Category: Disaster film

San Francisco (1936)

Charismatic stars and a well-oiled Hollywood plot lead into an highly effective disaster movie

Director: W.S. Van Dyke

Cast: Clark Gable (“Blackie” Norton) Jeanette MacDonald (Mary Blake), Spencer Tracy (Father Tim Mullin), Jack Holt (Jack Burley), Jessie Ralph (Mrs Burley), Ted Healy (Mat), Shirley Ross (Trixie), Margaret Irving (Della Bailey), Harold Huber (Babe)

With San Francisco, Hollywood stumbled on a formula that was a sure-fire success: a romantic triangle comes to head in the face of a natural disaster with buildings tumbling. Love and disasters – who doesn’t love that? San Francisco is set in the build up to the 1906 earthquake that left over two thirds of the city in ruins and over 3,000 people dead. How’s that for focusing minds onto what really matters: who you really love and, of course, faith in a higher power.

“Blackie” Norton (Clark Gable) is a lovable rogue, a saloon owner on San Francisco’s rough-and-ready Barbary Coast. His love for a good time doesn’t stop him being best friends with Father Tim Mullin (Spencer Tracy), a man’s man whose heart is with the Church. Blackie hires knock-out soprano singer Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald) for his saloon, but can’t wrap his head around the fact that she’s meant for classier things (like San Francisco’s opera house) than a life singing for his rowdy crowds. Of course they fall in love. Blackie is holding Mary back (without fully realising it) and she finds a new patron (and suitor) in stuffed-shirt rich-man Jack Burley (Jack Holt). All these romantic problems are suddenly dwarfed by that earthquake.

Like all disaster films, San Francisco starts with a high-blown melodrama before becoming a special effects laden epic. Much of the first 90 minutes revolves around an engagingly played familiar pair of formulas. We have a story of two old rough-and-tumble childhood friends – inevitably one who chose a life of the cloth, the other of rowdy pleasure – whose friendship struggles under the weight of conflicting principles. And we also get a love triangle where a woman is torn between two suitors – one a rogueish chancer who doesn’t understand her dreams, the other a selfish dull rich guy who offers her those dreams at a price. This is classic Hollywood stuff.

To deliver it, three popular stars go through their paces to audience pleasing effect. Clark Gable brings his customary suave charm and naughty grin to make Blackie (who in other hands could come across as a myopic, selfish sleazeball) into someone fairly endearing. Of course, it’s helped that the plot makes clear Blackie may appear to be a boozy saloon owner, but actually he has a heart of pure gold: he buys an organ for the local church, gives money to orphans and is running for office to improve the city’s fire safety. He’s easily the most polite, decent and upstanding bad boy you’ll see – and he’s even completely faithful to the woman he loves. He may say God is for ‘suckers’, but it’s not going to be a long journey to reform him into someone worthy of a good woman.

And he’s also honest in his love for Jeanette MacDonald’s Mary, trying to give her what he thinks she wants. Blinded by his three ‘Chicken Ball’ trophies for ‘artistic achievement’, he genuinely can’t see the difference between Mary performing Faust and dressing her up in the shortest skirt imaginable (as he tells her, good legs sell) to sing for hundreds of drunken punters. Poor Mary feels obliged to give up her dream to return for this nonsense, until good old Father Tim points out Blackie is accidentally behaving like a cad. Enter Jack Burley as alternative: just to make sure we know it’s the wrong choice, he’s played as un-charismatically as possible by Jack Holt and uses his money to get everyone to follow his orders, exactly the sort of ‘Nob Hill’ crook Blackie rails against.

With Jeanette MacDonald – who is perhaps a little too coy and bashful for today’s taste – we also get an awful lot of singing, from opera to hymns to several renditions of ‘San Francisco’. This went down like a storm at the time, but is probably a bit too much to take now. MacDonald actually has the duller, less engaging role, constantly changing her mind between her various career and romantic options, although she does a nice line in awkward uncomfortableness when accommodating herself to Blackie’s wishes rather than her own (not least in her body language when dressed up in that slutty showgirl costume that Blackie thinks is a compliment).

Surprisingly Spencer Tracy then landed an Oscar nomination (the shortest ever leading performance nominated), but he nails the muscular Christianity of Tim, the boxing priest. Tracy’s main role is dispensing advice and guidance to Gable and MacDonald, full of shrewd wisdom mixed with firm stares of moral judgement. Tracy plays the role very lightly, never making Tim priggish even at his most righteous. A confrontation which sees a frustrated Gable smack him in the mouth, is a classic Tracy moment: a steely eyed glare dripping with disappointment, but still he refuses to react (the film throws in an early boxing scene between the two, where Tracy easily bests Gable, to confirm he certainly ain’t scared of his co-lead!)

The various smoothly handled formula leads perfectly into the earthquake. You can’t deny this is hugely impressive sequence. The scale, using super-imposition and enormous sets, is truly stunning: buildings topple in flames, fires rip through houses, crowds run in panic through debris-packed streets. A ballroom crumbles before our eyes: the roof cracking, the wall falling down (Gable is nearly crushed by a wall), a staircase balcony collapsing.

Clearly someone on the MGM lot spent a bit of time watching Battleship Potemkin. The first wave takes Soviet cinematic montage inspiration to the max. Tight reaction cuts to horrified faces are intermixed with tumbling walls and buildings. A statue is seen, seemingly starring down in horror, before a cut to it cracking and then a shot of the head roiling downwards on the floor. A carriage wheel spins in the streets in close-up as debris falls around it. This sequence feels visceral and intense, a real stand-out moment. A second wave picks up the baton with a street literally tearing itself in two, flames licking up from a burst gas main. Buildings are dynamited as fire breaks. And through the aftermath, Gable stumbles blooded and torn and genuinely looking lost and afraid, terrified that he has lost the woman he loves in the conflagration.

It brings a real energy and punch to an entertaining plot-boiler relying on the chemistry and charisma of its stars. San Francisco ends with a tribute to the endurance of the American Spirit (not to mention, of course, Gable completing his reformation into a man of God), as all races and creeds are bought together with the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ as they march towards a city reborn in superimposed imagery. With all that is it any wonder it was a box office smash?

28 Years Later (2025)

Belated sequel successfully compliments gore with thoughtfulness and surprising sensitivity

Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: Alfie Williams (Spike), Jodie Comer (Isla), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Jamie), Ralph Fiennes (Dr Kelson), Edvin Ryding (Erik), Chi Lewis-Parry (Samson), Christopher Fulford (Sam), Amy Cameron (Rose), Stella Gonet (Jenny), Jack O’Connell (Jimmy)

Following on not quite 28 years since the original (23 Years Later wouldn’t have had the same ring to it), 28 Years Later sees Danny Boyle return to the post-apocalyptic hell-scape that is a Britain over-run by rage-infected, super-fast, permanently-furious, adrenaline-filled humans (don’t call them zombies!). But those expecting a visceral, gut-punch of blood-soaked violence may be in for a surprise. 28 Years Later is a quieter, more thoughtful film, where the battlefield is for the sort of values to embrace in a world gone to hell.

