Apocalyptic Fiction - Movies (list at the end), Novels, Poetry & Gonzo Journalism


The Purse Seine
   ~ Robinson Jeffers

Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
       of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net, 
        unable to see the phosphorescence of the 
        shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting 
        Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off 
        Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color 
        light on the sea's night-purple; he points, 
        and the helmsman
Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the 
        gleaming shoal and drifts out her seine-net. 
        They close the circle
And purse the bottom of the net, then with great 
        labor haul it in.

                                      I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible, 
        then, when the crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall 
        to the other of their closing destiny the 
        phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body 
        sheeted with flame, like a live rocket
A comet's tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside 
        the narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up 
        to watch, sighing in the dark; the vast walls 
        of night
Stand erect to the stars.

                                Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top
On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light: 
        how could I help but recall the seine-net
Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how 
        beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible.
I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together 
        into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now
There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable 
        of free survival, insulated
From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all 
        dependent. The circle is closed, and the net
Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet 
        they shine already. The inevitable mass-disasters
Will not come in our time nor in our children's, but we 
        and our children
Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all 
        powers--or revolution, and the new government
Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls--or anarchy, 
        the mass-disasters.
                                       These things are Progress;
Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps 
        its reason? Or it lets go, lets the mood flow
In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria, 
        splintered gleams, crackled laughter. But they are 
        quite wrong.
There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew 
        that cultures decay, and life's end is death.


List of most popular dystopic films from IMBd, 158 with at least 5,000 votes.

Click here to purchase only $2.99!
Amazon
Recommended by a reader:  Two books by Stephen Baxter: "Flood" and its sequel "Ark". Very compelling fictional tale of sea-level rise, climate refugees, and the attempt to get off of the Earth to find a new place to live. Great apocolypsi science fiction. 

Wiki entry

A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky
~ Lewis Carroll

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?



Ship of Fools
Hieronymus Bosch 1490-1500


 somebody's making a mistake somewhere
or is it everybody?
and if everybody's making a mistake
is it really a mistake?

  ~ the dirty poet

From the journal Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment (ISLE), a special edition described at Cultures of Energy blog...

"A new issue of the journal Interdiscplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment will address eco-horror as a mode and genre–an increasingly lively topic given the attention paid to horror by speculative-realist writers such as Graham Harman, Ben Woodward, Timothy Morton, and Eugene Thacker and their efforts to recuperate H.P. Lovecraft as a ecological writer. Thacker’s book In the Dust of this Planet, for example, does a useful reading of Fritz Leiber’s oil-horror novel The Black Gondolier. In the new issue, there is an implicit distinction made between eco-horror and the post-apocalyptic (or catastrophe) genre that is probably the most common focus for ecocritics after romantic poetry and nature writing. The issue is also indicates an increase in scholarly attention to non-realist genres such as horror, fantasy, science fiction, and speculative fiction.
The issue includes articles by critics such as Stephen A. Rust, Carter Soles, Christy Tidwell, Sarah L. Crosby, Heidi C. M. Scott and Kom Kunyosying. Postmodern horror film, comics, Poe, Hitchcock, parasites, posthumanism, and new materialism are among the topics discussed."

 Blog --Synthetic_Zero - don't miss the post on Glenn Beck and Nihilism!

The Ark - see review here - "In the 2040s, the world is falling to pieces. A seed bank has been set up in the Snowy Mountains to protect the world's plant stocks. As the Chaos mounts, the director of the seed bank decides to bring the employees and their families inside and lock them away. He says it's to keep them and the plants safe until things calm down, but also implies the giant biotech company which runs the facility has been secretly destroying the world's natural crops and he wants to rescue these seeds from them. "

“No pestilence had ever been so fatal or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal…the redness and the horror”.  The Mask of the Red Death, Edgar Allen Poe

 Bleak House, Charles Dickens

 The Healer ~ Antti Tuomainnen ... see review
   excerpt..."He said he did it on behalf of ordinary people, to avenge them… a healer for a sick planet.  That’s why he had murdered the CEO of a manufacturing company and his family.  And that’s why he would continue to murder whoever he claimed had contributed to the acceleration of climate change."

