Robo's Review: War Of The Worlds
Tom Cruises through alien invasion, Mulder & Sculley
need not apply

The new movie brings a new vision, Empire Of the Sun
meets Close Encounters. If the passing dialog of
extras is to be believed, a million years before ET
phoned anybody, the evil 'they' came and buried great
machines of warfare. They left them to suffer the
vicissitudes of earthquake, continental drift, and oil
drilling just so they could wait for mankind to
achieve nuclear weaponry, battlefield command and
control, and pinpoint precision bombing. Then the
cleverboots struck.

Then they struck. Brilliant planning.

Spielberg chooses a worm's eye view of the
proceedings, an immature dock loader with a, you're
gonna be surprised, ex-wife and alienated kids, one of
them, Dakota Fanning, spookily bright.

The effects are awesome. But to get to the good stuff
we have to endure Tom Cruise's character's life, which
is charmless. The little bits of humor which are so
rare in Spielberg flicks, except for the Indiana Jones
trilogy, are rare here, too. The movie goes down okay
but compared to what it could have been with a better
writer and a bit more imagination, it's a bit of a
disappointment.

Good Part: Effects
Bad Part: Interchangeable character roles: Tom Cruise
could be Mel Gibson could be Keanu Reeves could be
Demi Moore..Dakota Fanning, could be the creepy kid:
"I see dead people"
Apparently Gene Barry, hero of the 50's movie, was
given a bit part, which I found out too late. They
should start putting in little cartoon bubble overlays
when the easily missable easter eggs go by, maybe
they could sell a pair of magic LED glasses with
streaming text commentary.

Anyhoo, it didn't suck, but it didn't rock. And
Spielberg should make up his damn mind: Aliens…..good?
Aliens……bad?

Maybe it was all a horrible misunderstanding (We
thought you liked being hunted for sport)
I just watched "Sean of the Dead" with the neighbors,
and think it's sort of cute but nothing worth renting.
It's an urban English slacker update of the zombie
flick with an unknown cast, for the most part,
althought the supporting female character is the
secretary from "The Office" (original English) series.