Jump to content
Washington Football Team Logo
Extremeskins
Forum Rules and Guidelines

War of the Worlds

Eagles_Legendz

By Eagles_Legendz
in The Tailgate

Recommended Posts

Eagles_Legendz

Eagles_Legendz

Posted
Posted

(Apart from Tom Cruise's involvement), is anybody else excited for this movie? I know that early reviews were restricted, but they've finally started to come in on rottentomatoes, and all are positive thus far.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/war_of_the_worlds/

I generally enjoy Spielberg's movies (except for the abomination that was A.I.), so hopefully he doesn't disappoint with his latest offering.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Walking Deadman

Walking Deadman

Posted
Posted
Originally posted by Eagles_Legendz

(Apart from Tom Cruise's involvement), is anybody else excited for this movie? I know that early reviews were restricted, but they've finally started to come in on rottentomatoes, and all are positive thus far.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/war_of_the_worlds/

I generally enjoy Spielberg's movies (except for the abomination that was A.I.), so hopefully he doesn't disappoint with his latest offering.

My wife, despite not being able to stand Cruise anymore, really wants to see this.

I like the F/X I've seen and wouldn't mind seeing it.

Although, I also want to see Land of the Dead.....and I wouldn't mind watching Batman Begins again (alreay saw it twice, great movie if you like Batman or ever read the comic).

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Hooper

Hooper

Posted
Posted

Variety just weighed in -- sounds like the movie of the summer.

http://www.variety.com/VE1117927497.html

A generation later, Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg has made the anti-"Close Encounters" in "War of the Worlds," a gritty, intense and supremely accomplished sci-fier about some distinctly unbenign alien invaders. Latest adaptation of H.G. Wells' endlessly malleable and resonant 1898 novel preys upon the insecurities of a modern audience that's more fearful and skittish than was the case when the director made his optimistic early-career smashes about outer space visitors. Relentless mix of breath-sapping scares, awesome spectacle, Tom CruiseTom Cruise and a massive marketing push look to deliver the biggest B.O.B.O. haul Spielberg has enjoyed in quite a few years.

With each telling, this elemental story -- the first ever written about an alien assault on Earth -- offers a subtext appropriate to the paranoia of its era. Wells' original reflected attitudes about the British Empire as well as the rapid rise of science and technology; Orson Welles' panic-inducing 1938 radio broadcast (which had a New Jersey setting, as does Spielberg's film) arrived less than a year before World War II broke out; and the George Pal/Byron Haskin 1953 feature was very much a product of the anti-communist Cold War mentality.

Implicitly, then, this new take exists in the shadow of 9/11 and fears of new enemies bent on nothing less than the total destruction of the West in general and the United States in particular. Granted, "War of the Worlds" arrives after such pics as "Independence Day," "Armageddon""Armageddon" and many others have served up similar doomsday portraits in vivid detail, so such images are now commonplace in the collective pop culture mind. But Spielberg's vision of worldly wipeout has such visceral immediacy that it connects almost at once and rarely flags until the end.

For a $135 million special effects epic, it's striking how grungy and ordinary it looks. Foregoing the widescreen format, desaturating the colors and focusing on nondescript working-class neighborhoods, Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz KaminskiJanusz Kaminski employ a raw, inelegant visual style to disguise the film's extraordinary stylistic sophistication and make seamless the interlacing of real and computerized action.

No sooner has dockworker Ray Ferrier (Cruise) taken weekend custody of his kids, disaffected teen son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and nervous daughter Rachel (Dakota FanningDakota Fanning), from newly married ex-wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) than dark clouds envelope the low-end waterfront area and thunderless lightning bolts hit the ground, knocking out electricity and motor vehicles.

In effects that look as realistic as the humdrum setting, streets crack open and collapse, buildings crumble and an enormous warrior robot rises from beneath the ground and starts firing away with an incinerating ray, vaporizing fleeing Earthlings and blowing up anything it wants. This is annihilation, without explanation.

In its frenzy of surprise firepower and sudden death, this initial action salvo packs a punch not unlike that of the opening of "Saving Private Ryan," albeit with a PG-13 gore factor. Spielberg is very good at filming frenzied flight -- his films are full of it -- and showing the characters subjected to the attack as fish in a barrel.

Somehow, Ray figures out how to get a car started, and manages to spirit his kids off to Mary Ann's house, where they pass a tense night. In the morning, they are greeted by the sight of a crashed passenger jet and members of a news crew, who inform them the 100-foot "tripods" are wreaking destruction everywhere. Despite this, Ray is determined to get the kids to Boston, where Mary Ann and her husband are visiting her parents.