 Article by Nathaniel Rich reviews the role of dystopian fiction, including:

 Timothy Egan’s “Worst Hard Time”
Ian McEwan’s “Solar”
Ron Rosenbaum’s “How the End Begins”
“The World Without Us,” by Alan Weisman
E. M. Forster,  “The Machine Stops
“Future Shock”, Alvin Toffler

 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ( series ) ~ Douglas Adams (Don't Panic!  and Thanks for All the Fish!)
There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

~ Sara Teasdale
Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver

A Friend of the Earth ~ T.C. Boyle

Odds Against Tomorrow ~ Nathaniel Rich

A collection titled ~ Limericks of Doom, by Benjamin the Donkey available at Amazon for $3.06

Since publication, perhaps his best, dated 9/12/14 -

Overshoot
or
The Blind Men Were Irrelevant
Six Dooshistan men had in mind 
That extinction’s cause they would find;
They thought that through thinking
They’d see their cares shrinking
Despite being mentally blind.

The first, the bag he was in
Had a heavy religious spin,
So the reason he picked
Wasn’t hard to predict:
“The problem is all due to sin!”

The second spake, “We’re going to tank
Because our economy shrank:
The future’s not sunny;
The reason is money,
And everyone trying to make bank.”

The third said, “We’re going to expire
From “advances” we didn’t require—
Like the planting of plants;
Now we’re pooping our pants
Due to agriculture and fire.”

The fourth quoth, “We’re feeling bereft
From oppression and government theft;
The reason things bite:
We’re too far to the right
(Or maybe too far to the left).”

The fifth declared, “Life is complex,
And we’re into it up to our necks;
Our species’ extender
Lies trapped within gender:
The problem is all due to sex!

The sixth opined, “We’re down the drain
And the reason is perfectly plain:
Folks are totally nuts,
Their head’s up their butts,
They’re psycho, and crazy insane.”

So each man played with his dong
And disputed on whose was most long;
Each thought he was right
But that changed not their plight,
Which made them all fatally wrong.

From Tennyson:

 Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
~ The Kraken, Alfred Tennyson




LXXIII
With Earth’s first Clay They did the Last Man knead,
And there of the Last Harvest sow’d the Seed:
And the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.

The Rubaiyat ~ Omar Khayyam

Goodreads Apocalypse Group

FaceBook Cli-Fi Central group 

 The Conqueror Worm
By Edgar Allan Poe

T.S. Eliot - The Hollow Men, 1925 "This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper."
also see
The Wasteland, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Hunter S. Thompson & Ralph Steadman


Frankenstein, Mary Shelley


Review of the following Cli-fi novels in Dissent Magazine,  Cli-Fi, Birth of a Genre
Far North ~ Marcel Theroux 
I’m With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet~ edited by Mark Martin 
Back to the Garden ~ Clara Hume 
The Healer: A Novel ~ Antti Tuomainen 
Odds Against Tomorrow: A Novel ~ Nathaniel Rich 
Solar ~ Ian McEwan 
Wild Ones:  A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America ~ Jon Mooallem


“It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!"
~ Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
They lived, they died. "I am what I am,"
Someone heard Swift stammer: he was crazy.
Beethoven, dying, learned to multiply.
What does it mean? Why, nothing.
Nothing? ... How well we all die!
~ Randall Jarrell

The Institution, Para Dime, 2009

 The Walrus & The Carpenter, Lewis Carol

Fire and Ice ~ Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.


Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden (1978)
Advice to a Prophet
BY RICHARD WILBUR

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,   
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God’s name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,   
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,   
Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.   
How should we dream of this place without us?—
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,   
A stone look on the stone’s face?

Speak of the world’s own change. Though we cannot conceive   
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,   
How the view alters. We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip   
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without   
The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?   
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean   
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose   
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding   
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing   
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.

