Exhuming McCarthy.

While perhaps a bit too black-and-white in terms of the history, George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck is nevertheless a somber and captivating paean to Edward R. Murrow, his televised expose of Joe McCarthy, and, by extension, the Pioneer Days of Television Journalism. (In this last regard, it’s somewhat reminiscent of the excellent Clooney-produced live TV version of Fail Safe a few years ago.) It’s also assuredly a smoother, subtler, and more accomplished bit of muckraking than, say, Tim Robbins’ recent and lamentably over-the-top Embedded. Once again displaying the surprisingly strong directorial sense he exhibited in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Clooney also benefits here from a smartly written script which refuses to talk down to its audience, the crisp black-and-white cinematography, and quality performances across the board. As a result, what could have been an above-average History Channel documentary is instead a powerful and intelligent work of cinema that’s easily one of the better films out this year.

Admittedly, as Jack Shafer pointed out in Slate, Good Night, and Good Luck is rather narrowly focused, and works better as an impassioned and articulate morality play than it does as sound history. The Murrow of this film is saintly to a fault (although David Straitharn ameliorates this with a sardonic and multifaceted performance that may well get some nods come award time.) And there’s very little historical context offered herein, either for the origins of the McCarthy hysteria or for the Wisconsin Senator’s ultimate downfall, which had more to do with picking a fight with the army than with the Murrow broadcast.

That being said, I really like the way Clooney uses archival footage in this film. For one, Clooney was clever to follow Murrow’s example and let Joe McCarthy hoist himself on his own petard. Having the real McCarthy excoriate Murrow as the “leader of the jackal pack” gives the film a sense of history (and menace) that an actorly turn couldn’t have provided. For another, Clooney, who definitely appears to have done his homework, is unafraid to cut to real historical footage — the Annie Lee Moss hearings, for example — for extended periods, and just let the inherent drama of the real proceedings speak for itself. As a result, the history feels alive and contemporary, no mean feat when so many other historical films seem to use the past as merely exotic window dressing. Could the film have been more nuanced in its appraisal of both Murrow and McCarthyism? Undoubtedly. (Then again, nuanced appraisals weren’t exactly McCarthy’s strong point, either., nor is it a long suit of his current defenders.) But on the whole, Good Night, and Good Luck is, I think, a worthy exercise in historical filmmaking, and one with some obvious relevance in light of today’s entertainment-addled, sideshow-obsessed news media.

Movie-wise, there are a few small problems. I think the GN, & GL should have done either more or less with Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson as Wershbas Joe and Shirley — their particular plight doesn’t tie in to the rest of the story very well. And, while Ray Wise is good as the broadcaster-at-wits-end Don Hollenbeck, he’s also typecast in my mind — I kept expecting him to break into the Leland Palmer dance. All in all, though, Good Night, and Good Luck manages to enliven both the staid television studios of Fifties CBS and this historical moment with smoky jazz, languishing cigarettes, and ominous shadows. As the show says, see it now.

Unsound Methods.

Given the very favorable (and somewhat spoilerish) reviews that David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence has been getting, I went in expecting a great film from this auteur of the disturbing (albeit one without the throbbing, fleshy, pulsating chunks of gristle usually associated with Cronenberg’s oeuvre.) But, while Violence is a good film with some excellent performances — most notably by Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello — it is not ultimately a great one. In fact, I found it something of a letdown after all the hype. [Be warned: I don’t want to give everything away, but it’s a hard movie to talk about without delving into some very heavy spoilers, including the film’s conclusion.]

I’ve never read the source graphic novel, so I can’t vouch for the deviations in the tale, but it basically goes as follows: Viggo Mortensen is Tom Stall, a hard-working, Midwestern fella who runs the local diner in Smalltown USA. He is loved by his adoring, alluring wife (Bello, exquisite as usual), admired by his two children, respected by the community, and generally living the American dream, as long exemplified in Norman Rockwell paintings and The Saturday Evening Post. (A lot of this corn-fed small-town-America set-up — a little girl’s nightmare, a run-in with a high-school bully — comes off as completely flat and stilted, but I think there’s method in Cronenberg’s madness. What he’s doing is akin to the Naomi Watts/Nancy Drew stuff in the first half of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive — he’s lulling us in with mundanity to knock us off-kilter later on.)