After a viciously terrifying opening set on the day of the original outbreak – in which vicar’s son Jimmy flees, terrified, from his home after a gang of infected literally rip-apart or infect his family sand terrified telly-tubby-watching friends – we flash-forward decades. Britain is now quarantined and nature has reclaimed large chunks of the land. The few remaining survivors live in protected communities, like a group on Lindisfarne, protected by a causeway flooded at high tide. In the community, 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), is taken to the mainland by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to claim his first infected kill, while his confused and ill mother Isla (Jodie Comer) sits at home. But Spike will learn things about himself and his father on the mainland – enough for him to decide to risk taking his mother to meet with the mysterious Dr Kelson (a magnetically eccentric and softly-spoken Ralph Fiennes, in a performance that defies all expectations), who lives in isolation and may just know how to cure her.

Boyle’s film is kinetic and vicious at points, but also has a magnetic beauty as his camera flows across a world in some-ways unchanged from 2002 and in others utterly alien. Scavenged supplies are full of technology from the earlier noughties. The remains of things like Happy Eater restaurants are everywhere, and (proving not everything is bad) the Sycamore Gap tree remains standing. Buildings and villages are overgrown with plant-life and trees. Colossal herds of deer – enough to shake the earth – roam the countryside. In many ways the future is once more the green and pleasant land, with the Lindisfarne community sharing supplies and relearning skills like farming and archery (echoing the days of Henry V, with Boyle calling back to this with a series of shots from OIivier’s film, it’s a compulsory skill as the safest way to kill infected).

There is no chance of salvation or change here. That’s made very clear to us, with the Act Two arrival of Edvin Ryding’s scared Swedish soldier who tells us plainly that being stranded on the island is a death sentence. The world has left Britian behind and they way Erik describes it, all iPhones and Amazon deliveries, is as familiar to us as it is utterly incomprehensible to young Spike. This is not a film about fixing, averting or liberating the island. It’s a film about existing in a permanent state where mankind is no longer the apex predator.

Boyle’s film, with an excellent and thoughtful script by Alex Garland, is therefore all about defying expectation. Spike’s journey with his father is less about a terrifying chase from hordes of infected (though there is plenty of that), or him hardening himself in a brutal world. Instead, it’s about Spike’s nagging doubts about his father being confirmed. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a very good as a man who is brave and protective, but morally weak and desperate for approval. He’s the sort of man who harangues his son into executing restrained infected (even children) and takes every opportunity in between dutiful caring for his wife, to slip off to his girlfriend. A man who brags on their return as if his son was some sort of Hercules, when Spike knew he spent most of his time missing with his arrows and in a constant state of terror.

28 Years Later captures that sinking feeling children can have when they realise beyond doubt that their parents aren’t perfect. Alfie Williams is excellent as a caring boy, who doesn’t see sensitivity and humanity as weaknesses in the way you suspect his father does. Who sees through his father’s need to promote himself and is disgusted by it. And finds himself drawn closer to his sick mother (a carefully vulnerable performance from Jodie Comer) and finding he has more affinity for a world that still has a place in it for decency, where going back to help someone is not written off as foolishness.

It’s a film that raises fascinating questions about the infected themselves. While millions of infected passed away – their rage filled minds unable to carry out basic tasks like eating or drinking – the small percentage who survived, seemed to retain enough of themselves to maintain some sort of life. They move in herds – or, as some of the obese ground-crawlers do, in a bizarre family unit – and they even have leaders. ‘Alphas’ – those who the disease caused to grow to humongous proportions (in every organ) – direct their charges. And they have intelligence: our main Alpha ‘Samson’ enraged at the death of his comrades, holds back from an attack until the moment is right, mourns the loss of a female infected and maintains a relentless pursuit for reasons we’d recognise from thousands of movies.

28 Years Later uses this to force us to ask questions about ourselves and when human life ceases to matter. To Jamie, the infected have ceased to be human and killing them a duty. But Spike is forced to start to ask: what right do we have to decide there are less human than us, these people who were like us perhaps moments before? Beyond self-defence, is killing them as noble as all that? 28 Days and Weeks Later featured the instant slaughter of anyone with even a suspicion of infection. Years questions this like never before. Everyone on this island is a victim, and the infected deserve just as much memoralizing as victims as the uninfected.

It makes for a surprisingly quiet and meditative drama – even if it is punctuated by moments of shocking blood and gore, from heads and spinal cords being ripped out to a blood-spatted TellyTubbies screening in a vicarage – and one that demands you think almost more than it demands you be thrilled. With exceptional performances, especially from Alfie Williams, it’s a different but mature sequel that redefines aspects of the series. And, based on its jaw-droppingly bizarre ending, its sequel will only take this thinking further.

Juggernaut (1974)

Disaster film masquerading as a sort of state-of-the-nation political satire of 70s Britain

Director: Richard Lester

Cast: Richard Harris (Lt Com Anthony Fallon), Omar Sharif (Captain Alex Brunel), David Hemmings (Charlie Braddock), Anthony Hopkins (Supt John McLeod), Shirley Knight (Barbara Bannister), Ian Holm (Nicholas Porter), Clifton James (Corrigan), Roy Kinnear (Social Director Curtain), Caroline Mortimer (Susan McLeod), Mark Burns (Hollingsworth), John Stride (Hughes), Freddie Jones (Sidney Buckland), Julian Glover (Commander Marder), Cyril Cusack (O’Neil), Michael Hordern (Baker)

Based on an event that almost happened – a bomb threat against the QE2 that led to a bomb disposal team parachuting onto the ship at sea, only to discover it was a haux – Juggernaut was a popular 70s thriller that today looks surprisingly dry. The ship here is the SS Britannic, caught in stormy seas. A calm man calls the firm’s director (Ian Holm) and to state he’s placed multiple high explosives onboard. Bomb disposal expert Anthony Fallon (Richard Harris) and his crew fly to the ship, captained by Alex Brunel (Omar Sharif), to try and disarm the bombs while Superintendent John McLeod (Anthony Hopkins) – whose family, naturally, is onboard – races against time to find the bomber.

Juggernaut can feel as sluggish as the cruise liner it’s set on, with large chunks feeling like they are being played for surprisingly low stakes. The passengers feel strangely impassive about their imminent deaths. When a member of the bomb disposal crew drowns on arrival no one seems to care. There is a strangely sombre mood everywhere, a general air of misery that seems in place long before the bombs are even announced. The police investigation is carried out by a team that thinks its hopeless and the captain retreats to his cabin to fiddle with executive desk toys.

Then you realise. This isn’t The Towering Inferno full of can-do action. This is a British disaster film, which is really about the depressing, dreary, dead-end feeling a lot of people in Britain had about their country (seemingly permanently in the grip of strikes, economic depression and political crisis) throughout the 70s. Juggernaut reflects this completely, the ship a weird state-of-the-nation place where even a bomb threat can’t shake the general feeling of grim acceptance that life doesn’t get any better than this, everyone and everything in charge is useless, so best get used to it.

Richard Lester appropriately then directs events in a very distanced way – perhaps he also wanted to put behind him his Hellzapoppin’ style that bought him fame and success with the Beatles. Most of the moments of action and tension are presented in a deliberately prosaic style (the culmination of the film happens in a distant long-shot with the final dialogue mumbled quietly) with a journalistic lens (there are obvious debts to Fred Zinnemann’s The Day of the Jackal in its forensic laying out of procedure, but with that film’s pace or urgency carefully compromised, despite the clock ticking down). As part of this, the characters become devoid of exactly that – character.