*******

Any Greek myth, especially Prometheus, Icarus, and Pandora

James Wesley Rawles, Patriots
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/04/15/the-most-dangerous-novel-in-america.html


clifi novels:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_Eldritch

Examples in literature


Ozmandia, Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

A.S. Byatt, Ragnarok, The End of the Gods -

“If I were writing an allegory [Loki] would be the detached scientific intelligence which could either save the earth or contribute to its rapid disintegration.  As it is, the world ends because neither the all too human gods, with their armies and quarrels, nor the fiery thinker know how to save it.”

Tolkien, Lord of the Rings - a review at The Withering of All Woods

T.S.Eliot, The Wasteland (excerpt)

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
The Maple and The Birch


Along the road I daily walk
a birch, a maple grew
entwined,
and limbs laced through
 they occupied
the space of one.

Some time ago, two seeds had died,
then side-by-side revived as
seedlings
 saplings
young trees
fully grown.

And as they reached
 all trusting to the sun
their un-twinned bodies
pressed so close that
flesh had fused
in places here and there
along the lusty trunks,
joined branch on branch
the peeling black and white
the marbled grey
 together.

Every day
along the walking way
I passed them
in all seasons and all lights,
companionship of limbs and leaves
- serrated birch, the maple we all know –
two trees in arms
as one.

‘Til summer heat began to sear
and leaves so finely tuned
to distant fire
to shrink from sun
they once had sought
as life itself.


Pale birch the first to burn,
its leaves to rust and fall
before the frost could even slice
with silver knife -
one glistening night
then weeks of flame and glory.
Not now, instead,
an ugly August autumn.

Belittled leaves exposed
the tender tops
that drying in
the now fierce heat
began to break
to fall to bits
at first unnoticed
then – crack – a larger limb
 came down
and then another -
jagged stumps, like war wounds,
where once whole branches
wet with sap
had soared.

Until today
I saw the birch had died,
its brittle sun-scorched trunk
snapped through – Who heard? –
and now
the charred and shattered top,
hangs
 caught and held   
in friendly arms.

How long the maple tree will live
I cannot say,
but will daily pass this way,
a sad and silent witness
to what end?

~ Patrick Lima

MAY MORNING

How quiet has the spring become
of birdsong how bereft
where once (in living memory)
May mornings rang
with voices
all a-jumble

Discordant harmony
a unison of
trills and peeps
of shrieks and caws
of gurgles, flutes
and piercing cries
so loud
the very air
crescendoed
with great joy

rise early rise early
get up get up
see hear see hear

No more. Now, mid-day,
plaintive mourning doves
refrain
of loss on loss
and loss again,

~ Patrick Lima

******
Drew Dillinger video - Planetize the Movement
What did you do once you knew??

********

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

~ Prospero, The Tempest
sPeaking out
Hi.
Peak oil.
Peak everything.
Nobody wants to know.
It's quite simple though.
You start with a pristine planet.
Life outgrows itself eon after eon.
The Sun keeps shining. The rain keeps falling.
The plants keep growing, as do the animals, and dying.
Huge deposits of organic matter keep forming. Minerals just rest wherever.
Huge amounts of energy and chemical elements just lie there, buried for bilions of years.
The deposits of dead biomass turn soil first, then oil and gas under the immense pressure of the Earth's crust.
Then one day appears an ape, who learns to run on its legs first, then on wood, then on coal, then on oil and gas and uranium.
That's how we started to run out of things without any regard for them as they where so plentiful and we needed to outgrow ourselves - didn't we?
That's how enormous forests disappeared as did many species of animals, and that's how we managed to multiply in spite of killing each other.
We are still in the process of increasing our number while we can still burn wood, coal, oil, gas, uranium and hopes of growth.
But we face an inevitable prospect of decline as we run out of all known types of fuel and other materials we dig out.
There is absolutely no way at all that "renewable" sources of energy can substitute for fossile fuels and uranium.
The sheer amount of energy on which we depend nowadays, and the rarefying chemicals, can't be substituted for.
There are no technologies in sight of whatever kind that could substitute for a half of present needs.
Solar energy, wind farms, hydraulic power stations etc. combined can only supply a third of it.
On top of that most alternative, renewable technologies, depend on rarefying raw materials.
That's how the biggest bubble of all will burst sometime: that of human population.
The so-called global and sectorial crises and regional conflicts will worsen.
Countries are starting to run out of resources and labour.
Hardship, poverty, hunger and disease will ensue.
Unrest will spread from poorer to richer areas.
Energy supply will trail demand forever.
Same thing for minerals and foodstuff.
We may run ahead competing.
But then we are doomed.
We need to change.
We need less.
To survive.
Help us.
Bye.
by Artur Sixto

