Meteor: Sean Connery battles Karl Malden, The Russians, Politics, & A Five Mile Wide Rock

Cheesy effects and great actors. What a combo!

Sweet, mad as a hatter Sean Connery is the only reason I sat down to watch the classic train wreck that is Meteor. Already old enough to feel he needed to wear a toupee, but still exuding that Connery charisma, he holds his own against other stellar actors who got suckered into this thing.

Meteor was plagued by all sorts of problems, mostly due to the folks behind it having grandiose dreams of a blockbuster, but not enough resources or people skills to pull it all together. Sadly for them, this was a flop back in 1979, but for the Queen Of Cheese sitting down to watch it finally in 2009, I loved it.

Meteor has all the elements that make a great B-movie disaster/science fiction flick. We have astronauts all the way out in a spaceship near Jupiter and Saturn. We get to see them converse with space command back on Earth, with absolutely no delay. Spiffy technology since there's at least a few seconds delay just between Earth's orbit and the ground! The acting aboard the space craft as a deadly meteor heads their way is awesome, too, especially with the cheesy lighting effects to simulate combustion. We get more questionable science as a comet zips through an asteroid belt and drags some big rocks with it, and one at least five miles wide ends up on a direct course with Earth, along with some baby meteors just big enough to cause lots and lots of damage, including destroying a ski resort, causing a tidal wave, and other general mayhem.

Even more ludicrous is the science behind how the meteor is going to be stopped. The U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. both have secret, illegal space weapons with nuclear missiles, originally pointed at each other. The plan is to cut through some political b.s., provide some political posturing, but ultimately aim those missiles at the meteor instead, coordinate a launch that will divert the giant mass away from the planet, yet not just break it up into smaller, just as deadly pieces that will hit us anyway.

Really, it's not the bad science or laughable attempts at a political or military drama that will keep you watching this thing. It's the heavy, ominous music that sounds every time the meteor is seen rolling slowly, inexorably on it's path of doom. It's the long, drawn out sequences as the missiles are readied for launch, again with overbearing, giggle inducing music throbbing away, making sure we know this is a serious moment we should all take pride in as citizens of the Earth. Or something.

The acting of the main cast is definitely more than this film deserved. Sean Connery is the bitter scientist sucked back in to save the day. Karl Malden is his friend and liaison who does his best to stand between him and the paranoid military man played by Martin Landau. Brian Keith plays a very convincing native Russian scientist, delivering his lines in an accent that makes you forget all about that diabetes-inducing show, Family Affair. Natalie Wood is beautiful and smart as his English translator, and Sean Connery's tepid love interest. Henry Fonda takes a brief turn at being President of the United States, naturally being more noble of character than any real politician would be under those circumstances. The tons of secondary characters are all top notch, adding alternate touches of humor and melodrama. Even some of the silent, just in the background characters are a riot, including a duo of ladies in a caved-in subway scene who are doing their nails with looks of ultimate boredom as they await rescue.

There have been lots of disaster movies before Meteor and tons after, and arguably Meteor is not well done. However, there's a certain charm to it with it's over the top music, above average acting, and laughable premise of how the world would be saved from a crisis like this, not to mention the overtly phallic symbolism in all those nuclear rockets (which the movie lingers on for several minutes longer than necessary to simply say it's 'dramatic'). It's got the 70's hair, the 70's wardrobe, the 70's attitude about politics, the military, and science, and an awkward, unrequited romance between a young Russian translator and an 'old enough to be her grandfather' American scientist. It all adds up for a popcorn-munching couple of hours. In the end, if the looming meteor rolling towards you doesn't make you giggle a bit, you're not watching this for any of the right reasons!

Solar Attack: a.k.a. "The Sun is mad, and lashing out at the Earth"

The Earth has to deal with a serious case of sunburn, or something...

The world is in danger again. This time the plot focuses on global warming, and how much methane is in our atmosphere. I promptly got distracted by jokes about cow farts, and don't really know the ultimate outcome.

