June 29, 2005
Steven Spielberg’s WAR OF THE WORLDS (original review)(2013 Summer Flashback review) follows the BATMAN BEGINS pattern for me: loved it at the time, loved it on rewatches, but watched it now and still found myself thinking holy shit, I forgot how good this is. In the set up it’s almost JAWS-good – the beautiful look and sense of place, the natural and economical ways it sets up these people and their relationships, the dread about what horrors are coming even though honestly I wouldn’t mind hanging out longer in this normality that’s about to be interrupted.
Tom Cruise’s character Ray Ferrier kind of seems like the inevitable results of living as one of the charming dicks he played when he was younger – regular Yankees-hat-wearing, working class guy, pretty likable, but fucked up his marriage and now lives alone in a little place in New Jersey. Definitely a deadbeat in the parenting department, and isn’t disciplined enough to get his shit together (until now, when it really counts, during an alien invasion). (Spoiler.) We first see him operating a crane at the docks in Brooklyn, it looks pretty challenging and his boss (Peter Gerety, Homicide: Life on the Streets) seems to think he’s the best at it, but it’s still funny when he punches out and roars into traffic in his Mustang like he’s convinced he’s the coolest motherfucker who ever lived.
Turns out his reckless driving is for a different reason: he was supposed to be home at 8 when his ex-wife Mary Ann (Mirando Otto, HUMAN NATURE) drops off the kids to stay with him during her trip to Boston. He pretends he thought it was 8:30 and doesn’t even say he’s sorry, so it’s not that surprising his teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin, TAKING LIVES) hates him, doesn’t acknowledge him, won’t take off his headphones for him. (read the rest of this shit…)
The ’70s version of the classic Herschell Gordon Wells tale does not hold a candle to the ’32 version I reviewed at Halloween time. The lifeless color scheme pales compared to the evocative black and white, the screenplay feels much slower and less eventful, the makeup may be more sophisticated but it’s less creepily believable, and somehow they made it in the ’70s without making it nearly as perverse. If the girl he’s fucking is part panther like in the old one I don’t think it’s ever mentioned.
The Island of Lost Souls is an interesting island. That’s what Ed Parker (Richard Arlen) finds out when he shipwrecks and the drunk captain (Paul Hurst) of the boat that rescues him dumps him along with the cargo on this small slice of uncharted jungle property. Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton) is out there doing some cutting-edge scientifically research with one colleague, Montgomery (Arthur Hohl). He’s somehow figured out how to bypass millions of years of evolution and has created futuristic plants, including giant asparagus. He lives with a pretty young weirdo girl named Lota (The Panther Woman) and a staff of hairy servants who Parker believes are the “strange looking natives” of the island. Yeah, they look strange all right, they look like the wolf boy on the cover of the told freaks video. 
Sometimes for scientifical type purposes I try to predict what bad puns the hack critics will use in reviews of upcoming movies. For WAR OF THE WORLDS I was leaning toward an “out of this world” or “worlds away from E.T.” type thing. Somebody suggested “Bore of the Worlds” but I was saving that for “Fantastic Bore” and “Fantastic Snore.”
