1. 2012 (Sony/Columbia, 3,404 Theaters, 158 Minutes, Rated PG-13): The Mayans, rumor has it, belives the world is going to end on December 21, 2012. Roland Emmerich has decided to apply this myth to his disaster movie template and to see what happens.
You might think I am exaggerating, but really. This is how it goes.: a catastrophic event (alien invasion, a giant lizard, a giant snowstorm, the end of the world) causes massive CGI destruction (every major landmark in the world, most of Manhattan, most of Manhattan again plus the rest of the United States, everything in the known world). While this is going on, our stoic yet sensitive hero (Will Smith, Matthew Broderick, Dennis Quaid, John Cusack) is compelled to be reunited with a loved one (their girlfriend, their girlfriend that stabbed him in the back but still loves him anyway, his son, his daughter) and ensure their safety (by blowing up the aliens, by blowing up the lizard, by relocating to Mexico, by getting on a massive space ark).
The rest of the connecting tissue is nonsense on top of nonsense. Will we see any type of characterization? A good explanation of why the world is ending? Why there is a space arc and where it came from? Probably not.
However, if you love seeing famous landmarks destroyed, then this movie will be for you. You’ll probably get more of that than you could have ever dreamed of. At least 130 minutes of it.
2. Pirate Radio (Focus Features, 882 Theaters, 135 Minutes, Rated R): And here we have the sacrificial lamb to 2012.
This is loosely based on real life events in Britain during the 1960s. As a result of the government shying away from playing pop music in favor of jazz, a bunch of pirate radio stations sprung up in the waters around England and broadcast what the kids wanted to hear.
This film isn’t based on any one story, but a composite of a bunch of them. It involves a wacky bunch of DJs and the like undertaking a bunch of wacky adventures while being all subversive and stuff.
The film is written and directed by Richard Curtis of Love Actually and Notting Hill fame, and the cast if filled with a bunch of cast members from his previous films such as Bill Nighy, Emma Thompson, January Jones, and Rhys Ifans, with Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the token big nmae American in the cast and Nick Frost thrown in for good measure. So it should be entertaining to say the least.