Earth Abides Geroge Stewart
poet George Heym
poet Jakob van Hoddis "The End of the World"
One Second After, Forstchen

http://www.huxley.net/soma/somaquote.html

*******
We must teach our children 
To smell the Earth
To taste the rain
To touch the wind
To see things grow
To hear the sun rise and night fall
To care.

                  ~ John Cleal, 1929 - 2007

APOCALYPTIC MOVIES (aka doomer porn)

Goodbye World - see trailer
Brazil, 1985 black comedy - see review
The Zero Theorem see it on torrent
28 Days After
22 After, free on vimeo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87F2jX5Qk2Y&app=desktop

Survivors

Survivors is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC. It depicts the lives of a group of people who survived a virulent unknown strain of influenza which has wiped out most of the human species.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00q3gk5/episodes/guide

These Final Hours

As Earth approaches a cataclysm that will be its end, a self-obsessed man heads for the party-to-end-all-parties, but he ends up saving the life of a little girl who is searching for her father.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaoF6byFQFU

Interstellar

In Earth's future, a global crop blight and second Dust Bowl are slowly rendering the planet uninhabitable. Professor Brand (Michael Caine), a brilliant NASA physicist, is working on plans to save mankind by transporting Earth's population to a new home via a wormhole. But first, Brand must send former NASA pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and a team of researchers through the wormhole and across the galaxy to find out which of three planets could be mankind's new home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vxOhd4qlnA

Finding a Friend at the End of the World

The announcement that an enormous asteroid will obliterate Earth in less than a month brings an end to the marriage of mild-mannered insurance salesman Dodge (Steve Carell), whose wife leaves him on the spot. After his bold young neighbor, Penny (Keira Knightley), belatedly delivers a letter from Dodge's former sweetheart, Dodge decides that he must find the love of his life before it's too late. Dodge and Penny embark on a road trip that eventually brightens their outlook, if not the world's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T43InzvBm-k

Waterworld

In a future where the polar ice-caps have melted and Earth is almost entirely submerged, a mutated mariner fights starvation and outlaw "smokers," and reluctantly helps a woman and a young girl try to find dry land.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpKbULrB9Z8

Planet of the Apes

An Air Force astronaut crash lands on a mysterious planet where evolved, talking apes dominate a race of primitive humans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPgNrHqfTdY

Deluge

A massive earthquake strikes the United States, which destroys the West Coast and unleashes a massive flood that threatens to destroy the East Coast as well. (1933)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icXVth7gC0U

Into the Storm

(2014) As a new day begins in the town of Silverton, its residents have little reason to believe it will be anything other than ordinary. Mother Nature, however has other plans. In the span of just a few hours, an unprecedented onslaught of powerful tornadoes ravages Silverton. Storm trackers predict that the worst is still to come, as terrified residents seek shelter, and professional storm-chasers run toward the danger, hoping to study the phenomenon close up and get a once-in-a-lifetime shot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBH25XxM-7g
http://intothestormmovie.com/

I am Legend

Robert Neville (Will Smith), a brilliant scientist, is a survivor of a man-made plague that transforms humans into bloodthirsty mutants. He wanders alone through New York City, calling out for other possible survivors, and works on finding a cure for the plague using his own immune blood. Neville knows he is badly outnumbered and the odds are against him, and all the while, the infected wait for him to make a mistake that will deliver Neville into their hands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2q71r5-K_g

Snowpiercer

A post-apocalyptic ice age forces humanity's last survivors aboard a globe-spanning supertrain. One man (Chris Evans) will risk everything to lead a revolt for control of the engine and the future of the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX5PwfEMBM0

