WAR OF WORLDS MOVIE.

*looks askance*

So how much does it clone Signs anyway?

how can it be a clone of signs if signs itself was a war of the worlds rip-off?

i really liked signs in its own cheesy way.

no doubt it will be better than independence day, but that's not difficult.

still i am anticipating this movie.

im looking forward to it! even tom cruise can't ruin my love of malevolent extraterrestrials!

-- Mr. Vas Djifrens (THEWARLOCK8...), June 28th, 2005.

what he said.

and actually i thought signs DID have some stuff going for it (though it was, as pointed out, a war of the worlds ripoff--AND an owen meany ripoff!)

How so?

It's all like

TRIPOD: "BAM, BAM, TAKE THIS MOTHAFUCKAS, AIN'T NO PARTY LIKE A MARTIAN PARTY!"

*blasts of heat ray, destruction of London*

TRIPOD 2: "THIS IS HOW WE MOTHERFUCKING RO...HEY, XBALU'AHNTH, I DON'T FEEL SO GOOD. I'M A LIE DOWN."

* tripod 2 crashes to the ground*

TRIPOD 1: "WHAT THE...*SNEEZE*...AW HELL NAW!"

*tripod 1 crashes to the ground*

NARRATOR: "Ahah, DO YOU SEE, the tiny micro-organisms destroyed the GIGANTIC WAR MACHINES, DO YOU SEE?

FIN.

so they aren't reminiscent of the critters in Wells' novel (basically giant octopi)?

well i guess the poster gives part of it away:

http://www.cinemasavvy.com/w/images/waroftheworlds.jpg

but the 1953 War of the Worlds had humanoid martians:

http://www.chokingonpopcorn.com/popcorn/wp-uploaded/WOTW-4.jpg

slocki are they similar to the 1953 critters?

-- Mike Stuchbery (michael.stuchber...), June 28th, 2005.

yeah i'm interested in that angle too! is it done well?

it's definitely more about survival and alien-avoidance than alien-fighting. which is pretty cool although it definitely has its own dramatic disadvantages.

but fuck!! there's some seriously dark, scary stuff. spielberg definitely impressed me on that count.

but damn i cant wait. i love me science fiction movies.

ew

Bet she's got the xenu playing cards though.

Depends on your perspective!

yeah, kinda. not as intense, not as strobey though. but it's very subjective camerawork, shakey, not a lot of nice shots of the aliens.

bahahaha. "Yo, CH'UXTHANLGSE, let's go blastin' on some fools!"

http://www.all-pictures-photos.com/images/ice-cube/ice-cube-011-img.jpg

[shot of woman tossing about a bed in a negligée]

http://www.all-pictures-photos.com/images/ice-cube/ice-cube-011-img.jpg

[a helicopter makes a desperate escape from a erupting volcano]

http://www.all-pictures-photos.com/images/ice-cube/ice-cube-011-img.jpg

[cornwallis surrenders at yorktown, surrounded by his troops]

http://www.all-pictures-photos.com/images/ice-cube/ice-cube-011-img.jpg

s1ocki, as a take on Wells, how would you say it compares to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 2?

I dunno... call it a thing, but it always annoys me when films do that.

as is well-known (to the point of being tedious), up to the 20th century at least, more soldiers at war died of disease than wounds sustained in combat

*flees*

... if they dont have that song in the movie I am not seeing it. I wanted to air-keyboard.

*keyboard flourish*

"Come and look! I've already started digging.."

you told me last week that you'd probably see it! CAUGHT! You see everything!

pashmina it's one of the great modern meta-cruise roles, where his the character's cruiseness irritates even his own family and very quickly proves itself useless (it is actually very good casting)

How come? Next you'll be telling me that it *isn't* David Essex.

morbius are you wishing hollywood would only make bad blockbusters??

no!! he also has "sweet smile." SEE ONE ARE WE THERE YET.

s1ocki, as a take on Wells, how would you say it compares to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 2?

obviously not as inventive (in its divergences) and ridonkulous--much more straightforward. but good in that way. i mean it's 180 degrees away from alan moore's version (unsurprisingly).

germs are not a deus ex machina (unless you the viewer have never heard of the concept of germs before and therefore consider them to be somehow a supernatural item): the point is being made that even beings from another star find themselves Slaves to the Real

i dunno! the calvalry arriving still counts as deus ex machina even if you've heard of calvalry before, doesn't it?

Well the "I WISH" pins it as exactly that.
-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...), June 28th, 2005 8:36 AM. (Dr Morbius) (later) (link)

HAHAHAH is this an xpost? or not?

So Hyde doesn't rape the invisible man in this one then... sigh...

Okay, so I saw this on Saturday and my main thoughts are:

1) WOW WHAT A GREAT MOVIE!!!
2) It's really too bad that Hayden Christensen has the acting chops of a bundt cake.

I mean, Natalie Portman is by no means the world's greatest actress, BUT if she'd been paired up with someone who could actually GIVE energy to a scene rather than sucking all of the energy out of it like a gigantic sponge, leaving a vacuous pit of uneasy glower reminsicent of the expression on the face of someone with rampant diarrhea waiting in a long restroom line in place of emoting and connecting with the other people in the scene, both II and III would have been MUCH MUCH better.

Having said that, the bits at the end where completely lost his shit and was chewing up the lava planet were awesome; the rest of the movie needed more of that in order to make his fall believeable.

[...]

See, Hayden was so ridiculously awful to me that everyone else seemed to be operating at the master thespian level, including the random Twi'lek Jedi who got gunned down like she was some kind of dog.

[...]

(hahaha I hadn't read the rest of this thread but I see that the "Hayden C is gorgeous ergo he must be a good actor" brigade is in full effect upthread)

(at least that was what was going on with the one person in our group who didn't think he completely, totally, utterly sucked ass on a level specially invented for his performance in the movie, so I'm just going to apply it to everyone who liked him in the movie because that's the only explanation that makes any rational sense to me for any positive commentary about any scene he had before the lava planet)

[...]

I went into this movie looking for:

a) an explanation of what led Anakin to the dark side;
b) an explanation of how Padme died;
c) lots and lots of cool lightsaber duels;
d) Yoda kicking ass.

The movie delivered on all four and added as a bonus gave some of the best performances in a Star Wars movie to date (Ewan MacGregor, Ian McDirmand). Furthermore, the entire showdown between Anakin, Padme and Obi-Wan was stellar.

HAVING SAID ALL OF THAT, part of the fun of these movies is how campily AWFUL certain aspects are, like Luke the Irredeemable Whiner from the first trilogy and Anakin the Jedi Mannequin in the second trilogy. There isn't a moment in the movie where I thought that Anakin actually gave a shit about Padme's existence, even in the selfish "I must have you at any cost" way that needed to be conveyed in order for his turning to make any sense; poor Natalie Portman spent the whole movie wringing anguished tears from her vagina and Hayden just kind of looked at her like she was maybe hiding a particularly quenching Orange Julius under her shirt and maybe after he finished his workout he'd be thirsty enough to pay attention to her. Conversely, Mark Hamill played Luke as if he was a six-year-old stuck in a post-pubescent body, ping-ponging wildly between "OOOH TOYS!" and "OOOH BOOBIES!" for the first two movies.

