The Longest Day (1962)

It's somewhat fitting that a film titled The Longest Day should have a long running time. And while its 178 minutes don't exactly fly by, because a great many tiny dramas exist within the larger one (i.e. the World War II D-Day landings at Normandy in June, 1944) it rarely drags its heels.
Also noteworthy is the cast. It's packed with famous faces but many have little more than a cameo role. The closest it has to a leading man is either John Wayne or Robert Mitchum, but even they feature only occasionally because the binding thread is the event itself, not any one person or squad. That means we get scenes not just from the Allied side but the French and German sides, too, and in each case it's in the nation's native tongue, like it ought to be.

4 tough nuts out of 5

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Revellers on board the luxury liner Poseidon enjoy their New Year's Eve party oblivious to the giant wave that's thundering toward them... until it hits!
Produced by master of disaster flicks Irwin Allen, Poseidon is a thoroughly enjoyable but admittedly pretty awful journey from the bowels of hell to the light of day for a small and varied collection of individuals who realise that they must band together if they're to have any hope of escape.
With plenty of rationalising and moralising along the way the ensemble cast do their best with the material, and by the end we know exactly why each character was included and what basic emotion they were required to appeal to, a task that most of them do rather well, I'm happy to say. I know that it's basically trash given the big screen treatment, but damn me, I love it.

3½ tables turned (literally) out of 5