Director Roland Emmerich must really hate New York City. Maybe he was once mugged while cruising Times Square, or maybe he's a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan, or maybe he simply couldn't get tickets to a taping of Letterman. Whatever the case may be, The Day After Tomorrow marks the third time he's destroyed the Big Apple on film ( Independence Day and Godzilla are the others). He's also a director who hasn't really been given his due. He's no Martin Scorsese, but he's probably the most successfully manipulative filmmaker since Irwin Allen. His pictures aren't just movies...they're events , and while no one will ever use the words "Roland Emmerich" and "Intelligent Cinema" in the same sentence, he's as gifted as Spielberg for what he does, which is take an apocalyptic premise and use it as a platform to skillfully depict epic-scale destruction of familiar cultural landmarks; who cares about characterization when you get to see Madison Square Garden explode (as in Godzilla )? My only regret is it doesn't happen during a Celine Dion concert. You might even say Emmerich had a hand in creating (or at least popularizing) such a subgenre of the modern disaster film; nearly every effects-driven disaster epic since ID4 features the obligatory destruction of familiar landmarks. To call The Day After Tomorrow his best film may be faint praise to some, but it is his smartest movie in an often dubious genre, and we get to watch New York (as well as L.A., which truly deserves to be destroyed) meet another untimely demise. This Fox release is surprisingly light on instantly accessible extras, but as a special effects bonanza and a supreme example of a state-of-the-art DVD transfer, you could do a lot worse.

Dennis Quaid plays Adrian Hall, a professor who warns dignitaries at a summit meeting that the Earth may face a cataclysmic weather shift if action isn't taken right away. He's ignored, of course, and subjected to ridicule by the Vice President (whose obligatory function in the movie is to poo poo any scientific evidence our hero has to offer). Sure enough, dramatic and catastrophic events begin occurring all over the planet, only much faster than Hall predicted; softball-sized hail rains, twisters destroy most of L.A., ocean temperatures plummet, and New York is devastated by a tidal wave. Soon after, because of the massive sudden drop in temperature, the entire Northern Hemisphere is buried under snow and deadly winter storms. And wouldn't you know it, Hall's son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhall), happens in be in New York at the time, and gets trapped in the library with a bunch of his high school friends. While the rest of the country begins migrating south to escape the new ice age, Hall, determined to save his son, ventures north with a few loyal colleagues in a valiant (though far-fetched) rescue effort. The Day After Tomorrow is neither as rousing or gloriously stupid as Independence Day , opting for a more somber approach (much like Deep Impact ). As a story, it's fairly interesting, aided by top-notch special effects (the tornados which level L.A. and the tidal wave which submerge New York are ominous, exciting and completely convincing); the one exception is the obvious use of computer-generated wolves which attack the kids in New York. I can't imagine it was cheaper to use CGI instead of actual wolves for the sequence, unless the producers didn't think real wolves looked vicious enough. As for the movie's science...I couldn't tell you if the explanation for the devastating weather changes is scientifically sound or not, and it doesn't really matter, because they sound like they are; how many viewers are gonna be global warming experts, anyway? The acting is serviceable; Quaid makes an earnest and likable hero, while Gyllenhaall does a good job with a cliche role as the initially-estranged-but-ultimately-loyal-and-loving-son. Sela Ward, as Hall's wife, does good work with an essentially thankless role as a doctor refusing to leave her patient's side; these scenes could have been edited out and I don't think anyone would care. The movie isn't without its drawbacks. Like many disaster movies preceding it (like The Poseidon Adventure and the aforementioned ID4 ), a lot of the biggest effects-laden scenes occur before the film's even half over, and while what's left of the story is done well enough to maintain interest, the ending is a bit anti-climactic (though the epic-scale shot of Hall hoofing-it into a snow-buried Manhattan is pretty damned cool).

This is another great transfer from Fox. The picture is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and it looks stunning, with great color balance and accurate black tones. The image is also free of grain, scratching or blemishes. I was also pretty impressed with the sound transfer, rendered in both 5.1 DTS and 5.1 Dolby Surround. There's great balance and Harald Kloser's haunting score (which does a lot to contribute to the movie's dark tone) is well rendered.

While there are some good extras on the disc, such as two audio commentaries, some deleted scenes and a cool section which breaks down all the audio segments of a sequence, all the actual "making of" stuff is DVD-ROM content, which means you have to take the disc out of your player and use your computer to access web-links; there's over an hour of info to be found there, but I don't understand the rationale for doing this. Basically, if you don't have a computer (of course that means you ain't reading this), or if you own a Macintosh, you're screwed. Similar Movies: Twister; The Fire Next Time; Deep Impact; The Day the Earth Caught Fire; The Day the Sky Exploded; The Core Useless Trivia: Allegedly, several global warming experts, upset at the depiction of such an event in this film, urged Fox to tack on a disclaimer at the beginning of the film saying this isn't how it would really go down. Fox, apparently crediting its audience with more intelligence (how often does that happen?), understandably refused. Come on, you dumbass eggheads...it's a movie, not 60 Minutes .

The Day After Tomorrow isn't the greatest disaster movie ever made, but it's better than most, and it's difficult to quip about plausibility when you get to once again watch New York and L.A. get decimated (especially if you're a Red Sox fan). The extras are sort of a pain in the ass to get to, but the movie itself looks great. It's similar in structure to Emmerich's ID4 , and while this one is a lot more serious, there's still a lot of fun to be had.