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  • Deep Impact (1998) -vs- Armageddon (1998)

    August 22, 2008 106

    It’s the End of the World as We Know It. Back in 1998, during the Year of Lewinsky, Paramount/DreamWorks got into a game of chicken with Touchstone. The result was two disaster films about comets that were about to crash into the Earth and destroy all life. The two films could share a single log-line:

    When a “planet-killer” sized comet is discovered to be on an imminent collision course with Earth, an international space effort — led by the United States — sets out to deflect the object by setting off nuclear weapons deep inside its core so that it will miss Earth and, therefore, save humanity.

    I won’t tell you how the Earth fared yet, but I can tell you that the point of impact in the theaters was about two months apart. Talk about operational redundancy!

    Even though Deep Impact was the first in the theaters, for our purposes, we’re giving the “Defending Champion” designation to Armageddon because it won at the box-office. Armageddon grossed $553-million world-wide to the Deep Impact gross of $349-million. Incredibly, IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) has it as a virtual tie with both films scoring a 5.9 out of ten audience rating. […]

  • Wyatt Earp (1994) -vs- Tombstone (1993)

    June 29, 2011 84
  • Without Limits (1998) -vs- Prefontaine (1997)

    July 14, 2007 44
  • Hairspray (2007) -vs- Hairspray (1988)

    August 6, 2007 38
  • Warrior (2011) -vs- The Fighter (2010)

    September 6, 2011 35

Random Articles

  • Larry Crowne (2011) -vs- The Company Men (2010)

    July 2, 2011 4

    With unemployment staring down more than 14 million Americans, it’s natural to want to address the issue on screen. Hollywood has helped define hard times before, through a range of classic films from The Grapes of Wrath to It’s a Wonderful Life. But making an uplifting film about surviving the loss of a job is tough. The best movies — like the best people — transform that disappointment into something different, and that’s the challenge our two competitors each tackle in their own way.

    Tom Hanks mines the vein with a lighter touch in Larry Crowne, which he directed, starred in and co-wrote with Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding). Despite the uncomfortable subject matter, his Academy Awards, box office history and talent made this an easy project to green light. With Julia Roberts on board, the studio is clearly hoping this comedy about being on the wrong side of downsizing will be too big to fail.

    The Company Men, released at Christmastime for Oscar consideration and expanded wide last January, shows us more realistically what it’s like to be squeezed out of the office: Longtime friends carry out their boxes of possessions and, like a re-enactment of Dead Man Walking in the workplace, those left behind wonder who’s next. We learn both who’s next and what they must endure in this film by writer and first-time movie director John Wells, featuring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper and Kevin Costner looking for traction and self-respect in a bad economy. […]

  • Inception (2010) -vs- The Dark Knight (2008)

    July 16, 2010 14
  • Eastern Promises (2007) -vs- A History of Violence (2005)

    September 26, 2007 0
  • From the Editor-in-Chief

    March 27, 2011 1
  • Angels & Demons (2009) -vs- The Da Vinci Code (2006)

    October 12, 2009 4