DISASTER FLICKS
Updated: May 27, 2021
Disaster Flicks With Billy Disaster #1
Last nights movie was Twister starring Bill Paxton🤢 and Helen Hunt.
Bill Paxton is The Worst Actor In The History Of Movies. Jesus Christ how does this guy get these roles? I’ve never liked him in any role and he really brings his shit game to this flick. Honestly, it’s like he’s doing an SNL impression of himself in this. You suck Bill Paxton!
Most of the characters in this are pretty unlikeable (except Aunt Meg). Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character is a embarrassing impression of Slater from Dazed and Confused and the rest of the cast was put together as if this were a remake of Jurassic Park, but with tornadoes instead of dinosaurs. This whole movie feels like the director (Jan de Bont) was being micromanaged by Steven Spielberg who co-produced this movie.
and that’s not entirely a bad thing. With the exception of the lame performances, this flick was actually pretty rad. Lots of great action, tension, and the special effects with the tornadoes was truly awesome. There was actually a few moments of well-timed humor in it. I really had a lot of fun watching it.
Well, we’re off to a pretty decent start with Disaster Flicks with Billy Disaster! 3 Pornadoes for Twister🌪🌪🌪 . (The Pornadoes is my favorite Seattle band name. Great band too!). Tonight‘s movie will be The Towering Inferno. And stay tuned for a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT coming in a day or two!
Disaster Flicks With Billy Disaster #2
Last nights movie was The Towering Inferno starring Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway and many others.
I was not prepared for how awesome this movie was going to be. I’ve never even heard of it (goddam, I’m so naïve it’s painful). From the helicopter over San Francisco title sequence to the end credits, I was blown away. (Pun kind of intended).
The production design by William J. Creber was stunning.
The floor of the glass tower where the executive offices are is so very 70s and incredibly cool. And Faye Dunaway‘s idea to install a secret “love room” behind Newman’s office? Sign me up!
Every character in this was almost perfectly developed where you cared whether they survived or not. I may have pumped my fist and cheered when Richard Chamberlain fell. And he was only the side asshole...the real asshole was William Holden (cheap, greedy bastard).
Paul Newman and Steve McQueen play truly great heroes in this flick. They don’t over act and try to out macho each other (although I read that they we’re kind of doing that behind the scenes…) (there was a lot of drama behind the scenes).
The production of the burning skyscraper was unbelievable. Considering that they would do that with CGI these days only adds to the appreciation of this. And the list of stunt actors in the credits is a mile long.
And I’m like...”Oh Shit! That’s OJ Simpson the murderer!”
And then I’m like...”Jesus Christ! That’s Fred Astaire!” who was nominated for best supporting actor for his minor role.
All in all, this movie was awesome. I really loved every minute of it. 5 Pornadoes for The Towering Inferno🌪🌪🌪🌪🌪 . Tonight’s movie will be Airport.♥️ you #moviereview #moviereviews #disastermovies
Disaster Flicks With Billy Disaster #3
Last nights movie was Airport (1970) starring Dean Martin, Jean Seberg♥️, Burt Lancaster and Helen Hayes.
A big congratulations to Jean Seberg for becoming my new Celebrity Girlfriend! However I’m not breaking up with Renee Zellweger...I’m gonna be a 2 timer for awhile just like what seems to be half the people in this movie. Especially Dean Martin, who knocks up a flight attendant half his age (Jacqueline Bisset♥️). (I might have to have a little celebrity fling with her too)...and then there’s Burt Lancaster‘s wife who is a spoiled brat 2 timing asshole. (She was also like 20 years younger than Lancaster...These older movies can be so creepy!)
I loved all of the performances in this flick. Especially Helen Hayes who plays an old lady who scams her way onto flights like it’s a hobby. I love how even when she gets caught she still expects full accommodations.
The last 20 minutes or so were so tense I had to cover my eyes. While 3 or 4 different soap operas are happening, a suicide bomber blows a hole in the plane and they have to try to land it in a brutal mid western snowstorm. But during all of this tension there is a truly great comedic moment where a passenger sitting next to a priest is freaking out and being a jerk. The priest is saying a prayer...The Father, The Son and The Holy Spir..WHAM!! He clocks that jerk upside the head mid prayer!😂 . I laughed so hard that Mrs. Disaster had to splash a beer in my face.
This flick was really fun. It wasn’t on the level as The Towering Inferno (DFWBD#2), but still really cool. And I’ll watch anything where Edith Head is the costume designer. 4 Pornadoes for Airport🌪🌪🌪🌪 . Tonight’s movie will be The Poseidon Adventure. ♥️ You
P.S. I know that the photo I’m using isn’t from this movie but I couldn’t resist. I’m sure you understand:)
Disaster Flicks With Billy Disaster #4 Last nights movie was The Poseidon Adventure starring Gene Hackman and Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka
I always worry about reviewing a movie that I didn’t like very much because I know that some people are gonna get all pissed off at me. But here it goes anyway...