I remember Solar Attack decides that the way to save the world is to shoot nuclear missiles at the North Pole. Okaaay.... Sounds reasonable in a B-movie world, I guess. Then there's something about Russians versus Americans, and all that old Cold War conflict coming to the surface now that an American billionaire used Russian technology to launch his personal manned craft into low orbit, but it blew up, killing an American astronaut/pilot, and everyone wanted to blame the Russian technology, but it was really because of a huge "coronal mass ejection" that lit the methane in the atmosphere on fire and incinerated him, and then the billionaire knows what's really going on but no one will believe him now, but he has friends with Russian subs so he takes matters into his own hands to save the world... and stuff.

All I really remember is that after a slew of disaster movies in my recent viewing history, this one at least didn't have a precocious kid that needed a healthy dose of discipline and a lesson in manners. This one at least didn't have a contrived treacle-filled sub-plot about family sticking together through tragedy, or society trying to carry on in the aftermath of disaster. This at least just stuck to questionable science, showed plenty of pretty lights to make sure we know there's lots of "coronal mass ejections", and a requisite fist fight/action scene or two.

It just didn't keep my interest, however. I don't think it's all the movie's fault. I think it's because I've seen so many of this genre of film in the last few days, and just got burned out. I know I fell asleep a couple of times trying to watch it, but there wasn't anything going on that made me sit up and take notice. It's just another typical "we've got to save the world...again" movie.

I watched it mostly for Mark Dacascos since he's sunk to the level of Casper Van Dien and Lorenzo Lamas. Decent actor, has plenty of action star chops, but he's not so good that he can rise above mediocre roles like this. Sometimes he's funny, and then sometimes intentionally so. I also watched it for Louis Gossett Jr, an actor I feel deserves more respect than a movie like this. I didn't watch it for anything else except a morbid curiosity about how bad this would get.

To sum this up, I tried to watch yet another disaster movie, and got absolutely nothing out of it, including an even halfway decent review. I'll give it another try in a few months and see if my "disaster movie tolerance level" has subsided, but I don't have high hopes that anything will save this movie for me.

In the meantime, I'm eagerly awaiting my next movie from Netflix, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, and the following trailer will tell you why!

Asteroid: Too much melodrama, not enough asteroid action

It really should be plural, since there was more than one asteroid, but that name was already taken...

With the video game Asteroids already calling 'dibs' on that name, this made-for-tv movie from NBC decided to use it in the singular form, even though there are actually more than one asteroid threatening the planet. Maybe they were running on the theory that it was 'one asteroid at a time is threatening the planet, so technically we're correct, so nyah!'. Of course, it's not a good enough of a movie to do in-depth research to figure out, so we'll drop this whole part of the conversation.

The movie starts off mildly interesting with an astronomer watching a comet, and noticing that it's picked up some hitchhikers. She decides that it's noteworthy enough to call FEMA, and a very brief interlude later we have the evacuation of Kansas City, Missouri ordered. We have to deal with tons of side stories about different characters so we know there's a 'human face' to the coming disaster. The astronomer has a precocious kid, a too-good-to-be-true father who's also a great doctor, and a deceased husband to make sure there's opportunities for treacle. The FEMA agent is dedicated to his job to the point of risking his life at the drop of a hat. We have a firefighter with a wife and children, where the wife doesn't understand why he has to keep fighting fires when she needs him at home. There are other gripping stories peppered throughout, but it's mostly filler to make up for the lack of actual asteroid action, and the fact we were promised a science fiction-y sort of tale, but got an uninteresting human interest story instead.

It wouldn't have been so painful if it weren't by the numbers human beings triumphing over disaster and reaching out a helping hand to everyone around them. It's unrealistic, and knows it is, and practically screams "This is the way we should all be, don't ya think???". Beat me over the head too much with this type of message and I just want the whole world to explode so I don't have to watch good actors get dragged down by lazy, saccharin-laced writing.

