Hacker Cinema
Left Behind
2014 · Film · 110 min
Directed by Vic Armstrong
A small group of survivors are left behind after millions of people suddenly vanish during the rapture and the world is plunged into chaos and destruction.
2 negative1 neutralfrom 3 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
I believe Cage had a massive tax bill to pay at some point which led to him appearing in basically anything he was offered, including what is without doubt the worst film I have ever watched, Left Behind [1]. One review I read said something along the lines of "phoning it in would be too kind a description, Cage is so devoid of effort or emotion in this film he regularly appears to have been photoshopped in afterwards" which really summed it up perfectly.
Having said that, both before and after the money trouble, he made some superb movie choices and put in some outstanding performances - think Wild at Heart, Pig, Unbearable Weight etc. Hats off to you Nick.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2467046/
In another life I was a practicing Catholic and if you haven't, the book of Revelation is an actually interesting sci-fi post-apocolyptic fan fic, especially the dramatized renditions like the Left Behind book series (movies are terrible).
Revelation describes the anti-christ in a similar fashion. Is the Pope implying Lucifer has returned? I wonder if the Vatican even takes Revelation as true dogma in practice too, since it is somewhat off-the-wall.
It is hardly news that American (and, to a smaller extent, European) reading tends to revolve around disposable media events. Specific books are announced, promoted, celebrated at launch parties, paraded on semi-arbitrary bestseller lists[1], advertised with author appearances, and then retired and forgotten just as quickly. Do you remember when you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a volume in the endless Left Behind series?
A lot of people I've talked to in the US enjoy specific books, to a large extent, because they are read by lots of other people at the same time. The spectacle gives the reader a sense of affirmation that the choice was a good one, and for a subset of book genres, wide readership is what allows a fandom to coalesce.
In this setting, an old and unpopular book is bad, because no one else is shipping Bjornstjerne Bjornson characters. It's almost as weird as going back to watch old baseball games.
But if that's not how and why you read, yeah, there are thousands upon thousands of wonderful and unusual books that will narrate a corner of human experience that you've never thought about before.
As an anecdote, Raintree County, a 19th-century family saga set in a fictional Southern town, was a cause celebré when it came out in 1948. The movie rights to it were sold before the novel was even published, and the eventual film won the best picture Oscar, beating out Gone with the Wind! Talk about changing tastes!
[1] e.g., https://observer.com/2016/02/the-truth-about-the-new-york-times-and-wall-street-journal-bestseller-lists/