The boat collector

DEAD CALM

1989

Directed by Phillip Noyce

Written by Terry Hayes (based on the novel by Charles Williams)

Spoilers: moderate

Ocean's Week: Screw Sinatra's hand

OCEAN'S THIRTEEN

2007

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien

Spoilers: moderate

Ocean's Week: It's not in my nature to be mysterious, but I can't talk about it, and I can't talk about why

OCEAN'S TWELVE

2004

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Written by George Nolfi

Spoilers: high

Ocean's Week: I have a question. Say we get into the cage, through the security doors there, and down the elevator we can't move, and past the guards with the guns, and into the vault we can't open...

OCEAN'S ELEVEN

2001

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Written by Ted Griffin

Spoilers: moderate

Ocean's Week: Fifty percent of something is better than one hundred percent of nothing

OCEAN'S 11

1960

Directed by Lewis Milestone

Written by George Clayton Johnson, Jack Golden Russell, Harry Brown, and Charles Lederer

Spoilers: moderate

Get your ass to Mars

MARS EXPRESS

2023 eux/2024 nous

Directed by Jérémie Périn

Written by Laurent Safarti and Jérémie Périn

Spoilers: moderate

What a disaster: We're an airplane, not a spaceship

STARFLIGHT ONE

aka Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land, and other titles

1983

Directed by Jerry Jameson

Written by Gene Warren, Peter R. Brooke, and Robert Malcolm Young

Spoilers: moderate

What a disaster: The Jerry Jameson TV roundup, part 2

In which we discuss Terror On the 40th Floor, The Deadly Tower, Superdome, and A Fire In the Sky, concluding our overview of the disaster telefilms Jerry Jameson directed in the 70s, which began here., where we dealt with Heatwave!, The Elevator, and Hurricane.

TERROR ON THE 40th FLOOR (1974)

When I set myself to the disaster telefilms of Jerry Jameson, I negligently failed to realize there were this many, so many that even just "the disaster telefilms of Jerry Jameson of 1974" became a fractal, neverending endeavor, so that I suppose that after doing three previously and only realizing I'd missed a fourth now, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if there were, somehow, four more still lurking out there to make me look foolish.  Fortunately, Terror On the 40th Floor doesn't change anything I said about The Elevator, which is, if anything, even more comfortably Jameson's best movie of an extremely busy 1974.  Similar in setting and somewhat in concept to The Elevator, what we've actually got here isn't that at all, and it's pretty shameless and more than a little suspect just from the outset: a skyscraper-on-fire TV disaster movie aired three months before The Towering Inferno came out in theaters in December.  If that sounds hackish and mercenary and even gauche to you (yet actually about two months too early to properly parasitize on the marketing and hype for The Towering Inferno, especially when Airport 1975 is presently playing on the big screen), you're pretty much right; this is quite low-effort material.  A notable distinction, anyway, is that The Towering Inferno is legitimately "about something"—mostly that fire is hot, sure—but also that skyscrapers and perhaps the system that produces them are an affront to morality, and the disaster there is triggered by greed and hubris and poor regulation; in Terror on the 40th Floor, the disaster is triggered by a drunken blue collar worker spilling fire all over everything.

It's a

TRAP

2024

Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Spoilers: moderate

Tornadon't

TWISTERS

2024

Directed by Lee Isaac Chung

Written by Joseph Kosinski and Mark L. Smith

Spoilers: moderate

A cabin in the woods

KNOCK AT THE CABIN

2023

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Written by Steve Desmond, Michael Sherman, and M. Night Shyamalan (based on the novel The Cabin At the End of the World by Paul G. Tremblay)

Spoilers: high

What a disaster: The Jerry Jameson TV roundup, part 1

In which we discuss Heatwave!, Hurricane, and The Elevator.

