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Whether it's fair or not, certain directors get pigeonholed. Woody Allen is the king of New York neurosis, Martin Scorsese is cinema's mafia don, and Roland Emmerich is the master of disaster. Even if you don't know Emmerich's name, you're probably familiar with this orgies of multiplex mayhem.

Whether it's "Independence Day," "Godzilla" or "The Day After Tomorrow," the Teutonic director may not be much of a storyteller, but he knows how to blow stuff up real good.

His latest things-go-boom trash epic is "2012" and, again, he doesn't disappoint. It may not be a great movie, or really even a good one, but if you've got a sweet tooth for CGI apocalypse, you won't be asking for your money back.

This time around, John Cusack stars as a struggling writer and despondent divorced dad who stumbles onto the five-alarm news that the world is about to go to hell in a handbasket thanks to the fact that the earth's core is heating up and we're all inhabiting a ticking time-bomb of a planet.

If all of this sounds like Al Gore wrote the screenplay, well, no, it's not as smart as all that. It's preposterous really. But who cares when the first action set piece comes along and Cusack and his ex-wife Amanda Peet and cutesy kids are racing through L.A. in a stretch limo trying to outrun imploding highways and bridges. Sure, it looks totally fake. But there's a giddy thrill to it all. There's also a pretty unnecessary subplot about how the government knows all of this is coming, but keeps quiet.

"2012" is, I'm told, loosely based on the notion that the Mayans predicted that that year would bring the end of the world. And the movie is sprinkled with a heavy dose of mumbo jumbo thanks to Woody Harrelson's pirate radio prophet of doom. Again, who cares? All of this is really just window dressing between Irwin Allen-style spectacles where India is devoured by a tsunami, Las Vegas crumbles, and the churches of Rome come tumbling down.

If logic matters to you, stay away. But if it's eye-candy destruction you're after, "2012" is the ticket.

Now for a look at what else is new on DVD: in "Up in the Air," George
Clooney plays a frequent-flying corporate downsizer; in "Precious," Director Lee Daniels unspools a bleak tale of domestic abuse; and in "Hachi: A Dog's Tale," Richard Gere stars in a canine tearjerker.