Contagion

When Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns to Minnesota from a Hong Kong business trip, she attributes the malaise she feels to jet lag. However, two days later, Beth is dead, and doctors tell her shocked husband (Matt Damon) that they have no idea what killed her. Soon, many others start to exhibit the same symptoms, and a global pandemic explodes. Doctors try to contain the lethal microbe, but society begins to collapse as a blogger (Jude Law) fans the flames of paranoia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYSyuuLk5g

Creation


The film is based on "Annies Box," a biography penned by Darwins great-great-grandson Randal Keynes using personal letters and diaries of the Darwin family. We take a unique and inside look at Darwin, his family and his love for his deeply religious wife, played by Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind, Requiem for a Dream), as, torn between faith and science, Darwin struggles to finish his legendary book "On the Origin of Species," which goes on to become the foundation for evolutionary biology. Evolution has everything to do with extinction!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7X33g6eoOc 
Divergent

Tris Prior (Shailene Woodley) lives in a futuristic world in which society is divided into five factions. As each person enters adulthood, he or she must choose a faction and commit to it for life. Tris chooses Dauntless -- those who pursue bravery above all else. However, her initiation leads to the discovery that she is a Divergent and will never be able to fit into just one faction. Warned that she must conceal her status, Tris uncovers a looming war which threatens everyone she loves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutgWjz10sM

Apocalypto

The Mayan kingdom is at the height of its opulence and power but the foundations of the empire are beginning to crumble. The leaders believe they must build more temples and sacrifice more people or their crops and citizens will die. Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a peaceful hunter in a remote tribe, is captured along with his entire village in a raid. He is scheduled for a ritual sacrifice until he makes a daring escape and tries to make it back to his pregnant wife and son.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngWBddVNVZs

Spartacus

The rebellious Thracian Spartacus, born and raised a slave, is sold to Gladiator trainer Batiatus. After weeks of being trained to kill for the arena, Spartacus turns on his owners and leads the other slaves in rebellion. As the rebels move from town to town, their numbers swell as escaped slaves join their ranks. Under the leadership of Spartacus, they make their way to southern Italy, where they will cross the sea and return to their homes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKCmyiljKo0

The Looper


"Looper is a remarkable feat of imagination and execution, entertaining from start to finish, even as it asks the audience to contemplate how and why humanity keeps making the same rotten mistakes."


“It's the glimpses of Children of Men-like societal dystopia that give the movie its real weight".


"The film's premise is markedly inventive, and [writer-director Rian] Johnson spends a lot of time making his universe seem lived-in and believable, but he's not just concerned with whiz-bang what-ifs. The showdown of selves illuminates just how little Gordon-Levitt's character has changed over the intervening years, stuck as he is in a feedback loop of drug use and violence despite his pipe dream of moving to Europe. The retro trench coats and firearms also suggest a sort of eternal recurrence, and as Looper's plot gets more complex, its central question simplifies: If we can't fix our mistakes, can we at least make sure we don't repeat the same ones over and over again?"
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1lg4ue_looper-official-movie-trailer-2012-hd-bruce-willis-emily-blunt-joseph-gordon-levitt-entertainment-ho_shortfilms

The Rum Diary

Based on the debut novel by Hunter S. Thompson, "The Rum Diary" tells the increasingly unhinged story of itinerant journalist Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp). Tiring of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, Kemp travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local newspaper, The San Juan Star, run by downtrodden editor Lotterman (Richard Jenkins). Adopting the rum-soaked life of the island, Paul soon becomes obsessed with Chenault (Amber Heard), the wildly attractive Connecticut-born fiancée of Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart). Sanderson, a businessman involved in shady property development deals, is one of a growing number of American entrepreneurs who are determined to convert Puerto Rico into a capitalist paradise in service of the wealthy. When Kemp is recruited by Sanderson to write favorably about his latest unsavory scheme, the journalist is presented with a choice: to use his words for the corrupt businessmen's financial benefit, or use them to take the bastards down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8KblG1S0_A
 