Juggernaut actually is more about taking rebellious swings at British politics than solving a crisis. The British government – embodied by a smugly self-satisfied John Stride’s three-piece-suit apparatchik – makes it quite clear the 1,200 souls on the Britannic are expendable if the cost compromises the government. Juggernaut has more discussion of government subsidies than every other disaster film alive. The navy is run by fusty rules-bound types (interestingly, the private enterprise company is presented much more favourably – Holm, as its representative, is principled, decent and the only guy who really cares about the passengers). The bomber is a disillusioned former government worker, shafted on retirement by the cheapskate MOD (he even asks for an embarrassingly small amount of money). Fallon, in his cynical style, constantly bemoans how nothing in the country works and how useless his bosses are.

Juggernaut flings together an American style disaster and action plot, with a kitchen-sink drama about British society. While its interesting, personally I feel mashing these two genres together creates a slow, dry action-adventure and a shallow, social commentary. The tone seems to have confused some of the actors: Omar Sharif seems literally all-at-sea. A potential romance with Shirley Knight’s character deliberately goes nowhere – the film so takes the unconventional route with plots likes this that you state to wonder why on earth Knight even agreed to do it). Anthony Hopkins permanently feels like his attention is elsewhere. The smaller roles tend to come out best: Stride’s uncaring official, Roshan Seth as waiter who pretends to speak less English than he does (a neat social commentary on cultural expectations in the 70s), Michael Hordern in a scuzzy cameo as a bomb expert – all of them make more impact.

Lester does treat himself to several amusing background events. A nameless passenger who doesn’t let the ship’s imminent explosion get in the way of his exercise regime (he runs into almost every single main character at some point). Throw-away gags (very much in the style of The Three Musketeers) are common, such as market stall owner turning to place something on his stall, not noticing it’s been sent flying by a speeding police car or a flustered Holm feeding Rice Krispies to his kid then his dog. You could make the surrealist argument the real hero is Roy Kinnear’s entertainment officer, relentlessly continuing the good cheer. From umpiring half-hearted badminton matches in a squall to jollying the passengers through a fancy dress party that could also be their last evening on earth, Officer Curtain is determined ‘civilisation must be preserved’. Is there a better vision of what it felt like living in 70s Britain, clinging to the fading memory of the Blitz spirit?

Richard Harris – in a neat and no-doubt-boozy pairing with David Hemmings – is the only one of the leads seemingly allowed to inject life in this, or able to marry up the counter-culture harrumphing and tense wire-cutting action in a performance of amusing cynicism and cocky pride. Juggernaut – for all it boils down to our maverick hero having to choose between the red and blue wire – is actually fairly detailed (and praised by experts) on the process and teamwork of bomb disposal, even if Harris’ less-than-steady hands are not what I would want standing between me and death.

Away from him though Juggernaut is a curiously unhurried, slow and sometimes-less-than-gripping thriller that really shines a light on the slightly run-down, depressed and bewildering place Britain was to many people in the 70s. A land it seems where everything felt a bit hopeless and pointless and nothing seemed to work – except the bombs used to blow the place up. Expect that and you’ll find stuff to enjoy: expect The Towering Inferno and you are in for a disappointment.

Titanic (1997)

Cameron’s film is easy to knock, but is a triumph of romance, scale and real-life tragedy

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Jack Dawson), Kate Winslet (Rose DeWitt Bukater), Billy Zane (Cal Hockley), Frances Fisher (Ruth DeWitt Bukater), Kathy Bates (Molly Brown), Gloria Stuart (Old Rose), Bill Paxton (Brock Lovett), Suzy Amis (Lizzy Calvert), David Warner (Spicer Lovejoy), Danny Nucci (Fabrizio De Rossi), Victor Garber (Thomas Andrews), Bernard Hill (Captain Smith), Jonathan Hyde (J Bruce Ismay)

Get on any ship, and I guarantee you’ll see two people at the bow standing, one in front of the other, with their arms stretched out. If that doesn’t tell you something about the lasting impact of Titanic nothing will. Titanic was a sensation: top of the box office for months with the sort of repeat-viewing producers dream of; My Heart Will Go On went platinum and half the world was in love with Leonardo DiCaprio. It won 11 Oscars, made a billion dollars and is a film everyone knows even if (hard to believe) they ain’t seen it. James Cameron took an enormous punt on Titanic – Romeo and Juliet meets disaster movie on legendary ship – and it paid off in spades. Because, no matter your cynicism, you can’t deny he created a film millions of people invested in to an extraordinary scale, staged with the epic sweep, gorgeous detail and pounding disaster thrills that channelled David Lean, Luchino Visconti and Irwin Allen all at once.

Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) is destined for a life of dutiful, unimaginative marriage with spoilt millionaire Cal Hockley (Billy Zane) when she boards Titanic as a first-class passenger in Liverpool on 10 April 1912. Also boarding the ship (but in steerage) is drifter and would-be artist Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio). When he saves her from taking her own life by jumping from the ship, they form a bond which flourishes into a love that will change both their lives. But not as much as the iceberg the ship is ploughing relentlessly towards across the Atlantic.

It’s very easy to take a pop at Titanic. Its romance sometimes succumbs to Mills and Boon cliché and Cameron’s script has more than its fair share of clunky lines (it’s one of those rare Best Picture winners with no screenplay nomination). Plenty of people hated it in a fit of inverted snobbery as a whole generation took this modern romance to its heart. But Titanic reveals the truth of the magic of movies: it uses a traditional romance to build our emotional investment in the sinking and the lives of ordinary passengers, more successfully than any other Titanicfilm had before or since.

Cameron knew the mountain he had to overcome. After all, this was the most famous disaster since Pompeii: where was the tension? So, he opens with a modern-day setting, a treasure hunt among the real ship’s ruins, with the hilariously named Brock Lovett (a game Bill Paxton in a thankless role) searching for a priceless diamond, the Heart of the Ocean. His only link: the older Rose (a plucked-from-retirement performance of charm and hidden fire from 87-year-old Gloria Stuart), who becomes our window to the past. This allows the audience to be told the geekily excited “ain’t it cool” details of the sinking with the same sort of distance we’re used to thinking about it. The film then becomes a lesson in making us learn, like Brock, this wasn’t an anecdote but a horrific disaster that killed 1,500 real people (made worse because we know exactly what’s going to happen to this ship every step of the way). The MacGuffin is intended to look as trivial as it does by the film’s end.

His key tool for this was his Romeo and Juliet love story told, for all its airport-novel lack of originality, with a vibrant, earnest intensity. Helped by fantastic chemistry between two talented actors, you have to work hard not to care for Rose and Jack (no accident those initials). And through their eyes, the whole ship comes to life, Just as the special effects camera sweep through the ruins, turns it from a ghost shop into a living breathing place, where ordinary, real-life dramas play out in every corner. It’s a perfectly judged entry point for bringing history to compelling life, playing on emotions we’ve all felt: love and fear of death.

The film splits neatly into two acts. The first is the romance and, whatever you say, it’s a cinematic romance for the ages in its old-school sweep. As we watch them bounce round the ship, make each other laugh, dance and fall in love, the utter lack of cynicism is really winning. It’s so overwhelmingly genuine and heartfelt, you can’t help feeling it yourself. Both help each other find new depths: for Rose, the willingness to embrace her own choices, for Jack a maturity and responsibility he’s lacked. Bathed in golden cinematic light and backed by James Horner’s superb score, they become two people we really invest in being together. It’s so earnest and honest it even gets away with otherwise ridiculous scenes like “draw me like one of your French girls Jack”.

