Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I caught this on TV under the title Cat. 8: Armageddon. It's a SyFy Channel disaster movie made in a two-part miniseries format rather than the usual slot. Otherwise, all of the plot elements are the same as you'd see in a usual movie. This one was filmed in Canada like many others (blame the tax breaks) and surprisingly doesn't feel slow despite the three-hour running time.The story is about a failed scientific experiment affecting the Sun and causing solar flares to strike Earth. Attempts to fix the problem only serve to make things worse when the planet stops spinning on its axis. Of course, the only person with the power to save the world is a renegade scientist, played by screen veteran Matthew Modine.Half of the running time follows Modine and his friends and family attempting to evade the ruthless authorities who plan to stop him for no good reason. The other half involves the President attempting to keep a control on things. There's also a human villain, the Secretary of Defense, working for his own ends and only making things worse. The usual gamut of cheap acting and lousy CGI effects plays out, but this is notably more likable than many SyFy efforts, feeling like a throwback to earlier disaster movies such as DEEP IMPACT more than anything else.

My review is very unfair because I have only seen the first half. It is extremely formulaic - the only smart guy is in disgrace, and has a beautiful, plucky daughter (don't they always?); the ESTABLISHMENT is full of weasels who are interfering with solving the problem, and the science is beyond ludicrous. But hey, it's good dumb fun. I wouldn't wait in line to see it, nor make space in my busy schedule, nor pay extra, but as a filler after you need to "come down" from an episode of Breaking Bad, if you like B-grade sci fi and/or disaster movie stuff, it works just fine. Strangely, the acting isn't all that bad. On the one hand, there are rug-chewing villains (the slime literally rolls off the "Secretary" whose self-serving unwillingness to listen to scientific advice causes the catastrophe; the hero's ex-wife's new husband is an unrelenting sleaze, etc.) But scientist/hero Modine is quite good in his role, and the scientist who unleashed the disaster (under pressure from the "Secretary") is actually pretty good too, coming across as sort of a normal person (well, normal for someone who has just destroyed the planet). Anyway, in the "good dumb fun" category I give this high marks. Others have compared it to "Eve of Destruction" and like "Eve" I have only seen one half, but will gladly view the second halves when the opportunity arises.

I watched this film yesterday with queasy disbelief. The simple fact is that nothing - but nothing - can fly between the earth and the sun in less than 8 minutes.That isn't susceptible to "as far as we know", either. It is the basis of one of the most tested, verified and successful scientific theories of all time.Even if a massive CME had been caused immediately by the incoming glittery beam of science-stuff, it could not have reached the earth in less than 16 minutes. And the sun is so big that like a big container ship, it doesn't exactly turn on a sixpence. By the time anything happened, the affected part of the sun would have turned away from the earth, and the CME would have missed.I would have had a lot more respect if there had been an "omigod" moment and a prediction that something nasty was coming in, say, 24 hours, and the film wouldn't have had to run for 24 hours to show it either.This is only one little point in a film I begrudge having spent the time to watch it. IMO it is a turd sandwich with really thin slices of bread either side.Saying, "hey, it's just SCIENCE FICTION, Negative Nancy" does not relieve the film of the responsibility to have at least one foot planted firmly in plausibility. They could have done this properly at no greater cost, with no impact on the story, and I would have given them kudos for having done so.No plausibility, no kudos. This film's nonsensical trashing of the scientific method does not render it any the more entertaining. It's just sloppy, rushed-looking and tedious.I shan't be watching it again.

I agree completely with Ed Blackadder's review. Why is it so very difficult for the writers of scripts that pretend to be "science" fiction to ask even a serious amateur science enthusiast to review their scripts (I'd do it for free) to catch their innumerable errors and misrepresentations of natural phenomenon? Did the writers of this bad joke sleep through their grade school and high school science classes? Apparently. And they must also believe that everyone else did, too.If you are a SCIENCE fiction fan, you'll want to skip this one unless you want to watch for a few laughs. However, that probably won't hold you through the entire show. I stopped watching to write this after the hilariously wrong satellite sequence about 20 minutes in. Gawd...