Our retrospective of the disaster cinema of the 1970s left its main phase back when we arrived at 1980, whereupon we treated with Irwin Allen's final effort, When Time Ran Out..., as well as, of course, the parody that was disaster cinema's own disaster, somewhat killing the genre off for years to come, Airplane!; after that, there was no real compulsion to be even more thorough than I already had been, as there would only be side-quests left anyway, and these were to be completed at leisure and for their own pleasure: Airplane II: The Sequel; the original disaster cinema parody, The Big Bus; and one day, I swear I'll get to the Japanese branch of the genre.  For now, there's this.  Obviously, nobody is forcing me, and I doubt it would have occurred to anybody to even ask me, to backtrack through the television movies of Jerry Jameson.  But I did anyway.  (Then again, there was that guy who kept at me, justifiably enough, for like two years to finally get to Raise the Titanic.)  Initially, this was supposed to be a stopgap for the lull in reviews this late July—minimalist reviews, cross-posted from Letterboxd and cleaned up.  Well, they're not going to be maximalist.  But the main thing is that later on I still want to tell you about Starflight One, a very cool TV disaster movie from all the way out in the wilderness of 1983, this being a telefilm directed by, you guessed, Jerry Jameson; and if that was to have a place here, then it only feels right to deal with all of his other disaster telefilms, of which there were at least three and perhaps six, depending on your definition of "disaster movie."  (ETA: oh, for hell's sake, there's seven.)  We'll be going broader with that definition than I actually believe is correct, but there are so many fuzzy lines in life, aren't there?  To be clear, this does not open the way towards a pathologically completionist "all disaster films of the 70s, even the TV movies" campaign, or at least I hope it doesn't.

Middle-aged by dawn

OLD

2021

Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan (based on the comic book Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters)

Spoilers: moderate

Daddy, daddy, where'd you get them stilts?

LONGLEGS

2024

Written and directed by Osgood Perkins

Spoilers: moderate to high

Some would say that the Earth is our moon

FLY ME TO THE MOON

2024

Directed by Greg Berlanti

Written by Bill Kirstein, Keenan Flynn, and Rose Gilroy

Spoilers: moderate (somewhat inapplicable, obviously)

Hollowest Earth

GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE

2024

Directed by Adam Wingard

Written by Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, Jeremy Slater, and Adam Wingard

Spoilers: moderate

American Gothic Week: In case any of you are afraid of being bored, I promise you it won't take long—it's only a small tribute

MADHOUSE

1974

Directed by Jim Davis

Written by Ken Levinson and Greg Morrison (based on the novel Devilday by Angus Hall)

Spoilers: highish

American Gothic Week: To take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them

THEATRE OF BLOOD

1973

Directed by Douglas Hickox

Written by Stanley Mann, John Kohn, and Anthony Greville-Bell

Spoilers: moderate

American Gothic Week: You cannot threaten the dead with death, my friend!

DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN

Directed by Robert Fuest

Written by Robert Blees and Robert Fuest

Spoilers: moderate

Where the wild ones are

THE BIKERIDERS

2024

Written and directed by Jeff Nichols (based on the book by Danny Lyon)

Spoilers: moderate

American Gothic Week: They have failed to procure the slightest clew

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE

1971

Directed by Gordon Hessler

Written by Christopher Wicking and Henry Slesar (based on the story "The Murders In the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe)

Spoilers: moderate

American Gothic Week: Balkanized

BLOOD BATH or PORTRAIT IN TERROR

aka Operation: Titian or Track of the Vampire

1966 or 1968

Directed by Rados Novakovic or Jack Hill or Stephanie Rothman

Written by Vlastimir Radovanovic or Jack Hill or Stephanie Rothman

Spoilers: moderate

American Gothic Week: The dreams were meanwhile getting to be atrocious

CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR

aka The Crimson Cult

1968

Directed by Vernon Sewell

Written by Jerry Sohl, Mervyn Haisman, and Henry Lincoln (based on "The Dreams In the Witch House" by H.P. Lovecraft)

Spoilers: moderate

Now that you are sole heir to our world, you will have every opportunity to achieve wickedness

GAS! -OR- IT BECAME NECESSARY TO DESTROY THE WORLD IN ORDER TO SAVE IT.

aka Gas-s-s-s

1970

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by George Armitage and Roger Corman

Spoilers: moderate

A lovely sort of death

THE TRIP

1967

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by Jack Nicholson and Charles B. Griffith

Spoilers: moderate, somewhat inapplicable

Some new nadir in sordid behavior

THE WILD ANGELS

1966

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by Charles B. Griffith and Peter Bogdanovich

Spoilers: moderate

If a young man came to me today with similar credentials there's no way I'd hire him

FIVE GUNS WEST

1955

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by R. Wright Campbell

Spoilers: moderate

Every other man took you at your own price—nothing!

SUSAN LENOX (HER FALL AND RISE)

1931

Directed by Robert Z. Leonard

Written by Leon Gordon, Zelda Sears, Edith Fitzgerald, and Wanda Tuchock, as well as, in an uncredited capacity, something approaching half the staff of MGM (based on the novel by David Graham Phillips)

Spoilers: moderate

Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z: Are you familiar with the concept of evolution?

KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

2024

Directed by Wes Ball

Written by Josh Friedman

Spoilers: moderate (verging on high, maybe?)

Ain't no grave can hold my body down

IN A VIOLENT NATURE

2024

Written and directed by Chris Nash

Spoilers: moderate

Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z: Apes together strong

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

Directed by Rupert Wyatt

Written by Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, and Mark Bomback

Spoilers: severe

Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z: Get your stinking hands off me, you damn dirty human

PLANET OF THE APES

2001

Directed by Tim Burton

Written by William Boyles Jr., Lawrence Konner, and Mark Rosenthal

Spoilers: high

Do you have it in you to make it epic?

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA

2024

Directed by George Miller

Written by Nico Lathouris and George Miller

Spoilers: moderate

Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z: Ape has killed ape

BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES

1973

Directed by J. Lee Thompson

Written by Paul Dehn, John William Corrington, and Joyce Hooper Corrington

Spoilers: high

Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z: Your servant? Your creature? Your animal?

CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

1972

Directed by J. Lee Thompson

Written by Paul Dehn

Spoilers: high (high also for Pierre Boulle's novel)

Can you get enough of me?

THE FALL GUY

2024

Directed by David Leitch

Written by Drew Pearce

Spoilers: moderate

Cardboard Science: Weird West

THE VALLEY OF GWANGI

1969

Directed by Jim O'Connolly

Written by Willis O'Brien, William Bast, and Julian More

THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN

1956

Directed by Ismael Rodriguez and Edward Nassour

Written by Willis O'Brien, Robert Hill, and Jack DeWitt

Spoilers: moderate

Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z: I loathe bananas

ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES

1971

Directed by Don Taylor

Written by Paul Dehn

Spoilers: high

Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z: Almighty bomb

BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES

1970

Directed by Ted Post

Written by Paul Dehn and Mort Abrahams

Spoilers: severe

Chimpan-A to chimpan-Z: You who are reading me now are a different breed, I hope a better one

PLANET OF THE APES

1968

Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner

Written by Rod Serling, Michael Wilson, and John T. Kelly (based on the novel by Pierre Boulle)

Spoilers: oh, c'mon

We'll be right back

LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL

2024

Written and directed by Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes

Spoilers: moderate

The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart!

THE PAJAMA GAME

1957

Directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen

Written by George Abbott, Richard Bissell, Richard Adler, and Jerry Ross (based on the novel 7 1/2 Cents by Richard Bissell)

Spoilers: moderate

This is the story of the hurricane

SNAKE EYES

1998

Directed by Brian De Palma

Written by David Koepp and Brian De Palma

Spoilers: high, sort of

What can I say? I'm a spy

TRUE LIES

1994

Written and directed by James Cameron (based on the screenplay La Totale by Claude Zini, Simon Michaёl, and Didier Kaminka)

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part LVI: I believe you left a wake-up call for the dawn of time?

DINOSAUR

2000

Directed by Ralph Zondag and Eric Leighton

Written by John Harrison, Robert Nelson Jacobs, Walon Green, et al

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part LV: Mars and beyond

MISSION TO MARS

2000

Directed by Brian De Palma

Written by Lowell Cannon, Jim Thomas, John Thomas, and Graham Yost

Spoilers: high

Walt Disney, part LIV: Pompous circumstance

FANTASIA 2000

2000

Directed by Don Hahn, Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, James Algar, Francis Glebas, Paul Brizzi, and Gaёtan Brizzi

Spoilers: moderate, I guess

Walt Disney, part LIII: Only thing about me is the way that I walk

TARZAN

1999

Directed by Kevin Lima and Chris Buck

Written by Tab Murphy, Bob Tzudiker, and Noni White, et al

Spoilers: high

Walt Disney, part LII: The buck bounds here and there, whilst the doe has narrow eyes, but when the two hares run side by side, how can you tell the female from the male?

MULAN

1998

Directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft

Written by Rita Hsaio, Chris Sanders, Philip LaZebnik, Raymond Singer, Eugenia Bostwick-Singer, and Robert D. San Souci

Spoilers: high

Walt Disney, part ΔΔΔΔΔI: You swoon, you sigh, why deny it, uh-oh

HERCULES

1997

Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker

Written by Donald McEnery, Bob Shaw, Irene Mecchi, Ron Clements, and John Musker, et al

Spoilers: severe