Independence Day

A disaster film in which ships arrive at Earth. An object appears in space and breaks apart. Each piece settles over a city and shadows fifteen kilometres across form around the world. An engineer finds a countdown inside the signal the satellites are carrying. The attack begins on the second of July. Cities are destroyed with a single shot and the film gives that in a few images that became iconic. From there the film follows several people. A president, a navy pilot, an engineer, and a former soldier who flies a crop duster. There is a secret base in the desert holding a crashed ship. What the narrative is interested in is not aliens but gathering: the film unites the whole world around one plan, and the president's speech is the peak of the narrative. The plan is simple and deliberately absurd. A computer virus is uploaded to the ship and the shields drop. Most of the effects were made as models and explosions. The city destructions were shot with miniatures and it is taken as one of the last large examples just before the computer era. The film won an Academy Award for visual effects. It reached the highest worldwide box office of its year. Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Randy Quaid and Judd Hirsch are in the cast. Roland Emmerich directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes large-scale disaster films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for logic; the plot rests on a series of coincidences and the film never examines them.