War Of The Worlds [REVIEW]

[MrOats]

Steven Spielberg -- the cinematic master of the amiable alien -- turns brilliantly to the dark side in his apocalyptic War of the Worlds. It's enough to make E.T. grab his potted plant and turn tail for home.

Movie Review

WAR OF THE WORLDS

**** (excellent)

RATED: PG-13 (with frightening sequences, a threatened child and violence)

STARRING: Tom Cruise. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Paramount, 118 minutes.


Spielberg's $128 million adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic joins Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. to form Spielberg's superb trilogy of alien visitations. While the earlier films profiled benign and helpful intergalactic beings, this War of the Worlds presents slimy, malevolent aliens, as willing to destroy us as we are to stomp on ants.

Tom Cruise stars as Ray Ferrier, a divorced New Jersey dockworker and far-from-perfect father. When the film opens, he begrudgingly agrees to watch his two children for the weekend. The teenage son (Justin Chatwin) has no respect for Dad, while the 11-year-old Rachel (Dakota Fanning) tries to, but not without a struggle.

In short order, bizarre and intense lightning strikes morph into a full-scale alien invasion. Aliens ride the lightning bolts into the ground where giant tripod war machines await. In a shift from earlier versions, the machines have been here all along, planted on Earth like deadly flower bulbs millennia before humans arose from the muck. The machines simply awaited their crews.

With the giant machines at work, trampling and blasting humans and their structures with horrific abandon, the Earthlings can do little but run, mostly out of the world's cities and into the countryside. However, the aliens are soon on their trails.

The 1897 Wells novel, the famous 1938 Orson Welles radio broadcast, and the 1953 George Pal film all had a professor as the protagonist -- the better to make scientific suppositions. In an intriguing shift, Spielberg and his writers put a typical, working-class father and his two children at the center of the tale. Less concerned with the why of it all, the Ferriers' chief concern is simple survival, which generates the film's unrelenting core of tension.

The concept also puts War of the Worlds in a steady line of Spielberg films that have made imperfect families an important theme. We are nearly as curious about the Ferriers' stumbling attempts at reconciliation as in the survival of mankind.

Family ties also give Cruise something worthwhile and more textured to work with as an actor and he delivers a moving performance, especially in the various moments when his young daughter is threatened.

Fanning, who shares most scenes with Cruise, is a remarkable young actress, well beyond the manipulative prop that most children seem to be on screen. Tim Robbins contributes a few key scenes as a spooky, disillusioned survivor who thinks he and his single-shell shotgun can take on the alien invaders.

Of the various incarnations of the story, Spielberg seems most influenced by the 1953 film, aping especially an ominous sequence in which an alien periscope snakes its way into an underground hideaway where our heroes try to avoid its all-seeing eye. (Spielberg also gives the '53 star, Gene Barry, a tiny cameo as Ray's white-haired father-in-law.)

War of the Worlds isn't quite perfect -- a blood-sucking motif in the final reels is a bit muddled, and the ending succumbs to sentimentality. Still, Spielberg shows he remains the master of the form he virtually invented.

Source:http://www.pressconnects.com/wednesd...5s175298.shtml

I couldn't agree with this review enough! It's great for any suspense craver! You'll laugh,cry,and be on the edge of your seat!

[Someguy03]

I thought it was awesome. Spielberg truly knows how to make a movie. The only thing I disliked was the 2 hour running time. It could've easily gone 3 and I wouldve still wanted more.

[MrOats]

Originally Posted by Someguy03

The only thing I disliked was the 2 hour running time. It could've easily gone 3 and I wouldve still wanted more.

*Ditto* I just couldn't get enough...

[colin]

My brothers saw it last night and said it was really good. However, I just don't think I can watch it. Last summer I had to read War of the Worlds, and it was quite possibly the most horrible book I have ever read. It completely scarred me and I can't bring myself to relive the memory of that book .

[Oreo]

I heard that the first half was quite good, but the second half was painful and the aliens were somewhat the "same-old same-old" insect on drugs type alien. I'm not sure what to think...as far as the book, keep in mind it was written in the 19th century...that era tended to bring about rather wordy books.

[AwesomeSauce]

Originally Posted by Oreo

I heard that the first half was quite good, but the second half was painful and the aliens were somewhat the "same-old same-old" insect on drugs type alien.

You are right. I just got back from watching this movie, and I thought it was fantastic... or at least, the first half of it. The second half got a little bit boring in some parts, but still it was an awesome movie.

The special effects were top-notch, too.

[RabidKitten]

I think the movie all in all was wonderful, especially for the time period the book was written in.

Alright, firstly, the beginning was just annoying because all the main two boys did was bicker and it was so incredibly irritating, I wanted to just scream. The second half was amazing, in my opinion. Yeah, alright, so it wasn't quite as "action packed" or whatever that non sense is. Just because they didn't have insane flashes, tons of movement and explosions does not mean it was boring in any way, in my opinion.

This is what kept rolling over in my head the whole movie. It's a -heartwrenching- movie in parts, involking things I felt in the more horrible, ungushy moments of Titanic, Schindler's List and The Diary of Anne Frank. The attrocities that were going on were amazing, the pain the confusion the suffering and the insane quickness you had to have just to have a chance to stay alive.

Not to mention the obvious paralells between the Diary of Anne Frank and the second half of the movie with Dakota, Tom and that other fellow. I don't want to give anything away, but those who've seen it or remember that sequence know what I'm talking about.

There were parts of it that just made me -ache-. How nonchalantly they were exterminated and such, especially the graphic nature of what they did with captives.

Also, great parts where Tom figured out how to get the car going, when he took it, the whole business with the grenades (how many folks can say they single handedly took one out, hmm?)...the will of people to keep going on and resourcefullness. Just made me gleefully giggle. And just shows how much a person is willing to do for the hope of survival...that infamous, horrid scene with him and Tim Robbins in Tim's basement...*shudder* How horrible, but I do agree with his actions.

There were so many aspects to this movie...there are so many things that remind me of how we treat 'lower creatures'. The captive crafts and the two baskets they carried the people in...I kept thinking about fishing minnows for some reason. The nonchalance about zapping them reminded me of bug zappers or fly swatters, or Raid cans. Going through the old buildings afterward to flush them out...it's what an exterminator or a landscaper does with unwanted pests. I just couldn't help thinking those things and kind of...I don't know, I suppose shaking my head with a slight smile thinking "Yep, that's about right".

My roomate hated the ending. I loved it. It makes perfect sense. What did they drink??? Well, what if someone had a blood disease? Could you imagine what would happen to them after grabbing up someone with AIDS? Honestly it made perfect sense. Kind of what happened to the native americans when the settlers came by. They just...dwindled and grew weak at first because of all the crap we brought along. In all that we did, in all the technology and brain power...our war was faught for us by the smallest pieces of the world that most of us never even think of.

And really, I didn't think the aliens looked bug like in the least. I thought, especially in the face they resembled more humanoid than most other aliens in movies did...which really really drove home the parallel of how humans treat other 'lesser' animals. And their bodies, I didn't see anything bug like in them. They way they walked and climbed reminded me more of more elegant, thin and lithe looking canines or four legged mammals. Perhaps even monkies since they used their 'hands' but then walked and clibed with incredibly sufficiency with them as well.

I thought it was lovely. Not a boring part in it. Beginning, Middle and End were lovely, though the beginning was irritating to me and the middle until the bickering stopped.

My two cents.