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…

The wind is blowing toward the storm...

I understand why there are so many reviews referencing 9/11 but I don't see it as having all that much relevance outside of characters' reactions and isolated sequences of mass panic offering analogous images. It is distinctly a product of post-9/11 cinema but, to me, Spielberg is constructing something much more broad drawing upon fears of complete societal collapse and of a force totally unsympathetic to human suffering - perhaps even God destroying His creation (the first machine rising out from the church facade backs this).

At the centre of it is a pretty typical portrait of the dysfunctional 21st century family and so all the action remains grounded in Cruise's attempts to…

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…

2005 was the year of War of the Worlds and Munich, and Spielberg hasn't made a movie quite like those two since. Watching this film, it's like Spielberg poured the meanest darkest elements of his horror/thriller/sci-fi movies into a boiling pot of 9/11 allegory and extraterrestrial invasion.

The intimate family perspective and awe of Close Encounters, but a dysfunctional family barely clinging together through this crisis, the awe mixed with dread and panic. The relentless pursuit of Duel, escalated from inescapable Peterbilt to the towering scale of the tripods. The set-piece roller coaster and movie-monster tension of Jaws and Jurassic Park, the spectacle injected with a sense of grim hopelessness and apocalyptic doom.

The relationship with Robbie and the jarringly…