A look back at Sam Neill's versatile acting career – video obituary

Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor whose career spanned five decades, has died at the age of 78. From Oscar winners to blockbusters such as The Piano and Jurassic Park, Neill built a career playing dashing romantic leads and charismatic villains across film and television Sam Neill’s 20 best performances A life in pictures ‘A true gentleman’: actors, directors and leaders pay tribute to Sam Neill Obituary Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/HNyWTGn via IFTTT

From Twister to Titanic: writers on their favourite disaster movies

As the tornado-chasing sequel Twisters arrives, Guardian writers pick the films that have stuck with them the longest

While sadness is never too far from the frame in the disaster genre – the majority of films, after all, do involve the mass erasure of life – it’s rarely felt quite as heavy as it did in 1998’s other comet movie Deep Impact. It unfolds with the frightening urgency of a serious-minded political thriller, as Téa Leoni’s ambitious journalist realises her big scoop is far bigger than she had initially thought, a misunderstood acronym leading her to realise the world might be coming to an end. What always struck, and scared, me as a teenager was just how hopeless things then felt – an aborted mission to throw it off course, a limited and unjust lottery for some to stay safe in shelters, a host of horrible choices to be made – with so much of the film then haunted by the thoughts and fears of people truly facing their own mortality (James Horner’s crushing score is an added killer). It’s most painfully felt in Leoni’s fractured family, her parents played by the Julia co-stars Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell with far more punch and complexity than one expects in this territory. While the world might not ultimately end, it’s hit by devastation of an unfathomable scale, a reminder of how powerless and unprepared the world would be if such a day were to ever come. It still gives me a chill. Benjamin Lee

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