Entertainment
Netflix's Forgotten Disaster Movie Has The Hottest Icons Of The ‘90s
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The ‘90s were filled with so many crazy blockbuster films that it’s easy for many of them to fall into our collective pop culture memory hole. For example, did you know this decade featured an over-the-top natural disaster movie starring the biggest names from the James Bond and Terminator franchises? The film in question is Dante’s Peak (1997), starring Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton, and you can now stream this forgotten blockbuster film on Netflix.
The premise of Dante’s Peak is that a volcanologist is sent to explore a town in Washington (the titular Dante’s Peak), which is right next to a stratovolcano. While he tries to figure out what is going on with this town (including multiple mysterious deaths and a contaminated water supply), an earthquake causes the aforementioned volcano to explode. This expert is suddenly thrust into a race for his life, and he may be the only one who can save everyone before it is too late and their town is completely engulfed in lava.
When Franchise Worlds Collide
The cast of Dante’s Peak includes some great character actors, including Jamie Renée Smith (best known for Hidden Canyons) and Charles Hallahan (best known outside this movie for The Thing). However, the real draw of the film is Pierce Brosnan (best known for his James Bond films) as a rugged volcano expert whose esoteric knowledge is all that stands between a tiny town and certain death. Meanwhile, Linda Hamilton (best known for her Terminator films) plays a hands-on mayor whose willingness to trust an outside may or may not be enough to save her constituents from a fiery fate.
Dante’s Peak wasn’t a box office bomb, but it didn’t exactly set moviegoers on fire when it first hit theaters. Against a blockbuster budget of $116 million, the movie earned $178.1 million. That’s not exactly box office bomb territory, but the studio was hoping for a larger profit, and the fact that this ambitious film couldn’t even crack $200 million is a big part of why we never got a sequel.
Critics Were Neither Shaken Nor Stirred
When Dante’s Peak came out, many reviewers thought it was more of a disaster than a disaster film. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rating of 30 percent, with critics claiming that the dialogue and characterization are poor but that the movie is pretty solid once all hell is breaking loose. That was the general consensus of Siskel and Ebert, who each gave the film two and a half stars, while the former (who claimed “the movie really starts to cook” after the volcano erupts) sarcastically asked, “can I recommend half of a movie?”
So, before you blow your top like a volcano, I need to answer the obvious question: why should you watch a movie that disappointed at the box office and that critics generally hated? First of all, I agree with Siskel and Ebert’s take that this movie gets downright compelling after the volcano explodes. This leaves us with nearly an hour of witnessing nature’s fiery wrath, and if you like natural disaster movies for the “disaster” part, Dante’s Peak is a movie that delivers in spades.
A Cast That Knows How To Have Fun
Additionally, natural disaster movies have something in common with horror movies: they are more enjoyable when you actually like the various everyman characters who must stare death in the face. In Dante’s Peak, those characters are played by ‘90s action icons Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton, two seriously attractive actors with charisma to spare. Even when the writing in this forgotten thriller falls flat, you are left with smart, sexy characters and killer special effects, all of which add up to some serious spectacle.
At the end of the day, spectacle is the main reason to watch Dante’s Peak: it’s got all the cheesy pomp and explosive circumstance that you’d expect from a natural disaster movie. I personally found Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton quite entertaining in this film, and they have an easy chemistry that helps to animate their many shared scenes. Even if you hate these characters, though, you’ll be entertained by the vivid special effects that have held up surprisingly well and look so much better than anything you’ll get from a modern made-for-streaming movie.
Will you agree that it’s worth climbing Dante’s Peak, or is this one natural disaster opus that you’d rather leave in the past? The only way to find out is to grab your remote and stream this forgotten blockbuster on Netflix. If nothing else, this movie is the perfect excuse to turn your living room into a game you haven’t played since childhood: The Floor Is Lava.
Entertainment
This $10 upgrade transforms your PC — but it’s only on sale until midnight
TL;DR: Upgrade a PC affordably with this Microsoft Windows 11 Pro license, on sale for just $9.97 (reg. $199) through tonight at midnight.
Want to get the feeling of a new computer without having to shell out all the money for one? A new operating system gives your device a whole new feel, and if you’ve got a PC lying around, it could probably use this Microsoft Windows 11 Pro upgrade. If you act fast, you can get it for only $9.97 through tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT.
Windows 11 Pro breathes new life into an old computer, extending its lifespan for less than the cost of your lunch. Unlike older operating systems, this one was made with the modern professional in mind.
Mashable Deals
Rest easy knowing Windows 11 Pro is filled with features that can improve your workflow — from an easy-to-use interface that enhances usability to snap layouts, seamless redocking, a more powerful search experience, and improved voice typing.