So far so good - and a pretty good proto X-Files show but midway through the series two of the main characters are killed off and it turns into a completely bat shit urban wasteland war story a la Terminator.

Also, how does your question work if you substitute "Battlefield: Earth" and John Travolta?

in Wells' version the aliens and their crafts came to earth via meteors, whereas in the film their ships are already buried and laying in wait, whilst the aliens themselves are delivered via lightning bolts.

anyway i've signed up for a personality test and light info session which i hope will explain all this and more

nobody has answered my blasphemy question yet - isn't this a little like selling jesus&mary snuff tapes at the church bakesale??
No, it's more like selling Jesus and Mary Chain tapes at the church bakesale.

DON'T DO THAT TO ME!!!

This sounds like the most excruciating thing in the world.

"Keep yo baby off the street! 'Cuz Martians is comin'!"

(I will simply note that I fully support Dan's approach to this movie due to Cruise because I have a similar problem re: one Mr. K. Reeves, as is well known.)

Except that "Minority Report" was pretty good.

Just back from seeing it. Fantastic--fantastic--first hour. Incredibly powerful, involving, scary, exhilarating. Then, unfortunately, Tim Robbins shows up and nearly wrecks it. Cruise is pretty good. Dakota Fanning, as his daughter, is sensational. Ending stinks. But man, that first hour. Wow!

(Mind you, he claimed there was no humor in Batman Begins.)

(about this movie, haha)

Fair point.

the FX are really good. the aliens were better-looking than slocki described IMHO, but he's right that they had a disappointingly humanoid look. once again, though, those tripods were BADASS.

tom cruise basically played a variation of the same character he always plays: the self-absorbed dick who through some circumstance or another learns to be a not-dick. within that very narrow range he was pretty good in this.

overall, very well-done and entertaining. it feels overwith and done a bit too quick, ending semi-abruptly, but even the ending isnt' overly schmaltzy or anything.

dude how about the "grandparents" shot? LOL

"is that who...weren't you in...*shakes head* whatevah!*

*WARNIN': CONTAINS SPOILERS*

http://chud.com/interviews/3522

http://chud.com/interviews/3533

"Q: One of the things changed from the novel was having the aliens laying dormant for eons rather than coming out of the sky…

Cruise: I was there when he came up with that idea. It was instantaneous. I remember that. I thought it was a great idea, because the machines are lying dormant.

Q: So what resonance did that have for you as a Scientologist?

Cruise: In what way?

Q: Well, in that some of the tenets of Scientology deal with the past of aliens on this planet…

Cruise: That’s not true.

Q: No?

Cruise: You’re like “Huh? What?” What paper are you from?

Q: Boston Phoenix.

Cruise: Boston what?

Q: Boston Phoenix.

Cruise: Is that… okay… a good paper? I don’t know how to answer that. It has no resonance whatsoever. There’s absolutely no relation to that whatsoever.

And if you’re interested in Scientology you should read Evolution of a Science. I don’t know if you’ve ever read that, or Fundamentals of Thought. That’ll give you a greater understanding of what Scientology is. Read that for yourself."

hahaha liar

otm.

just saw it. pretty damn good! the first half is wonderfully INTENSE. the tripods are really threatening and scary. the movie does lose some momentum in the second hour, but it never goes bad or anything.

otm.

Also, does the tripods' signature noise remind anyone else of that dnb track Wax Doctor - "Magnum Fusion" or am I just weird?

actually, this is a known physiological disorder.

(Not really sure "parable" is the right word here.)

Oh shit, yeah, I was going to mention that.

(spoiler)

My impression was that it was the natural microorganisms that we live with, not pollution? Unless that's what you meant by the "failed" part?

It's like cinema du Spielberg (screwed & chopped remix).

Speaking of melting, can anyone tell me if Dakota gets a big teary death scene in this movie?

The scene in the basement was almost exactly the same scene as the raptor scene in JP and the bathtub scene in Minority Report, but it was still pretty neat. I LOVED the scene when Tom Cruise blindfolded his daughter and then...

No, I was thinking of the pollution angle as a comic misinterpretation of the movie. Lately I've been making way too many jokes on ILx that border on senselessness and trying to explain what I meant to others feels like quicksand folly.

Anyway, for a more thoughtful exegesis, Wikipedia says:

The book has been viewed as an indictment of European colonial actions in Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas. Justification of the conquest of non-European peoples was usually along the lines of might-makes-right; i.e., the Europeans had vastly superior technology and so must be naturally superior people and so are perfectly justified in taking the lands for themselves. This argument gets flipped on its head with the arrival of comparatively technologically superior Martians who, according to the colonizers' own arguments, must therefore have every right to subjugate Europeans.

one thing nobody on this thread has mentioned: there is a scene dealing with the "mob mentality" that contains no aliens and is one of the rawest and scariest things in the movie.

***OK SPOILER***

the flaming train is totally off the fucking hook. i jumped out of my seat!

Cruise does a good job playing slightly against type as a not particularly admirable ordinary guy thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Spielberg makes some wonderful choices along the way. There's a scene, for instance, where "heroic" action is called for and you'd figure Cruise would leap into the fray and take care of business. But he doesn't. Who *does* is a mild surprise, and the look on Cruise's face is wonderful. One of my wibble moments, must say.

The alien machines are way cool and scary. The aliens themselves are okay. But the images that revisited me in dreams last night were the mob scene, the flaming train, the river, and parts of the ferry scene. Those are gonna hang around for a while. Damn Spielberg. ::rueful laugh::

alter him if he doesn't want to go!

Very offtopic but after watching this I started thinking "What was Spielberg's last great SF film?" and I decided AI still rules (dude). I watched it last week for the first time in a bit and it held up beautifully. Don't know if same can be said for this one or Minority Report .

very dark

ps mars attacks rules

i don't know - but i do think that sort of seeing is one of the few things that films-seen-in-theatres do better than books or television or paintings or landscape architecture or whatever.

pervert

I feel your antsiness, amst. I don't really get how or why someone might feel pleasure, even vicarious pleasure, from seeing a depiction of humanity under the hammer; as a member of the class of items to be annihilated, a viewer is essentially watching a dramatization of not only his own destruction but that of his friends, family, country etc. etc. (I mean, even in The War of the Worlds or Independence Day where YAH! HUMANITY WINS! everything is still amazingly fucked for the survivors.) That sounds like some serious death-wish shit there that I don't want to get near.

there is lots written abt battleship potemkin!

major gripe apart from the ending: why all the different methods used by the aliens to dispatch humans, each new one seemingly less efficient than the previous one? (apart from the obvious reason of giving the audience something different - and nastier - to see)

The bit where he gets to his x’s house at the end was a little weird, her house and herself looked impeccable considering the world have just had its arse kicked.

Revelations? Never heard of it.