Both the leads carry-off it off superbly. No mean feat considering the challenge of making the film – not least being submerged for weeks in freezing cold water during night shoots. Kate Winslet makes Rose burst with life from the depths of fear and doubt, effortlessly carrying much of the movie. It’s often overlooked that Rose drives much of the pace of the romance, as well as clearly being the more sexually and romantically experienced partner. Leonardo DiCaprio – who found it a burden for years, as it turned him from proto-DeNiro to heartthrob pin-up – gives an infectious energy to Jack’s fortune-cookie mantras, while growing in authority as the film progresses towards disaster.

Cameron fills his golden-hued recreated Titanic with the sort of detail we’ve not seen since The Leopard. Sure, his view of the haves and have-nots is hardly subtle (from ruthlessly posh, heartless Brits to plucky, happy-go-lucky Irish working-class), but it makes it very easy to relate to the injustice, bullying and casual snobbery. In Rose’s fiancée Cal, Billy Zane unselfishly plays an utter rotter: a coward, a snob who mocks Picasso and has never heard of Freud, a bully who treats Rose like a pet dog and puts his own needs (and safety) first at every turn. Titanic might be a ship of goodies and baddies (most egregiously in its clumsy slandering of First Officer Murdoch, a clumsy mis-step Cameron later apologised to Murdoch’s family for), but it’s undeniably alive.

It’s that quality of life which makes the sinking of the ship so horrifyingly intense. Cameron’s extraordinary second-half of the film – effectively a souped-up, horrifying remake of A Night to Remember (including quoting shots from that film) – never lets us treat this like a historical curiosity. Instead, it hammers home in intense, tragic detail, the shocking loss of life and the desperate, futile attempts of so many people to survive. Told in close to real-time, superbly edited and practically dripping in freezing water, it’s terrifying in its unstoppable intensity. Suddenly the scale of this mighty ship shrinks into an ever smaller world of fear. Events advance with horrifying speed, as the ship slowly then terribly quickly, disappears, made worse by our knowing in advance every step.

Cameron breathes life into dozens of small tragedies that surround Titanic. The band that played on. The Irish mother who puts her children to bed, knowing they cannot escape. The wealthy elderly couple who lie together while the water washes up around them. The hysterical children separated from their weeping father who remains on board. The priest who spends his dying moments comforting his flock. The camera catches moments of terror in the eyes of people we have seen fleetingly in the film. Titanic drains any sense of perverse excitement at the disaster from you. By the time the survivors are pleading for rescue in the freezing Atlantic, you’ll be as shell-shocked and shaken as the witnesses in the lifeboats.

Watch Titanic with your cynicism parked, and it is an extraordinary piece of epic, romantic film-making. The cinematography, production design, costumes and editing are all perfect and James Horner’s inspiring score takes the film’s slightly mushy romance to a higher level. There are great performances from the likes of Kathy Bates and Victor Garber. And the second half grips like a horrific vice, never letting go. There’s a reason this film gripped the hearts of the whole world in 1997: it knows exactly what it is trying to do and excels at doing it. And never, in any film, has a historical disaster hit a viewer with as much punch as Titanic does.

Twisters (2024)

It won’t blow away, but theres something reassuringly old-fashioned about Twisters

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones (Kate Carter), Glen Powell (Tyler Owens), Anthony Ramos (Javi), Brandon Perea (Boone), Maura Tierney (Cathy Carter), Harry Hadden-Paton (Ben), Sasha Lane (Lily), Daryl McCormack (Jeb), Kiernan Shipka (Addy), Nik Dodani (Praveen), David Corenswet (Scott)

Twisters is perhaps one of the oddest pieces of IP rebooting (as we call it these days) in years: a sideways sequel to a 1996 box-office hit that virtually no one has thought about once since it was in the cinema thirty years ago. Twisters hardly brings in a new breath of air for 2024 compared to what worked at the box-office in 1996: in fact in many ways it’s as predictable as that film was. But yet it gets away with it, because there is an old-fashioned simplicity about it, a pure ‘just wanna entertain you’ vibe throughout, combined with the fact it creates a small group of likeable characters we care about, played by winning performers. Rather like Top Gun: Maverick it takes the ideas that people liked from the first film but delivers them far more effectively with much more charm.

Meteorologist and instinctive twister spotter Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is one of the few survivors of a failed scientific experiment to use a compound foam to reduce the power of tornados, with the deceased including her boyfriend Jeb (Daryl McCormack). Five years later she is called back into the field by her old colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos) who needs her help to test his new tornado radar-scanning technology company. In Oklahoma with Javi’s team, Kate faces her fears, finds that the impact of the storms is leaving a heavy burden on the community and falls into a flirtation with rock-and-roll meteorologist and YouTuber Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) whose cowboy exterior hides his heart of gold.

All this blows itself up into highly entertaining stuff, told with an old-fashioned sense of fun by Lee Isaac Chung. It’s actually a relief to find a modern blockbuster just focused on an entertaining, character-led piece of popcorn fun, rather than blowing pop-culture references, set-ups for future films and homages to hits from yesteryear, straight into your eyes. Twisters never reinvents any wheels at all, but it’s several degrees better than the forgotten film its riffing on and you’ll end up being surprisingly invested in it.

A big part of that is the charming and hugely likeable performances from its two leads. Edgar-Jones is very good at this sort of tough-edged exterior hiding inner-vulnerabilities (the team on Twisters must clearly have binged through Normal People during lockdown like the rest of us). Powell – who is having a moment and then-some – is also an absolute pro at cocksure types like this with unexpected layers. There is a sort of It Happened One Night opposites-attract screwball comedy between these two, who take each other at first for a naïve city-girl and a brainless cowboy only to find (would you believe it!) that first impressions are not always the right impressions.

However, this sort of rom-com, relationship-led stuff is exactly what makes Twisters entertaining and makes you care for it. After all, as Twister showed us, once you’ve seen wind related special effects pile on, you’ve kind of seen them all, it’s just a question of degree. Twisters front-and-centres not so much the gusty action, but the characters at the heart of it. Impressive as Chung’s staging of the blowing away of cars and the ripping up of buildings is, it works because we care about the people at cowering beneath the gale.

That’s because Twisters is told with an old-fashioned heart. There is nothing in it that really surprises you: Daryl McCormack’s prologue boyfriend has ‘doomed’ written all over him the moment he speaks and the only thing that you’ll really puzzle over is how long the post-prologue time-jump will be. Although it’s character and plot developments are well handled and endearingly delivered, there are all unsurprising. Would you believe Kate and Tyler find they have much in common? That Tyler’s blow-hard cowboy storm-chasers turn out to all have Hearts of Gold? That Javi’s loaded, Stetson-wearing tycoon sponsor is a ruthless modern-day Crassus, using the weather forecasts to snap up devastated land for tuppence? It’s just like we can be pretty certain that the twister-diluting experiment that Kate is working on in the film’s opening will come storming back in Act Five.

