Never mind the son. The daughter has to have been one of the most annoying
child characters ever to have graced the screen...and I include Baby Leroy
in that.
Her whiny, high-pitched screaming was one of the many things that marred the
movie, along with Tim Robbins extended over-the-top nutbar performance.
I liked the first half of the film but found most parts of the second half
laughably bad. On the other hand, there were some remarkable set-pieces that
are almost worth re-watching the movie for: the car-jacking scene, the ferry
scene and the walk through the debris from the crashed airliner. Too bad
they weren't in a better movie.
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Richard" <jrl...@mediabearonline.com>
To: <MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU>
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2009 3:35 PM
Subject: Re: [MOPO] FAVORITE FILM THAT YOU HAVE TO DEFEND
I agree that Spielberg's War of the Words and the original theatrical
release of Dune are both worthy of defense. I still like the original
release of Dune better than the subsequent "director's cuts". It was clean,
it was direct, it flowed well and it let people who had never read the book
understand what the heck was going on.
As for War of the Worlds... sure, it's flawed in a lot of ways, but still
one great ride and so very different from the 1953 film that they are two
completely different things. By the way, the reason Tom Cruise's car was
the only one that ran was because it was an older model that did not have
any computer chips in the ignition system or motor -- the computer chips
in all the other vehicles had been fried by the big electro-magnetic pulse
the Martians put out. A nice way to get him a car when no one else had
one, I thought, although Spielberg did a bad job of explaining it. Some
people think it was because the garage guy had fixed the car (replaced the
computer chip) after the pulse, but that doesn't fly because the
replacement computer chip would have been fried when it was sitting on the
garage shelf and so when the mechanic put in it still wouldn't have
worked.
I second the motion that Tom's idiot teenage son should have stayed toast
at the end.
-- JR
aaroncba...@fuse.net wrote:
I am enjoying this discussion. I always feel the need to defend War of
the Worlds (Spielberg's). I think it is a better and more interesting
film than most people give it credit for. I firmly believe that the
entire film is a dream (e.g. Invaders from Mars)- Tom Cruise's dream. He
falls asleep and then everything starts happening. The entire film is an
exaggerated nightmare- his worst nightmare- his parental abilities are
tested to the extreme. The very beginning of the film lays out the fact
that he is a questionable parent at best. Then, throughout the
nightmare, he is faced with parents' worst fears realized (best e.g. is
the scene where Cruise is simultaneously dealing with strangers trying to
take his daughter and his son being pulled inexplicably towards the
military- both primal parental fears). By film's end he proves his
parental prowess and in one of the most maligned scenes in the film (the
last scene) he hand delivers his children back to his wife safe with his
judgmental in-laws th!
er!
e to lay witness. To me this was absolutely Spielberg's intent.
Throughout, the film works more in the realm of dream logic (e.g.
Cruise's car is the ONLY one that works). If you are still reading, I
also find myself defending Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut for one very specific
and unique reason: I firmly believe that the film is one big cosmic
joke- a black comedy -that even the critics, as far as I could tell,
missed entirely. In the simplest of terms it is a story of a husband who
get's so jealous about his wife having an imaginary tryst that he spends
the rest of the film trying to get laid and he CAN'T!
Mr.Tom-universal-sex-symbol-Cruise cannot get laid! And the most
exaggerated case in point is that he ends up going to a super deluxe orgy
and he STILL can't get laid. I think Kubrick threw a curve ball at us
before he died. A very funny curve ball.
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