Saturday, January 21, 2006

Today, I decided to take a break from low budget, crappy movies to watch a pair of crappy, big budget movies!

Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005)

     Okay, I have to admit, I was really expecting this to be horrible. And I was disappointed, as its not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Granted, its not good. But it doesn’t pull a full vacuum. I loathe Tom Cruise, and this movie does NOTHING is improve my opinion of him. He plays himself, a self-centered asshole. The aliens are cooler than I expected, and you see them more than I had heard. So it wasn’t the worst movie I’ve seen this year, but it was by no means good. Spielberg knows how to pace a movie, and the action scenes are very well done. My problem was that I didn’t like any of the characters. I really wanted them all to become alien chow. Dakota Famming is a wonderful actress, but her character is a little spoiled brat. And the son was a punk, and Cruise was his usual no acting asshole self. I just wanted a war machine to step on them all, so we could move on to more sympathetic characters. But alas, I was disappointed, and they all f’ing live, against my strongest wishes.

And to just cement my dislike for the movie, the disc sucks. First off, there’s no commentary. What, is Steven Spielberg too good to do a commentary?, But there’s room for like 5 different languages. Why put a French soundtrack on an American disc? They can’t play them in France, and how many people in Region One (USA) speak French as their primary language? And even if Spielberg can’t lower himself do do a commentary, sn’t there a producer or a writer or someone who could have done one? Its just a cheap disc, and if there’s a Special Edition this year, I’ll be even more pissed.

Three beers out of five, and that only because of the pretty special effects. (Pretty sad when you spend 130 million dollars, and only get three beers)

The Cave (2005)

     One hundred million dollars less than War of the Worlds, and not a bit worse. Not a bit better, mind you, but no worse. A group of professional cavers go down in a virgin cave and discover a parasite that transmutes humans into bat-like things. Not as much CGI as you’d think, because they filmed in Romania, and had this HUGE set built. It’s a beautiful set, I’ll give them that. The whole time I was watching the movie initially, I was convinced it was a real cave (cause we do a fair amount of caving, we do. And I know what caves look like). This movie was not as boring as you might think, moving along at a good clip. Overall, this movie did not suck as bad as some critics said it did. Don’t get me wrong, this is no Ginger Snaps, but its not Alone in the Dark either.

The commentary, on the other hand, is pretty poor. (of course, its better than the one on War of the Worlds. Oh, wait, that’s right, there wasn’t one.) Its neither a technical discussion, nor a antidote-laden nostalga fest. They just kinda talk about different things, without a lot of passion. Some liquor passed around would have improved this commentary a lot.

Three beers out of five as well.