Anyway, Tom’s picture-perfect life goes awry after he becomes an unwitting “American Hero” media sensation by killing two Bad Men in his diner one evening. (We know they’re Bad Men because one of them blows away a little girl in the first five minutes, which seems like exceedingly cheap and lazy character development.) Soon, scraggly-looking n’er-do-wells like Ed Harris come-a-knockin’, convinced that Tom Stall is not Tom Stall at all, but rather…Aragorn of the Dunedain, Isildur’s Heir and a trained, lethal adversary. Ok, not quite…nevertheless, this case of mistaken identity eventually forces Stall to forego being a man of peace and come to grips with his violent tendencies. And, in true Cronenberg fashion, this violence soon seems to infect Stall’s world like a particularly dangerous viral meme, and threatens to transform forever the lives of he and his family.

Along the way, A History of Violence comments on many significant tropes in the history of violence — “justified” violence, parental violence, marital and sexual violence — culminating in a replay of the original Biblical murder (one which loses much of its force due to William Hurt being an insufferable hambone — Perhaps he and Harris should’ve switched roles.) And, to its credit, it leaves many of these setpieces tantalizingly ambiguous. Was Viggo’s kid right to smash up the bully? How should we feel about the incident on the stairwell? But, for all that, I’m with Edelstein — The larger arc of the story seems cartoonishly black-and-white. Yes, the last scene of the film is an undeniably powerful one, but, really, the Stalls get off easy. If violence, once unleashed, spreads like a wildfire, then how come only Bad People (or at the vey least Deserving People, like the bully) end up on its brunt end? True, Cronenberg shows us the gory consequences of murder (Throbbing Gristle sighting!), but never upon any character that we happen to like.

I can see the argument that the story had to end the way it did — with the Stalls perhaps physically unharmed but in spiritual turmoil — as a commentary on either the standard narrative of the Western (covered similarly in Unforgiven) or on Dubya’s foreign policy, which Cronenberg says is an analogy he and Viggo had in mind. Still, as it is, I think the story’s conclusion subverts the movie’s message. By leaving the white hats shaken, not stirred and the black hats pushing up daisies, A History of Violence ends up suggesting that violence is actually a rather effective way of dealing with Bad People, although it may cost you (sniff) a few tears. All in all, A History of Violence is a much-better-than-average movie and it’s one well worth seeing, but, in the end, I don’t think it quite holds up.

Black Celebration.

As with the wonders of Pixar — indeed, even more so, given the amount of time and effort involved — Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is such a (literally) eye-popping stop-motion marvel that it seems churlish to quibble with its perhaps just-a-bit-too-formulaic approach. If you loved The Nightmare Before Christmas (as I did), you’ve likely already seen Corpse Bride, and probably loved it also…even if you felt that you’d already seen much of it before (and especially if you ever played Grim Fandango.) Nevertheless, even ensconced as it is in the now-slightly-creaky Burtonverse, Corpse Bride is a sumptuous 75-minute treat that’s skull-and-shoulders above most animated fare.

The story is thus: Much to the chagrin of the aristocratic (but penniless) Everglots (Albert Finney & Joanna Lumley), their daughter Victoria (Emily Watson) is soon to be betrothed to the meek, moon-eyed Victor (Johnny Depp), sire of nouveau-riche and fabulously wealthy fishmongers. Victor and Victoria seem to get on well enough — they both enjoy melancholy etudes on the Harryhausen piano, which should tell you all you need to know about their romantic viability in Tim Burton’s world. But, when Victor is prevailed upon by the local minister (Christopher Lee) to practice his vows in the nearby enchanted forest, he inadvertently awakens — and weds — the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter), who, despite being undead, is quite a looker…all pillow lips and bedroom eyes (albeit one that’s home to a Peter Lorre-like maggot.) Y’see, apparently long ago a dastardly suitor (Richard Grant) pulled a Kill Bill on the Bride here, and since then she’s been waiting for a bridegroom to free her from his curse, and die with her happily ever after…

If you don’t see where this is going from the opening reel, well, you should get out to the movies more. But that’s neither here nor there — as with life (and, in this film, death), the journey is the reward. At times, Corpse Bride seems entirely too reminiscent of Nightmare — Instead of “ma-king Christ-mas,” the denizens of the Dead are ma-king wed-dings. (Or, when the Dead Elder-fellow (Michael Gough) scratches the hole in his skull, it’s funny…but it also recalls the exact same move by Dr. Finkelstein in the earlier film.) For the most part, though, Corpse Bride is rife with its own inventive flourishes. (I particularly liked the little undead kids at right, the Elder’s raven, and the designs of the aged living.) And I’m willing to forgive sins much more grievous than the mild repetition on display here if it means Burton & co. will keep making stop-motion movies. Their gothic world may always be tinged with the same palette of nightmare and melancholy, but frankly, I’m smitten.

Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World.

“They say that ‘evil prevails when good men fail to act.’ It should just be ‘evil prevails.’” Andrew Niccol’s Lord of War, which I saw earlier this week, is basically an angrier, more sardonic kid brother to The Constant Gardener. But, while Gardener is probably a better-made work of cinema, I actually enjoyed myself more at Niccol’s film. At once a character study of an amoral arms dealer, a bitter tirade againt third world exploitation, and a dark comedy that may run too sour for some tastes, Lord of War is an above-average entrant in the satirical muckraking tradition. And its occasional preachiness is leavened by Nicolas Cage’s consistently-amusing and deftly-written performance, most of which is voiceover, at the center of the film.

Cage plays Yuri Orlov, a Ukrainian immigrant to Brighton Beach in the 1980s who, after an inadvertent run-in with the Russian mafia at a local cafe, realizes that guns, like the funeral business, is pretty much always a growth industry. Enlisting his more sensitive sibling (Jared Leto) as muscle and back-up (a.k.a. his “brother in arms”), Orlov embarks on a quest to arm the world and make mad bank doing it. Along the way, he woos a trophy wife (Bridget Moynahan), attracts the ire of both a more-established (and ostensibly more “moral” — he has politics as well as money in mind) rival (Ian Holm) and an idealistic, go-getter federal agent (Ethan Hawke), scavenges his former homeland after the fall of the USSR (essentially a free-for-all fire sale of tanks, munitions and ordnance), and finds himself in the company of increasingly more sadistic and unsettling despots (notably Eamonn Walker, doing a variation on Liberia’s Charles Taylor.)

What keeps Lord of War moving at a brisk clip is Cage’s deadpan voiceover, which boasts an impressive arsenal of witty bon mots. Says Orlov of his mission, “There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That’s one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?” Of his clients in the ’80s: “I never sold to Osama bin Laden. Back then, he was always bouncing checks.” Of his (brief) attempt to go on the up-and-up: “Thank God there are still legal ways to exploit developing countries.” In short, if your sense of humor runs toward the dark and twisted, Niccol’s tightly-written script pays dividends.

Whatsmore, unlike Gardener, which at times seemed to wallow in its piety, Lord of War cleverly juxtaposes its increasing contempt for Orlov’s vulturine livelihood against Cage’s natural amiability and his character’s rising fortunes (a la Richard III.) So, even as the story grows blacker, the audience has no place to go. We’re forced to empathize, at least to some degree, with Orlov’s attempt to achieve his own sick version of the American Dream on the backs of the Third World. Which, in the end, is Niccol’s point — We, too, are complicit in this story. Admittedly, the movie drops the ball somewhat in the last reel and veers too far toward polemic. (Of course, the same can be said of many quality film satires, including Catch-22 and Bamboozled.) But, until then, Lord of War is a disarmingly breezy jaunt through a highly-armed world and proof positive that, occasionally in “message movies,” honey catches more flies than vinegar.

Man of Constant Sorrow.

Next up on the Labor Day bill was Fernando Meirelles’ well-received The Constant Gardener, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz in a sort-of action-romance-thriller-edutainment about the extreme shadiness of the Pharmaceutical Trust’s clinical trials in Africa. (Or, put another way, it’s The Limey meets Hotel Rwanda meets The Bourne Supremacy meets The Girl in the Cafe.) At its best, The Constant Gardener is a compelling travelogue and a resonant Soderberghian love story, anchored by a great performance by Fiennes and solid supporting work by Weisz, Bill Nighy, and others. (By the way, nothing screams “English conspiracy” quite like the presence of Gerard McSorley, who plays a pharmaceutical tough here. Between him and Pete Postlethwaite flitting in and out, this occasionally seemed like In the Name of the Father transported to Kenya.) But, Gardener also suffers some of the defects of Meirelles’ earlier film, City of God, namely an overreliance on shaky hand-held camera work and a plot that strains credulity often enough to detract from the overall experience.

