A Masterpiece!

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

American cinema loves to destroy things, the bigger the better. In this case, the thing to be destroyed is Los Angeles, with a huge volcano rising right in the middle of the city. Its a very traditional disaster film, true to its genre, in which the improvised hero saves the day with total heroism, in a situation off total despair. The only two real characters here are the Volcano and the City because no character is truly developed, not even the hero. They are faces, people who do things. Sometimes they're there just to scream hysterically, be scared, to die, to show cowardice or to create situations in which the hero will shine. Because of this, the work of the actors is just OK, including Tommy Lee Jones. It would be impossible for any actor to shine with such empty characters. The strongest part of the film are the action scenes, stuffed with special effects. Some are so far-fetched that we're forced to think that guy should be on the luckiest day of his life to survive in that unbelievable way. But anyone who is expecting a CGI show will be disappointed: they're not always good and seem a bit dated in the eyes of the current audience. But it's a 1997 movie... everything has its time and, of course, with today's technological breakthroughs, our eyes will not see this movie the same way we watched it twenty years ago. Even so, there are some scenes and sequences where the film is powerful and emanates a pleasant tension that makes us uncomfortable. Not everything is bad, predictable or cliché.

Just getting over the aftershock of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, the Los Angeles area now had to deal with other major issues. If it wasn't drive-by shootings, it was the destruction of old historical buildings to put in mini-malls as well as the expansion of the red line into Beverly Hills, a fight that would eventually cease and leave the end of the line in Hollywood. But there's magma forming underground, and that is even a bigger problem for an already freaky city where film crews didn't even have to leave town to get to.MacArthur Park really will be melting on the dark if something isn't done, and when the bubbles start a brewin' in the La Brea tar pits, trouble is definitely on the way. At the helm of the investigation into what's bubblin' up is a straight faced Tommy Lee Jones (assisted by Don Cheadle) who quickly puts two and two together, getting a two minute warning of pending disaster. The result is the return of the disaster movie genre, off the box office roster since the mid 1970's.I have fond memories of seeing this at the Beverly Connection cinema, right across the street from where much of it took place. To say that the audience reaction to this was just a little weird is an understatement. The conclusion brought the volcano literally under my seat, adding a ton of fun to my film going experience. This is a mixture of disaster, only the slightest of family subplot interference, growing intensely as it moves on, and featuring a feisty Carole Lombard like performance by Anne Heche as a geological expert.Released almost simultaneously with the similar but more rustic "Dante's Peak", this never slips up like more recent disaster films that crossed the line on credibility, although the character played by Gaby Hoffman (as Jones' teenaged daughter) starts to get on ones nerves after a bit due to her selfishness. There's also a bit with a racist cop that could have been done away with. Scenes of genuine tragedy happen with two trapped firemen in an overturned truck and an MTA employee trapped underground are gruesome and caused violent shaking when I saw this again. I happen to prefer "Dante's Peak" over this, but this has comedy, tension, conflict, a little bit of romance, a bit of real L.A. history that I experienced, and none of the excess garbage that pretty much ruined the new wave of disaster films that came out following the millennium.

Australian Free-to-air TV is in such a poor state that this movie was the best thing I could find tonight. This cliché-ridden piece seemed to have been written by 'my film student nephew' who 'has Final Draft on his computer' with the visual effects done by his mate who owns a pirated copy of After Effects. That's not to say that this film doesn't have its virtues. With a little extra modern day post-production this could be an excellent comedy instead of just an accidental one. Just have Mel Brooks tweak the script (not too much!), then CGI replace Tommy Lee Jones with Rick Moranis, give Anne Heche the voice of Joan Rivers and call it 'Lava Balls'.

Disaster movies go way back in cinema. Just like how gore hound fans love to see their deadly horror films, there's also a large crowd of viewers who live to watch disaster features. For unexplained reasons, studios and screenwriters alike have a fond interest of showing to their audiences how mother nature could flip the birdie at us. Unfortunately like a lot of other movies, there isn't much of anything clever about these types of films. The problem is because the movie focuses more on the natural disaster itself more than the characters; especially during the late 1990s when special effects started being abused instead of being utilized. This film has that but does have a few points that make it worth the time to see (once).When worker Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) of the Office of Emergency Management is notified of a couple burn victims in man-made underground pipes, he decides to find out what caused such a freak accident. Believing it could have been a pipe burst, Roark discovers something much more dangerous than he thought. Consulting to Dr. Amy Barnes (Anne Heche), they hypothesize that the cause is actually an active volcano. As a story, this is about as far as it gets when it comes to anything that moves its characters. Initially the story starts out with what seems to be a political/social take on (possibly) what has happening in California at the time,...but it never really gets addressed. As for characters, the only actors who save themselves (performance wise) are Tommy Lee Jones, Don Cheadle and Keith David. Everyone else quite honestly wasn't necessary with all the numerous story threads. Their roles are there for cliché development and that's it.There's a subplot about a nurse played by Jacqueline Kim that doesn't go much of anywhere and Roark's daughter played by Gaby Hoffmann wasn't that important either. Even as significant as Anne Heche's role was, she still has a cliché character. Also what's with her and liking much older men? She has a crush on Jones in this movie and falls for Harrison Ford in Six Days Seven Nights (1998). It's interesting to see who wrote the script for this movie. Credit is given to Jerome Armstrong and Billy Ray. Armstrong only has this movie to his credit. However, Ray has apparently improved because he now has critically acclaimed films like The Hunger Games (2012) and Captain Phillips (2013) on his resume. But for this work, it can be seen that he hadn't perfected his skill just yet. The only pluses that can be given in the writing are the several tense scenes which involve the flowing lava peril or when the people of the city are working together. Both scenarios are polar opposites in tone but they also work effectively in bringing out the right emotion while watching the film run its course. It's funny how that works.Mick Jackson directs the film and although it gets the job done in areas mentioned prior, the direction is just standard. This was also his last feature film to direct for the big screen. Since then, he has moved on to directing TV show episodes and TV movies. The cinematography provided by Theo van de Sande looks decent. Considering Sande had more than 20 years of experience before this, rightfully so his work should look good. Sande does not have wide scoping shots but they at least conceal the illusion that this movie was not filmed in a large city. The special effects to the lava also looked decent although a couple times some shots were recycled. Finally the musical score composed by Alan Silvestri work well. Again, when it came to the emotional scenes it did work in its favor. Considering that this is not a franchise, listeners should be able to understand why there was no memorable main theme. That's acceptable for this kind of movie. It's a very basic thriller when it comes to characters and their development. Plus the fact that it's a disaster movie doesn't exactly have anything to highlight other than the disaster. Thankfully, some of its main leads, peril scenes and effective music manages to make it entertaining enough to use some of the viewers time.