How It Ends (2021)

So good! We loved this. Zoe Lister-Jones stars, co-directed, and co-wrote (with her husband Daryl Wein) this apocalyptic comedy of a woman blithely walking around in deserted Los Angeles as an asteroid is headed in to wipe out everyone. 

Apparently Lister-Jones and Wein conceived and shot this during the 2020 COVID lockdown, which explains how the actors are able to walk down the middles of streets in the Silver Lake neighborhood with many cars parked and none driving.

There are so many funny cameos! Olivia Wilde. Bradley Whitford. Colin Hanks (who starred with Lister-Jones in the series Life in Pieces). Whitney Cummings. Nick Kroll, Paul Scheer. Helen Hunt. Fred Armisen. All the stars of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia except Danny DeVito. And more!

The original music by Ryan Miller isn't available to stream, though I found some of his other work. Here are the songs.

The locations, no doubt just belonging to the actors and their friends, have some spectacular landscaping. Check that out, too.

Ten years ago Jack and I did not like the movie Melancholia, which is also about earth about to be decimated by an asteroid. One reviewer said that "How It Ends is like Melancholia without the, um, melancholia." I definitely agree.

Lister-Jones and Wein were last blogged for Band Aid and Miller for In a World..., which is another terrific independent, female-driven movie.

Rotten Tomatoes critics don't care much how it ends, averaging a barely fresh 66%, while its audiences want it to end right now at 47. Don't listen. We thought it great fun when we rented it for a fee on iTunes/Apple TV on August 6.