You could pretty much scribble down all possible plot developments over the course of the film after watching the first twenty minutes, but somehow it doesn’t really matter. Even though everything in this is completely and utterly safe and straight-forward, it’s told with such professionalism and such a sense of fun, it hardly matters. Everything in Twisters is focused on just entertaining you and not forcing you to worry or get stressed about things. Perhaps that’s why the film shies away from the questions asked around why the storms are getting worse (let’s not bring something really depressing like climate change into a breezy opposites-attract thrill ride). To balance that it does more-or-less avoid the storms making moral judgements on who gets killed off in its blustery assaults, unlike so many other disaster movies.

Twisters offers nothing really original or unique, but everything in it seems to come from the heart, like Chung wanted to make the sort of unfussy, well-meaning entertainment vehicles he watched in his youth, when it was all about sitting back, munching popcorn and leaving with a grin on your face that a film just entertained you. And at a time when the cinema seems to be full of easter-egg stuffed, self-satisfied, franchise-building bait there is an awful lot to be said for that.

A Night to Remember (1958)

Still one of the definitive Titanic movies, a compelling documentary-influenced look at the disaster

Director: Roy Ward Baker

Cast: Kenneth More (Charles Lightoller), Michael Goodliffe (Thomas Andrews), Laurence Naismith (Captain Edward Smith), Kenneth Griffith (Jack Phillips), David McCallum (Harold Bride), Tucker McGuire (Molly Brown), Frank Lawton (J Bruce Ismay), Richard Leech (William Murdoch), John Cairney (Murphy), John Merivale (Robbie Lucas), Honor Blackman (Liz Lucas), James Dyrenforth (Colonel Archibald Gracie IV), Anthony Bushell (Captain Arthur Rostron)

The sinking of the Titanic on 14 April 1912 is one of the most iconic events in twentieth century history. A Night to Remember brings the ship’s final hours to life in forensic detail, based on Walter Lord’s carefully researched book. Told with documentary-style distance, mixed with admiration for stiff-upper-lip British pluck, the film cemented many people’s perceptions of the night of the sinking and remains one of the best-known films about the disaster.

To tell the story, the production decided it needed a central figure and selected Second Officer Charles Lightoller, recruiting a British star to play the role. And no one did bluff, charismatic middle-class decency better than Kenneth More, born to play roles like this. Lightoller would be placed at the heart of the keep-calm-and-carry-on evacuation of the ship, More’s reassuring presence letting the audience know everyone involved was doing their best under impossible circumstances.

A Night to Remember remains very effective. It’s special effects and recreation of the ship are highly impressive. Even tilting sets were built to replicate the ships list, meaning drinks tilt in glasses and the careering skid of a dinner cart in the dining room was done for real. But where it really scores is its effective capturing of a very particular British mood: the determination to carry-on in terrible, appalling circumstances. While it’s easy to look at this unflappability in the face of disaster as almost comic, what’s so effective in A Night to Remember is that below the surface it’s clear almost every single character is screaming in terror.

You can see it in the shell-shocked disbelief of Captain Smith (a very effective Laurence Naismith, an excellent portrait of man in ultimate authority with no power at all to affect the situation) who stares with shame at the hundreds of people he can’t save. It’s in the guilt of Thomas Andrews (Michael Goodliffe, full of wry humour that slips away leaving him a shell) who blames himself and vainly tries to save others without creating panic. The grim-faced determination of radio operator Jack Phillips (a remarkably restrained Kenneth Griffith) who taps out the SOS until the bitter end. These feelings are carefully hidden and suppressed – for the good of morale – but the screaming panic and despair of the passengers in the final moments of the ship are simply giving voice to hidden feelings earlier.

What comes across very well in A Night to Remember is the utter powerlessness of the situation, matched with the bad luck and poor preparation that condemned more to death. It’s clear to everyone in authority, from the start, that there are insufficient lifeboats and quickly becomes apparent no help is not coming. While not raising enough urgency around the evacuation did contribute to deaths, it’s also clear to the officers it’s the only way they can hope to maintain any sense of order for as long as possible. If they fronted up on the real disaster heading their way, those guns they grab from the armoury would have all been exhausted keeping control.

A Night to Remember subtly suggests the fault is not personal, but somehow systemic: that Titanic is just the rash a whole host of societal problems have come out in. You can see the arrogance and unwillingness to question in the huffy pretension of the man on the train who pulls Lightoller up for mocking a soap advert that celebrates the ship. The behaviour of many of the passengers that safety precautions are at first an imposition, then that their class and position should automatically entitle them to particular treatment. The thudding refusal of many to accept the reality that the unsinkable ship can go down. The stunned look on people’s faces when the truth hits them and, as Lightoller says late in the film, it suddenly feels like they can never trust so blindly again.

Alongside this, it’s a tribute to bravery and self-sacrifice, often expressed with that classic British reserve and dry humour in the face of imminent disaster. From Lightoller and the sailors who fight, up the final moment, to assemble two collapsible boats even as the deck sinks under water around them to the engineering crew who willingly agree to stay below deck to keep the power on – a certain death sentence (“And it’s my birthday today and all” someone good naturedly moans, while the others gather a water-logged cup of tea). Perhaps uniquely for Titanic films, there isn’t even a villain: it’s one of the few adaptations that doesn’t show Ismay (a never-the-less pompous and weasily Frank Lawton) ordering the ship to go faster. In fact Ismay is shown energetically throwing himself into the evacuation (even told to stop trying to help by Lightoller) who steps into a boat (self-loathing covering his face) only when no one else tries to take one of the available seats.

Despite which, the film doesn’t avoid the fundamental errors. The treatment of the second and third-class passengers is shockingly abrupt and impatient, as if the saving of their lives is an inconvenience on a busy night – by the time they are allowed on deck, one plaintively moans that the lifeboats have already left. A group of bellboys are ordered to remain where they are (and instructed to not smoke!) condemning them. As the scale of the disaster grows, several passengers in under-filled boats complain that they are ‘already too full’ to go back for survivors. Even Lightoller’s decisions (interpreting ‘women and children first’ as ‘women and children only’, a decision that led to half-full boats sent away) are criticised.

A Night to Remember also sprinkles itself with several touching personal stories that carry real impact. The first-class passenger who asks Andrews for a no-bullshit appraisal, then quietly ensures his wife and sleeping children board a lifeboat. The Stausses who refused to separate and go down with the ship. A lost child saved from trampling by a steward, who promises him it will all be over soon as they sink. The young couple crushed by a falling funnel. The heartless card sharp who turns out to have a capacity for calm self-sacrifice.

And it could all have been avoided. More than any other film A Night to Remember focuses on the unquestioning crew of the Californian who watch the sinking from ten miles distance (including the never-ending launch of emergency rockets) but having no instructions or initiative don’t do a thing (they switch their radio off rather than try and find out more). The rigid mindset of the system right there: disasters just don’t happen to British ships (Britannia rules the waves after all) so no reason to rock the boat. They are contrasted with the professional urgency of the Carpethia (who did leave their radio on) who race against hope to help.

A Night to Remember captures this all extremely effectively, remaining a powerful and documentary look at the simple facts of the world’s second most iconic (after Pompeii) disaster. Full of some very fine performances and shot with a pacey assurance by Roy Ward Baker, it remains one of the definitive studies of the diaster.

