METEOR (1979)

A pissed off comet punches a large asteroid in the nuts and now that 5-mile-wide sucker (plus various smaller fragments) is going to hit the Earth in 6 days! Ahh, crap. Luckily, the Americans have a top-secret satellite with 14 nuclear missiles on it. Unfortunately, 14 missiles isn’t enough to stop the asteroid from evolving into a…meteor!!!

On paper, METEOR sounds like a promising film: exciting story (anything about shit crashing into the Earth is awesome); a cast full of well-known faces (at least for the time) and a respectable budget of $16 million (remember ALIEN came out the same year and only cost $11 million). But on paper doesn’t guarantee on-screen excellence. Nope. I have no clue what happened in the making of this clunker, but METEOR is a goddamn turd! I haven’t been this disappointed since the last time I walked into a Best Buy.

The story takes off quickly enough with Hercules satellite designer Sean Connery being informed of the asteroid and put in charge of getting Hercules ready to blast that global killing son of a bitch out of the sky. At the same time, US President Henry Fonda gets Russia to admit that they also have a top-secret satellite armed with nuclear missiles. So the Russians send over a scientist and Sean Connery immediately starts trying to bang interpreter Natalie Wood. Motherfucker, ain’t you got better shit to focus on?! Blah, blah, blah, it goes on and on with all kinds of conversations and romance and bickering. Fuck me. I just want to see some sappy ass heroics and shit blowing up. And don’t even get me started on the special effects. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century looked better.

Long story, short: METEOR is mildly entertaining and fun to laugh at, but if you’re looking for an actually good late-1970’s asteroid story then A FIRE IN THE SKY would be a better bet. Or, you could always just say fuck it and watch ARMAGEDDON again for the hundredth time.

PATTON (1970)

Whether you like the real life General George Smith Patton, Jr. or not, I think most movie lovers will agree this is one hell of a movie.

Completely skipping his younger years and centering solely on the years 1943 - 1945, PATTON opens with the now iconic scene of Patton, in full dress uniform, standing before a huge American flag and making a speech to his offscreen troops. After that we're taken to Northern Africa 1943, where he's placed in charge of a disorganized group of soldiers.  He soon whips them into shape and wins a battle against the Nazis.  During all of this we learn that Patton believes in reincarnation and that he has lived many times before and has been present at different wars throughout history.  This will be a reoccurring theme through out the film.  After securing Northern Africa, Patton moves on to Italy.  It's a joint-campaign with the British with the British suppose to lead the way.  Frustrated by the slow progress, Patton disobeys orders and smashes through to the port city of Messina.  His aggressive assault pisses off his men and he's eventually relieved of command after slapping a shell-shocked soldier and threatening to shoot him.

Meanwhile, the Nazis believe that this is all a ploy to trick them into not believing that Patton is actually going to be the one to lead the Allied invasion of German-occupied Western Europe.  The American leadership took advantage of this and made Patton the commander of a fictitious Army group that was going to invade at Pas-de-Calais.  Of course, we all know the Allied forces actually landed in Normandy.  After D-Day, Patton was given a real command.  Patton's Third Army then charged from August 1944 to May 1945 far into Nazi territory and claimed (according to Wikipedia) to have killed, wounded, or captured 1,811,388 German soldiers.

To make a detailed film about Patton's World War II years would be impossible, but with a running time of only 172 minutes PATTON does an amazing job.  The movie is over 40 years old and it still looks breathtaking.  Massive battle scenes with tons of extras, European locations (mostly Spain), zero CGI, genuine WWII-ear military vehicles and even planes!  And thanks to an amazing script by Francis Ford Coppola and a legendary performance by George C. Scott the viewer is truly transported to another time and place.  The first time I saw PATTON I don't think my mind wandered for a second.  Scott's performance is one of the best in movie history.