From here on, Spielberg paints a portrait of devastated humanity that at times takes on medieval overtones in its evocation of widespread arbitrary suffering and every-man-for-himself opportunism while a pitiless force rains down pestilence on a suddenly pathetic-looking race. It's a canvas that has room for some striking, surreal brush strokes, such as Rachel witnessing dozens of bodies floating down a river, or a blazing night train roaring down the tracks.

Amid the mayhem, the volatile Ray can't keep his fractured family unified. Overcompensating for his failure as a husband and father by yelling a lot and trying to appear in charge when he's not, he drives his son away and maintains control of Rachel only due to her youth and his promise to get her back to her mom. He's supposed to be a regular Joe with plenty of foibles but good survival instincts. But he also seems to be on uppers, as Cruise is in overdrive virtually throughout. It's easy to see why Spielberg wanted the commercial cushion of an above-the-title superstar, but this is no more a performance-based picture than "Jurassic Park," and might have proven more balanced and artistically effective with a no-name cast.

Ironically, the suspense highlight is provided by the film's most intimate and quiet scene. Encountering a half-cracked man, Ogilvy (Tim RobbinsTim Robbins), at a farmhouse, Ray and Rachel hide with him in the basement, which is soon penetrated by an enormous tentacle that slithers around every wall and post as the humans scurry to avoid detection. The framing, cutting and timing of this breathless sequence are unerring, revealing the master hands of Spielberg and editor Michael KahnMichael Kahn. Interlude precedes the long-delayed revelation of the aliens themselves, nasty looking buggers with dark crustacean-like heads and emaciated versions of a human torso (unlike all previous versions, this one does not identify them as Martians).

There is more terror in store, but when the end comes -- the solution is taken directly from the novel -- it arrives suddenly, with brief framing narration intoned by Morgan FreemanMorgan Freeman easing the viewer out of the nightmare. Quiet conclusion may leave some feeling a bit hollow at fadeout, but muted wrapwrap-up is refreshing after all the overdone, slam-bang action climaxes of recent years.

Except for the anonymous soldiers obliged to do their duty, pic completely eschews the military and government types that are normally standard issue in this sort of fare, just as Spielberg and scenarists Josh FriedmanJosh Friedman (the upcoming "The Black Dahlia") and David KoeppDavid Koepp ("Jurassic Park") avoid the cliche of showing landmarks being destroyed.

"War of the Worlds" alludes to many of Spielberg's previous works, and not just his sci-fi features. The contrast could not be more obvious between the gentle-spirited aliens of "Close Encounters" and "E.T." and the present film's murdering monsters. But there are unstressed echoes of many other pictures: the societal upheaval and personal displacement of "Empire of the Sun," the genocide of "Schindler's List," the sudden and arbitrary slaughter of "Saving Private Ryan," the mass hysteria of "Jaws," the fractious motorized family struggle of "The Sugarland Express."

Making the film look as grubby as it does was inspired, as it both enhances the action's believability and distinguishes the picture from the grandiose physicality of its big-budget brethren. Never before have such diverse and numerous visual effects appeared more naturalistic and undifferentiated from the actual, photographed material. Tech contributions are first-rate across the board, and John Williams' string-dominated score is unusually somber, even mournful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
The X-Factor

The X-Factor

Posted
Posted

I actually saw a pre-release yesterday (have a friend that works at a theater). I thought the movie was above average. The ending really brought it down IMO. The special effects were really good. I also liked how the camera was at ground level. It made you feel like you were actually there. It's worth it to see it in the theater, there are a few very intense scenes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Spaceman Spiff

Spaceman Spiff

Posted
Posted
Originally posted by SkinsForLife260

What is everyone problem with Tom on this site?????

He's a raving scientologist freak. He dissed Brooke Shields publically for her post-partum depression. The dudes gone off the deep end.

That said I thought it was pretty cool, I'm glad there weren't scenes with the president giving messages to the country before the television feed went out and crap like that. That little girl is a good actress for her age, Cruise wasn't bad. Spielberg doesn't disappoint often.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Spaceman Spiff

Spaceman Spiff

Posted
Posted
Originally posted by SkinsForLife260

Ummmmm

What about when a guy who was interviewing him squirted water in his face.

How is he crazy?

Dont hate cause he has a young hot babe.

Haha, don't hang from his ballsack cause he's brainwashing that hot young babe with his scientology crap.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...