Saying something's a persistent feature of culture isn't really giving an explanation for the satisfaction it gives people. It's kinda backwards, since the satisfaction could explain the persistency.

i am totally bullshitting here, btw! it's a very interesting question tho.

Actually, I wanted to say something like "suicide" or "castration" -- that getting a thrill from civilization GETTIN IT is like a wish for self-mutilation or self-destruction.

Yes, b-b-b-but also the oportunity to build a *new* civilization which is tons better than the one that preceded it (cf: the "I think we all learned something today" speech that the vice prez gives in "The Day After Tomorrow")

i think spielberg takes us away from the family's point of view like maybe three times, and only one comes to mind where we see something they dont.

He doesn't really, he still a pretty shitty father. And I did like that his ex didn't come running over to him or anything.

why all the different methods used by the aliens to dispatch humans, each new one seemingly less efficient than the previous one?

I don't quite follow. They use their heat rays (which seem more like spontaneus combustion rays - they leave the clothing okay) to kill people, and then when humanity's subjugated, they keep them as cattle (the sucking blood out scene was them feeding).

I agree about the real actual aliens being disappointing.

I was impressed by the relative fidelity of it, including the murder of the priest/artillaryman figure (Tim Robbins).

Two additions which don't match up: the machines arose in each metropolitan area AND they were planted millions of years ago?

still fired up to watch this next week! but buzzing off batman begins right now

are the fact that the first tripod arrives by unscrewing a cylinder a bity block wide, and the scene where Tom Cruise wakes up in his wife's home, and goes outside to survey the wreckage, and the first thing he sees is OMG a giant silver cylinder with the top rotating! Which turns out to be a jet engine. . . OMG a jet engine!

Psyched about all the Jerseyana stuff (they even mentioned the Pine Barrens). For a blockbuster movie, I think they did a reasonably good job of portraying a realistic Bayonne (or whatever Hudson County town it was) NJ. The people looked and sounded enough like people I see and meet here in Jersey City that I was able to forgive any slight hollywood refinements on them.

One thing: did anyone catch the references to the 1970s Phil Kaufman version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which is fantastic itself)? Spielberg still likes to prove that he knows him some film.

-I like the tripods a lot, especially in the first scene where it looks just 50s sci-fi enough that you don't quite take it seriously (you start to soon though.)

-I actually found the way that the people were vaporized both frightening and very beautiful

-I also like the kind of stupified curiosity the people approach the thing with at first -- even when there appears to be danger, everyone wants a look at it as much or more than they want to go to safety.

-I agree that the mob scenes are actually more terrifying than the alien scenes, but I think that's the idea, isn't it? You know, the terror, what it does to people, how it tears the social fabric, is more frightening than the threat itself, etc.

one of the things that scared me about the old '50s war of the worlds when i was a kid was that you never saw the aliens that clearly (i think there's one encounter in a dark room where you see one of them for a split-second). of course, wells' description of them in the novel is so scary it's hard to imagine any movie monster living up to it.

that explanation makes little sense either! is that in the book? we're two days into the invasion, humanity is hardly subjugated at this point in the movie (as later scenes bear witness). and it's the planet they're supposedly after, not humans (who weren't even around when they buried the spaveships - see below)? and how could they know humans were worth "consuming" (to the extent that they had devices to catch/eat them!!)? and..., and..., etc.

Two additions which don't match up: the machines arose in each metropolitan area AND they were planted millions of years ago?
yes, and we're required to assume that the germs that kill them off at invasion time didn't exist when they buried the ships. hmmmm.

"We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water"

Yeah, it's from the book, which is without this "buried for millions of years" nonsense, and is just here they come, in their giant metal spaceships.

humanity is hardly subjugated at this point in the movie (as later scenes bear witness).

??? Humanity's pretty fucked, Boston aside.

she's looking mighty fine for a 38 year old

Perhaps the aliens have time travel? They're aliens, it's not impossible. HG had already used it, don't forget.

The beginning build-up and 1st appearance of tripods: great; creepiness in cellar: okay. I was disappointed by the flaming train, it struck me as very "Mars Attacks" rather than terrifying.

There was a bit too much directorial showing off - which Sielberg does seem to indulge in, to let everyone know that he's the most technically (and techniquely) proficient director of his generation. I find it a bit distracting.

i had to see this again with friends and i love the first appearance of the tripod so much, esp the music that starts playing.

(I have a phobia of air crashes fwiw)

it's like planes, trains, & automobiles: the TRUE STORY

The whole last part of the movie, though (with the exception of the ferry sequence) was not compelling to me at all, however. The bit with Tim Robbins underground was sludgily assembled and felt neither fresh, true or interesting. The very end of the film happened much too fast, with only the obvious notes being given weight (ie, dad and son reunion), rather than images of greater poignancy or subtle interest. I don't have any complaints with what happens (ie, the way the aliens are defeated), just with the way the end of the film was assembled by Spielberg. Really underwhelming after the direct-to-your-heart-thump opening minutes.

i think the movie basically peaks with the ferry scene (but wow!) but i found the robbins scenes pretty cool in a different way. it's a let down in way, but the scene where he blindfolds his daughter, and the shot of her through the windshield, are just fantastic.

hahaha. I love how people see things differently. The blindfolding daughter scene was to me classic Spielbergian awfulness, melodramatic and unsubstle and almost pathetically unresonant. (Like Schindler's List's much-ballyhooed Girl-in-the-Red-Dress.)

i am sort of surprised by the weight of negative reaction to the ending. there are really good parts in the final quarter - my favorite is the scene where cruise is speaking to a soldier, in the background we can see a tripod that's toppled into a building. i don't think i will ever forget that scene.

jones pointed out that the soldiers in that final sequence were very "'50s army"

then there is the amazing part where suddenly all of the soldiers freeze, one of them points a finger upward, and they all look up, the camera follows, and we see helicopters firing rockets at the tripods. i know i'm watching violence happening but the "rocket's red glare" is so gorgeous, like a sunset, everything seems to pause.

it ties in neatly with something someone said upthread about the rapture of looking, wrt the guy who can't put down the camera even though he is abt to be zapped by alien death-rays.

i'm thinking - and i'm not an educated observer or really even a movie buff so what do i know - that this movie is one of the best american movies, in terms of tricks with light and color and texture, since "far from heaven". (of course since todd haynes did it all without digital fx he pisses on spielberg from many miles but whatever).

...I know it's popular right now to pile on Tom Cruise, and I don't just mean for gay men. I mean to make fun of and ridicule him because of his religious views and bizarro behavior. Still, he is weird. He's a terrible actor because he never even seems like a person acting. He's more like some tightly wound inorganic matter pretending to be a person acting. He doesn't seem to have a reserve of genuine emotion to tap into. Fanning is the same way; she's preternaturally creepy, like Haley Joel Osment because she is unusually bright for her age, but also not childlike at all...

