The Core

This overly long, old-fashioned science-fiction adventure from director Jon Amiel (Copycat, Entrapment) is the kind of mindless B movie that used to saturate drive-in movie screens. It almost works as a guilty pleasure, with Jules Verne adapting Fantastic Voyage to an inner earth mission. Nostalgia for simpler and more clueless cinematic times is spread thick as a cast of mostly independent film actors (Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Stanley Tucci, Delroy Lindo, Tchéky Karyo and Alfre Woodard) burrow a literal train of passenger and equipment compartments shielded with “unobtainium” to the center of the Earth. Seems the liquid core of our planet has stopped spinning, which sends birds crashing into buildings, people with pacemakers toppling to the ground dead and our heroic crew scrambling to ignite enough nuclear warheads to restore Earth’s magnetic field before we burst into flame like a campfire marshmallow.