2012 (2009)

If you like disaster movies, you’ll probably love this eye-bursting ultimate expression of the genre from the friendly folks who menaced the world with Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow. Like all such flicks, the stories of myriad tragic deaths are virtually ignored in favor of showing how a few lucky people survive. The luckiest character in film history is Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a failed novelist working as a chauffeur for a Russian billionaire in Los Angeles. While camping with his son in Yellowstone, Cusack sees things and meets people (including a crazed Woody Harrelson) that give him the exact information he needs to stay an inch ahead of the certain death that seems to stalk him as the Earth's mantle suddenly starts to melt. If you hate contrivances and coincidences (unfortunately, staples of most blockbusters), you will groan about 2,012 times during this film, but you can still marvel at the spectacle of the Pacific engulfing the Hollywood sign, gawk at the profundity of the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy surfing squarely into the White House, and applaud the majesty of The Queen stoically boarding a survival ship to preserve her reign over an extinct Realm. And just in case you aren’t engaged enough by all this mayhem, a cute doggie is placed in peril, too. To the filmmakers' credit, they debunk the false prophecy that the world will end on December 21, 2012 by making the end happen weeks before that dreaded date. Trivial Tidbit: When the Earth's poles flip, the new South Pole is over Central Wisconsin.