*VERY VAGUE SPOILERS*

1. When Cruise and his kids are making their escape down the freeway in the truck, with all the arguing and shouting and the camera is in the vehicle, panning round it, overhead tracking shots, then back in and so on, all in one seamless take. I can only assume it was "done with computers", but it looks amazing nonetheless.

2. The sequence when Cruise comes out of the ruined house and confronts the tripod, and the whole landscape is shattered and infested with weed. There's a really lavish technicolor look to it that echoes the 1950s version of the movie (to my mind) and also ties in totally with Vahid's Far From Heaven ref above. It's so beautiful and eerie.

I thought the whole film looked incredible though.

(1) The fact that, as mentioned above, the audience only ever sees what Cruise and his family see. Obviously there's many other events happening concurrently with their story, but you only ever see from their POV. Even when the plane crashes, you don't actually see it, because they themslves didn't see it. And even the massive widescreen vistas are only what they see; so you never get a full visual picture as to what's happening elsewhere, only anecdotally, which is exactly the experience of the Cruise Three.

(2) The way that Cruise (I think at least twice or 3 times) shields his daughter's eyes so she can't see, and therefore won't be harmed - once or twice during the carnage, and also when he sorts out Tim Robbins. And also at the beginning?

(3) The son's main arc is that he just wants to SEE what's happening - he makes that clear at least twice, until he finally disappears over the hill. He's doesn't seem particularly interested in taking part, but just wants to observe. And of course once he does leave, we never get to see what he sees. (I'm not sure I understand the point of the son to be honest - why would he have left his sister, when he was convinced Cruise was such a bad dad?)

(4) There are constant references to eyes in the dialogue, although I seem to have mislaid the the script. I remember small fragments such as a conversation Robbins has with Cruise where he refers several times to eyes.

(5) And there's the obvious visual motifs such as the tripod's eyes, the search lights, the "roving" alien eye in the basement, as well as visual tricks such as the shots through the windscreen, mirrors etc.

I think what Spielberg is trying to ram home is that there are maybe 5 billion human versions of the story, and this is Cruise and his daughter's. Which may go some way to explaining the suddenness of the ending - the alien deaths were nothing to do with Cruise, he didn't save the day (for mankind, at least). He just did his bit to save his immediate loved ones. (Let's just pray this doesn't mean 4,999,999,998 sequels though, eh?)

Did anyone else pick up any more references like this?

Myself: "But to the point that he neglects - nay, completely forgets - the sister that he has been so protective of, particularly with reference to how he sees his dad as a parent to her? Or maybe despite his earlier protestations, he's actually the person he accuses his dad of being, i.e. self-serving."

A nice idea, bit it requires ignoring the extreme shorthand of the handful of shots of Cruise's son, the look on his face clearly registering he's getting his rage on.

So, too, is the subext. Not the 9/11 one but the one where Tom Cruise demonstrates the explosive productiveness of unleashing his load up the rectum of the tripods.

Also it gave me the chance to actually watch the camera work. The opening zoom in from miles away to Cruise in the crane is nice, and that one-shot conversation in the car is amazing.

There are a few moments when the plot gets a bit lazy EG when the car magically finds one clear path through the freeway, and also the same through the ruins of the jet plane.

I liked that it established early on that Cruise was both a master crate-stacker and drove a sharp car, both of which were of no use whatsoever.

I liked that it established early on that Cruise was both a master crate-stacker and drove a sharp car, both of which were of no use whatsoever.

totally! either that was a good red herring or it was something left over from an earlier draft of the script (the crate-stacking stuff, i mean). pop-cult palimpsest thread to... uh, thread.

haha i was so watching this scene thinking "oh right yeah, i wonder when we get to see toms crate stacking skills put to martian beating use"

i thought this movie was actually all right, having been a huge fan of the whole WOTW scenary from when i was but a child I had high expectations. I even digged tom in this and i usually hate him, as did my mate. i agree about the plot being a bit lazy at times, yeah thought this was so uncharacteristic of speilberg.

(and they're going to BOSTON, remember?!)

what i really liked was that the flight to nowhere turned it into a road movie, where the movement is a string to hang difft ideas on "now we explore this kind of social breakdown, here... ok moving along..."

also agreed that the ending is real deflationary (at the very least, the stepdad survived too, and they don't invite TC in, so it's like, all this shit and then back to life as is) but it wasn't the son being alive (too literary i guess) or the private ryan grandparents, but the BUILDINGS being totally fine that really broke my heart. thru the whole thing "boston" is this reflexive thing, a lie to yr 9 yr old, a talisman etc; when he says he's going there to robbins he gets no answer and it read to me as totally ridiculous, like it was clear they were running from nowhere to nowhere. but then at the end Boston really was the place to go! like fuck.

i esp liked the orange muck that flopped out of the tripod at the end. teh nasty!! i bet the fx ppl had a great old time brewing that up, various colors and viscosities, spielberg coming thru the shop one day, "oh, yeah, the orange, that's fucking IT"

It was very, very exciting, I even found the cellar scene kind of thrilling, despite tim robbins = rubbishness. The bloody racket of the alien machinery when they were hiding in the cellar was evective It kind of reminded me of Peckinpah's "Cross of Iron" in that it had this kind of relentlessness about it, and you kind of almost felt like you'd actually been through it at the end. Scariest bit = on the ferry, where the captian looks out of the wheelhouse & sees the martian war machine under the water!! OMG will the pwnj never end! (plus, I have this weird thing where machinery seen under water makes me feel really uneasy) Cruise was bizarrely convincing, and he didn't do the look @ my expressive eyes thing too much, the little girl was very convincing, which kind of added to the scariness, I suppose. The teenage son was lame. It wasn't really about the acting, though, was it.

The scene w/the uneathly red weed was good, and a little more of the aliens colonising the planet, even changing the look of the place would have been better, perhaps.

Also, effective scene in Wells' book - the black gas dome! The scene in the book where the guy is at the top of the church tower, just above the top of the gas, and as the level of the gas lowers over 3 or 4 days, he sees features of the landscape poking out through the top of it was really effective & creepy.

I look forward to the sequel - WOTW2 - now the've brought penecillin!!

http://www.monpa.com/dwc/images/sabine.gif

-- Pashmina (vietgrov...), August 5th, 2005.

aliens gotta blow off some steam and get funky sometimes.

It's almost a compendium of his best work, the eviscerated cityscapes from AI, the indomitable predator from Jaws, the feeling of never being able to relax from Duel, a blasted dystopian vision of urban moral and social decay from Schindlers list.

He does suspense probably better than any director since Hitchcock and this felt like a companion piece to the Birds, though big fuck off ones with death rays. My son, who loves war movies had to leave after an hour shaking with fear, Spielberg's created something really visceral and unsettling with this film.

Ha ha! Imagine the look on people’s faces when you get a call?
http://www.movie-pix.com/War-of-the-Worlds-2005-Family.jpg

Some movies I really liked in 2005

Wallace and Grommit and the Curse of the Wererabbit
The Aristocrats
In the Realms of the Unreal
Batman Begins
Kungfu Hustle
40 Year Old Virgin

x-post In the Realms of the Unreal:

Urg! Urrrrg!! Make it stop. There was a thread around here somewhere about this Dakota Fanning movie, but I'm not bumping it.

saying that though, haven't seen Kink Kong yet.

omg, Kink Kong. Yeah, I think that may be a "download only" release...

