Sneering, eyepatch-wearing anti-hero Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is forced to drop into a dangerous, crime-ridden, apocalyptic New York City to rescue an ineffectual POTUS (Donald Pleasence) before time runs out. Set in 1997, John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981) certainly resembles 2020 more than it did that long-gone year. Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) must rescue the President from a warzone before it’s too late in Escape from New York. Escape from New York ★★★★★ Shout! Factory
Look for the director’s cameo at the beginning of the movie near the pet shop in San Francisco’s Union Square. Ed McBain) adapted the short story by Daphne Du Maurier. Hitchcock postpones the first attack for a surprisingly long time, and yet manages to build crisp tension anyway. Sometimes cataclysmic things just happen and humans are in the way. In Bodega Bay, Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette, and Veronica Cartwright find themselves attacked by birds, all different kinds, for absolutely no reason. One of Alfred Hitchcock’s best and purest films, The Birds (1963) is nearly an experimental work, stripped down to its basics, and without even a music score the legendary composer Bernard Herrmann used all his skills to create a cacophony of screeching bird noises instead.
Stream on Peacock Premium or rent ($3.99) Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) faces off with rogue birds in Bodega Bay in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Will the world be saved? Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Steve Buscemi, Will Patton, William Fichtner, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Peter Stormare are just part of the massive cast. Even though it’s an end-of-days movie with billions of lives at stake, it’s all swagger and gusto, with a huge pack of lovable actors playing lovable misfits and outcasts, and a razor’s-edge ticking-clock countdown to the final sweaty-palm moments. Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer’s blockbuster Armageddon (1998) makes the potential end of the world into a roller-coaster ride filled with flash, noise, color, Charlton Heston narrating, and Aerosmith shrieking “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” Bruce Willis and a team of drillers take a rocket ship up to an approaching asteroid, intending to make an 800-foot hole, drop a nuclear bomb into it, and get the heck outta Dodge before it blows up, and thereby saving the earth. Rent on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Vudu ($3.99)
Armageddon ★★★☆☆ Buena Vista PicturesĪ team of drillers (L-R, Will Patton, Bruce Willis, Michael Clarke Duncan, Ben Affleck, and Owen Wilson) head into space to blow up a huge asteroid in Armageddon.
Rather than presenting the usual batch of New Year’s-themed movies with streamers and champagne, we thought we’d offer something different: 11 movies about disasters and the end of the world! Send 2020 out with a sneer! Then, we suggest two actual New Year’s movies that seem to fit with the times, followed by two more movies with moments of genuine hope, to welcome in a better 2021. Its final days would normally be set aside for celebrations, but given that we are suspposed to stay home for the good of everyone, it’s time for more streaming movies. Murder hornets, for Pete’s sake! 2020 really upped the ante on just how much one year could dish out, and how much all of us could possibly take.