When originally released, Deep Impact was, arguably, the better of the two killer-space-rock movies released that summer, the other being the Michael Bay-directed Armageddon.

But now, 20 years later, viewed through the stinging eyes of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become a once-hopeful film of a government that knows what it’s doing, a president who actually cares about people, and the world coming together in solidarity to defeat a deadly threat from outer space.

How times have changed.

In this 1998 disaster film, the comet is accidentally discovered by teenager Elijah Wood, then passed on to astronomer Charles Martin Smith, who is accidentally run off the road and killed in a fiery explosion. A year later, this rock — dubbed ELE, for extinction-level event — is discovered accidentally by Téa Leoni, back when America accidentally gave her a career.

As President Tom Beck (Morgan Freeman) soothes the nation with those dulcet, proto-Obama tones, a group of astronauts with the unlikely names of Spurgeon Tanner (Robert Duvall), Oren Monash (Ron Eldard) and Dr. Gus Partenza (Jon Favreau) look to blow up the thing with nuclear missiles. Meanwhile, Wood marries his 15-year-old girlfriend (Leelee Sobieski).

When I originally viewed this in the theater, I was a bit bummed by how little destruction there actually was. But, watching it now, I’m actually impressed by the amount of scientific planning — fake or not — that went into the months of prepping before the actual aerial collision, and I believe that’s mostly thanks to director Mimi Leder and writers Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin.

So while Earth might not be affected by a comet the size of New York City anytime soon — dear God, I sure hope not — while under quarantine we can at least, collectively, watch this slow-burn sci-fi flick and dream about better times when the total immolation of our planet was the only thing we had to worry about. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

From Emilio Vieyra, director of The Curious Dr. Humpp, comes the arguably more bizarre Argentinian tale Stay Tuned for Terror, aka Strange Invasion, in which an entire town’s television sets suddenly go on the fritz. It all happens in Clearview — subtle, Señor Vieyra — where every channel of every TV starts broadcasting only a ’round-the-clock hypnotic pattern of waves, baffling authorities.

This is immediately met with the urgency of government response, shouting over the phone, screeching brakes, nosy reporters and fully suited men problem-solving in a board room as if this were Apollo 13 and not just housewives crying in vain, “Gimme my stories!”

Because children have no taste and will watch anything, Clearview’s kids remain transfixed by the signal, which renders them glassy-eyed and cataleptic — basically, the most emotionless kids this side of Midwich. Remove them from their perch in front of the tube and they fall ill and throw tantrums, much like today’s tots when the Wi-Fi signal goes down. As doctors and other experts theorize the signal’s origin and purpose, prepare to hear “diathermic” so often, you could make a drinking game out of it.

Unlike its cathode-ray threat, Stay Tuned for Terror is harmless speculative fiction, more fun in concept than in execution. Written by Philip Kearney and Les Rendelstein, the duo behind Paul Bartel’s wonderfully warped Private Parts, the pic grows as repetitive as the Liberty Mutual jingle, but at 71 minutes, is mercifully brief. The message is perfectly simple; the meaning is clear: TV is a drug, so please, for the love of God and country, patronize the cinema. —Rod Lott

Get it at dvdrparty.