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Nickdfresh
06-29-2005, 04:58 PM
Victory march

Steven Spielberg does H.G. Wells proud in remake of "War of the Worlds'

By JEFF SIMON
Arts Editor
6/29/2005
http://www.buffalonews.com/graphics/2005/06/29/0629lifea.jpg
Tim Robbins, left, provides shelter for Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning in "War of the Worlds."

Tom Cruise stars as Ray Ferrier, a man who would do anything to protect his daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning), during a catastrophic alien attack.
REVIEW

War of the Worlds

****
(Out of four)
Rated PG-13
Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning and Tim Robbins in Steven Spielberg's bone-rattling version of the H.G. Wells nightmare about a Martian invasion. Now playing in area theaters.


It would be nice to just call Steven Spielberg's terrifying "War of the Worlds" a sci-fi masterpiece and adjourn for lunch. But there's so much more to it.

It's not going to save Hollywood's sagging box-office bacon single-handedly but here, by God, is a film actually worth getting excited about - a film that isn't a frozen lichen from the bat-cave or a fungus from prime-time of yore.

And, so help me, you knew it was going to be this good the minute you first laid eyes on the roster of summer films. You knew that the early summer movies that had a chance of being truly extraordinary for audiences were going to come from the two men whose work invented the blockbuster era - Steven Spielberg, the man who first terrified summertime filmgoers with "Jaws" and his pal George Lucas, who tickled and merchandised them to death with "Star Wars." Add Paul Haggis' magnificent "Crash" and you've got the sum total of the summer movies in current multiplexes that will remind you why people once got so hopped up about movies in the first place.

The idea that Spielberg was going to employ all the fearsome technical resources of modern film-making to remake one of the terrifying Saturday morning classics of his youth - George Pal and Byron Haskins' marvelous 1953 version of H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" - was enough to get the adrenaline swooshing among film intelligentsia. George Pal's special effects 52 years ago were state-of-the-art (they're still nifty in their primitive way) but what has become possible since is mind-boggling. And Spielberg has presided over quite a bit of it ("Jurassic Park," "ET,", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind").

"War of the Worlds" may not, literally, shock and awe, but it will assuredly jolt, amaze and terrify. And if it falls prey, at the end, to a kind of glutinous plot slowdown, that's an inevitable result of some fidelity to Wells' novel. That's what happens when you graft civilized British anti-climax-a kind of parlor aphorism raised to the level of a denouement - onto a wild and nightmarish multiplex thrill machine.

It's also what is increasingly happening in Spielberg movies. I don't know why, but his sense of climax has been intermittently defective since "Schindler's List," where he ended by chucking his movie story entirely and returning us, powerfully, to the very real gravestone of a once-very-real Oskar Schindler. (The ending of "A.I." was little short of appalling.)

If the first two-thirds of "War of the Worlds" don't rattle your bones and shiver your timbers, you may well be a pod person, an impostor among us movie-lovers.

Orson Welles' youthful radio version of "War of the Worlds" - and the resultant national panic - was the historic annunciation of the powerful mass media age we're still in. It's in the very DNA of this story of interplanetary invasion, then, to horrify and unsettle in special ways.

And it does, it does.

In a post-9/11 world, apocalypse doesn't seem screaming sci-fi silliness anymore (nor was it, really, in the eras when there were Nazis on the march and nuclear weapons being routinely and openly tested in Utah). The sight of hordes of people on foot fleeing an attacked city isn't just Spielberg's fantasy on Wells, it was what we all saw on network television on a beautiful September Tuesday four years ago.

So when Tom Cruise, as an irresponsible, near-deadbeat dad, grabs his tall teenage son and quivering 10-year old daughter and hightails it away from Martian death rays just a few feet away, you won't have time to disbelieve or scoff. You're "in the moment," as the actors say, and, if you've got blood in your veins rather than Kool-Aid, you're likely to be scared witless. ("What's that stuff all over you?" his daughter asks. How do you tell her it's human ash?)