Year Six

Daniel struggles to survive in a post-apocalyptic world, while coping with the loss of everything he once knew and loved.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPUDWpD_8OU

The Quiet Earth

Trailer for the 1985 Sci-Fi classic - The Quiet Earth

Plot Summary: A man wakes up to find himself literally alone in the world, and goes about trying to find other survivors, as well as to find out what happened. He suspects that a government research project he was involved in had something to do with the disappearance of everyone. Eventually he finds several other people, and once they begin to trust each other they try to figure out why they were left on earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdHoYtBzdX0

They Are Just Meat

After years of investigation, an alien meets with his partner in a diner to discuss an unbelievably shocking discovery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

The Postman

Kevin Costner directs and stars in this action-filled epic set in a post-apocalyptic American West. In the year 2013, a massive war has left most of the country in total disarray. Out of the chaos comes one man, determined to rebuild the American spirit, by delivering mail to provide much needed communication between the surviving pockets of communities. As his efforts begin to take hold, he finds himself in a fight for his life against a despotic general and an army of warriors who wish to continue their reign of terror.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC8FxxvXYTY
2001 A Space Odyssey

"2001" is a story of evolution. Sometime in the distant past, someone or something nudged evolution by placing a monolith on Earth (presumably elsewhere throughout the universe as well). Evolution then enabled humankind to reach the moon's surface, where yet another monolith is found, one that signals the monolith placers that humankind has evolved that far. Now a race begins between computers (HAL) and human (Bowman) to reach the monolith placers. The winner will achieve the next step in evolution, whatever that may be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6ywMnbef6Y

Miracle Mile

A young man meets and falls in love with a young woman at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. This area is known as Miracle Mile, and the whole movie takes place there. They make a date, which he misses, and while he is searching for her, he accidentally finds out that we (the United States) are about to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. He frantically searches for her so that they can escape Los Angeles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK6th2tOqSo

The Quiet Earth

1985 Sci-Fi classic. A man wakes up to find himself literally alone in the world, and goes about trying to find other survivors, as well as to find out what happened. He suspects that a government research project he was involved in had something to do with the disappearance of everyone. Eventually he finds several other people, and once they begin to trust each other they try to figure out why they were left on earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdHoYtBzdX0

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Faced with both her hot-tempered father's fading health and melting ice-caps that flood her ramshackle bayou community and unleash ancient aurochs, six-year-old Hushpuppy must learn the ways of courage and love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF7i2n5NXLo

Ravenous

It's a recipe for nonstop action and excitement when the inhabitants of an isolated military outpost go up against a marauding band of cannibals in a deadly struggle for survival! Ever watchful of the enemies who might literally tear them apart, the uneasy alliance of soldiers must fight brutal elements of the Sierra Nevada wilderness -- as well as their own murderous instincts to stay alive. Directed by Antonia Bird (Priest), this white-knuckle thriller stars Guy Pearce (Iron Man 3, Prometheus), Robert Carlyle (Once Upon A Time) and David Arquette (Scream 4).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7BDiNktrLU

Last Man on Earth (TV series)

From writer/producer Will Forte (“Nebraska,” “Saturday Night Live”) and directors/producers Chris Miller and Phil Lord (“The Lego Movie,”  “21 Jump Street”), THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is a comedy about the life and adventures of Phil Miller, an average guy who inadvertently became humanity’s last hope. The series recently was nominated for four 2015 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (Forte), Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series (Forte) and Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series (Lord, Miller). After a deadly virus swept the planet in 2020, only one man was left on earth: PHIL MILLER (Forte). Phil searched the country in his RV for other survivors, only to return to his hometown of Tucson, realizing that he was almost certainly the last living being on the face of the earth. All he wanted was for someone – anyone – to find him. His prayers were (kind of) answered with the arrival of CAROL PILBASIAN (Kristen Schaal), the last woman on earth. Carol and Phil do not share the same post-apocalyptic values, and Carol forces Phil to marry her before they attempt repopulation. Phil finally agrees, only to discover that another woman still roams the earth, MELISSA (January Jones). Their cul-de-sac is soon filled with a handful of other survivors, including the lovable and cheerful TODD (Mel Rodriguez), charming southerner GAIL (Mary Steenburgen), Aussie ERICA (Cleopatra Coleman) and, finally, a strapping, second PHIL MILLER (Boris Kodjoe), who have all followed the billboards to Tucson to complete their tiny, weird community. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jGqyxC2LbM

