Tom Cruise has recently taken time off from being a professional oddball to make a small arthouse movie entitled War Of The Worlds, directed by an unknown called Steven Spielberg. Now, we haven’t seen this niche feature film yet, but lots of people have. Take a look at what they think.
The film is based on HG Wells‘s Surrey-based science fiction novel, Orson Welles‘s infamous radioplay and a horrific prog-rock album featuring David Essex.
And now Steven Spielberg (DVDs) has turned it into reportedly the most expensive film of all time. He’s roped in Tom Cruise (DVDs) to star – even though Tom’s doing his best to overshadow the movie by acting like the planet’s biggest fool – and Dakota Fanning, the scary-eyed child star.
So is War Of The Worlds a bomb or the bomb? Here’s our War Of The Worlds review digest…
Jan Stewart form Newsday says that "Spielberg serves up a stops-out, all-you-can-eat banquet of spook-out creatures and sumptuously staged disasters" – but that’s enough of Tom Cruise’s recent television appearances…
Tony Medley from Tonymedley.com is under the impression that "Cruise and Fanning give Oscar-caliber performances". For what, exactly? Running away from some spacemen? The Academy sure love those alien invasion movies.
Our old friend Roger Ebert, the man who has a thumb instead of a nose, has seen War Of The Worlds, and has worked himself into a state about the number of legs on the aliens’ vehicles: "limbs of living things, from men to dinosaurs to spiders to centipedes,
tend to come in numbers divisible by four. Three legs are inherently
not stable, as Ray demonstrates when he damages one leg of a giant
tripod, and it falls helplessly to the ground", he whines.
Walter Chaw from Film Freak Central points out that this movie doesn’t put an end to the Spielberg Curse of saccharine endings. He says it’s "A celebration of splendid isolation in which a billion people die so that Tom Cruise can become a better daddy."
Gregory Weinkauf from Ubercine.com wasn’t a fan. As well as only giving the film 3/10 for "philosophical heft and depth", whatever that means, he mocks the Tim Robbins character for spending all his screen time "speaking loudly in the most cartoonish voice employed by a serious actor since Daniel Day Lewis impersonated Bugs Bunny".
So War Of The Worlds looks to be another mixed bag. Some
people love it, some people hate it, some people are more concerned
about the time Daniel Day Lewis impersonated Bugs Bunny. Looks like
you’ll have to see it for yourself to make your own mind up.
The aliens all get a runny nose and die, by the way.
War Of the Worlds opens tomorrow.
[story by Stuart Heritage]
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The movie was decent… But was kind of… well.. extremly far fetched. i didnt like it… It ended to fast
The key here is that all the aliens die of microbe infection. This movie was embarrassing. The story was extremely clever when written in 1898. But we have since been to the moon, and no, we didn’t completely forget our space helmets. The CGI graphics are unimpressive. Don’t waste your money.