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Adventure, Thriller, Science Fiction 117 min PG-13
Rotten Tomatoes76%Metacritic73IMDb
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Ray Ferrier is a divorced dockworker and less-than-perfect father. Soon after his ex-wife and her new husband drop off his teenage son and young daughter for a rare weekend visit, a strange and powerful lightning storm touches down.
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Epic, resolved, overwhelming and bleak.
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Written by TMDB members; each links to the original. Not part of Taste Buds's numbers.
Sometimes it just pays to leave well alone, and this remake of the 1953 version adds nothing aside from more sophisticated special effects. A vehicle for Tom Cruse, it allows Stephen Spielberg to turn this menacing and thought-provoking sci-fi classic into a family melodrama with the star and his dysfunctional family travelling the breadth of the country trying to escape the terror that is falling from the skies. These metallic creations are ruthless, destroying everything in their path but somehow the emphasis of this is more on why "Ray" can't get on with "Robbie" (Justin Chatwin) and whether or not "Rachel" (Dakota Fanning) can keep hold of her childhood toy. The effects are good: the lasers and the pyrotechnics; the explosions and scenes of dereliction are impressive - but oddly enough, I found them less so than in the iteration made fifty years earlier. Lots of horrified expressions as the cast look longingly at green screens, some banal dialogue and we end up with a film about the people in/behind it rather than one about alien world domination. After almost two hours, the ending - and it's huge significance - is almost an afterthought to the boring story of who did what to w
Read the whole review on TMDBI enjoyed this entry into the HG Wells film library. The special effects are great (to this amateur anyway) and the acting and action more than adequate. Plus it stays near enough to the sci-fi genius of the author to satisfy the fans of the classic novel. I will say that I got a little tired of the son acting like such a teenager, but he and the Tom Cruise character both show some character growth by the end of the film. Tom is one of those actors who seems to be playing himself a lot, but I suspect there is a lot more work to it than that. I'm not sure Dustin Hoffman would have gotten his Academy Award for Rain Man if he had played off a lesser actor than Cruise. I think there are a couple of scenes the movie could have done without, such as in the cellar with Cruise, his daughter and the man who lived there. It slowed the story down, changed the tenor of the drama, and didn't add a lot, in my view. But it is what it is and overall I found War of the Worlds to be entertaining. Good science fiction movies can be hard to find.
Read the whole review on TMDBAn intense, serious and harrowing portrayal of the H.G. Wells classic. Tom Cruise doing an excellent job of not being Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning out acting everyone. It's hard to call this film an enjoyable watch as it's actually emotionally affecting at times, with some very raw realism concerning human nature. This movie manages to keep a constantly high pace without being exhausting to watch. Well worth a place in your collection.
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“Is Tom Cruise the best thing in War of the Worlds?”
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“Is it too big for its own story?”
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“Would a little humor have helped?”
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50 profiled raters. Loved most by The Provocateurs; disliked most by The Formalists.
If you loved this film, the television, the book, the music, the game.
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