Magnitude 10,5 : L'Apocalypse

This certainly was better than I expected from Filmrise, and considering it is a TV miniseries, I expected it was designed to give excitement, danger and entertainment. And that is about all it was. It is full of cliches, as if they ran down a check list of what audiences might expect. They wrap it in pseudo-science terms, and naturally have a discredited scientist as the person who is the one who can explain what is happening. There currently are major film franchises that have action as far fetched as in this series, and they make a lot of money. Even when they were supposed to be witnessing actual locations, they failed. King's Peak in Utah is nothing like they pretended to show. And they laid on the drama by having some take risks that no sane person would ever do just to keep up the excitement for the audience. They threw in a lot of shouting and screaming in the third installment for good measure. In the trapped scene in the Las Vegas casino, when it was insisted they had to go up to get out, it reminded me of a certain movie about an overturned ocean liner.

This movie is not even remotely scientifically accurate. I'm pretty sure the writers haven't even passed basic high school earth science nor ever watched a PBS documentary on earthquakes to have gotten pretty much everything wrong. There are also many, many moments that were beyond even basic common sense, and I was yelling at my TV. The acting was pretty decent, and the actors were gorgeous and/or stately. Some of the lines were pure cheese, however. However, it's far from being the worse disaster movie or mini-series that I've ever seen, and it was a decent enough way to send a few hours on a rainy day. Don't expect to learn anything about a) science, b) surviving a disaster, or c) health care, and take it for what it is: escapist fantasy.

What is wrong with director John Lafia? Any chance of this film being any good was destroyed by the constant zoom in and zoom out. I have not seen many home movies filmed this bad. The constant zooming was so annoying that after an hour I had to turn it off. Of the hour I did watch the acting and dialog was unbearable. I really can't say if it got any better but the first hour was dreadful!

What is wrong with the directors in Hollywood now days? Why do they insist that all action scenes need to be filmed with a shaking camera or zooming all over the place (like MI:3)?

I liked the old days when good acting and action carried the scene not the blurred shaky camera work of today!

Gets a couple of points for the laugh-at-it value.

It picks up a few minutes after the end of the first installment. A major earthquake has just annihilated part of southern California, clear out to Barstow, with millions of casualties. We see some guys in Vegas, only 150 miles from Barstow, who would have certainly felt such an immense quake; and witnessed news coverage of it. What are they doing? Preparing for a possible danger to Vegas? Mourning the victims of the disaster? No, they're playing poker. The father of the heroine in both movies is winning, so that must be why he's not concerned with his daughter's fate much.

That's only the beginning. We see President Bo Bridges, still looking like he's suffering stomach wall spasms (like in the first movie). The scientist girl goes to discover more seismic problems are coming. Then an inconsiderate quake interrupts her dad's poker game. This opens the obligatory Poseidon Adventure rip off sequence, complete with all the disaster movie trimmings: arguing, wrecked staircases, aftershocks at just the wrong moment, panicky person gets killed, one of the rescuers is related to one of the fleeing survivors, etc.

Then the scientists watch as a major fault cuts across the heartland. Good special effects here, but the story line remains ludicrous. What's right in the way of the fault? A nuke power plant, what else. And so it goes.

Outrageous, but fun.

This is an escapist entertainment featuring a cast of good actors and some commendable production values - all rendered pointless by the director's incessant (and I do mean incessant) abuse of the zoom lens. Whose idea was that? The director? The director of photography? Who holds the blame? It became so nauseating that it effectively spoiled everybody else's hard work. The director is not a novice and yet he allows this same grievous mistake to sink this film as he did the previous 10.5 disaster TV movie. There seems to be a mistaken notion that manipulating the zoom lens equates with directorial style. Jess Franco would even be embarrassed.