Disasters are real \u2014 also, these days, frighteningly common, be they epic confluences of nature and negligence or the murderous and preventable kind. And when it comes to disaster movies, it\u2019s hard to know what the acceptable level of exploitation is.<\/p>\n
Of course, director Paul Greengrass could never be confused with the unseriousness of producer Irwin Allen (\u201cThe Towering Inferno\u201d) or filmmaker Roland Emmerich (\u201cThe Day After Tomorrow\u201d<\/a>), ringmasters who preferred heaping helpings of A-listers on slick, expensive calamities. Rather, when Greengrass, coming from documentaries, tackles dark days of mass casualty, they tend to be true stories like \u201cUnited 93\u201d<\/a> and \u201cBloody Sunday.\u201d<\/a> His stripped-down, jagged style, absent marquee names and focused on such issues as terrorism and community, brings intelligent urgency to the unfathomable.<\/p>\n With his new film \u201cThe Lost Bus,\u201d however, starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera<\/a>, about the real-life effort to save a busload of schoolchildren from the 2018 Camp fire<\/a>, a wildfire that would destroy most of Paradise, Calif., Greengrass is trying to merge the two sensibilities. This time he mixes star heroism with you-are-there spectacle and the results can be galvanizing if awkwardly framed.<\/p>\n