2012 (Roland Emmerich, 2009)

Roland Emmerich is a kind, selfless man who only wants to act as an intermediary to transfer the big studios' money to poor CGI artists in their thousands. And if, by doing so, he gratifies enough Americans who were gutted at not being near enough the WTC Ground Zero to witness the awesome levelling of big buildings whilst people ran around screaming, so much the better.
Connecting a worldwide apocalypse to any religious prophecy is too hard work for this director: the priority is to  blow up, crush and flood as much stuff as possible in 2½ hours, and he does this with an admirable aplomb. Sure, some pseudoscience about er, solar flares, the Earth's core, magnetic realignment and the like has to be wedged in, along with the tedious necessity of providing a generic bunch of principal protagonists to 'provide a human dimension' - meaning the likes of John Cusack as the divorced dad and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the scientist no-one listened to have to do some sharp mental arithmetic to determine whether delivering yet more credibility-blighting shite is really outweighed by their paychecks.
So, Emmerich is also yet another artist who's forced to make compromises for the sake of getting his vision to the screen. And what a vision! The White House getting flattened by the JFK aircraft carrier is a highlight, but to Emmerich's credit, despite 2012's demanding length, the stupidity well never runs dry.

3/10