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

Östlund’s super-rich satire lines up straight-forward targets to easily knock down

Director: Ruben Östlund

Cast: Harris Dickinson (Carl), Charlbi Dean (Yaya), Dolly de Leon (Abigail), Zlatko Burić (Dimitry), Iris Berben (Therese), Vicki Berlin (Paula), Henrik Dorsin (Jarmo), Woody Harrelson (Captain Thomas Smith), Alicia Eriksson (Alicia), Jean-Christophe Folly (Nelson), Amanda Walker (Clementine), Oliver Ford Davies (Winston), Sunnyi Melles (Vera)

In my review of The Square, Östlund’s previous Palme d’Or winner, I described its targets as “so obvious, the entire film might as well be footage of fish being shot in barrels”. If only I’d known: Triangle of Sadness, his satire on the super-rich, takes this to the Nth degree: it’s an entire film of Östlund spraying machine gun bullets into an aquarium of drugged fish. That’s not to say there ain’t good jokes in here and several of its sequences are cheeky, engaging and funny. It’s well-made and high quality: but it’s also obvious and is in a such a rush to make its oh-so-clever satirical points that it frequently blunts its own impact.

The film revolves around a luxury cruise liner. On board: the self-obsessed, selfish, greedy representatives of the world’s oligarchs. A Russian who repeatedly amuses himself by bragging that he sells “shit” (fertiliser), a Danish app builder who splashes his cash, a married couple of British arms-traders who jovially bemoan how UN restriction on landmines made for tough financial years… you get the idea. Also on board: Instagram influencer supermodel Yaya (Charlbi Dean) and her insecure male model boyfriend Carl (Harris Dickinson). All of them treat the staff like slaves. But when the ship sinks after a storm and an attack by Somali pirates, the surviving passengers find they entirely lack the skills needed to survive on an island, unlike toilet-cleaner Abigail (Dolly de Leon) who rockets from the bottom to the top of the social hierarchy.

Östlund’s film lays into the emptiness, greed and selfishness of the super-rich with glee, even if it hardly tells us anything we don’t already know. The rich are only interested in their own needs and can only see others as tools for their own pleasure: who knew? Wanting to expand his satirical targets even further, Östlund also takes a pop at the social media generation. Apparently, they are shallow and interested only in commodifying their own lives. Who knew? It’s the sort of stuff that makes for a punchy student revue, but you want something a little bit more challenging that moves above cheap shots from a Palme d’Or winner.

In many ways the film’s most interesting section (and most subtle ideas) take place before we even reach the boat. The film’s first chapter exclusively follows Carl and Yaya. Carl auditions for a modelling job where he’s treated like a piece of meat (hilariously they mutter about him needing botox). At a fashion show, staff pleasantly demand three people move out of their seats to make way for VIPS – who immediately ask for one more seat. Everyone shuffles along one (the camera following this with a neat tracking shot), leaving Carl seatless. This is a more subtle commentary on the self-obsessive focus of the super-rich than anything that follows.

Carl and Yaya are in an interesting position: they are both part of the beautiful super-rich and not (they don’t have any money). That early act opener balloons from a disagreement over who pays for a meal into Carl inarticulately arguing for sexual-equality and mutual partnerships that defy gender roles. It’s more interesting than almost anything that follows, because it’s multi-layered and raises genuine issues we all face (to varying degrees).

But the film abandons multi-layered the second it steps foot on the boat. There are fun set pieces. Carl unwittingly gets a pool attendant fired because he’s jealous of Yaya’s admiration for his topless body. The staff on the boat gee themselves up for days of enthusiastic deference with a tip-expectant-group-chant. A Russian lady demands the staff all swim in the sea so they can have as much fun as she is having (and to show how ‘normal’ she is). The film’s most infamous set-piece occurs as a storm coincides with the captain’s dinner (with the fish courses under-cooked due to the aforementioned obligatory staff swim) leading to nearly all the passengers projectile vomiting across the state room, then sliding around the floors of the swaying ship in their own filth.

Amusing as that can be in its guignol excess, it tells you how subtle the film is. The film is awash with obvious, lazy jokes – of course the polite arms trading couple are called Winston and Clementine! To hammer home the social issues the film whacks us over the head with, the Captain (an awkward performance from Woody Harrelson) an alcoholic Marxist spends the storm pissed in his cabin, reading Noam Chomsky and his own anti-capitalist ravings over the ship’s tannoy. This takes up a huge amount of screen-time and manages to be both obvious and not very funny.

The film enjoys taking these pot-shots so much, it ends up feeling rushed when we arrive at the island. If we had seen more of Dolly de Leon’s Abigail earlier in the film (in actuality, the film sidelines her as much as the characters do, barely allowing her more than a minute of screentime in its first hour), the shift in social hierarchy would have carried more impact. If Östlund’s film had more patience to show the passengers expectation that shipwrecked life would be identical to that on the boat, then Abigail taking charge after a few days that would have carried more impact. Instead, Abigail takes command from arrival, and then essentially behaves (in a way I’m not sure the film quite understands) with exactly the same self-entitled greed as the passengers did. She takes the best cabin, establishes a hierarchy, keeps most of the food and turns Carl into a sex toy.

Because we’ve not really seen Abigail earlier in the film, we don’t get a sense of her earlier mistreatment (really, most of the film would have been better told from her point-of-view) or join her satisfaction at the tables being turned. The film also exhausts its commentary on the super-rich leaving it with little to say about in its third act Lord of the Flies set-up. Instead, the film dawdles its way to a conclusion and cliffhanger ending that feels unearned.

It makes you regret the loss of its earlier more subtle commentary on Instagrammers Carl and Yaya (good performances from Harris Dickinson and the tragically late Charlbi Dean) who are drowning-not-waving in a world where they must commodify their bodies but have no power over them, struggling to work-out where they fit in a world. It throws this overboard to go for some (admittedly at times funny) gags about greed and very obvious social commentary. If it had committed to its social underclass uprising earlier – or carried on with its more subtle themes from the opening prologue – it would have been a better film. Instead it’s as subtle and probing as the faceful of vomit it serves up halfway through.

Thirteen Lives (2022)

A real life rescue attempt that defied belief is bought to the screen with gripping power and skill

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Viggo Mortensen (Richard Stanton), Colin Farrell (John Volanthen), Joel Edgerton (Dr Richard Harris), Tom Bateman (Chris Jewell), Pattarakorn Tangsupakul (Buahom), Sukollawat Kanarot (Saman Kunan), Teerapat Sajakul (Captain Anand), Sahajak Boonthanakit (Governor Narongsak Osatanakom), Vithaya Pansringarm (General Anupong Paochinda), Teeradon Supapunpinyo (Ekkaphon Chanthawong), Nophand Boonyai (Thanet Natisri), Paul Gleeson (Jason Mallinson)

In Summer 2008 one story gripped the world. In Thailand on June 23^rd, 12 members of a boys’ junior football team and their coach Ekkapon Chanthawong (Teeradon Supapunpinyo) were stranded underground in the Thum Luang caves by flooding. Rescue attempts would call for an international effort: Thai Navy Seals, American military, the local community and a team from the British Cave Rescue Council pooled talents and knowledge to help save the boys before they drowned, suffocated or starved to death.

It’s bought to the screen in Ron Howard’s gripping true-life disaster film, Thirteen Lives, a scrupulously respectful yet compelling dramatisation reminiscent of his Apollo 13: it wrings maximum tension from a story nearly all of us know the outcome of. Just like that film, it superbly explains the huge obstacles the rescuers faced – the near impossibility of navigating the flooded caves, the onslaught of water, the claustrophobic underwater conditions, the panic-inducing nightmare of swimming through kilometres of tight space for inexperienced divers…

Each of these is swiftly but carefully explained, before Howard focuses on the international effort resolving them. Onscreen graphics – in particular a map of the route through the cave complex, including distances and time spent travelling underwater (over four hours) – help us understand every inch of the journey and its implications. Carefully written scenes avoid the trap of exposition overload while making the dangers of an hours-long swim through dark, flooded tunnels clear.

