This is last year's star-studded "end of the world" movie satire about a planet-killing comet headed for earth. At the beginning, a talented young PhD student (played by Jennifer Lawrence) discovers a new comet, but her excitement quickly turns to terror when she and her professor (Leonardo DiCaprio) calculate that the comet will crash into earth in six months.
This seemingly far-fetched yet unfortunately all too believable farce satirizes every absurd thing that's happened in our culture through the past five years: Trumpian autocratic politics, climate change denialism, celebrity culture obsessions, social media disinformation, space-seeking billionaires and COVID-19 vaccines and mask resisters.
In doing so, it makes a powerful statement about our collective failure to take seriously the threats looming before us, or to focus on finding viable solutions to problems (especially climate change, for which the comet is an obvious stand-in) that present a clear and present danger to our survival as individuals and as a species.
Lawrence and DiCaprio star, but there are also great assists from Cate Blanchett (as a vacuous morning show TV co-host) and Meryl Streep (as a female Trump-like president).
It's grimly amusing, but also a passionate scream for sanity and planetary preservation in our own beleaguered times. Highly recommended.
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