a shot if you are in the mood for some terrible cheese, and burn Fire Twister on sight.

That's all folks, so until next time, have a disaster free week!