Armageddon

Armageddon is a 1998 science fiction film starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Marshall Teague (who has a Star Trek connection) and Chris Ellis (who was active in Memphis community theater when he was younger).

Narration at the beginning:

This is the Earth at a time when the dinosaurs roamed a lush and fertile planet. A piece of rock just 6 miles wide changed all that. It hit with the force of 10,000 nuclear weapons. A trillion tons of dirt and rock hurtled into the atmosphere creating a suffocating blanket of dust the sun was powerless to penetrate for a thousand years. It happened before. It will happen again. It's just a question of when.

Youtube has it online divided up into 14 parts. Part 1:

part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14

Moria says it "emerges as only a spectacular monument to its own self-promotion and self-importance over the provision of anything of substance". EW has a review. Roger Ebert pans it, saying "No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out." The New York Times doesn't like it:

Movie isn't actually the best word to describe ''Armageddon.'' More accurately it's a product, a feat of salesmanship, a sight worth noticing only because, like the asteroid on a collision course with planet Earth, its size and inevitability aren't easy to miss.

Criterion calls it

a work of art by a cutting-edge artist who is a master of movement, light, color, and shape—and also of chaos, razzle-dazzle, and explosion.

7/24/2009: We watched this one tonight. It was selected by The Younger Son. I'm the only one in the family who had seen this one all the way through.