10.5: Apocalypse
10.5: Apocalypse is a 2006 television miniseries written and directed by John Lafia. A sequel to 2004's 10.5, the show follows a series of catastrophic seismic disasters including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and sinkholes, all triggered by an apocalyptic earthquake. The series was produced in Canada. It received primarily negative reviews.[1]
10.5: Apocalypse
10.5: Apocalypse began filming in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in June 2005. A sequel to 10.5, the miniseries used much of the same staff, headed by returning executive producers Howard Braunstein, Michael Jaffe, and Gary Pearl. Director John Lafia, who also wrote script, decided to film the sequel using digital media, stating that it would allow the producers "to achieve a whole new level of visual effects and style that have heretofore not been seen on network television."[2]
The series was critically panned, and received a 23 out of 100 on metacritic.com. Gillian Flynn at EW.com wrote, "Everything about the [miniseries] is so lousy, it's difficult to pick just one failure." Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in Wall Street Journal's website, "10.5: Apocalypse is visually dazzling, relentlessly hysterical and also a sequel, which means that most viewers sitting down to watch it know what they're getting into. That should damp down any untoward expectations -- the appearance of a believable character, for instance, or piece of dialogue, neither of which, be assured, is to be found here."[1]
The plot of 10.5: Apocalypse is and isn't something that's hard to follow. In a nutshell, Samantha Hill (Kim Delaney) discovers a large fault line after the West Coast is hit by a massive earthquake. What makes this new earthquake even worse is that it's going to be more massive and it happens to be heading toward our nations largest nuclear reactors. Samantha and the President (Beau Bridges) call on Dr. Earl Hill (Frank Langella) who just happens to be Samantha's father. He had predicted this event many years before (which is actually a somewhat interesting idea of reverse continental drift), and, having been disgraced by the very people he was trying to help, doesn't want to hurt his daughter's career with his own ideas. Suddenly, Las Vegas is rocked by an earthquake, Dr. Hill is thought to be a casualty and it's up to Samantha and a pair of rescue workers (Dean Cain and Oliver Hudson) to stop the impending doom.
As this is a TV movie the budget that director John Lafia has been afforded is not the biggest. So The Day After Tomorrow this is not. However, I doubt that anyone gearing up to watch this film really expected it to be that. It is a solidly told ensemble tale, that mixes decent effects with various interpersonal relationships. There are some things that seem a bit farfetched (the President's daughter working as a relief worker?) and fantastical (the very idea that is being put across of the tectonic plates coming back together!), but if nothing else 10.5: Apocalypse delivers an interesting story that keeps moving and moving until the end.
As a miniseries I found that I did enjoy 10.5: Apocalypse. I thought that it wove interesting character stories into an entertaining narrative. While not the most original of films, it did attempt to have certain elements that would keep viewers watching. In fact having watched the miniseries in one sitting (as opposed to having it broken up over subsequent nights), I think that 10.5: Apocalypse worked more as a thickly textured character study, with just enough nuance in the action to give a variety of fans the kind of viewing experience that they have come to expect.
Currently on Prime Video as Earthquake: The Fall of Los Angeles. This is actually a sequel mini-series called 10.5: Apocalypse. And while it is low budget, it does have a fairly strong cast of B-List TV actors and C-list movie stars in Beau Bridges and Frank Langella. Along with 10.5, I actually enjoyed this.
Our data shows that the 10.5: Apocalypse is available to stream on 7plus. We also checked other leading streaming services including Prime Video, Apple TV+, Binge, Disney+, Google Play, Foxtel Now, Netflix and Stan. 10.5: Apocalypse is not available on any of them at this time.
10.5: Apocalypse cast list, listed alphabetically with photos when available. This list of 10.5: Apocalypse actors includes any 10.5: Apocalypse actresses and all other actors from the film. You can view trivia about each 10.5: Apocalypse actor on this list, such as when and where they were born. To find out more about a particular actor or actress, click on their name and you'll be taken to a page with even more details about their acting career. The cast members of 10.5: Apocalypse have been in many other movies, so use this list as a starting point to find actors or actresses that you may not be familiar with.