Howard skilfully goes for show-not-tell where he can. The gallons and gallons of water running down the mountain and into the caves in the monsoon conditions are made abundantly clear. The first expedition of experienced cavers Richard Stanton (Viggo Mortensen) and John Volanthen (Colin Farrell) is staged in careful detail: the sharp currents, confined conditions (some parts of the cave are almost impassable – particularly when dragging two oxygen cylinders), the inability to see where you are going, the hours of oppressive time spent underwater.

In case we in are any doubt of how difficult any rescue will be, we see Stanton take a stranded rescue worker a short distance underwater: the man panics, nearly drowns them both and then nearly kills himself trying to surface. The eventual plan – to sedate each boy and have an experienced rescue diver carry him out – is as carefully explained as is its risk (if the dose is not exact, suffocation or panic induced drowning can and will occur). Howard’s careful, unflashy but captivating filming of the rescue attempt that follows is nail-biting and deeply moving.

Not least, because the film doesn’t shy away from the terrible risks. The accidental drowning of Navy Seal Saman Kunan – tragically volunteering from retirement – is sensitively, heartbreakingly handled. Every character is painfully aware of the dangers: Teeradon Supapunpinyo’s coach begs the families to forgive him for putting their children at risk (the children fall over themselves to praise him for saving their lives, in a heart-rending scene). Tom Bateman’s (fabulous) Chris Jewell breaks down in relief, guilt and a fear after he briefly panics during the rescue (no one blames him for a second – they all know each of them has been seconds away from the same countless times). This is a film that understands heroism is not square jawed machismo, but a grim awareness of the risks and a determination to not let that analysis stop you from helping those in need.

But Thirteen Lives is very pointedly not a white saviour story. It’s a story of teamwork and skills coming together: the British and Australian divers join a rescue effort being led by Thai Navy Seals, supported by local Thai officials. All of them are vitally assisted by a Thai water engineer who travels a huge distance to the site to help, and who brings vital knowledge, but can’t succeed without a local man who knows the terrain and a team of ordinary volunteers.

A triumphalist story would have opened and closed with one of our British heroes – the coolly professional ex-firefighter Stanton perhaps – and had them learning lessons and rising to the challenge. This film starts with the boys’ plans for a birthday party, and closes with the eventual much-delayed party. As soon as it’s revealed they are alive inside the cave complex, the film returns to them time and again and stresses their role was in many ways the hardest of all: trapped, lonely, terrified and slowly starving and suffocating, powerless to do anything. Howard’s film never forgets it is their story, or the courage they showed.

Equally, the film doesn’t forget the role of ordinary people. Thirteen Lives is full of people unquestioningly making sacrifices, putting themselves in danger or working at the limits of endurance to help. It’s not just the divers who carried the boys out who saved them. It’s the Thai farmers, living in poverty, who willingly agree that their farmlands (and crops) be destroyed by redirected water flow from the mountain to buy the boys time. The Thai volunteers battling for days with sandbags, pipes and eventually bamboo funnels against a never ending waterflow.

In this the British team are another group of (admittedly more prominent and vital) experts, volunteering their skills. Their presence is at first resented by the Thai Navy Seals – do they fear a white saviour story as well? – who feel a personal duty to rescue the children. Such clashes are not glossed over – but Howard’s film demonstrates the growing respect between them. The Seals are superb divers: but less experienced in the caving conditions the British team practically live in. The British are experts, but strangers in this land.

As those divers – this is surely the first Hollywood blockbuster to feature a hero from Coventry – Mortensen and Farrell are superbly committed and human. (There is a British delight to be had from their discussion of the merits of custard creams.) Mortensen is the hardened realist: he is sceptical that the impossible can be achieved and is firm that he won’t allow himself or others to undertake suicidal efforts. Farrell is great as his counterpart, determined to leave no one behind. Both actors spark wonderfully off each other – and their commitment, and that of the rest of the cast, to filming in these punishing conditions is stunning.

Thirteen Lives is a superb reconstruction of an incredible story, that wrings the maximum drama from an international sensation. It carefully celebrates internationalism and co-operation (its dialogue is largely not in English) and the struggles of the highly professional to find solutions to insurmountable problems. Channelling all Howard’s skills with biography, against-the-odds survival stories and ability to draw committed performances from actors, it’s his finest film in a decade and a worthy spiritual follow-up to Apollo 13.

Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)

It seemed like such a good idea at the time… Keanu Reeves wisely passed on Speed 2 – so should you

Director: Jan de Bont

Cast: Sandra Bullock (Annie Porter), Jason Patric (Alex Shaw), Willem Dafoe (John Geiger), Temuera Morrison (Officer Juliano), Glenn Plummer (Maurice), Brian McCardie (Merced), Christine Firkins (Drew), Mike Hagerty (Harvey), Colleen Camp (Debbie), Lois Chiles (Celeste), Royale Watkins (Dante)

In 1996 Keanu Reeves turned down a huge salary for Speed 2. Everyone in Hollywood thought he was mad. On June 13^th 1997, Speed 2 was released. On June 14^th everyone thought Keanu Reeves was a genius. It’s quite something when one of your best ever career moves was not doing a movie. But God almighty Keanu was right: time has not been kind to Speed 2 – and even when it was released it was hailed as one of the worst sequels ever made. It’s like de Bont and co sold their souls for Speed and in 1997 the Devil came to collect.

Keanu’s Jack Traven is clumsily replaced by Jason Patric’s Alex Shaw – although the dialogue has clearly only had the mildest tweak as Shaw has inherited Traven’s job, friends, personality and girlfriend Annie (Sandra Bullock – elevated to top billing but even more of a damsel-in-distress than in the original). Alex and Annie are wrestling with making a long-term commitment – see what I mean about this script only be mildly tweaked? – when they decide to take an all-or-nothing cruise. Shame the cruise liner is hijacked by deranged computer programmer turned bomber Geiger (Willem Dafoe). With the boat powering through the water towards a collision on shore, can Alex save the day?

You’ve probably noticed the disparity between the title Speed and the setting: a slow-moving cruise liner. At one point, Alex asks how long it would take an oil tanker to move out of a collision course with the liner – “At least half hour – that’s not enough time!” he’s told. The very fact that a debate whether 30 minutes will be enough time in a flipping film about speed shows how far this sequel has fallen. How did anyone not notice this?

Pace is missing from the whole thing. The script is truly dreadful. Paper-thin characters populate the cruise liner, none of whom make even the slightest impression. At one point a character breaks an arm and then immediately shrugs off the injury to steer the ship. The script is crammed with deeply, desperately unfunny “comedy” beats. Bullock’s character seems to have transformed into a ditzy rom-com wisecracker – with a “hilarious” running joke that she’s a terrible driver (geddit!??!) – and, instead of the charming pluck she showed in the first film, is now an irritating egotist. She still fares better than poor Patric, who completely lacks the movie star charisma of Reeves and utterly fails to find anything that doesn’t feel like a low-rent McClane rip-off in his character.

