TOM CRUISE’S NEW CLIMATE DISASTER MOVIE, DIGGER, IS A DISASTER:

Digger, the new movie from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and star Tom Cruise, is a spectacular misfire, conceptually bold and occasionally intriguing, but mostly just an exercise in teeth-grinding awfulness.

In fairness, the film actively intends to be terrible. It’s an over-the-top satire of climate villainy, with a prickly oil baron (Cruise) as its central figure and a pompous president (John Goodman) plus his cabinet of advisers in supporting roles. Shortly after the film begins, an oil rig on a glacier explodes, creating a massive iceberg that’s headed straight for Europe, with untold casualties and damage likely. Whatever shall they do? Mostly, it turns out, stand around and exclaim things to each other in intentionally hammy accents. The overacting is excruciating; the satire is brutally on the nose. It’s painful and unpleasant to watch, and, all right, it’s supposed to be. This is not interpretation or speculation.

To explain why requires some spoilers. You’ve been warned.

Exit question: “Has there ever been a good movie about climate change?”

UPDATE: Once again, Hollywood ruins a classic when it updates it for the proverbial “modern audiences:”