Take advantage of unique professional tools like Azure AD, Hyper-V, Windows Sandbox, and BitLocker device encryption. Then take a break and check out the impressive gaming experience offered by DirectX 12 Ultimate graphics.
Windows 11 Pro includes Copilot, Microsoft’s very own AI-powered assistant, which can assist you with a wide range of tasks. Get some help kickstarting your writing process, summarizing web pages, changing your settings, or even opening your apps.
You can also enjoy improved cybersecurity with Windows 11 Pro, as it adds biometric logins, encrypted authentication, and enhanced antivirus protection.
Mashable Deals
Get your PC a Microsoft Windows 11 Pro license for only $9.97 tonight through midnight.
StackSocial prices subject to change.
Entertainment
3 AdultFriendFinder red flags — how to avoid scams on AFF
Depending on who you ask, AdultFriendFinder is either the Wild West of hookup sites, an “anything goes” paradise for adult fun, or a total scam replete with bots, fake profiles, and inactive accounts.
After months of personal testing, I can confidently say which AFF you experience ultimately boils down to how you use the site. If you approach it naively, without a strategy, you’re probably going to have some frustrating experiences. On the other hand, if you exercise a modicum of caution and common sense, you’ll discover a huge, fun, and kink-friendly community.
Here are three red flags to look out for as you use AFF, to help you spot potential scammers and separate the authentic users from the fake profiles.
Hookup apps for everyone
AdultFriendFinder
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readers’ pick for casual connections
Tinder
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top pick for finding hookups
Hinge
—
popular choice for regular meetups
Credit: AdultFriendFinder
Unverified accounts
AdultFriendFinder already offers a fantastic first step in combatting fake profiles that they call ConfirmID. Once you’ve created an account, you can, at any time, upload a clear scan of a government-issued ID card and then, using a webcam, undergo a quick face verification scan to confirm that you are indeed the person identified in the government document.
This step strikes the perfect balance between not being onerous enough to annoy the average user but still requiring enough effort to deter scammers, who notoriously go after the low-hanging fruit.
Mashable Trend Report
Once you’ve completed the ConfirmID sequence, you’ll be rewarded with a verification badge on your profile, and we strongly recommend that you limit your one-on-one interactions on the site to other verified users.
Perfect profile photos
Alright, admittedly this one requires some personal judgment, as everyone should strive to upload good, high-quality photos of themselves to dating websites. But if every photo looks like it belongs in a magazine, or if the person in the photo looks a little too good to be true, you should exercise caution.
In the age of generative AI and filters, it’s trivially easy to create a fake photo or series of photos, so you should also be on the lookout for what isn’t in the photos. Are there recognizable local landmarks (clubs, restaurants, well-known parks, or street corners) in the photos, or are they all equally generic?
Over-eager chatters
Ever since chat bots became a thing, dating sites have become plagued with them, and as AI improves more and more, it’s not always easy to know, right away, if the “person” you’re talking to is really human. One dead giveaway, though, is how much they chat and how quickly they reply.
Real people go off on tangents, employ non sequiturs, and sometimes stumble with awkward questions or comments. Chat bots, on the other hand, are typically always chipper and extremely fast-talking, so much so that a paragraph-long answer can come back to you in seconds.
They also almost always have an agenda, too, whether that’s directing you to click on a link (“Follow my Instagram profile”) or getting you to divulge some potentially compromising bit of personal information about yourself.
Entertainment
SNL opens with another Pete Hegseth press conference
Saturday Night Live returned from a brief hiatus Saturday with a cold open depicting a joint press conference between Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and FBI Director Kash Patel, with “Master of None” creator Aziz Ansari playing the latter.
Colin Jost’s Hegseth hit the familiar beats at the podium — performative machismo, military bravado, and repeated jabs at the secretary’s well-documented drinking habits. This time, Hegseth arrived at the mic hauling an oversized pitcher of scotch, which he assured the room was his one for the day. He then fielded questions from the press about the administration’s handling of U.S. strikes on Iran, dismissing each reporter with the particular brand of smug confidence that has become central to Jost’s portrayal of the character.
Ansari’s Patel proved to be the sketch’s standout, arriving to defend his tenure at the FBI and proceeding to do so poorly. The bit’s centerpiece involved Patel simultaneously denying and admitting that he had locked himself out of his work email for 36 hours after forgetting he had changed his password to “kashmeoutside69.”
Funnily enough, Patel was reportedly locked out of his FBI email in real life and believed, at least momentarily, that he was being fired. As the sketch demonstrated, the distance between SNL’s Cold Open and the actual news cycle has rarely felt smaller.
This $10 upgrade transforms your PC — but it’s only on sale until midnight
Wild D Jonas Brodin out for Game 1, F Joel Eriksson Ek also ailing
