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…

There's something fascinating about watching Spielberg letting his darker side take the forefront, because as good as he is in creating feelings of wonder and awe, he can do the same for terror and fear.

When the Tripod first appears, it's all viewed from the ground, making it feel bigger than it already is, the people below smaller, and its eventual slaughter, where everyone is blown to literal dust and their clothes become one with the wind, feel like your worst nightmare come true. When this whole event is over, we see a poor father struggle to keep himself together in-front of his own children, begging him to explain what's going on.

Beyond these moments, the overwhelming sense of dread…

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…

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…

The Box Office Bashing Season: 2003 to 2014

ONE OR TWO SPOILERS

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…

So War of the Worlds is a movie I remember having watched when I was a kid (a very young kid who probably shouldn’t have watched it in the first place, anyways,) and I loved the movie. Ever since I got older I’ve wanted to watch the movie again because the poster always stuck with me, so now 14 years later I’m finally doing it. Here are some thoughts that came over me while watching (might contain spoilers?): 

30 minutes into the movie and me and my mum can’t stop laughing and cackling 

No matter how I try I can’t take this seriously. The dad acts like a teenager, Tom won’t stop smiling while being under a very stressful situation…

War of the Worlds (2005)
Regisseur: Steven Spielberg
Hoofdrollen: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, Miranda Otto en Tim Robbins

Deze film kan niet tippen aan de impact die het hoorspel van Welles destijds gehad zal hebben, de massahysterie die realistisch zal zijn bij een invasie van aliens en een egoïstisch oerinstinct doet bovendrijven bij de mens krijgt maar mondjesmaat ruimte. Het goede in de mens word vooral getoond tussen deze puinhopen van dood en verderf wat de angst voor het onbekende voor mij doet afzwakken. Een slechte vader die met zijn afstandelijke kinderen op de vlucht slaat voor aliens zou normaliter te kort door de bocht zijn maar is voor deze film een gepaste samenvatting. Cruise doet erg zijn…