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A River Runs Through It (1992)

7.0 (2 Ratings) Rate It

Movie Watch

Academy Award®-winner Robert Redford (Best Director, Ordinary People, 1980) captures the majesty of...

Contest of Champions Vol. 1: Battleworld

Al Ewing

8.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

Book

You've played the game, now watch the action play out across page after page of super hero...

Blood Red Road (Dust Lands, #1)

Moira Young

8.9 (7 Ratings) Rate It

Book

Saba has spent her whole life in Silverlake, a dried-up wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms....

A Separate Peace: As Heard on BBC Radio 4

John Knowles

9.2 (5 Ratings) Rate It

Book

AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 'A GOOD READ' 'A novel that made such a deep impression on me at sixteen...

Tishomingo Blues

Elmore Leonard

(0 Ratings) Rate It

Book

Vintage Elmore Leonard - a searing tale of gambling, gangsters, hidden agendas and a whole heap of...

Black Widow Vol. 1: S.H.I.E.L.D.'S Most Wanted: Volume 1

Mark Waid and Chris Samnee

7.0 (3 Ratings) Rate It

Book

They wowed you with Daredevil, now the Eisner Award-winning team of Mark Waid and Chris Samnee take...

Awix (3310 KP) rated Earthquake (1974) in Movies

Mar 21, 2021 (Updated Mar 21, 2021)

Earthquake (1974)

1974 | Action, Drama

6.8

(5 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Archetypal piece of mid-70s schlock hits all the usual disaster movie beats: slowish first half introduces various characters, attempts to drum up a sense of foreboding, then everything goes shaky and there are various subplots of people struggling amongst the rubble. A tone of rugged stoicism is usually predominant.

You can almost sense the modern blockbuster struggling to be born here - high concept, low credibility, lots of special effects, John Williams score - but the film is let down by some wobbly production values and questionable casting choices. (The subtext is surprisingly reactionary and morally inflexible, too.) All the bits which make it most entertaining nowadays - Marjoe Gortner as an unhinged national guardsman, Richard Rowntree's motorcycle daredevil, Walter Matthau's dancing drunk - are the parts which are the most camp and ridiculous. Sort of entertaining if you enjoy this kind of bombastic studio silliness.