Steven Spielberg. His mark.

As always with Spielberg, nothing quite conveys wonderment, or terror, like the up-raised eyes of the beholders. And in between is a standard Besieged World movie ("Deep Impact," "Armageddon," "Independence Day," etc., etc.). The difference is that this one was made out of classic material by a master.

Cruise plays a Jersey dockworker who's supposed to watch his semi-estranged two kids for the weekend while his pregnant, remarried ex-wife visits her folks in Boston.

And then the Martians come to town.

Lightning storms atomize everybody. Skyways tumble. Gaping holes open up in city streets. Cars refuse to run. Huge creatures emerge, making loud hideous foghorn noises and zapping people and buildings with almost playful cruelty (another Spielberg mark - the sadistic playfulness of malice).

His family's odyssey through a human world of devastation and people acting sub-human is brilliantly imagined. Utterly amazing images tumble over one another. In one, a long march of refugees is momentarily stopped by ringing bells at a railroad crossing. A passenger train screams by at top speed. Horrifying flames are roaring out of every car window.

In another, the 10-year-old daughter (Dakota Fanning, as adorable as any Hollywood child actress has ever been) is alone, looking in the woods for a place to go to the bathroom. She encounters a country stream. One body floats by on the swift current. Then, after a brief interval, dozens and even hundreds of them.

They take refuge in the home of Tim Robbins, as a Good Samaritan with a lunatic, non-Samaritan agenda.

"This is not a war," he says, "any more than there's a war between men and maggots. This is an extermination."

One of Spielberg's scriptwriters was David Koepp. Anyone who's seen Koepp's own films - "The Trigger Effect," "Stir of Echoes" - will recognize that Spielberg has redeemed a lot of brilliant ideas that Koepp himself, as a director, couldn't quite get to work.

If the frights and momentum are stopped finally by some minimal fidelity to Wells, it may not be an entirely bad thing. Just as "Saving Private Ryan" would have been unendurable if its full-length had been as powerful as its 45-minute opening sequence, Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" couldn't, for its full length, ask its audience to ride along on a flaming train for 117 minutes.

What's onscreen is unforgettable enough.

I wouldn't exactly say it's safe to go back to the movies. But if you ever loved movies and you miss this one - well, let's just say you're making a big mistake.

One final word: I understand international piracy concerns these days but many, especially women, in the preview audience wanted to know if it was absolutely necessary that they be forced by studio security to leave their purses in the car.

At this stage of summer, mightn't a little friendliness and audience courtship be wise?

Just asking.


e-mail: jsimon@buffnews.com

DrMaddVibe
06-29-2005, 05:08 PM
I'll pass thank you!

DrMaddVibe
06-29-2005, 05:14 PM
By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer Wed Jun 29,12:48 PM ET

Big concept. Big director. Big star. Big, big budget. Big deal.
Steven Spielberg and
Tom Cruise's "War of the Worlds" comes off exactly the way it started: An assemblage of enormous talent on a frantic dash to meet a deadline. They made it, but the rush job they delivered shortchanges story, character, design and even execution on some of the colossal special-effects sequences.
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The update of H.G. Wells' sci-fi classic of marauders from the skies went on the fast-track late last summer, when a narrow window opened in Spielberg and Cruise's schedules. Their haste shows.

"War of the Worlds" is so disjointed and episodic, it plays like 32 short films about alien invasions. As a divorced dad, Cruise alternates through a succession of explosive action scenes and uninspired exchanges with his two screeching and moaning kids.

Among disappointments of modern Hollywood, "War of the Worlds" ranks with "Pearl Harbor" and the "Planet of the Apes" remake, two other bloated spectacles conceived as blockbusters first, human dramas second.

This is Spielberg's "Attack of the Clones," a movie burdened with stiff dialogue and fatuous relationships, dolled up with the gloss of computer animation into a big-screen video game with puny humans as targets.

Millions are dying, yet unlike the wonderful blend of humanity and horror in George Pal's 1953 take on Wells' story, this "War of the Worlds" presents the masses as anonymous chaff.

