Re-read my post. I actually found the part of her wanting her mom believable. What I don't find believable was the cutesy "don't look as I pee" scene. Either she would have pissed herself or found somewhere close to the car (like behind an open door) to piss. This scene was made worse by her practically going to hell's end to take a piss. I know there was no love lost between her and her dad at that point but there was no way in hell she would have gone so far from her brother. It was practically hammered into our heads before (and after) that scene that he is basically anchor and whom she turns to for comfort. She would have in all likelyhood asked him to take her somewhere to pee while dad had to wait by the car.

Of course it's a standard hollywood ending. And it would've worked because this is basically the first half of a standard hollywood disaster pic. It's like SS remade the first part of ID4 and took it to the next level. Great. But it's still a standard hollywood disaster pic. You can't just ramp up and ramp up and ramp up and then leave the audience with an ending like that. SS can do both types of movies, Shindlers List, had a wonderful ending. But so did Private Ryan. And did that movie just end abruptly when Ryan showed up?

Just because SS did something 'different' doesnt mean it was good. Just because he 'stayed true to the book' doesnt mean it was good. And actually, he basically tossed out the book until the ending, so this whole 'True to the book' nonsense is nonsense.

Keeping close to characters is great. But the friggin WORLD is getting destroyed. At some point, I want to see that. I want to see the big fruitless battles. Why couldn't he have done both?

Don't get me wrong, I found it easy to follow. Hell, the narrator and opening animation gave away the ending right off the bat anyway. My suggestion was merely a way to make the ending more palatable to the general audiences that mistakenly thought of it as a cop-out.

not that i really care much (since i had little desire to see it anyway) but you might want to spoilerize the post where the ending to Signs is given away (or atleast how the aliens are defeated)

Because the whole movie is from Ray's prospective. We only know what he knows. That's why there are so many questions unanswered about the aliens. It's refreashing that SS chose to tell the story that way. Instead of having another ID4 like you want.

Hmmmm. I don't know. While I suppose you have a point, I still don't have any problems with anything she did or the way she did it....

Right. Over the years I've heard many people, Roger Ebert in particular, bitch about how today's movies "tell us everything". So we get WotW were many things are still a mystery and people complain about that too.

You simply can't make everyone happy.

I give it a 10/10. Second favorite movie of all time. Can't wait to see it again,and the november DVD release(s)!

Because at no point in his film was his movie about that. Your standard Hollywood disaster film is about multiple characters in a disaster situation. This film was NEVER like that. You can call the beginning your standard Hollywood formula, but its not. Save for explosions and destruction, it still remained a focused story about one family, and never cut away to otehr things happeneing. Obviously this didn't work for you, but you're gonna have a hard time convincing me this is inherently a bad thing. Just because it doesn't show everybody else doesn't make it inherently bad either. If you think the story of this family's survival was done badly, that's a complaint. Saying the movie sucked for not doing something it never intended to I think is a bit off though. I personally think it'd be a betrayal to the rest of the film, and a complete sidetrack if all of a sudden the camera pulled up and started focusing on things outside the main story we had been with for the last hour and 45 minutes. To each their own, but I think you've got your Hollywood formulas mixed up. I mean, how could you confuse the first half of this film with ID4??? Tehy're nothing alike save for things blowing up. Where were the multiple characters, the landmarks blowing up, the view of the world and this affecting people all over? THAT'S ID4, and that's your standard disaster formula (Deep Impact, Towering Inferno, Earthquake, Volcano, Dante's Peak). Thsi isn't like those films at all. This movie has more in common with The Pianist in its structure then those films. Like that movie, it's all about survival, and not about destruction for multitudes of character, then solution. No, this is a straight up survival picture.

And also, he obviously did not toss out the book until the end. Many of the scenes are adapted from the book all through the movie. It's actually a fairly faithful adaptation to be honest even though it is also quite different on many levels. Plot wise it stays pretty close to the book though.

I just got back from seeing this tonight and I thought it was awful. The effects were good and the first attacks were kinda cool, but it felt like there was an hour of movie left out. They got attacked, they ran and hid and walked and hid and ran and ran etc, etc, etc, etc, then oh look the aliens are dead, movie over. I was really looking forward to this movie and that was seriously my biggest disappointment of the year so far.

