CITY ON FIRE (1979)

The star-studded cast can't hide the fact that the story for this movie suuuuuccckkkks.  After being introduced to all of the (bland) characters, we're finally treated to this nameless city blowing the fuck up (thanks to a disgruntled oil refinery employee) and...it's pretty boring.  Poorly photographed explosions mixed in with stock footage.  The story eventually focuses in on some firemen's efforts to rescue the people trapped in a hospital and...that's boring as well.  In fact, there's nothing about CITY ON FIRE that isn't boring!  Boring script, boring special effects, boring photography, boring acting.  I really enjoy disaster movies, but CITY ON FIRE straight-up bored me to death.  Which is a shame since Henry Fonda and Shelley Winters are both amazing talents (just watch MISTER ROBERTS or A PLACE IN THE SUN if you don't believe me), but they are strictly on auto-pilot here.  Collecting a paycheck.

Outside of morbid curiosity or self-hatred, I can't think of too many reasons to ever subject yourself to this overcooked turkey.  Skip it with a vengeance.

According to Box Office Mojo, CITY ON FIRE cost $5.3 million to make and only brought in $784,000.  That's kinda funny.

Eating egg shells.

CRACK IN THE WORLD (1965)

In order to solve the worlds renewable energy problem, scientist Dana Andrews heads up a project to drill down to the Earth's core and use its nonstop heat to create power.  Trouble is, once they drilled down nearly to the core they encountered a hard layer that they cannot break through.  Solution: blast that bitch with a nuclear missile!  That's right, launch a missile down into the hole and hope for the best.  Naturally, things don't go too well and the massive explosion (multiplied by a hidden gas pocket) causes a slow-moving (3mph) crack in the Earth's crust.  That can't be good.

Yeah, that's a silly idea for a movie, (you could even say the filmmakers must have been smoking...all of the crack in the world), but it does have potential (massive earthquakes destroying cities, damns bursting, the Golden Gate Bridge falling over, airplane landing on a runway that suddenly splits in two, dogs and cats living together, oceans boiling up gigantic clouds of steam, a volleyball game at a nudist colony is broken up by a sink hole with lava spurting out of it, etc.)...unfortunately none of that shit happens on screen.  Why? Because half of the film it taken up with a love triangle between Andrews, his young wife and her scientist ex-boyfriend who she still has the hots for.  Not a single motherfucker who paid to see a movie called Crack in the World(!!!) gave a single fuck about a love triangle, but it's an excuse to chew up runtime without spending money of special effects, so it what we got.

Insulting lack of action, weak ending, annoying screaming by the lead actress, magmanauts, mediocre acting, a guy with zero respect for helicopter blades, misleading tag line on the poster: "The day the Earth split in two!"...bullshit.

Based on the poster artwork, I was looking forward to seeing this movie.  I was really curious as to how they were going to overcome the Earth splitting in friggin' two, but in the end, I just ended up disappointed and feeling sorry for Dana Andrews wasting his talents on this lying turkey.

Look how close that helicopter blade is to that guys dome!

JURASSIC WORLD (2015)

You would think that with over a decade between sequels there would've been plenty of time to write an awesome script that would make the audiences eyeballs pop out of their heads, but...I guess not.  Instead, we get what looks to be a list of "cool ideas" strung together with a connect-the-dots style script.

So we got these two kids who's aunt works at Jurassic World island.  She's like super important and always has her phone out and stuff and like she can't be bothered to watched the kids cause she's trying to get investors lined up for this awesome new genetically altered dinosaur.  I think his name is like Awesom-O or something and so like the kids just wander off by themselves all over the joint and then you got that handsome dude from that one movie who's like a raptor whisperer or something and can talk to raptors, but then there's a evil military dude and the big new dinosaur gets loose and starts wreckin' shit.  He even eats that one guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm.  You remember the one where Larry kills the swan at the country club and then gets in a argument with the tombstone carving guy?  The tombstone guy is the guy who gets eaten by the dinosaur!  Anyway, so there's like dinosaurs running all over and then the bird ones gets loose and start flying around eating people.  I mean this place is going to get sued to Hell and back!  Audie Murphy-style!  Oh yeah, oh yeah, so there's like this plastic ball that people can get in and roll around with the dinosaurs and stuff, so like the two kids get in there and the bad dinosaur attacks them and they run away and find a Jeep from the first movie then the T-Rex gets loose and he's like "What the fuck?  This is my island motherfucker!" and beats up the Awesom-O dinosaur.  Boom, boom, boom, bang!!!  And there's raptors on motorcycles and cavemen in jet planes...oh wait, that was BATTLEFIELD EARTH.  I watched that right afterward.  I mean, what the fuck?  Whoever thought that would be a good movie?!  How'd it even get financing?  I mean, yeah, it starts out alright, but then next thing you know you got cavemen in jets and nuclear bombs and flight simulators!  How'd they even know to fuel up the jets or how to load the machine guns?!  Plus the shit's been sitting there for a thousand years!!!  Anyway, so JURASSIC WORLD was pretty cool.  BATTLEFIELD EARTH was "auggghhhh!"  For a single viewing, JW was alright.  I'd watch it again if somebody wanted to watch it, but JURASSIC PARK...shit, I still watch that motherfucker like 2 - 3 times a year!

Part 1 - Jurassic Park (1993)
Part 2 - The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Part 3 - Jurassic Park III (2001)
Part 5 - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Part 6 - Jurassic World: Dominion (2021)