Urg! Urrrrg!! Make it stop. There was a thread around here somewhere about this Dakota Fanning movie, but I'm not bumping it.

-- Eric H. (ephende...), November 25th, 2005.

-- Eric H. (ephende...), November 25th, 2005.

-- lol ur old (lo...), November 25th, 2005 10:03 AM.

That Tim Robbins' perf in indisputably better than his Damaged Guy in Mystic River splendidly illustrates the poison of the "Oscar aesthetic."

Cruise has definitely learned to cry better. Did Spielberg actually figure out how to say "Turn it the fuck down" in Tom Talk?

did anyone catch the references to the 1970s Phil Kaufman version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which is fantastic itself)?

If you're around, Hurting, I loved that Kaufman movie but haven't seen it in eons; please amplify.

Didn't always know which locations were Bayonne and which the Ironbound, but NEWARK REPRAZENTS!

btw, The Spiel sez the aliens came from "a darker place in E.T.'s neighborhood."

It was a shame, I was enjoying the movie up until the end, and then the ending was so trite it ruined things for me.

I'm not saying they are perfect or anything, though.

Count me in. Minority Report is almost a masterpiece.

All the dissing of S.S.'s endings are wrong except Minority Report. How about setting your monthly chorus to music?

According to what I wrote on the other thread I DID CARE, but yeah blech on this movie.

I haven't seen Minority Report, WotW, or Munich yet so I might be completely wrong, but if previous films are anything to go on I "don't get it," the Speilberg-is-great-but-for-endings meme.

xpost I find Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law both disturbing so that might be my problem with AI. Not so much hating children as hating completely disturbing actors, I guess.

Also, the shark shoulda eaten Richard Dreyfuss. And the Close Encounters Special Edition inside-the-starship footage, BOOOOOOOOO.

I haven't seen The Terminal. Is it the shite?

This is some feat though, isn't it?

WotW wasn't as interesting, scene for scene and action-wise, as Minority Report. There was nothing as cool the eyeball extravaganza.

And then the grandparents in Boston, yeah - apparently aliens are Red Sox fans.

i like Dakota Fanning. there i said it.

I believe I am the only ILXer who liked The Terminal, the first part of Spielberg's 9/11 trilogy. "America is CLOSED."

I would modify "good" to "almost Spielberg career best", or some variation of, but otherwise, yeah, needs more holocaust

I read this as "I kinda think 'Crash' is his best recent movie...

Spielberg is OBV worth the debate though! That's why everyone debates about him! And as I've said many times before the main reason I find him so disappointing is that he so frequently takes projects I am very interested in and does far less than I would like with them.

ooooooh, you really know how to push my buttons! ;)

In my opinion!

Aviator's one of those movies which I thought was going to be terrible and then surprised myself by thinking was really good (it's the anti-Crash.) I should watch it again.

Catch is the only film mentioned that's even close though. I don't rate the other two at all.

-- J.D. (aubade8...), March 8th, 2006.

baby Predators.

The "I could've saved one more" scene was key, to me, in Schindler, because, you know, he could have.

It's got more holocaust in it than anyone else would've dared to put in a mega-budget "Cruise vehicle." What makes things easy for S.S. critics is they demand the impossible.

I kinda think "Catch" is his best recent movie, in that it works fine from start to finish without ever becoming majorly embarassing.

I read this as "It's the least adventurous."

No what makes it easy for S.S. critics is that S.S. can't deliver the possible.

But "adventurous" doesn't naturally equate with "good", and "unadventurous" doesn't natuarally equate with "boring", or we'd all be discussing Domino and Roger Avary films.

we'd all be discussing Domino and Roger Avary films.

OMG I knew Domino was probably bad but it's ROGER AVARY bad????

I remember sort of liking that.

Note: I like Catch Me If You Can and the first part of Minority Report a lot. I also quite liked Empire of the Sun. So it's not all Indiana Jones.

also basing ANOTHER movie around a car crash that affects a bunch of intersecting characters' lives. so lazy.

it's weird, because i really thought munich was pretty great, but one shot sticks out for me as being fairly awful. it's gonna sound weird, but when they're stalking that one guy down that street and the middle-aged chap with the glasses has his umbrella and opens it and he's hiding a gun underneath it...it struck me as being a "cool reveal shot" without any purpose. stash it in your overcoat, bro. other than that, though, i was okay with the movie.

1. The FX were SPOTTY, not AMAZING.
2. OK I can see what people mean about the 1st hour being WOWZER!!! YAY!!! but after this part

News Producer: [at the site of a plane crash] Were you on that plane?
Ray Ferrier: No.
News Producer: Too bad. It would have made a hell of a story.
[shuts news van door and drives off]

none of it mattered. Spielberg aims all of his films squarely between the ideas of the most mentally impaired moviegoers the world has to offer. Luckily for him this nets big cash because the american adult population is comprised of 51% fucking insipid morons with nothing better to do than watch a little girl scream and cry while people are murdered in fantastic ways for 2 hours, or whatever this fucking piece of shit waste of celluloid and computer cycles was supposed to be about.

I fucking hated this piece of shit. I can't believe all of you liked it. It is DEFINITELY not on par with Independence Day, I TOTALLY agree with Ebert that it compares unfavorably with The Day After Tomorrow, and the chatter comparing Signs unfavorably with this movie boggles my fucking mind, slocki, I am not sure what your definition of scary is but it ain't anything like mine.

I was having a hard time last night thinking of a movie we had seen recently that was worse than this one, and then I remembered:

Catwoman.

Thank you and good afternoon.

1) one of the only good Tom Cruise performances I've EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE (this makes approximately 2, 3 if you include Top Gun for its WTFOTT factor) and the FIRST time I've ever had sympathy for a character he is playing--this is good
2) the first half is pretty good and exciting
3) terrible ending is not the film's fault.

But on the other hand, yeah, I dunno what these fx looked like on the big screen but they look like absolute hell on the tv dudes, like Jurassic Park looks better and that film is like 40 years old now. What is that about? Also I'm one of the few ILXors who likes Dakota Fanning but she was really grating for 60% of the movie (basically until the brother disappears). Also I would've appreciated a TINY bit of backstory as to why his kids treated him like utter shit, to the point of like disbelieving his story while they were WATCHING ALIEN TRIPODS DESTROY ALL OF BROOKLYN WITH THEIR OWN EYES. He didn't seem like that horrible of a douchebag that he deserved that and no backstory was given besides that pathetic "I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU!" you-don't-care-about-meeeeeeeeeee stereotype of a teenager speech his son gives apropos of little.

