Movie Monday: Top 5 Apocalyptic Movies

Okay…so here’s my dirty little secret…

I am a sucker for B/C-rated apocalyptic films, especially weather-related ones. Well, apocalyptic films in general, but especially the bad CGI ones with horrible acting and Mother Nature owning us royally. I don’t know what it is about them, they just touch my happy spot.

There has only been ONE A movie I’ve watched that was so bad I had to turn it off. ONE. It was something about an asteroid hurtling toward earth, and they couldn’t move the asteroid so they had to move the…earth. By setting off a bunch of nuclear bombs at one specific area, it would theoretically nudge the earth over just enough to be missed by the asteroid.

So, here we go.

1.) Day After Tomorrow (2004) – Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum lead the cast. Quaid is a paleoclimatologist who ends up (surprise surprise) playing Chicken Little to no one that will listen, and then being like “eh, screw y’all. I’ma go rescue my son.” The son, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, wouldn’t have been needing rescued if he hadn’t been making eyes at Emmy Rossum’s character even though he didn’t have the balls to do anything about it. They (and this is probably what endears the movie to me) get stuck in a very well-known library while TSHTF. There’s snow, snow, snow, more snow, more snow, wolves, uhm…yeah, more snow.

Basically its a really great movie (even if the CGI isn’t horrible)  to put on at night while you’re trying to fall asleep. Because, for a disaster movie, practically NOTHING loud happens in it.

2.) Category 6: Day of Destruction (2004) – A 4 part miniseries that was briefly on Netflix. I think all you really need to know about the awesomeness of this ‘movie’ is encapsulated in the following sentence: Randy Quaid played a character named Tornado Tommy. Randy Quaid. You know, the dude who gave the massive alien spaceship in Independence Day one hell of a bad prostate exam while yelling “I’m baaaaack!” Yeah, him. However, if you need a bit more: Massive “Category 6” storms. Heatwaves. Chicago in the Bullseye. Coverups, etc, etc. Horribly bad awesome CGI.

I mean, if you’re expecting a good movie with hard science to back it up… look elsewhere. If you’re wanting to snicker your way through a miniseries… well, here ya go.

3.) Category 7: The End of the World (2005) –  Well, folks, Tornado Tommy is back! And this time, he has a lovely co-star in Shannon Doherty. So Category 6 happened, and we didn’t learn from our lessons, and it was bing-bang-badda-boom Category 7 gon’ get yer arse.

“It’s tornadoes, hurricanes, electrical storms, and mass destruction as the effects of global warming brew into a super storm that threatens to rend the earth with an unprecedented power. Beautiful scientist Faith Clavell (Doherty), storm chaser Tommy Tornado, and Judith Carr, the head of FEMA, can stop the inevitable from happening-if they have the courage to venture into the roiling blackness of the storm itself. “Written by Echo Bridge Home Entertainment

4.) Cat. 8 (2013) – It doesn’t claim to be a successor to Category 6 or Category 7 (notice the huge name change to differentiate itself?) and it was several years later… but Cat. 8 falls into the same awesome vein of 6&7. Maybe even better… because.. some idiot shot a laser at the sun (we all knew how well THAT was going to work out…) and then folks…and then…the core of the earth stops spinning. Ahh, cruuuuddd.

5. ) Artic Blast (2010) –  Fans of Stargate SG-1, rejoice! Michael Shanks plays the hero in this, uh, titillating film about a blast of super-cold area from the mesosphere (evil mean sunflare started it all) that threatens to send the world into a New Ice Age.

So, there you are, folks. Have you seen any of these?