It’s like de Bont forgot everything he knew about directing in the three years between the two films. If anything, this feels like a well below average effort from a novice director. The humour is dialled up with feeble sight gags and the film takes a turgid 45 minutes to really get going (most of which is given over to derivative romantic will-they-commit banter between Patric and Bullock).

de Bont basically flunks everything. He fails the basic directing test of confined-spaces thrillers like this by never making the geography clear to the viewer. I challenge anyone to really understand how characters get from A to C on this boat. The long introductions are supposed to establish these basics (see Die Hard for a masterclass in this), but here you haven’t got a clue about what’s where or why some locations are more risky than others. There is a spectacular lack of tension about the whole thing – it’s not really clear what Dafeo’s lip-smacking, giggling, leech-using (yes seriously) villain actually wants or how his scheme works, and the momentum of the boat towards unspecified destruction is (a) hard to see on the open water with no fixed point to compare the speed with and (b) even when we get that, not exactly adrenalin fuelled anyway.

de Bont’s comedic approach to much of the material might have worked if he had any sense of wit or comic timing in his direction. Or if Patric had been more comfortable with the wit the part requires. Bullock instead feels like she has to joke for all three of them, to disastrous effect. There are a couple of semi-comic sidekicks sprinkled among the supporting players, but none of them raises so much as a grin. The film can’t resist implausible in-jokes, like bringing back Glenn Plummer’s luckless character to have his boat swiped by Alex (they even leave in a mildly altered “what are you doing here?” line, as if they didn’t realise until shooting it that Keanu wasn’t going to be there).

It ends with a loud crash of a boat into the shore which cost tens of millions of dollars (at the time one of the most costly stunts ever) but just looks like a fake boat ripping through a load of backlot buildings. It’s a big, loud, dull, slow ending to a film that looks like it was made by people who had no idea what they were doing but enough power to ignore anyone who might have been able to point out what they were doing wrong. Speed 2 remains the worst sequel ever. Reeves went off to make The Matrix. Who’s the idiot?

Airport (1970)

Disaster awaits in the sky in this ridiculous soap that is less exciting than Airplane!

Director: George Seaton

Cast: Burt Lancaster (Mel Bakersfied), Dean Martin (Captain Vernon Demerest), Jean Seberg (Tanya Livingston), Jacqueline Bisset (Gwen Meighen), George Kennedy (Joe Patroni), Helen Hayes (Ada Quonsett), Van Heflin (DO Guerrero), Maureen Stapleton (Inez Guerrero), Barry Nelson (Captain Anson Harris), Dana Wynter (Cindy Bakersfeld), Lloyd Nolan (Harry Standish), Barbara Hale (Sarah Demarest), Gary Collins (Cy Jordan)

A busy Chicago airport in the middle of a snowstorm. Workaholic Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) doesn’t have time to prop up his failing marriage to his humourless wife: he’s got to keep the flights moving, clear the runways and solve the problems other people can’t. He’s not dissimilar to his brother-in-law Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin), who hasn’t got time for his plain-Jane wife at home when he’s got a flight to Rome to run and a saintly pregnant air hostess girlfriend Gwen (Jacqueline Bisset), to deal with. Tensions will come to a head when depressed former construction worker Guerrero (Van Heflin) joins Demerest’s flight, planning to blow himself up so his wife can profit from his life insurance. Disaster awaits!

“A piece of junk”. That was Burt Lancaster’s pithy review of this box-office smash that was garlanded with no fewer than ten Oscar nominations. He’s pretty much spot on. Airport is a dreadful picture, a puffed-up, wooden soap opera that never takes flight, stapled together with a brief disaster plotline that only really kicks in during the final act of the film and is solved with relative ease. Other than that, it’s all hands to the pumps to coat the film in soapy suds, which can be stirred up by the strips of wooden dialogue that fall from the actors’ mouths.

Seaton adapted the script from a popular low-brow novel, though it feels as if precious little effort went into it. It’s corny, predictable dialogue does very little to freshen up the bog-standard domestic drama we’re watching in a novel setting. Both lead actors juggle loveless marriages with far prettier (and much younger) girlfriends. Those girlfriends – Jean Seberg for Burt and Jacqueline Bisset for Dean – play thankless roles, happily accepting of their place as no more than a potential bit-on-the-side and very respectful of the fact that the job damn it is the most important thing.

The film bends over backwards so that we find Burt and Dean admirable, despite the fact that objectively their behaviour is awful. Burt treats his home like a stopover, barely sees his kids and seems affronted that his wife objects he doesn’t attend her important charity functions and doesn’t want the cushy job he’s being offered by her father. Just in case we sympathise with her, she’s a cold, frigid, mean and demanding shrew who – just to put the tin lid on it – is carrying on behind Burt’s back. We, meanwhile, applaud Burt for showing restraint around the besotted Jean Seberg, merely kissing, hugging and chatting with her about how he’d love to but he can’t because of the kids at home damn it!

He looks like a prince though compared to Dean. Only in the 1970s surely would we be expected to find it admirable that a pregnant girlfriend happily takes all the blame – the contraceptive pills made her fat and she knows the deal – begs her boyfriend not to leave his wife and then urges him to not worry about her. Dean’s wife doesn’t even seem that bad, other than the fact she’s a mumsy type who can’t hold a candle to Bisset’s sensuality. That sensuality is overpowering for Dean, who at one point pleads with her to stay in their hotel room because the taxi “can wait another 15 minutes”. Like a gentleman his reaction to finding out Bisset is pregnant, is to offer to fly her to Norway for a classy abortion (rather than the backstreet offerings at home?).

This soapy nonsense, with its stink of Mad Men-ish sexual politics (where men are hard-working, hard-playing types, and women accept that when they age out, he has the right to look elsewhere) is counterbalanced by some laboriously-pleased-with-itself looks at airport operations. Baggage handling. Customer check-in. Customs control checks. Airport maintenance. All get trotted through with a curious eye by Seaton. Just enough to make parts of the film feel briefly like a dull fly-on-the-wall drama rather than a turgid soap.

Soap is where its heart is though. Helen Hayes won an Oscar for a crowd-pleasing turn (from which she wrings the maximum amount of charm) as a seemingly sweet old woman who is in fact an expert stowaway. Van Heflin and Maureen Stapleton play with maximum commitment (Stapleton in particular goes for it as if this was an O’Neil play rather than trash) a married couple whose finances are in the doldrums, leading the husband to take drastic steps.

It’s all marshalled together with a personality-free lack of pizzaz by Seaton, who simply points the camera and lets the actors go through their paces, with a few shots of humour here and there. There are some interesting split-screen effects, but that’s about the last touch of invention in the piece. It’s mostly played with po-faced seriousness – something that feels almost impossible to take seriously today, seeing as the structure, tone and airport observational style of the film was spoofed so successfully in Airplane (a much better film than this on every single level, from humour, to drama even to tension – how damning is that, that a pisstake is a more exciting disaster thriller?)

It smashed the box office in 1970 and got nominated for Best Picture. But its dryness, dullness and lack of pace mean it has hardly been watched since. Although it can claim to be the first all-star disaster movie, it’s not even fit to lace the flippers of The Poseidon Adventure, which far more successfully kickstarted the cliches that would become standard for the genre (and is a tonne more fun as well as being a disaster movie – this has a disaster epilogue at best). An overlong, soapy, dull mess.