Seeds of Destruction

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Sci-Fi / Action
IMDB Rating: 4.4 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

I do love an accidental find. Sitting at home, having done all the exciting things for the day (like washing dishes and cleaning out cat litter trays), I was channel surfing when I landed on the Universal Channel and saw that the movie coming on in 5 minutes was Seeds of Destruction. An awesome title, and when I saw that it starred Stefanie von Pfetten (of Odysseus and the Isle of Mists fame) I knew that I had found the perfect way to kill an hour and a half. From the ludicrous plotline to the horrible CGI and spending the whole movie’s duration trying to figure out how Ms von Pfetten’s surname is pronounced, Seeds of Destruction was a delightfully cheesy romp worthy of End of the World Month.

Oh dear God, more nature!

Let us all cast our minds back, dear reader, to a much simpler time at the dawn of creation. Adam and Eve are froliccing in their delightful Garden, God doesn’t have too many humans to manage and the air has never been so fresh (because, up until this point, it had never existed). It’s the plants that make the Garden of Eden so wonderful; they suck up any and all pollutants and leave Adam and Eve with the luxuriously clean air to which they’ve become accustomed. And then they screwed it up because someone just had to be tempted and eat the forbidden fruit. Now, what if Adam had had the foresight to steal some of the seeds from the Garden’s plants so that he could plant his own Eden 2.0 while in exile? What if some of those seeds were still lying around for us to find today? What if…

Virgins.

Well we can all stop with the ‘what if?’ questions because the movie is going to explain exactly what would happen in this kind of scenario. Jocelyn is a brilliant plant archaeologist who isn’t afraid to be blonde and biblical. She and her team were the people who discovered Adam’s urn containing the seeds and sent it back to her boss Frame to carefully open and inspect the seeds. Frame lied to Jocelyn and said the urn was empty when in fact he’s been experimenting on them ever since the discovery. Unfortunately Frame wasn’t very selective when it came to hiring his other staff and one of his lackies is now trying to sell one of the seeds on the black market. Environmentalist kids Joe and Kate are there when the whole deal goes down and, as often happens in these situations, mistakes are made, people are accidentally shot and seeds from the dawn of time are dropped on the ground and allowed to take root.

The dangers of improper garden maintenance.

Now, the world as we know it today is just slightly more polluted than when Adam and Eve were running around so the plant, doing what God made it to do, goes a little berserk in its growth. The bigger it is the better it is able to absorb all the pollutants in the atmosphere. While this is a very noble attempt on behalf of the plant some people aren’t so happy about the fact that it will have to bury most of the North American continent in order to do its job properly. Jocelyn, Agent Jack, Joe and Kate want to find a way to destroy the plant and stop its rapid-growth rampage across the country, but Frame has different ideas. He wants to study the plant and try and slow its growth, thinking that a modified version of the plant would be infinitely more useful to mankind. Either way someone’s gonna have to do something fast before it reaches the ocean and decides to go global and wreck everything. Only Stefanie von Pfetten can get us out of this mess of Biblical proportions!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Adam and Eve were the very first international seed thieves.
• Government agents can’t develop a battle plan based on the Bible.
• Blonde plant scientists, however, are more than willing to base their theories on the Bible.
• In moments of extreme disaster you should always go with the plan that has virtually no chance of success and the most horrifying consequences.
• The whole point of having a safe haven is to keep innocent people out of it.
• The Bible has a very draconian approach to pollution and global warming.
• Dead boyfriends are of absolutely no use to anyone.
• Running blindly into a situation is the best way to find out if it will help you or kill you.
• There is a debate as to whether or not giant plants ravaging the Earth are a part of God’s greater plan.

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Arctic Blast

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Sci-Fi / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 3.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Low
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Movies like this irritate me. So far as unheard of end of the world movies go, this really wasn’t a bad watch and there are far worse ways for you to spend your time. It’s main problem is that it dragged, but not in the usual way that makes you feel bored to tears. Rather it has a lot happen in a relatively short space of time so when you feel that Earth is pretty much on her knees and a resolution to the problem is about to be discovered you realise that you’ve only been watching for half an hour and that there’s still an hour to go. There are some glaringly obvious factual issues floating around but on the whole the acting is quite decent and the special effects are of a reasonable quality. That said, the title of the movie is completely misleading: nothing gets blasted and the arctic is in no way involved in the problem.

The frightening effects of over air-conditioning.

Poor little humans, we’re in for another round of ‘let’s meet our maker.’ It was a beautiful day when the people of Australia were watching a total solar eclipse (of the heart) and, much to the joy of health officials everywhere, nobody burned their retinas out. As happens from time to time the solar eclipse has a slightly greater effect on the planet than would normally be desirable. Somehow the combination of the moon passing in front of the sun and our recent tendency to pump our atmosphere full of pollution leads to the ozone layer springing a leak just off the coast of Tasmania. This rather sizeable hole (which is apparently visible from space) is allowing super cooled air from the mesosphere to filter down to the surface. This results in a cold front that begins sweeping its way across the sea towards Tasmania and the rest of Australia.

Honey! The planet's blown a puncture!

Now understandably nobody really wants to be caught in a fast-approaching cold front where the temperatures drop to -80 degrees fahrenheit (-62 centigrade for those who, like myself, find degrees fahrenheit confusing). Unfortunately for those people living in the line of fire the government isn’t really prepared to believe that the planet’s ozone layer is ruptured and freezing people in a split second, so a few people have to turn into frozen lollies before anyone actually sits up and pays attention. This is an end of the world movie so of course we have a rogue scientist in the form of Jack Tate to help us overcome this minor issue. As with many rogue scientists Jack’s family is in a state of turmoil and he’s in the process of divorcing his wife and losing the trust of his teenage daughter. Could this crisis possibly bring this family back together again?

Dress warm, it’s a bit chilly outside!

So now what is the government going to do about this little problem? Well they’re certainly not going to listen to Jack, the one man who might just have all the answers. While the government twiddles its thumbs Jack tries to get his family to safety and sticks his wife with the in-laws and takes his daughter back to his lab. While in the lab he will try to come up with the best solution to Earth’s current situation and possibly fix the screw up of a plan the Australian government has come up with on its own. The situation will become slightly more complicated by the fact that the ozone hole above Australia in some way sent ripples out across the planet and opened holes above other major cities in Europe, Asia and North America. The race is on to find a way to plug the holes before all of Earth gets turned into a giant ice palace.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• If meteorologists get drunk enough they could easily solve all the world’s problems.
• Divorce lawyers are quite happy to be called blood-sucking parasites.
• Fireworks and chinese take aways will not buy you your daughter’s loyalty.
• For some people a ship full of condensation is the craziest thing they’ve ever heard of.
• A hairdryer will fix the most waterlogged of hard drives.
• Diabetic meteorologists need excessive amounts of chocolate to do their work.
• Any fool who bangs on his keyboard hard enough will eventually hack into an American military satellite.
• A true gentleman will gladly offer to do a little insulin shopping in -50 degree weather.

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