So the upshot is this: Fiennes, the titular gardener, is a kindly and reclusive British diplomat in Kenya with an ill-defined job and a young new activist wife (Weisz), whom he met-cute (well, sorta) at a lecture he gave back in England and married after a whirlwind romance. When Weisz is found murdered on a desolate, unforgiving stretch of African road beside her colleague and possible lover (Hubert Kounde), Fiennes is forced to abandon the orderly and carefully tended confines of his mental garden and embark on a quest to discover both why she was killed and how she lived. Along the way, he finds that large pharmaceutical companies, the nemeses of his slain wife, have been rigging clinical trials and, worse, hiding the fatal side effects of their drugs by erasing the existence of poverty-stricken Kenyans who were administered them (How these fatal side effects were supposed to go over once these drugs went on the market is left unexplained.) Whatsmore, he soon finds his superiors at the embassy (Danny Huston, Nighy) have been steadfastly looking the other way, and that the global reach of Big Pharma isn’t above using strongarm tactics to ensure the truth never gets out…

The Constant Gardener is expertly acted and expertly put together, and it’s deserves the high praise it’s been getting — it’s easily one of the better films of this year so far. Nevertheless, I had nagging problems with the movie. For one, while I have no doubt that Big Pharma is up to many grievous misdoings in Africa (and elsewhere) in the name of the almighty buck, and I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if they have unctuous corporate flaks cooking books and crossing the palms of anybody it might help them to buy off, I had trouble believing that they were this kind of shady, with a seemingly universal intelligence capability and more agents than SMERSH. (Also, while I’m sure this type of trial-tinkering probably happens, the real pharmaceutical conspiracy — as others have noted — is how companies simply ignore medical crises in the developing world and attempt to ban the use of generic drugs in devastated areas.)

Also, while I could see how Fiennes’ character might be this clueless about his wife’s life-work if he had seemed more distracted during her lifetime, as played he’d have to be willfully oblivious to miss what’s going on. (Perhaps his almost-disturbing passivity is the point — the script seems to say as much at times — but I still felt it rang false.) Add an overdose of shakicam work (don’t sit too close) and some rather pointless action sequences (the late second act car chase, the bandit attack) and The Constant Gardener falls out of the top echelon of all-time-great films. But, in an otherwise down year for movies, Gardener is an adult, intelligent thriller and a believable romance that’s well above the mean and well worth catching.

The Imperial March.

In a bid to spend a few hours out of the unrelenting Maui sunshine this past weekend, we exchanged Aloha for Antarctica and caught the well-received March of the Penguins. Brimming with impressive footage of the Emperor Penguins’ arduous yearly breeding cycle in the world’s most inhospitable place, and presided over by an avuncular Morgan Freeman, March definitely makes for a pleasant and diverting moviegoing experience, and seemed a great movie to take the kids to. Yet, as appealing as it is, March seems somewhat misplaced on the big screen, given that — ultimately — it’s not all that different from what you can catch on the Discovery Channel most times of the day…but given the particularly lousy crop of late-summer movie fare at the moment, perhaps there’s something to be said for quality nature docs writ large. Regardless, big-screen or small-screen, March of the Penguins is worth viewing, if only to appreciate anew how strange, delicate, unforgiving, and surprising our world can be (and to discover that there’s much more to penguins than Opus and Oswald Cobblepot.)

Islands in the Stream.

So, after a paltry $12 million its opening weekend, it’s looking like Michael Bay’s The Island has turned out to be an outright box-office flop. Which is too bad, really, ’cause I caught it on Saturday and thought it was a solid summer movie actioner, with a soupcon of dystopian sci-fi gravitas. In fact, I’d say it’s probably Bay’s best film (which isn’t saying much, of course, but I’ll take it over The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and the Bad Boys.)

As you’ve probably seen in the previews by now, The Island is a bit schizophrenic — The first half plays like THX-1138 by way of an Estee Lauder or Claritin commercial, the second half is Logan’s Run meets Grand Theft Auto. Unfortunately, the ad campaign — which clearly failed to sell the movie to America — did manage to ruin the building tension of the first forty-five minutes. Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan MacGregor, having more trouble with clones), a skeptical resident of a utopian-quarantine unit of sorts, starts to question the underlying premises of his intensely monitored, Puma-clad existence, such as why his proximity to his friend Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johannson. who doesn’t do much but look pretty and run) is so rigorously monitored. The presiding doctor (Sean Bean, who must be sick of getting sent the same part over and over again) is little help in resolving Lincoln’s existential dilemma, but visits to a kindly mechanic schlub in the sub-sectors (Steve Buscemi) points Six-Echo on the path to self-knowledge.

