2005 Directed by Steven Spielberg
Ray Ferrier is a divorced dockworker and less-than-perfect father. Soon after his ex-wife and her new husband drop of his teenage son and young daughter for a rare weekend visit, a strange and powerful lightning storm touches down.
Tom Cruise Dakota Fanning Miranda Otto Justin Chatwin Tim Robbins Camillia Sanes John Scurti Morgan Freeman Takayo Fischer Yul Vazquez Ann Robinson Gene Barry Daniel Eric Gold Channing Tatum Dempsey Pappion Lisa Ann Walter Lenny Venito Rick Gonzalez David Alan Basche Roz Abrams Marlon Young John Eddins Amy Ryan Jim Hanna James DuMont Travis Aaron Wade Columbus Short Tom Kenny Ty Simpkins
Randy Dutra Jenn Emberly Tim Harrington Ryan Church Jim Milton Sandra Scott Matthew Gratzner Christian Alzmann
Richard King Michael W. Mitchell Randy Thom Aaron Glascock Michael Babcock Piero Mura Addison Teague Hamilton Sterling Anna Behlmer James Bolt Andy Nelson Richard Hymns Derek Casari
When 9/11 happened, I was in middle school. I was 13. When the first plane hit, I was just getting settled into second period. At about 9:15, the principal turned on the speaker and delivered the news. But we didn't hear about the planes, because at that point, there wasn't enough information to know about the planes in the first place. All we heard were the buzzwords: "Terrorists" "Attack" "Explosion" So the school was to be evacuated for safety precautions, of course.
It was one of the scariest moments of my life. I saw no explosions that day. I didn't see any death. I just saw the people in my life and strangers completely freaking out, and it wasn't until…
Surprisingly dark and twisted so unlike your typical Steven Spielberg film and I love it! Spectacular Special Effects! As far as acting goes the young upstart Dakota Fanning stole the show!
I could have done without the whole bad dad, teenage angst thang but other than that I truly enjoyed the film and it has become my favorite film adaptation of H.G. Well's Novel!
With minimal amount of plot on paper, excess reliance on CGI for its moments of action & severe lack of character depth, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of H.G. Well's classic novel does feature the trademarks usually found in his adventure films, including the attempt for larger-than-life spectacle yet no amount of visually striking images can make up for the poor storytelling that's on display here.
Based on H.G. Wells' novel of the same name, War of the Worlds tells the story of a broken family that finds itself caught in a major catastrophe when the entire planet is invaded by aliens who come out of the ground in their tripods, unleash carnage on human population & effortlessly defeat the armed forces. The plot…
The Box Office Bashing Season: 2003 to 2014
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This project hasn't been going so well so far, but this was a fair bit better even though I wasn't expecting it to be.
I do count myself as a sizeable Steven Spielberg fan even though, before this, I hadn't seen anything he'd made since the excellent Catch Me If You Can. I guess I've always been slightly reluctant to visit his later films because I was worried I would always come into them with the expectation that they would be as amazing as his earlier classics. But I actually came into this with no expectation at all, so maybe I'm ready to tackle them after all!
For…
I don't remember 9/11 at all. Brief images of seeing the attacks on a television at Applebees bounce around in my mind, but I'm pretty sure those were just manufactured in my mind. I've grown up with it being somewhat of an abstract event, the catalyst for our subsequent decade long war in the Middle East, our spending of trillions and trillions of dollars on military equipment and surveillance, a fierce debate over the importance of our rights during wartime and our society's unfortunate racism towards a whole people despite their almost universal innocence. You could say it defined my life, even though I don't recall anything about it.
Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds is an on-the-nose response to…
68/100
[Originally published on Nerve.com]
A decade or so from now, when academics start publishing scholarly tomes with titles like "The Anxiety of Insurgence: Hollywood Responds to 9/11," Steven Spielberg's unsparing adaptation of War of the Worlds is guaranteed a meaty chapter all its own. No doubt aware that images of people running in terror from collapsing buildings now carry unavoidable topical baggage, Spielberg, with the help of screenwriters Josh Friedman and David Koepp, has refashioned H.G. Wells' classic tale of interplanetary invasion into a unnervingly cathartic simulacrum of that Tuesday morning's apocalyptic confusion and horror. The references fly fast and furious and sans subtlety: onlookers covered in ash, walls papered with handmade MISSING flyers, mountains of rubble dotted with…
Dakota Fanning didn't actually have any lines in this movie, just screams of various intensity and cadence.
Some bad effects and several characters that become annoying very quickly. But on the whole an enjoyable bit of sci-fi fun
In Spielberg's Jurassic Park, Lex and Tim are the perfect mix of vulnerable and sympathetic. You root for them to make it out alive and well. It's perfect for a disaster story.
In Crichton's novel, Lex is vulnerable and bothersome. She is an extreme liability to Grant and Tim and, when danger nears, her vulnerability is annoying. You feel bad that you want a T-Rex to eat a child, but, seriously, she just needs to shut the fuck up.
In War of the Worlds, Spielberg's child actors land firmly in the Crichton camp.
Besides that, the story is meh with none of the mystery and paranoia of the Orson Welles radio version, the Tripods are unoriginal, the lighting is inexplicably washed out, but -
Tom Cruise is a Goddamn movie star.
Not bad, but it kind of lacks the old Spielberg magic that made you care about the characters regardless of what situation they were in.
No one crafts an action thriller like Spielberg. With this film, it's not the thrills and visuals that impact me, it's the broken family story which is so eerily similar to my own life it's like Spielberg studied my family. That being said, I would've liked to have seen more of the father/son relationship hashed out and less of Tim Robbins, which feels like a detour.
09.17 — Scavenger Hunt
Film no. 8 / Task no. 15 – A film directed by Steven Spielberg you haven’t seen yet (If you’ve seen them all just pick a lesser seen one)
The stupidity in an alien invasion apocalypse makes me concerned for humanity.
My reasoning behind choosing this film was the simple fact that it's always on TV and I never take the time to actually sit down and watch the entire thing through. After finishing this, I realised from sitting in on bits and pieces, I had actually seen maybe 75% of the whole film? oh well.
Personally I quite enjoyed this film a lot. The plot, although very simple is always a fun plot to follow…
I have always thought War of the World was minor Spielberg, nestled somewhere between 1941 and Sugarland Express, but even with all its problems it may just sneak in to the majors. It has truly breathtaking moments of Spielberg brilliance, with some of the early Tripod sequences rivalling the final battle of Saving Private Ryan. However at it’s very core this film, being an on the ground telling of the events, hinges on the characters we view them through, and those characters are not great, well performed, but poorly written. While the larger spectacle remains intact the emotional payoffs just don’t pay off.
Tension builds relentlessly in the first two acts but the last acts plummets.
The intensity and thrills are undone by one of the most anti-climatic endings ever.
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