The only three people who matter here are Cruise's Ray, an undependable father, his 10-year-old daughter, Rachel (
Dakota Fanning), and his teenage son, Robbie (
Justin Chatwin).

We're talking civilization on the ropes, about to go down, and Spielberg's spinning a tedious tale of a manchild who only learns to be a responsible father when space invaders land in his backyard.

In the opening minutes, the screenplay by Josh Friedman and David Koepp sets Ray up as a stereotype of the paternal ne'er-do-well, a guy who can't even manage to stock the fridge with food when his ex-wife (
Miranda Otto) and her new hubby drop the kids off for the weekend.

After this superficial start, the fireworks begin. The skies turn blackish, bolts of blue lightning zap the earth, and towering machines bust out of the ground, wandering about on three legs and zapping people into dust and buildings into rubble.

Some visual effects, notably the alien tripods emerging, are remarkable and thrilling. Elsewhere, particularly in battle scenes involving the futile American military, Spielberg falls back on loud sound effects, colored lights beyond the horizon and close-ups of Ray and his terrified kids, as though time did not permit the filmmakers to finish the visuals on the drawing board.

Ray always seems to find himself at the heart of the storm, and though the screenwriters have told us he's a lunkhead, he manages to stay five steps ahead of the rest of the scurrying rabble and even pauses to point out a battle-strategy opportunity to oblivious soldiers. He's like an "X-Men" superhero whose mutant power is a mega-dose of street smarts.

Conveniently commandeering a minivan that's the only civilian vehicle still operating after the aliens' electromagnetic pulses fry our circuitry, Ray dashes away with his kids, a clear path somehow always appearing amid abandoned cars and mounds of debris.

Tim Robbins enters the movie with jarring abruptness as a semi-demented survivalist railing about payback against the aliens, and he departs just as suddenly.

NASA's Mars landings have scotched Wells' notion of invaders from the red planet, so Spielberg opts for aliens of unspecified origin. He retains some of Wells' other trappings, including the gnarly red weed that spreads across the landscape, and
Morgan Freeman delivers opening and closing narration largely lifted from the novel.

Flying machines have been the norm in science fiction, so it's refreshing that Spielberg stuck to Wells' terrifying conception of mechanical monstrosities on stilts. Yet with their fluid motion, the alien tripods look like something grabbed off the reject pile from "The Matrix" movies and given a fresh shine.

Likewise, in the few glimpses we get of them, the aliens look like computer-generated concoctions begged, borrowed and stolen from any and every recent movie about space beasties. The creatures are more frightening when Spielberg only offers a peek; once we see them full on, they're nondescript and boring.

Given his sensational body of work, Spielberg's entitled to a clunker, but it's odd how generic "War of the Worlds" feels, lacking any real stamp of who's behind the camera.

This might as well be the hokey crowd-pleaser "Independence Day," another not-so-short film about alien invasions. And sadly and strangely, a better one.

"War of the Worlds," a Paramount release, is rated PG-13 for frightening sequences of sci-fi violence and disturbing images. Running time: 116 minutes. Two stars out of four.

Nickdfresh
06-29-2005, 05:52 PM
I'll give it a shot in the theater.

DrMaddVibe
06-29-2005, 06:01 PM
Go see "Batman Begins"...you'll thank me later.

Vinnie Velvet
06-30-2005, 09:17 AM
I saw Batman Begins last night.

Great movie, though I thought the fight sequences sucked bigtime. The editing cuts in these sequences were just way too fast -- you didn't know who or where someone was throwing punches or kicks. It gave me a headache watching.

War of the Worlds will BOMB at the box office.

Meaning, if Speilberg thinks he can get ET or Jurrassic Park numbers with this movie, he's dreaming.

When I saw Batman Begins, there were virtually no lineups for War of the Worlds.

I bet this is all due to Tom Cruise. This movie would've had greater potential if he wasn't the star of the film, judging his freakish actions of late.