Oh and how comes if the aliens kill all the electricity and even Tom Cruise's WATCH someone's camcorder still works for them to film the destruction, drop it, and allow Spielberg to do "arty" film-the-scene-through-camcorder-double-shot thing? Plz to be keeping one (1) sense of continuity with everything else you got going on. Unless this person had some kind of magic hand-cranked digicam or something. That is small niggling point but it really annoyed me!

xpost haha those were not aliens, they were a laptop techno act, remember?

Minority Report : the only way one can take the ending even slightly seriously is if you assume it was an hallucination - the fact that Spielberg so obviously does not want you to do this is what ruins the film for me

AI: is a better film on 2nd viewing and is a truly fantastic film up until the end of the scene where Robot Boy's mother abandons him in the woods. Even the ending would have worked had Spielberg been able to keep his genetic predisposition to schmaltz in check - I suspect that had Kubrick made the film the ending would have been almost unbearably bleak and therefore (to my mind) good.

Saving Private Ryan: is ruined by it's attempt to be a prper film with a beginning,middle and end. Had it kept it's subject to the Normandy landings it would have been perfect. The other flaws it has ie extreme jingoism pale into insignificance beside this.

The problem I have with Spielberg is that his technical proficiency is pretty much unrivalled by any living director, but his instincts are always going to be flawed. I'm still kinda hoping that one day David Fincher will grow up to be the Spielberg of his generation; but one who's actually prepared to take his films to interesting places.

xpost no you are not the only person that thought the burning train looked shit, I believe that was the exact moment in the movie where Tom lost his shit completely with it TBH.

http://movies.nnov.ru/Covers/What%20Planet%20Are%20You%20From.jpg

BUT they played laptop techno noize whenever they walked so that was pretty cool.

xpost I told you to not think about it so hard, I mean if we want to get all technical about things I really doubt those aliens actually exist.

"Worse than Catwoman" Wow, that's the ultimate put down!

yeah...now there's a movie with crappy CG! they have CGI cats in a scene (the part where shes revived by the kitties licking her up and reborn as... catwoman!) that could have used live trained cats for the cost.

Is it just me actually or is CGI getting crappier by the year?

no the train is where I kind of gave up and just started asking the obvious questions, like how did the INSIDE of the train just all catch aflame when there was no obvious damage to the OUTSIDE and we had already seen that the effect of the death ray could tear a highway overpass out of the ground and flip it over.

-- TOMBOT (tombo...), March 29th, 2006.

heh how can you watch tv without getting a heart attack!! ;-)

but i'm also a sucker for things with a cheesy
'sightings'/x-files/unsolved mysteries vibe...

-- Allyzay Rofflesberger (allyza...), March 29th, 2006.

i think it is! its prolly due to rushing the process to get movies out, and thinking that just having an effect done CGI will automatically make it satisfactory. this really sucks, since CG can look really amazing when done right.

i mean, the first Jurassic Park movie still holds up pretty well, effects-wise.

http://www.unmuseum.org/rayskel.jpg

I fucking hated this piece of shit... I was having a hard time last night thinking of a movie we had seen recently that was worse

Same Tom, same post. Swing the mood much? (or just OMG I'M SPOSED TO HATE SPIELBERG)

how did the INSIDE of the train just all catch aflame when there was no obvious damage to the OUTSIDE

A graduate of the Vertigo Literalist "How Did the Villain Know James Stewart Wouldn't Make It Up the Stairs" Institute.

they were WATCHING ALIEN TRIPODS DESTROY ALL OF BROOKLYN

That was Jersey (Bayonne/Ironbound Newark/Elizabeth). You lived here long enough to notice the Pulaski Skyway isn't in Brooklyn, oui?

The Bizarro Haskell & Sarris, ladies and gents.

Plz to feel free to defend the camcorder shot, Spielberg's Girlfriend.

Otherwise I don't lose any sleep over it because I can overlook "continuity errors" that don't have anything to do with the actual damned plot. So he stuck in an artsy-fartsy camera shot that relies on OH NOES BAD CONTINUITY!!! Big deal.

ouch

Signs was definitely better. That movie waited a long time to reveal JUST how fucking stupid it was.

x-post gear do you like snuff

pretty rich from an avowed depalma fan

Well see that makes sense to me except of everything else that got switched off. It basically affected every single thing, including battery powered items? It was just a really glaring continuity error to me.

Ending of Mars Attacks >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ending of War of the Worlds. Also this Hook nonsense is insane.

x-post Hook is probably worse, but only because I enjoy "panicky idiots in chaos" scenes.

Like fuck. "Yuh give up pork!?"

ILX version of Mars Attacks! I know whose head I see on the dog...

Actually when the slow guy got stabby with it I thought the movie was going to pick up but he only got one person. The subsequent scene where he was then beaten up by a blind girl was the last moment that had any vestige of bossness in the movie; it then turned into "Papa, can I go in the woods?" "No, you're blind and it's forbidden." "Well fuck you, I have MOXIE!" bullshit as opposed to the Colonial House cosplay bullshit that filled the first half of the movie.

I think having the "monsters" be rather obviously people in stupid porcupine costumes undercut the tension of the first half of the movie just a tad.

People who like this AND/OR Signs are obviously insane.

hahah shudder

-- The Equator Lounge (quartzcit...), March 29th, 2006.

http://www.oneposter.com/UserData/Poster/Poster_7278.jpg

(xpost: Alfred OTM, which is sad because that commercial is viciously awful.)

I was bitching about this in July and no one had a good answer.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/06/30/business/30WAL.jpg

Sterling and Dan, would you guys defend Swordfish also??? Pretty or no, Halle Berry is in several of the most awful movies ever made. She'd be better if she just was photographed and never spoke, or "acted," ever.

but catwoman actually was. i posted all about it on that thread. it wasn't particularly bad or groanworthy or anything and it sort of was funny and skipped along. i don't get the hate.

(omg tho you guys heard the killer line from BI:2, right "even Oedipus didn't see his mother coming." yipe.)

No, me neither.

The computer stuff in "Swordfish" was a gigantic pile of crap. However, Halle does flash her breasts. Hmm.

WOTW, Mars Attacks! and Independence Day have hardly a sodding thing in common except their plots are 'about' alien invasions. (It's like lumping The Silence of the Lambs, Persona and Born Yesterday together cuz they're about the shifting dynamics of relationships.)

Spielberg = humanist
Burton = misanthrope
Roland Emmerich = please spend $12 at the concession stand

WOTW, Mars Attacks and Independence Day are all based on the same source material. If you really believe that Spielberg is the humanist of the three, then why does his movie stick to the original denouement of airborne pathogens, instead of replacing it with something like actual human ingenuity or achievement? I like a good epic battle. Not so much a fan of the "survive by whatever means necessary until this all blows over" school of storytelling.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
-- Daniel P. Moynihan

A celebration of human ingenuity or achievement is a technocrat's idea of humanism.

I had no idea what this mortally sinful "camcorder shot [sic]" was until it was specified. Everyone who was disturbed by it, please confine your exegeses to "Everybody Loves Raymond."

Does anybody have anything to say for why this movie is worth watching yet, besides the sepcial effects?