The first half of the movie wasn't so bad. This was where they put the asteroid action, and we even get a nifty scene with Kansas City flooding. I liked it mostly because it wasn't slick CGI, but instead someone actually put the effort into making a scale model, and then flooding and filming that. The blue screens were hit and miss. Some were seamless, but the ones that weren't jump out at you waving their arms. The shots of asteroid chunks hitting are passable, but not done as well as the flood scene.

The second half of the movie is when it all goes belly up. The asteroids are done pummeling the Earth, so now it's time to watch everyone wander around aimlessly, shout at FEMA agents who are trying to help, or do dumb ass things like leave a town where you and your kids are safe in order to rush to where the big asteroid hit because you think your firefighter husband might be dead. I'm sorry (actually, I'm not), but if my spouse did that, the first thing I would do would be to scream myself hoarse at them for bringing my children into harm's way, especially because of such a stupid reason. What would she have done if her husband were really dead? Let her kids hug the corpse while they breathed the dust-filled air in a disaster zone? Of course we're also supposed to believe this resulted in happy endings all about when in real life I think it would have ended in divorce court.

Maybe I'm just cynical and unfeeling, but this painful endurance test would have been a heck of a lot better if it had just gone for a quick 'science fiction' resolution and left all the angst out. Send even more planes up to shoot the asteroids with even more lasers. Super heat the atmosphere by igniting the methane from all the cow farts so the asteroids dissolve on impact. I don't know. Just do something different than what I sat through for nearly four hours and am now kicking myself for doing.

If I can do any good in this world, let it be this. Let my warning to not waste your time on this 'epic' mini-series go out in the universe and save even one person from my experience.

Earthstorm: Featuring my least favorite Baldwin brother...

Stephen Baldwin says

I feel like a meanie-bo-beanie for being unable to restrain my laughter at the expense of Stephen Baldwin. He puts on a convincing show of wanting to be an actor, but he's pretty much the same character in a different hat in everything I see him in. And he picks roles where he gets to be the hero in a non-threatening kind of way, so he can feel assured that he's being all clean-cut and a good role model, or something. It ends up feeling very fake, but it does give me cheap laughs that I'm sure will be put in the column heading of 'Yep, she's going to hell' when it's time for me to face my maker.

That being said, Earthstorm gives me lots of 'going to hell in a hand basket' kind of giggles, and not all of them are because of poor Stephen Baldwin's attempts to have a career. (Seriously, Stephen, how much does it hurt your ego to know you're cast in a role only because you're the only Baldwin they can get, and they just want your last name?) The plot of Earthstorm is delightfully bad science, and involves the moon cracking apart after an asteroid hits it, and the United States determined to fix it, because gosh darn it, that's what the United States is supposed to do!

It turns out that our only hope is in the skills of a demolitions expert who knows how to bring down a building without scratching the surrounding area. Enter Mr. Baldwin and his team of a cute young girl who considers him a father figure, and a smart young man who seems to just be there as character ballast. Mr. Baldwin's character is obsessed with his work after losing his wife, so he's all tough and hiding his emotions, see. That's acting! Of course he presents the same expressions while talking about his late wife as he does when he's recruited to work for the government to save the world, and when he's informed he's being launched in a space shuttle in less than an hour.

But I digress. The speed with which the government moves makes sure you know that this is fiction, especially when they pull together a shuttle launch to the moon to include an untrained, not fit for space travel, guy to tag along. I know this is a disaster/world is gonna end movie, but everything about it is just so ludicrous I couldn't help but laugh all the way through. Watching the shuttle navigate through a storm of moon rock debris is just a riot, while at the same time pretty darn cool. Watching Mr. Baldwin tend to an injured astronaut on the flight, cobble together a replacement device to deliver the proper detonating force when they realize they brought the wrong thing (d'oh!) on the trip, and manage to be a reassuring presence to his cute young lady demolitions crew member almost simultaneously brings 'ludicrous' to a whole new level for me. It's so bad, it's awesome!

