San Andreas

Following in the footsteps of Earthquake and Dante's Peak, this adrenaline-assisted blockbuster employs state-of-the-art digital artistry to plonk us amid the collapsing buildings of what boffin Paul Giamatti notes is "the largest magnitude quake in recorded history". With the geological stakes higher than ever before, an implicit death toll in the hundreds of thousands and a pulverised Hoover Dam just an amuse-bouche, the vast thrill ride's emotional focus is LA Fire Department helicopter pilot Dwayne Johnson, who is intent on saving his estranged wife, Carla Gugino, and their daughter, Alexandra Daddario. Though the committee-written script treads an indistinct line between sincere and ironic, San Andreas is directed with a creditable sense of visual crescendo by the relatively inexperienced Brad Peyton (Journey 2 the Mysterious Island, also starring Johnson). Nothing is subtle, and Ioan Gruffudd's cowardly tycoon is a copy of Richard Chamberlain's engineer from The Towering Inferno, but Johnson, a human edifice, is more than equal to the preposterous destruction.