There's the hoped-for thrill that Dakota Fanning might die.

And this whole thing leads me to believe that people are just incapable of watching and understanding a fucking movie anymore. When we invade a country, do we do the exact same thing to every single person we encounter? No, no we do not.

So one can surmise that the plan is to first cull the population in the major population centers, then start herding up and harvesting the survivors for whatever nefarious purposes. Note that the destructo-rays are only busted out in the cities. By the time they're getting on the ferry, the tripods have started pulling people out of the water and rounding them up, only using the rays on the people who are shooting at them.

completely inexplicable incineration of the basement

Huh?

Yep. "People" being delusional juvie name-callers on the internets, esp.

not sure why anyone should bother talking to you at all. your basic move is to explode in rage and try to make them look like an idiot by shouting them down rather than, you know, discussing things.

it's fine though. im sure this all does something for your ego. so we'll continue to play along.

(man, imagine how stressful the divorce is gunna be)

-- Dr Morbius, March 29th, 2006 3:37 PM. (Dr Morbius) (link)

That's from a thread about making plans to meet people for drinks in SF on our honeymoon. Great guy.

Rageboy, let it go. The Lovely Lady has posted falsehoods about me regularly, I didn't know when you were getting married or that you personally reserve threads, and I really hope yer together for 60 years "Paradise by the Dashboard Light"-style. Dan and Ned, stick around and keep cornholing yr pals.

THE END

My pals thank me for not cornholing them, as I lack that 'special touch.'

This is asinine because I, the person who SAID THIS HORRIBLE THING THAT I EXPECT VAGUE CONTINUITY, dislike all three of those directors. And yeah, all three of them get away with a lot of BS. What is your point?

Haha! Touche, I guess.

Srsly, the camcorder thing had absolutely no bearing on the plot whatsoever. I just don't see what the point of getting hung up on it is.

OK, I likes me some Kubrick (mostly late-model - The Shining onward), but no one's taking the camcorder shot to task for being a camcorder shot - it's just the insult to our collective intelligence. Spielberg makes a point out of showing that all electronic devices don't work - in Spielbergian style, he beats you over the head with this fact (OH NOES WHAT WILL WE DO IN THIS MODERN WORLD), and then for no particular reason decides that hey, camcorders totally work great just so I can fit in this one irrelevant shot.

I also complained that the 35mm photographs in Closer later showed up printed full-frame and square. Little things like that can totally take me out of the film (which is rather important in a big sci-fi epic, no?).

rewatched this due to many vocal fans in the tom cruise thread. found about a billion things to say about it:

Okay, so I tried watching Spielberg's War of the Worlds last night, but only got about half an hour in. Watched the rest today, but I can't say I enjoyed it much. The photography and cinematography are amazing, absolutely gorgeous, wall-to-wall with striking and inventive imagery. It's honestly one of the best-looking and most cinematically creative action movies I've ever seen, especially when it comes to the "senselessness of war" stuff that dominates the midsection of the film. The cast is solid and the kids are cute, but I just can't relate. That's my real problem.

Cruise's Ray Ferrier is set up as off the bat as an underachieving and irresponsible everyman of the emasculated blue-collar variety. He may be a king in his working life (something we see very clearly in that wonderful opening crane shot of Ray in his tripod-like crane, looking down on the shipyard, the only world he masters), a cheerfully cocky adolescent rebel of the sort Tom Cruise has always loved to play, but he lacks the maturity and conviction necessary to impress and manage his own estranged family. Ray's dick has been cut off by his selfish failure to rise to the demands of fatherhood and by his ex's "cool" new man, a placid rich-guy cipher whose gormless white-collar sophistication is telegraphed by slick black casual wear and an expensive new ride. Perhaps someone like Bruce Willis could have made Ray's rise from isolated loser to heroic family man appealing, but Cruise can't conceal an off-putting glint of striving, Napoleonic desperation.

Not only is Ray obviously going to find his inner "good father" and prove that his wearily noble working-class masculinity is a fit match for whatever this world or any other can throw at him, his character is immediately associated with America herself, most obviously in an early shot where Cruise is photographed from below and framed by a row of stridently hopeful American flags. "Is it the terrorists?" Dakota Fanning pointedly asks as Ray and his family attempt to flee the carnage in a stolen minivan. This is a 9/11 movie, after all. That topical connection is made perhaps too ghoulishly clear when Ray runs through the powdery remains of his vaporized neighbors during the first moments of the alien attack, the images immediately evoking the dust clouds that enveloped lower Manhattan and caked shell-shocked New Yorkers in the aftermath of the Tower collapses. This is powerful stuff, but I have to admit that the manipulative obviousness of Spielberg's visual strategy repels me somewhat.

When watching the Hitchcock films The Man Who Knew Too Much and Shadow of a Doubt, I'm troubled by the xenophobia and political implications, but I'm also sufficiently far removed from the Cold War context in which they were created to overlook my reservations in favor of simply appreciating the stories and cinema. I find it harder to do that here. When the alien war machine first begins to rise out of the pavement in front of a quaint old church, i'm distracted by Spielberg's ham-handed (but visually clever) attempt to create a hybrid of Brooklyn's celebrated high-density "grit" and a nostalgic vision of small town America that wouldn't have seemed out of place in Back to the Future, Ray's goofy neighborhood buddies at once "streetwise" and cheerfully innocent. It's like Spike Lee meets Mayberry.

Just to be clear, I don't find anything terribly objectionable in the film's apparent politics, such as they are. In fact, in the dangerously distracting fascination that the useless military seems to exert over Justin Chatwin's good son Robbie, we might see a subtle repudiation of the marketing of Bush Jr.'s Gulf War as a response to 9/11. Tim Robbins' basement-dwelling lunatic makes the rather subversive point that "occupations always fail." Even Welle's conclusion makes an interesting point in this context, national threat becoming less the existential crisis it seems and more a kind of weather, a storm that will pass like any other. My problem is not that Spielberg's approach seems intolerably xenophobic or jingoistic in the maner of Hitchcock's (it doesn't), but rather that I simply can't relate to his style and concerns. I can't relate to Cruise's "built Ford tough" secondhand Springsteen protagonist, can't relate to the crushingly obvious way the story announces Ray's need to prove his masculine potency and claim the authoritative mantle of fatherhood, can't relate to Spielberg's insistently silly symbolism, and I can't relate to the sensibility that might find any of this thematic material satisfying or even engaging.

Where Spielberg's 9/11 movie contrasts the personal struggles and grudging decency of "little guy" Americans with monstrous space evil, David Cronenberg, using similarly hackneyed representations of American innocence and family at threat in his A History of Violence, at least manages to say something interesting about the construction of "heroic" narratives and the relationship of past transgressions to present circumstances. Children of Men addresses the burdens and perhaps futile-seeming hopes that attend fatherhood in an all-too-often senselessly violent world without blocking everything out in such tediously predictable terms. Hell, even Hitchcock let Doris Day do 90% of the thinking in The Man Who Knew Too Much.