10.5: Apocalypse is een Amerikaanse miniserie uit 2006, geregisseerd en geproduceerd door John Lafia. De miniserie is een vervolg op de televisiefilm 10.5. De serie volgt een aantal seismologische rampen, waaronder aardbevingen, vulkaanuitbarstingen en tsunami's. De miniserie werd net als zijn voorganger slecht ontvangen, met veel kritiek op de wetenschappelijke onwaarheden, het cliché plot en de slechte karakterontwikkelingen.
When '10.5: Apocalypse' premiered in 2006 on NBC, my local nightly news station invited a group of leading geologists to watch a special screening and report their reactions. The footage that followed showed a group of normally-stoic scientists laughing uproariously -- tears streaming by the gallon -- as the telefilm trotted out one unbelievable "fact-based" scene of earthquake disaster after another. Granted, an unashamed piece of entertainment hokum like '10.5: Apocalypse' is never going to claim to be a documentary, but couldn't it have tried to make its utter nonsense a bit more believable?
As a closet lover of all things Irwin Allen, I secretly wanted to embrace '10.5: Apocalypse' in all its cheesiness. The problem is, while there's nothing wrong with another 169 needless minutes of earthquake porn, the movie has been done on such a cheapie TV-movie budget that it fails to deliver the money shots. The "special effects" are poor, even by basic cable standards, with giggle-inducing CGI and just about every other shot employing a "cheat" reaction take to try and cover-up the fact that the flick's budget was $12. Even worse, the "drama" is boring, with the kind of drag-out-every-scene banality common in bad daytime soap operas. If you're not gonna give me the cool destruction scenes and hordes of screaming, dying people I want from a disaster flick, then at least go all 'Deep Impact' and deliver characters whose fates I care about.
'10.5: Apocalypse' supposedly boasts another "all-star cast." Too bad telefilms don't get movie posters, for this one would have a row of boxes on the bottom with the headshots of such mighty actors as Kim Delaney (returning from the first '10.5' as the only geologist in the world who isn't a total idiot), Goldie Hawn's son Oliver Hudson, a slumming Frank Langella, ex-Superman Dean Cain (where are your superpowers now, hot shot?), and Beau Bridges as the lamest-duck President since, well, George W. Bush. If Delaney at least tries to make this silliness slightly plausible, the rest completely phone it in -- I don't think I've ever seen Langella or Bridges look so embarrassed.
Perhaps I could have forgiven some of these flaws had '10.5: Apocalypse' not been so horribly directed. John Lafia is a TV veteran, so it's shocking how rushed and just plain annoying his choices are here. The guy is obsessed with constantly "rack-focusing" the camera, zooming in and out on everything -- I wanted to vomit after ten minutes. It's a blatant and transparent attempt to create "energy" during scenes that don't have any, and after 169 minutes of this "technique," I was seriously considering sending some of my upchuck in a bag to Mr. Lafia personally (care of the DGA).
Ultimately, '10.5: Apocalypse' is one of those so-bad-their-bad movies that doesn't even have the decency to be unintentionally funny. It's just inept, dull, and more than a bit insulting to the audience's intelligence. It's saying something when the greatest emotion a film elicits is relief for having finally made it to the end credits.
As part of Echo Bridge Entertainment's first wave of budget Blu-ray releases (mostly TV movies and barely-released theatrical fare), my expectations were about zero going into '10.5: Apocalypse.' Given the still-high costs of Blu-ray mastering and replication, just how good could a rushed title like this look? However, I was actually pleasantly surprised with this 1080i/MPEG-2 encode -- '10.5: Apocalypse' may not be your new demo disc, but Echo Bridge acquits themselves nicely here in the quality department.
'10.5: Apocalypse' is like a bad TV-movie version of a bad Irwin Allen disaster flick -- and that's not a compliment. I'm all for a stupid earthquake movie, but this one stretched even my patience. As one of Echo Bridge's inaugural budget-line Blu-ray releases, the disc quality here ain't so bad -- it's perfectly fine considering the quality of the content, and the price. I can't recommend this specific title, but if Echo Bridge is able to secure some better content in the future, they may have something here. 041b061a72