I’ll start by saying I didn’t hate EVERYTHING about this..The production design by William J. Creber (The Towering Inferno)(DFWBD#2) was truly spectacular. And the sea sickening filming was pretty awesome and effective. Oh, and the special effects of when the wave is coming in to fuck everything up for The Poseidon was terrifying and I was excited for the rest of the movie.
But then there was Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine. Holy Hell they were awful in this. They spent the majority of this movie way over acting and screaming at everyone. I love both of them in other films but I truly despised them in this. It actually took me two viewings to finish it because they got on my nerves so bad. And for some reason I never felt really engaged in the story. It’s not like I didn’t like the other characters, but when some of them died, I just didn’t care. I guess I was just too taken out of it by the shitty acting by Hackman and Borgnine that I just yawned. The story lacked inventiveness and didn’t achieve the suspense it was going for and I ended up being super disappointed by this . 2 Pornadoes for The Poseidon Adventure🌪🌪 . Tonight’s movie will be Pandora (Netflix) ♥️You #MovieReview #MovieReviews #theposeidonadventure
Disaster Flicks With Billy Disaster #5
Last nights movie was Pandora starring Do-bin Baek and Seung-Hoon Choi. Streaming on Netflix
This movie was so long that it took me a week to watch it. (It’s actually only 2 hours and 16 minutes but I was on vacation and Katy (from 80’s With Katy♥️) kept getting me drunk and I passed out. A lot.)
ANYWAY...This one’s about a nuclear power plant in South Korea that employs many of the men in the village and supplies most of the power to the area. Turns out that the plant was hastily built and vulnerable.
Things are normal as we are introduced to a few characters and go through a bit of paint by numbers plot set ups when suddenly all of the rats in town start running into the sea. EARTHQUAKE IS COMING!
The earthquake scene is really well done and quite terrifying. It damages the nuclear plant and causes a meltdown. The evacuation of the surrounding population gets complicated by the government and the plant needs to be dealt with (this is where this flick drags on and on..for like 4 days. I kept passing out..). One of the main characters volunteers for a suicide mission to stop the meltdown. The (very long) scene where he goes through the emotional process of coming to terms with his mission is truly heartbreaking and amplified by the wonderfully moving music of Jo Yeong-wook. I cried a lot and then passed out again.
This movie was inspired by the true events of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima which makes it even more terrifying.
It’s not as good as the HBO series Chernobyl but is still pretty good. 3 Pornadoes for Pandora🌪🌪🌪 .
ANNOUNCEMENT! We interrupt Disaster flicks this week to get ready for the Oscars! We’ll do most of the best picture nominees this week. Tonight’s movie will be The Trial of the Chicago 7. ♥️You. #MovieReview #MovieReviews #pandora #disastermovies
Disaster Flicks With Billy Disaster #6
Last nights movie was Black Sea starring Jude Law and Ben Mendelsohn. (Netflix)
Ben Mendelsohn is becoming one of my favorite current actors. He’s been in a shit load of movies and I really thought he was awesome in Rogue One (The Best Star Wars Movie Ever Made). (As well as The Outsider). In Black Sea he’s an average villain but he plays it so well that it gave this flick spark. Not that it needed much of it, this one was pretty damn good.
Jude Law plays a guy who just lost his job as a submarine captain and his wife left him for a wealthy guy. As he’s drinking his baby goodbye, a dude he used to work with let’s him in on some info about a sunken U-Boat with a fortune of gold in it. They form a plan to get an investor to finance the search mission and they assemble a crew to sail a run down submarine to go down and get the gold.
What follows is a raw and unique submarine adventure rife with danger that rarely resorts to cliché.
I love submarine flicks, particularly Das Boot. I would do a series on submarine flicks but I think I’ve seen them most of them.
What I dug most about this movie was the editing. It wasn’t quick action editing, but it never let a shot last too long. The music was awesome (Ilan Eshkeri) and the suspense was just clever enough. Jude Law was rad too. 4 Pornadoes for Black Sea🌪🌪🌪🌪 . Tonight’s movie will be Melancholia. ♥️You #moviereview #moviereviews #disastermovies #benmendelsohn #blacksea
Disaster Flicks With Billy Disaster #7
Last nights movie was Melancholia starring Kristen Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
The only other Lars von Trier flick I’ve seen is Nymphomaniac parts I and II and it seems to me that this guy has a PHD in depression and despair. The Nymphomaniac movies were seriously deep and, if you can handle the borderline pornographic material, very good. However, the subject matter is a study in depression on the level of Joker and it’s difficult to watch. The same goes for Melancholia. This is a disaster flick in the fact that a rogue planet is about to crash into earth. But that just provides a tense backdrop to the story of Kristen Dunst’s debilitating and destructive depression and her sister played by the truly great Charlotte Gainsbourg.