I realize I'm focusing primarily on what I see as the associative implications of the text and not the story itself, but while I am inclined to this type of analysis, Spielberg's directorial choices strongly encourage it. In War of the Worlds, he makes the strange decision to foreground the medium itself, relentlessly calling attention to the sometimes physically impossible camerawork and shifting nervously between film stocks and degrees of (ersatz?) grain so that the viewer is constantly reminded that they're watching a movie on a screen. I found that his use of these sort of self-consciously "cinematic" devices made narrative immersion almost impossible, so that instead of being carried along by the story, I was trapped outside it, considering how it had been constructed, at what cost and to what end.

Nevertheless, and like I said earlier, this is in many ways a brilliant action and suspense thriller. The scenery and nature of the family's overland adventure are constantly in flux, and Spielberg is equally adept at fleshing out character and building tension as he is at orchestrating the big blockbuster effects sequences. "Little Deuce Coupe" is heartbreaking. The landscape painted in blood is horrifying. While the last act is a bit of a letdown after the big chase that dominates the middle of the film, if it weren't for the overstated manner in which the first act draws its topical parallels and in which Spielberg signals the growth-steps along Ray's journey from callow man-child to heroically responsible "real father", then I'd probably have enjoyed the ride. And maybe if I'd watched it with children of my own my perspective would be different. But I didn't, and so be it.

tl/dr, i know, but i didn't know what else to do with it, so...

[countdown to zings]

This is powerful stuff, but I have to admit that the manipulative obviousness of Spielberg's visual strategy repels me somewhat.

his career in a nutshell imho

no way i'm reading all that, just gonna assume u loved it

I'll be at I Love Film.
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, March 30, 2006 10:19 AM

lol

http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/last-man-on-earth.jpg

^ morbs

I find it harder to do that here. When the alien war machine first begins to rise out of the pavement in front of a quaint old church, i'm distracted by Spielberg's ham-handed (but visually clever) attempt to create a hybrid of Brooklyn's celebrated high-density "grit" and a nostalgic vision of small town America that wouldn't have seemed out of place in Back to the Future, Ray's goofy neighborhood buddies at once "streetwise" and cheerfully innocent.

Just in the industry of pedantry, it's Jersey, not Brooklyn. What with Cruise's house being right at the foot of the Bayonne Bridge, and said bridge's destruction being the heart of the movie's early ad campaign.

that also doesnt really mean anything to me, what are examples that support that vague point besides the buddies being goofy? your criticisms are all completely vague

http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/n-z/wotw/wotwse_shot5l.jpg

contenderizer you've mastered the art of criticism that is more about you than the movie

always thought the 50s alien looked very sad with his mismatched eyes and frowning clown mouth

would play Simon on that face

haha totally

i can't relate to the sensibility that might find any of this thematic material satisfying or even engaging

negative capability get into it

i guess negative capability also plays into

focusing primarily on what I see as the associative implications of the text and not the story itself

but in a not very convincing way

would play Simon on that face
― your petty attempt at destroying me is laughable (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, July 3, 2012 5:49 PM

yeah thats what i think of too

this would be like simon jr though since it only has three buttons

this movie is so great.

you don't wanna know where the yellow button is, trust me (xp)

no way i'm reading all that, just gonna assume u loved it

― am0n, Tuesday, July 3, 2012 5:08 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

this, really, glad you loved the movie on your second viewing and were able to admit you were wrong w/ your initial opinion! :)

lol

Just in the industry of pedantry, it's Jersey, not Brooklyn. What with Cruise's house being right at the foot of the Bayonne Bridge, and said bridge's destruction being the heart of the movie's early ad campaign.

― Julie Derpy (Phil D.), Tuesday, July 3, 2012 2:37 PM (2 hours ago)

yikes, i might have caught that if i'd bothered to fact-check before posting, but probably not. mea culpa, the central eastern seaboard isn't really my beat.

contenderizer you've mastered the art of criticism that is more about you than the movie

thanks?

that also doesnt really mean anything to me, what are examples that support that vague point besides the buddies being goofy? your criticisms are all completely vague

― funny-skrillex-bee_132455836669.gif (s1ocki), Tuesday, July 3, 2012 2:40 PM (2 hours ago)

well, i'm not trying to say that it's a bad movie. i don't think it is, and don't believe in that kind of thing anyway (except where prometheus is concerned). just talking about why it didn't work for me, personally.

dude that ashton kutcher movie with sad r.i.p. manger babies woman just married? check it out sometime its a bad fucking movie.

dude that ashton kutcher movie with sad r.i.p. manger babies woman just married

took a long time to parse this

wondering how much the codeine affected my prose style...

you used capital letters

you were posting from 2001

The ending of this movie, where TC first realises how the martians are dieing and the tripod falls through the building, is great and reminds me of the Half Life 2 game.

(might have something to do with the rocket launcher i guess)

I just watched this for the first time since ... the first time, and I had totally forgotten that the ships come out of the ground, one of the all-time "this makes no sense" moments. Granted, if this was "Prometheus," those moments would just keep coming, but still ...

ya that was one of those like... ideas they prob thought were clever at the time

i liked the olde timey sci fi flourishes like that

what do they call it hard scifi, everything does not need to be that

i mean aliens cant get to our planet anyway so throw it all out the window

its not about it being 'hard' or not its about why are the martians underground and not from space, space is cooler

theyre from space they just went underground for min geez

there are no hard sci-fi movies anyway. Not really

one thing that happened over n over again that was kind of lol is crowds of people stopped to watch stuff they wouldve been running from in terror irl

it's not that it's bad sci-fi, but that it's a weird choice. it suggests a backstory that's never fleshed out. was it supposed to have "they came from within" resonance or something? spielberg probably just thought it'd make for a more impressive intro scene.

apparently u can visit the boeing crash @ universal studios

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/WarOfTheWorlds-Set.jpg/799px-WarOfTheWorlds-Set.jpg

spielberg probably just thought it'd make for a more impressive intro scene.

― contenderizer, Thursday, July 5, 2012 11:17 AM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i assumed it was from the book

remind me of the sequence of events when the first alien popped up, because now I can't remember if I was thinking that they were dormant underground and were awakened by lightning bolts or if I thought the metal plate was a teleport pad that allowed them to materialize underground

People staring in awe at stuff instead of running is Spielberg's Achilles Heel.

The space aliens hiding underground makes no sense on several mind boggling levels. How did they get there? Were they put there pre-people? Why? What triggered them? How in the world, after all this construction - in the city of the Big Dig, no less! - did no one notice them there? Etc. It's a cool reveal nonetheless, but totally bonkers.

there are no hard sci-fi movies anyway. Not really

primer springs to mind, but yeah, films of that sort are the exception. and it doesn't spend much time on the science, anyway.

Forgot how much explicitly 9/11 related stuff is in this too. People covered in ash really creepy on several levels.

didn't the lightning imply their traveling here? they just didn't stick the landing and ended up underground for a min

the aliens were shot down via lightning bolts to the tripods which were buried undergournd was the popular consensus in the movie