At which point, the chase begins and, well, you can guess the rest. Lincoln and Jordan spend the second half of the movie rushing frantically from the minions of a resolute and unstoppable bounty hunter (Djimon Hounsou — We know he’s a badass because Bay always shoots him from about knee level.) Higher order brain functions are no longer necessary for the remainder of the film, although there’s a nice stopover at the abode of Lincoln’s “sponsor” (and a rather impressive highway chase involving car-crushing dumbbells.) Still, in the end, The Island is redeemed from normal Bay-dom by a better-than-average script and several solid performances, with special nods to Ewan and Michael Clarke Duncan in an extended cameo. (Voyager‘s Neelix and the guy from the Manhattan Mini-Storage moose ad also live in the complex, which I found a bit distracting.) It’s not a great film by any means – In fact, it’s almost instantly forgettable. But The Island is a nice place to wile away two hours on a hot summer afternoon (and in a perfect world it’d do twice the business of FF.)

Weird Science.

Before Berk and I head off to procure a Golden Ticket back to Hogwarts, some thoughts on Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Well, for the most part, I dug it — it definitely didn’t feel as throwaway as Burton’s recent Planet of the Apes (or Big Fish, for that matter.) In fact, dare I say, it seemed more subversively Dahl-esque to me than the much beloved Gene Wilder version. That being said, I also thought the film grew forced as it went along — The most magical moments happen before Charlie even ventures onto the factory grounds. Alas, as with many Wonka delicacies, that initial rush doesn’t last, and the film grows less absorbing and more sickly-sweet as the children meander through the Land of Chocolate.

Speaking of the kids, though, they’re all pitch-perfect — it’s hard to imagine a more Charlie-ish Charlie than Freddie Highmore, a more Veruca-ish Veruca than Julia Winter, and so on through the Starting Five. I also found most of the modern tweaks they’d given the contestants quite clever (Mike Teavee as a gamehead, Violet Beaureguard’s mom as an Atlanta suburbanite Showbiz Mom, Violet herself as a kung-fu master.) As for the other denizens of Wonkaland, I frankly grew a bit tired of the Oompa-Loompas’ antics after awhile, although it’s nice to see a journeyman fanboy stalwart like Deep Roy get his moment(s) in the spotlight.

And Depp? Well, he’s weird, and — I’ll give him credit — weird in a totally non-Hunter S. Thompson-ish way. Even with the added-on humanizing backstory and somewhat unnecessary character arc, this Wonka is much more akin to the one the UN should be inspecting than the avuncular, approachable Wilder. To be honest, I can’t really figure out if his performance — part-Batman villain, part-gleeful-pre-teen, part-Rainbow Randolph-style TV host (Depp says he had Capt. Kangaroo types in mind) — is brilliantly off-putting or aggravatingly one-note. I do know that I probably wouldn’t want to sit through a Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator if Depp kept this up…Too much just makes ya sick.

Still, Depp, Burton, & co. deserve points for pushing Wonka in a completely different direction than did Wilder in the 1971 version. And that, in the end, is this Charlie‘s big plus: Unlike entirely too many unnecessary remakes of late, the film seems to have a reason for being other than audience nostalgia, and can co-exist happily with both the Dahl book and the Wilder film without doing dishonor to the memory of either. Just consider it the Sourz or Wild Berry version.

Everybody Knows.

So, in keeping with my usual Independence Day and unBirthday ritual of going to the movies (My b-day is December 29, my brother‘s is January 2 — as these dates fall uncomfortably close to Christmas, we received our birthday gifts on July 4th when I was a kid — whether or not this personal validation on America’s birthday every year played a part in my pursuing a career in US history is still an open question), I went to check out the exceedingly well-reviewed Me and You and Everyone We Know, written, directed, and starring performance artist Miranda July, at the new IFC Center (a.k.a. the old Waverly, where I lost my keys during Apollo 13 a decade ago.) And? Well, July definitely has an original and distinctive voice, and I can see why some critics loved this film. But, frankly, her voice is also one that didn’t speak to me very much. Me and You deserves credit for its sunny disposition and dogged faith in people, I suppose, but frankly, after ninety minutes I found the whole enterprise a bit stilted and twee.