The movie is divided into 2 parts. The 1st part focuses on Dunst’s wedding where her depression sabotages not only the wedding reception, but her career. It’s kind of a hard watch as pretty much every character is a total asshole (especially her mother) and Dunst plays her part all too well.
Part 2 focuses on her sister (Gainsbourg) who is married to a very wealthy scientist (Kiefer Sutherland). Gainsbourg has become obsessed with the news that a planet is going to crash into the earth while Sutherland tries to reassure her that the planet will just fly by.
One of the best details in this movie is the use of Wagner’s music from Tristan and Isolde as it’s soundtrack. It’s incredibly beautiful and used perfectly in this.
This is not a run of the mill action packed disaster flick but more of an intense study in depression. It’s not entertaining but it’s a good film by a very good filmmaker. 4 Pornadoes for Melancholia🌪🌪🌪🌪 . Tonight’s movie will be The Day After Tomorrow. ♥️You
Disaster Flicks With Billy Disaster #8
Last nights movie was The Day After Tomorrow starring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal.
See what happens when you piss the Mother Nature off? She will slap you upside the head, kick you in the shin and ground you for a YEAR! And then she’ll clean herself up and laugh at you when you’re free to go out and play again but refuse to learn your lesson. You’ll go right back to being destructive and chase after convenience and, when the time is right, she’ll fuck you up all over again.
I generally cannot stand CGI in my flicks, especially when it comes to recreating water effects (Greyhound, I’m looking at your ugly ass face), and fire. But when it comes to storms and ice like this movie, it’s really effective and in this case, terrifying. The visuals of tornadoes ripping through LA and New York City being swallowed by ice were incredibly artistic and scary to watch. It just seems so possible. I was surprised at how much I enjoy the special effects.
It’s too bad there were people in this flick. I realize that you have to have human interest in stories like this but does it have to be so fucking cheesy? Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal are serviceable and reliable in their roles, but the dialogue they have to work with is God awful🤮 . And then cue the overly dramatic and terrible music and, well, let’s just say I sounded like my neighbors cat coughing up a furball.
3 Pornadoes for The Day After Tomorrow🌪🌪🌪 . Tonight‘s movie will be San Andreas. ♥️You #moviereview #MovieReviews #disastermovies #thedayaftertomorrow #climatechange #globalwarming
Disaster Flicks with Billy Disaster #9
Last nights movie was San Andreas starring The Rock and Paul Giamatti
I had just watched The Day After Tomorrow (DFWBD#8) which means I basically just watched it again by seeing San Andreas. The formula of the story line was almost EXACTLY the same. They were both fun popcorn flicks but I’m becoming FAR too pretentious with my movie watching to keep reviewing them. You’ve got the hero dad, the genius scientist (sometimes one and the same), the damsel in distress, you know what I’m talking about. OH! And the same shit dramatic music that almost dares you to see how much you can puke before you pass out. And the dialogue is so embarrassing that I roll my eyes so much that you’d think I was my teenage daughter.
There were things that I enjoyed in this movie. I like The Rock. He can be a macho douche sometimes but he’s charming and comforting. He makes a great hero. I also love Paul Giamatti even though this was pretty much just a paycheck for him. And the disaster effects in this were cool and gigantic. Almost like a roller coaster ride. I guess I enjoyed this like I enjoy a fast food cheeseburger now and then. It’s cheap, satisfying, and forgettable. 3 Pornadoes for San Andreas mostly for the killer effects and The Rock🌪🌪🌪 . Tonight’s movie will be The China Syndrome and will be the final movie in the Disaster Flicks series. I’ll announce the next series tomorrow night ♥️You. Billydisaster.com
Disaster Flicks With Billy Disaster #10
Last nights movie was The China Syndrome starring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon.
It’s weird, I like pretty much every movie that Michael Douglas is in, but I don’t really like Michael Douglas’ characters in any of them. I’ve heard him in interviews and he’s awesome in real life. He’s a killer storyteller. But his overacting is annoying and he come across as creepy in every role including his role in this one.
The same cannot be said about Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon. Jane Fonda is so good in this flick. She plays a television news personality that covers “the lighter side of L.A. “ but wants to be an investigative reporter. The obstacles that she has to overcome are reminiscent of Christina Applegate in Anchorman. The treatment she receives as a woman from her asshole coworkers is appalling. She creates her own opportunity by stumbling on a story at a nuclear power plant that has a serious malfunction. She comes across the great Jack Lemmon who plays a worker at the plant who finds out that there are problems within it that his bosses want kept secret. The result is an incredible drama that is done almost perfectly. The pacing, the acting and the screenplay were all terrific. This isn’t a disaster flick that features any special effects of destruction but a dramatic story of human error and the danger it can cause. I loved it. 5 Pornadoes for The China Syndrome 🌪🌪🌪🌪🌪.
Well that’s it for Disaster Flicks. That was super fun and a great addition to the website (Billydisaster.com). I hope you’ll join me for the next series, Jim Jarmusch flicks! I’m so excited! What Jarmusch movies should I review? ♥️You.
