shame on spielberg

just got through watching "war of the worlds" and i thought it was a piece of garbage -- from the acting to the action and dialogue to the sentimentality.

i had reserved watching it until now. i wanted to rent it and thought i might from the herrick district library but i read a comment by that astute critic gene shalit on the cover of the dvd saying "tom cruise's greatest preformance." i put it down, thinking shalit must have never seen "born on the fourth of uly" or "magnolia." so i ended up borrowing the flick from a friend.

well, must disagree whole-heartedly with shalit. cruise's performance, along with everyone else's, sucked. it wasn't over-the-top like usual for him. this time he underacted. he was just there, lame and useless. impotent, if you will, running from one spot to another.

the dialogue was lame. not much substance to it and things weren't quite explained. why did robbie want to see those aliens so badly that he could have gotten killed? don't know. the exchanges between cruise and that man in the basement went nowhere, as did conversations with minor characters along the way: the mechanic and the woman on the trail that didn't make the ferry. it was a meandering piece of junk.

i checked the dvd timer and saw 48 minutes had elapsed. nothing had really happened. it flew by and i thought 'geez, almost an hour's gone by and we're nowhere." still i plugged along like a faithful movie watcher.

in some parts you cold tell where the blue screen was when cruise was running to escap0e from the machine. it was too unreal.

the great morgan freeman was wasted with a little voice-over at the start and end of the movie.

then robbie was alive. the kid went into the fireball and at teh end he's alive and well in his grandparents' house. don't get it. he should have been fried. so at the end, it's a happily ever after deal. sucked.

i don't know what spielberg was thinking. i'm not a fan of the sci-fi stuff he does, to be honest, although i loved jaws. i enjoyed more "the color purple" and "schindler's list." but this one just sucked. maybe he was concencrating on "munich" and had this puppy on auto pilot or something.

shame on you, steve.