So the upshot is this…Miranda July is a struggling video artist who one day decides she’ll be smitten with John Hawkes (Deadwood‘s Sol Starr), a soon-to-be-divorced shoe salesman who tries (and fails) to connect with his distant kids Peter and Robby (Miles Thompson and Brandon Ratcliff) through ill-thought-out stunts such as lighting his hand on fire. I came in figuring that this July-Hawkes romance was the centerpiece of the film, and I was basically in for a smart, indy-inclined romantic comedy. But, in fact, Me and You spends as much or more time with Everyone They Know, from Hawkes’ creepy, pedophile-in-training partner in the shoe department to two sexually adventurous teenage classmates of Peter’s to the little girl next door, who has developed a slightly disturbing penchant of collecting a “dowry” of home appliances in her hope chest.

If this is starting to sound like a Todd Solondz movie, well we’re in the same ballpark. But, unlike the relentlessly dark and downbeat Solondz, July’s universe is a much shinier, happier place, where (in one of the more affecting scenes in the film) even a lowly and abandoned goldfish is loved by many and doted on in its final moments. And, at times, July’s “bright-side-of-life” vision was truly transporting, as when Hawkes is distracted from the final collapse of his marriage by the sight of a bird alighting outside. (“Banish all dismay, extinguish every sorrow. If I’m lost or I’m forgiven, the birds will still be singing.“)

Whatsmore, what seems to be July’s wider theme is an intriguing one — we live in a world where me, you, and everyone we know are likely more comfortable communicating by keyboards, cellphones, photographs, video, or other interpolating media than we are by simple voice or touch. After awhile, though, I confess I found myself pining for something more akin to Solondz’s trademark misanthropy. Despite nice moments scattered here and there, I found too much of this film precious and quirky for its own sake, and it began to feel less like a movie than a series of video art vignettes at the Whitney. Take it with a grain of salt — again, I could see this movie being more appealing to warmer, gentler, and less cynical souls…but, as for myself, I have to admit I had emotionally checked out by the last reel.

Close Encounters of the Worst Kind.

“Across the gulf of space…intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.” Hey, don’t say L. Ron Hubbard didn’t try to warn us. At any rate, Spielberg’s take on War of the Worlds is a gritty, eye-popping ride at first, but ultimately ends up being a disappointing affair. In short, it too often abandons the eponymous conflict for pained bouts of family melodrama and lots of Signs-like crashing about in a basement.

I’m aggravated by this film more than most, because from the lightning storm in the first fifteen minutes to the incident at the Hudson River ferry about halfway in, War showed flashes of amazing promise at times. With their introduction from below and their commence-the-killing foghorns, the tripods were spindly alien nightmares, just as they should be. Some of the humanity adrift sequences didn’t make much sense (Why do the news crew cannibalizing the downed plane act starved 12 hours into Day 1 of the attack? How could everything else be picked over by then?), but I particularly liked the swarm of panic and rage surrounding the sight of the Cruise family’s working van. And, while using blatant and Dubyaesque terror, terror, terror, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 imagery seems like something of an easy shortcut (and how was that “missing persons” board near the ferry created so quickly, in such a random place?), it still helped augment the apocalyptic gloom that an adapation of War of the Worlds needs front-and-center.

But, alas, amidst all this armageddon, we’re forced to take multiple timeouts so that Tom Cruise and his kids can work out their unresolved family issues. You have to expect some of this in a Spielberg movie, sure, but it still seems like filler, pretty much every time. And it seriously detracts from the terror War is trying to invoke when one starts counting the character beats until the unavoidable group hug. Moreover, when we get to the interminable basement of Crazy-Eyez Robbins, the film just stops dead. (I know there was a similar sequence in the 1953 George Pal film, but frankly I don’t remember enough to compare the two.) After all the rabid, contagious fear of teeming, ant-like humanity that permeates the first hour, why would we want to watch Cruise, Robbins, and Fanning play hide-and-seek for twenty minutes with that Abyss-like tentacle? (Particularly given that we saw Cruise already do this with the ID spiders in Minority Report.) As a result, by the time Team Cruise gets to (a surprisingly undamaged) Boston for the cathartic group hug, I’d pretty much checked out. Unfortunately, despite a captivating first hour, War of the Worlds eventually bogs down into quagmire.