No one ever really expects a good disaster movie – quality seems – to be antithetical to the genre, but we can at least hope that a disaster movie should be entertainingly bad. One of the classics in those terms is The Poseidon Adventure – when a ‘sub-sea earthquake’ unleashes a mountainous tidal wave on

Shockingly amoral, Formula 51 follows a “master chemist” (Samuel L. Jackson) who’s trying to sell a new drug to the highest bidder. If you think that makes for a questionable hero, wait until you witness the callous and casual cruelty with which endless characters are killed off. A bullet to the face is considered a

Less a remake of the 1933 original than a rebuke. Ballooning to gigantic proportions what was already a bulky metaphor – the gorilla as tragic, unrequited lover – this King Kong is for those who always found the saga silly rather than mythic. Any movie with Jessica Lange’s aspiring starlet Dwan orgasmically enjoying the heat

A remake of Japanese master Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, this plays like a Reader’s Digest version of that great epic, in which a small farming village terrorized by a pack of bandits seeks out seven hired killers for protection. The pleasure of the remake lies in the casting. Yul Brynner may make for a strange

Zorro has had many screen incarnations since his debut in this silent, but few of them have veered far from that first film’s insouciant tone. Zorro’s legacy has been one of carefree prankishness rather than grim heroism. Watching Douglas Fairbanks Sr. prance around as the Spanish Californian nobleman by day and masked crusader for the

Matt Damon and director Doug Liman (Swingers, Mr. and Mrs. Smith) bring plenty of verve to Robert Ludlum’s classic spy novel, about an amnesiac with literal killer instincts. Even someone with memory loss would recognize the action-thriller tactics on display here, but at least they’re skillfully employed.

Narrative has never been a strong suit of director Terry Gilliam, which may explain why he chose Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem Jabberwocky, the slightest of source material. Peppered with magical, made-up words, Carroll’s Jabberwocky centers around a terrible monster and the young boy who slays it. Gilliam uses that framework to exercise the sort of

Stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen’s special-effects work in the 1950s and ’60s has had a far greater influence than any of the films it was featured in, including this ponderous and hokey take on the ancient Greek myth. Harryhausen’s visuals arrive like blessings from the gods; they’re heavenly creatures in a drama that is laboriously earthbound.