The ending is very trite 'edge of your seat' showmanship with little actual drama or tension. The very end is so cutesy as to be a replacement for syrup of Ipecac if one needs to induce vomiting. Overall I would watch this movie again, and if I found it cheap enough may even buy a copy. It's really that over-the-top cornball bad! And Stephen Baldwin, you may not be a cheesy actor by choice, but obviously the powers that be decided that this is meant to be your fate. I'm glad to see with your continued choices of roles that you have embraced this truth as much as I have. Cheese on, least favorite of all the Baldwins. Cheese on.

Meltdown: Days Of Destruction-a.k.a. "Lukewarm: Careers On The Back Burner"

The most lukewarm movie about heat you

Meltdown: Days Of Destruction is a disaster flick that follows pretty much every formula, including ones that make it bland, predictable, and completely forgettable. Poor Casper Van Dien is the lead in this endurance test, and while he's still got that certain something that makes me watch him, it's not enough to carry the heavy load of a plodding, hackneyed plot.

He plays a cop with an ex-girlfriend who didn't bother to tell him he was a father until his little girl (now eighteen) was five and already hating him. He also has a current girlfriend who's there just as a placeholder while the world falls apart and everyone realizes how important family is. The daughter naturally has an ex-con boyfriend a little too old for her, bringing down the ire of mom and dad, and gives us trite conflict that all resolves neatly.

We meet a scientist at the beginning who gives lots of dire warnings about how we really shouldn't be firing rockets at asteroids in space. Seems like solid advice, which comes to fruition when the asteroid breaks into three pieces, and the largest one skips across the Earth's atmosphere like a rock on a lake. The scientist turns out to be the brother of the new girlfriend, and so they all end up tagging along together.

There's a lot of useless setup to show what a good cop Van Dien's character is, which is all for naught as chaos ensues. Two days into the crisis the government lets the public in on the secret that yeah, the temperature is rising, and guess what? It's going to keep rising, and we're all gonna die. Let the riots and the looting begin!

For some reason everyone is trying to get to the airport, even though it's clear that vehicles aren't doing well in the heat, and are, well, blowing up. But these supposedly smart people are convinced an airplane landing at a specified time will get them all safely to the North Pole. Okaay... Why not? It's not like there's any logic to the rest of the movie.

Because they ran out of plot points in the middle of the movie, a dirty cop conveniently stumbles across the group, and kidnaps the brother, since the brother is the key to getting on the plane. We get gun battles, lots of scenes showing how cruel we are to each other in a crisis, unless you're the lead characters in a disaster movie, and road warrior style retro-fittings of refrigeration units on cars in less time that it took to get my oil changed last month. We also have to put up with lots of discussion about everyone's feelings, which made me feel slightly naseous.

To save you the terrible headache and craving for whiskey, I will now provide ending spoilers. You have been warned, and I emphasize I am doing this to help you, not hurt you.

At the end we get more gun battles, the North Pole-bound plane exploding in mid-air (which we don't get to see because they used up their budget on something, we just don't know what), and a completely ludicrous self-healing of the earth's orbit. It was mentioned earlier that the earth could just realign itself in a few days, and we'd know because it would start raining. So of course after the bad guy is dead, the dad and the new boyfriend have bonded over shooting people, the old girlfriend and the old boyfriend get back together leaving the new girlfriend to step aside all noble like because 'they belong together', and remaining bad guys have scampered off, what do you suppose happens now?

What's that sound? Oooh, oooh, oooh! It's rain! Rain! Our crops are saved! Although not really because they neatly skip over how much the world has gone to hell in a hand basket and the worst is probably still to come as everyone tries to rebuild and grab power and fight over the limited resources left behind.

But it's all okay. Something good does come out of it. The movie is over, and we never, ever have to watch it again.