I'll pass on seeing this flick in the theatre.

Hardrock69
06-30-2005, 10:23 AM
Yeah it will bomb...it will make several hundred million, but compared to ET that is a bomb.....

I spoke with a guy at the Robert Plant show last night who had seen it, he said it was one of the best sci-fi action films he has seen in a long time.

As I always say, I ignore critics, because critics are paid to criticize things, whether it is their opinion or not.

Vinnie Velvet
06-30-2005, 10:48 AM
Originally posted by Hardrock69
Yeah it will bomb...it will make several hundred million, but compared to ET that is a bomb.....

I spoke with a guy at the Robert Plant show last night who had seen it, he said it was one of the best sci-fi action films he has seen in a long time.

As I always say, I ignore critics, because critics are paid to criticize things, whether it is their opinion or not.

That's what I mean.

It will be a huge success and probably the second or third money maker of the year, however, it won't bring in ET or Jurrassic like numbers or even Revenge of the Sith.

Ya know I saw Batman Begins last night. Great movie, but certainly not the "greatest comic book movie ever" as some were calling it.

The same goes for War of the Worlds. Despite myself making a pass on this to go see it at the theatre, I still think it will be good, but not like some people were saying.

moose
06-30-2005, 11:57 AM
Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
Go see "Batman Begins"...you'll thank me later.

Is it good?

Matt White
06-30-2005, 12:01 PM
Both are good flicks. WOTW isn't bad at all...better than I thought it would be.

BATMAN BEGINS is the best so far....and there will be more

Vinnie Velvet
06-30-2005, 12:12 PM
Originally posted by moose
Is it good?

I saw it last night.

It was a good movie -- most likely the best Batman movie since the 1989 original.

The problems I had with it are the following:

Way too much backstory on how Bruce Wayne decides to fight crime and become 'Batman'. Origin stories for superheroes like Spider-Man (2002) and even Superman (1978) were done very effectively because you didn't have to sit for very long to finally see the superhero kick some criminal ass.

But I felt it took forever just for Batman to get into his digs and start crime fighting.

People want to see him kicking ass as Batman and not mulling over some pyscho-babble crap with some Ninja outfit called "the League of Shadows".

Katie Holmes was a waste of time and while every other actor was brilliantly cast, they missed the boat on casting Katie. She SUCKS! She can't act worth shit. No wonder she is already dropped for the sequel.

The fight sequences I had a major problem with. The editing and cuts and close ups were done so fast, you couldn't even tell whether someone was getting punched or kicked in the face. It gave me a headache.

The GOOD:

The new Batmobile is awesome! This thing is really cool -- a cross between a tank and a Hummer. The chase sequence with this thing was my favorite scene.

Christain Bale is the best Batman ever. While he may have come across as "wooden" in some scenes, he was overall great.

The scenes where Batman "flies" or glides with his batwings were really cool too --- but again, fast cuts and edits made it want you to see more of him actually doing it.


Overall, a great Batman flick, but certainly not the best comic book/superhero movie.

It was certainly nothing to cream your underpants over with like some fanboys were doing.

Redballjets88
06-30-2005, 12:14 PM
i liked wotw

Terry
06-30-2005, 12:37 PM
Will probably give War Of The Worlds a shot. The trailers look decent. It doesn't look like a 'Tom Cruise' movie, inasmuch as the effects are what's gonna make the movie any good. Am pretty much going to see it in spite of Cruise being in it.

To be honest, I don't have many expectations for movies I see anymore. Batman Begins was decent, but would say it was more a case of expecting it to suck so much that all it had to be was adequate in order to defy expectations. Not so sure I agree with those who say it was the best in the series, but it may well be the best movie to come out this summer. Considering the bullshit that Hollywood is releasing this summer, Batman didn't have to be very good to be the best.

Another factor in seeing War Of The Worlds is that the CGI effects never seem to translate very well to home rentals, and it looks like the kind of movie that you almost HAVE to see on the big screen.