War of the Worlds, 2005
Ok, now I know we don't start reviewing yet technically. But with this being a mail holiday and such, I know I won't get Maniac Nurses Find Ecstasy until like... Thursday, and I just saw this over the weekend and it qualifies as a horrible movie and so I will review it for you.


Achoo!
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Josh Friedman and David Koepp
Based on the novel by: H.G. Wells.

Starring
Tom Cruise: Ray Ferrier
Dakota Fanning: Rachel Ferrier
Justin Chatwin: Robbie Ferrier
Miranda Otto: Mary Ann
Tim Robbins: Harlan Ogilvy

I would assume we all know the basic plot by now, yes? I mean... the story has been around since 1898 when it was first published. Spielberg, however, felt the need to update things.

Why, man, why?

First and foremost to these changes was the removal of any Martian element. The aliens ships were buried underground for who knows how long... hey wait, no one ever noticed these huge ships that lay a few hundred feet below the surface, ever? They couldn't have been too deep, as evidenced by how they came up. So how were they hid, all over the world, for millions of years?

Wait! Forget that! Let's focus!

Ok. The aliens, no longer from Mars or discernibly anywhere else (because, as Spielberg says in an extra on the disc, he wanted to do something "different". Or as we say it "stupid"), land in lightning bolts and man their ships to wipe us all out with destructo-rays. Powerful things these destructo-rays. They reduce humans to dust and blow apart their clothes, leaving drifting rags and clouds of grey dust.

Huh?

How does that work Mr. Wizard? A ray that will turn all of a human into dust, but not his polo shirt? Fucking strange, it's almost as if the destructo-rays were at the mercy of special effects! But that couldn't be!

Anyway. Tom Cruise spends this entire movie running. He runs from explosions. He runs from other people. He runs from aliens. He runs like no one since Dick.

See Tom run. Run, Tom, run.

Tom runs with his children, too. Please note that the "running" referred to here is not always actual running, per say. General fleeing, hiding, dodging, sprinting... actually Tom kinda obeys the 5 D's of Dodgeball: Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge. Still. Running.

His children as especially annoying. I'm sorry, Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin may be great actors in and of themselves, but they both annoyed the shit out of me here. Dakota and her wailing. And then when she wasn't wailing she was that big headed kid from Jerry Macguire, being all creepifing and too smart and shit. Justin was just your normal overly written teenage male. Which is enough, certainly, to get old fast, but nothing surprisingly annoying.

So we follow this family as they run from Jersey to Boston, in search of Tom's estranged wife. (Not Nicole, you fucks, Miranda Otto who played his ex-wife for the movie and obviously couldn't be much help because she was fighting Ringwraiths in Cambridge. And if you don't think there are Ringwraiths in Cambridge, I'll tell you something. You go to the newsstand in Harvard Square on a rainy Sunday evening and you tell me if there isn't some guy working there with a big cloak-like thing on him who has a wheezing couch and a hack and screech to his voice. Sometimes he pointed at me, too. I would hand him midgets and pretend they were hobbits. He let me live. Oh, how I digress!) Why do they search out mom? Is it because Tom secretly still loves her? Maybe, but he seemed more annoyed by her than anything when we did see them together. Is it because, as one of the kids points out, he just wants to drop the kids off and not have to worry about protecting them anymore? Well, also maybe and that is one shitty hero he cuts if true. Maybe he simply has nothing else to do. He needed a goal.

Much like this film.

Because... he does nothing. He runs and dodges and so on, sure. But he effects no change in his world. He doesn't help against the invaders, he doesn't make any sort of difference to anything at all, really. He just runs around for 2 hours. After a while the aliens fall over. And then Tom arrives in Boston. Good timing, that.

The end actually felt like some fucked up dream sequence because it doesn't fit the lighting, mood, or feel of any of the movie before it, at all. What the fuck was going on there? Did someone else get bored? Spielberg perhaps? I think so.

Morgan Freeman, if you were on the fence as to his voice, is the narrator. You know, that guy at the start and finish of the movie who explains the plot because the movie kinda sorta comes close to some of it maybe but not really? Thanks, Morgan. You made a good God and now you make a good plot reader. Yer the man, Morgan! You go!

So yeah. War of the Worlds, 2005. What the fuck was that about?