It all started with a painting. On August 24, 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius exploded near present-day Naples, Italy. Tons of molten ash, pumice, and sulfuric gas were released, and the resulting debris buried the nearby cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Stabiae for more than 1700 years. Although Pliny the Younger’s letters are the definitive […]
Trailer: The Command (Kursk) (2018)
I think using Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” in a movie about a fatal submarine accident is a little harsh, is all I’m saying. The Kursk was a Russian sub that sank in the Barents Sea in 2000, eventually killing all 118 sailors aboard. Two explosions from a faulty dummy torpedo killed 95 immediately, but inactivity on […]
Trailer: Chernobyl (2019)
On April 25-26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Ukraine suffered the worst radioactive accident in history. From a combination of design faults and operator error, the plant “melted down”—uncontrolled nuclear reactions caused the normally cooling water to flash into steam, causing a massive explosion and later graphite (radioactive material) fire. The fire […]
Submarine Docudrama Premieres at Toronto Film Festival
On August 12, 2000, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk suffered an explosion and sank in the Barents Sea, eventually killing all 118 souls on board. Not all of them had to die, however. The disaster and Russian military’s “response” are the subject of the new docudrama Kursk (The Command is the English-language title), which premiered […]
Review: The Crew (Ekipazh) (2018)
Maybe it’s an “everywhere except America” phenomenon: disaster movies that are developed as dramas, not just spectacle. The Crew (Ekipazh), like 2015’s Bølgen (The Wave, Norway), has competence porn to spare, characters you can root for, a restrained yet evocative score, and a tense storyline. It all adds up to one of the best disaster […]