I thought it may be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I am amazed that Speilberg and Cruise have let me down by epic proportions. I had no idea it was going to be "War of the Basement."

The word terrorists is mentioned twice in the movie.
I was shocked to hear those words since S.S. edited it out of the E.T. dvd.

I liked that this movie was so serious instead of joking around like in ID4.
When the world is getting distroyed the average person is goona act like Tom Cruise not Will Smith's wisecracks.

Way, way better than ID4.

I mean come on.

This film has some of the most incredible imagery I've seen all year.
The sound design is just spectacular.



Sure, it's far from perfect, and the 3rd act seems somewhat truncated, but in my eyes it far surpasses ROTS or any other 'action' film this summer.

I love it when people declare these films to be "one of the worst movies I have ever seen". You're so cool.

i liked it.

I'm glad there are enough Talkers here who liked the movie to justify my full-priced ticket.

I was really disappointed. The beginning was pretty cool. I wasn't in love with the effects. Some of Tom's running scenes just screamed green screen, not acceptable in this caliber of movie. Aliens looked reminiscent of the ones in ID4. Some of the outdoors scenes screamed sound stage to me. Dakota Fanning has surpassed Haley Joel as most annoying child actor in my book. Sorry, the constant escaping of Tom's character - heck at several points he has ash on his face from the blasting of people on either side, this was annoying. The super-faulty alien probe that apparently can't see in it's blind spot allowing people to hide in the basement is one of several other nitpicks. Good to see Tim Robbin's character was resurrected from the Mystic River to reprise his performance in a sci-fi setting (is this guy really from Boston?) I didn't connect with the story, the family, the son should be dead period.[spoiler]

I cannot eloquently defend my dislike of this movie as many Talkers feel one should. Why can't we just like or dislike something without going into intense debate. Makes you feel like you need to take a serious collegate debate class, sometimes you just hate or like a movie and you can't put your finger on why. I didn't read any reviews, any Talk threads, but I left this movie unsatisfied.

Honestly, I'm not trying to be "that girl". I don't spend $10 of hard-earned cash to not like a movie. I love Tom, I love Steven, I loved Minority Report, I did not like War (and neither did gmal2003 - so there's another "that guy").

But seriously, the majority of you guys liking it reaffirms my love for the variety that exists in this world. It would be boring if everyone liked everything all of the time.

I felt the EXACT same way about The Diary of Anne Frank. That was 2 hours of my life I'll never get back.

LAND OF THE DEAD should get as much negative remarks as WAR OF THE WORLDS has in this thread. That's 90minutes of my life I want back!

Watched the movie tonight and liked it a lot.

Like some of you, I was not expecting the movie to be this dark coming from Spielberg but damm, this movie had some terrifying and disturbing scenes.

Maybe the reason why I liked it so much is because for once, in this type of alien invasion movies, they concentrate in the "little" guy point of view instead of the President, scientist or military type persons.

Bad ending, rest of the movie was pretty damn good.

Basically, this was an indie family flick... just set to the backdrop of a violent alien invasion. A few things didn't really seem to fit, but made for some incredible imagery. And the non-family aspect of the ending was handled quite well.

Quite good, I must say.

Edit: I was also a huge fan of the way it was shot, it was almost like a documentary at times - constantly focusing in on Cruise's characters - how he reacts and what those around him do. I loved the fact they didn't sell out for the wide shots of massive cities being destroyed and kept everything in prespective. Gave the flick a far eerier feel than any alien flick I've seen before it. I'm guessing people disliked it more based on expectation than as a full on movie itself - though I could be wrong. As it did turn into a more personalized movie and not what it could have been... Half-Life 2: The Movie.

I saw it tonight, and liked it a lot. However, the film was riddled with leaps in logic and some plot holes.

****1/2

For once? Did you see Signs?

Saw it last night. I thought it was okay. Pretty much your standard big-budget Sci-Fi. It had it's annoying movie moments - hero escaping despite improbable odds, little girl / stupid woman doing her best to get everyone killed, impossible detection scenarios. But the point of these movies aren't realism - they are fun. This is a fun movie, but it's not anything more. And Cruise was suprising bad in terms of acting in this movie.

Yeah, right .... same motivations, back stories, situations and character development.

That sort of statement makes me believe that you didn't understand either movie.

EDIT: Ok, I'll admit he was tall in both movies.

No, I didn't.