CS Film Club II

Wow. The disrespect. I’m the only person here that’s seen Geostorm.

Okay... that was... actually worse than I thought it would be. I was expecting this to just be a regular Roland Emmerich movie but with a slightly stupider concept to explain why all the destruction was going on but the movie I got was... fundamentally strange and yet not quite strange enough to really work as camp. I will give Dean Develin this, he seems to basically be in command of the fundamentals of filmmaking. The blocking, production values, and pacing here are about on par with what you'd expect from a Hollywood blockbuster and while I don't exactly like everyone in the cast they seem to mostly be doing what they can with the material given. The movie isn't intrinsically incompetent. I also don't think the basic premise with the weather altering satellites isn't a completely bad one and that something fun could have come out of that which would have been a little more interesting than the The Day After Tomorrow/2012 approach of "disasters are happening for reasons, lets move on." However, making a movie this silly in a way that's essentially straightforward takes a very particular kind of calibration. For whatever reason Emmerich seemed to be able to pull this off and Develin was not, and that's in part because Emmerich seems to actually understand that what he makes is destruction porn. His plots are simple because he wants to get them out of the way so he can give people the CGI wrecks they paid for, not really my kind of thing, but you can respect the hustle. Develin by contrast seems a lot less interested in destroying cities than he is in actually giving his protagonists a conspiracy to foil, which would have been an alright idea if he gave them politics or science that was even worth investing their interest in a little bit but he doesn't, he gives us inane bullshit. It's a movie that often feels like it falls on the same screenwriting formulas we're used to but its in service to this batshit concept and its playing out in ways that are straightforwardly ridiculous. On some level everyone involved should know this is nuts but they don't really betray that they're in on the joke. I think Develin knows that the movies he made in the past were also nonsense but I don't think he has Emmerich's knowledge of how far he can turn up the cheese factor without going too far... because he definitely goes too far here but not so far that it comes out the other side as something memorable or campy. It's like a project that Hollywood put on autopilot and expected to have make itself but then when they came back the next day to check on it something had gone horribly wrong... but instead of just embracing the mess they tried to save it in rather misguided ways. I don't recommend it.
* out of Five

Michael Keaton and Al Pacino? Now you’re speaking Doomsday’s language.

I think I might go with Scott Pilgrim after 14 years.

Dracula

Blue Collar
Batman (1966)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
The Big Heat
Days of Wine and Roses
Wagon Master
Girl Shy
Babe: Pig in the City

Will probably do Blue Collar

Good choice. For future reference, have you seen The Big Heat?

Happy to reassign you The Big Heat.