The Purge: Anarchy

The New Founders of America invite you to celebrate your annual right to Purge. THE PURGE: ANARCHY, the sequel to summer 2013¹s sleeper hit that opened to No. 1 at the box-office, sees the return of writer/director/producer James DeMonaco to craft the next terrifying chapter of dutiful citizens preparing for their country¹s yearly 12 hours of anarchy. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzFCDqKE4yA

After The Dark

Faced with an impending nuclear apocalypse, a group of twenty college students must determine which ten of them would take shelter underground and reboot the human race. The decision quickly becomes deadly as each in the group turns against each other in a desperate fight for survival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ36cRPg9es

Chloe & Theo

A young woman, Chloe, living by her wits on the streets of New York City, has a chance meeting with a wise Inuit Eskimo, Theo, who was sent to New York by his elders to provide a message to the people of the world – We either change our destructive ways or be destroyed by them. Chloe, who has been searching for something to believe in, becomes inspired by Theo and , with the help of a kind lawyer, Monica, the three of them present Theo’s story to the United Nations in hopes of creating a better future for all of us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-vZogVJOqM

Night Moves

A drama centered on three environmentalists who plot to blow up a dam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7-VqKLYZks

The Rover (tv series)

Fear the man with nothing left to lose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChM2icbWo9w

not to be missed cannibal scene, think "American Gothic" photoshopped!

Oh wait, somebody did it!



 

Day After Tomorrow

The Book of Eli

Miracle Mile - review
The Dog Stars Heller
The Age of Stupid
     Watch it in full here ... read about it from Earthtribe review here
Hunger Games series - this is actually a candidate for the documentary section.  Luscious satire.
Avatar
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)
Johnathon Livingston Seagull
World War Z - okay, it's zombies.  But the scenes of so many of them kinda look like...for real.
The Matrix
Idiocracy - review
The Road (adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel, review in the Guardian)
God Bless America - hilarious revenge!

They Live
Soylent Green
Mad Max
Zeitgeist
Code 46
Chris Petit's Radio On (1979)
Æon Flux
Under the Dome
Lucy
Cannibal - not apocalyptic but verrrrry ghoulish - see review

Transformers - Age of Extinction - better version of the script here:  http://www.the-editing-room.com/transformers-age-of-extinction.html

Living on the Edge

The Book of Eli - most malevolent cannibalism scene evah - trailer
Noah
The Carrington Event - what happens when the lights go out.  Predictable.
Revolution
Melancholia
The 100
Defiance
Resurrection
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/nov/24/take-shelter-review?guni=Article:in%20body%20link
The Grifters
Pulp Fiction

A comic "Cliff's Notes" of Kubrick's 2001

Knowing, reviewed in article, Contemplating Human Extinction 

I was going to include The Counselor, but it is trumped by this alternate script:  http://www.the-editing-room.com/the-counselor.html

5 comments:

  1. DANIELBLOOMNovember 28, 2014 at 9:35 PM

    MOVIES? SEE 1933 ''deluge''

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jackson DavisJuly 6, 2016 at 10:43 PM

    "A Canticle for Leibowitz," Walter M. Miller's SF classic. I liked especially the passage where the workers were illuminating wiring diagrams.

    ReplyDelete
  3. KirkOctober 2, 2016 at 4:22 PM

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2LKSTbmYis

    ReplyDelete
  4. KirkOctober 2, 2016 at 4:26 PM

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2LKSTbmYis

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gail ZawackiOctober 3, 2016 at 5:17 AM

      Thank you Kirk. I have now read several reviews of that book and will order it today!

      Delete

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