Will Russell Surf?

Would you believe David O. Russell as the director of a big pandering Silver Surfer flick? Does this play even as a radical idea? Can anyone envision an impassioned eccentric like Russell working for a nuts-and-bolts type like Avi Arad?
Consider this interview with Arad, chairman and CEO of Marvel Studios, that ran on MTV.com about ten days ago. In the piece, written by Larry Carroll, Arad is asked who might direct the Surfer flick, which will apparently begin shooting either later this year or early next.

Didn’t Quentin Tarantino speak about writing a Silver Surfer flick back in ’95 or thereabouts? Does anyone remember the Silver Surfer dialogue that Tarantino wrote and Denzel Washington acted in Crimson Tide?

“There is a director who should make Silver Surfer,” Arad answered. “He is mentally committed to it [but] he’s doing another movie now.
“What’s most important to me about this guy, first, is that he’s incredible with visuals,” he added. “But he’s also a spiritual guy, a Zen Buddhist.”
There’s been a rumor out there for two or three weeks that Russell has been talking with Marvel about doing this. And Russell is certainly a Zen Buddhist, and he’s working on a film now — a lower-budgeted thing for Universal about radio talk-show host (Vince Vaughan) who starts taking on the traits of his wack-job callers.
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I rang Russell’s office to check but they’ve all split for the 4th of July holiday. I called Russell on his cell and I think he picked up, but he just said “who is this?” three times and then hung up.
Baz Luhrman had been in the loop to direct this long-delayed effects film, but he is apparently no longer involved….but I don’t really know anything one way or the other. And I don’t even care that much, to be honest.

David O. Russell

It says something about the state of things when the best younger directors directors (Chris Nolan, David O. Russell, Bryan Singer) are all whoring themselves out to make superhero flicks.
The idea of Russell working for the Marvel factory and making a movie for kids and dealing with (how can I put this delicately?) a kind of elevated Menahem Golan mentality is a strange, fascinating prospect.
While Russell got along beautifully with Fox Searchlight and Peter Rice when he did I Heart Huckabees, I wonder how he’ll deal with Fox honcho Tom Rothman and his micromanaging approach to running a studio. Anyway, it’s something to consider over the holiday.

Goodnight Taste

An L.A. acquaintance has seen George Clooney’s Goodnight, and Good Luck (Warner Bros., 10.05), the ’50s drama about Edward R. Murrow vs. Senator Joseph McCarthy, and here’s his report:
“David Strathairn [who plays Murrow] is excellent. And I’d like to allay any fears you might have about him being able to summon Murrow’s authoritative voice. He nails it and then some.
“The film itself is high on atmosphere (especially during the opening scene….cigarettes, pointy glasses and tuxedo clad guests at a dinner reception) and does a very fine job of capturing the feeling of the 50’s.
“Clooney continues the good directorial work he did on Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. His camera is light and mobile, and the art design really showcases the beautiful black-and-white stock.

David Straitharn as Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney’s Goodnight, and Good Luck.

“The film itself is very quick and watchable, though I’m not sure how well it would play with people who don’t already have a real interest in the era of the Red Scare. It’s a bit like a civics lesson.
“I have some quibbles. A scrolling text intro that’s supposed to set up the era is unnecessary; as you watch the film you learn all you need to know about the background.
“It also lacks a certain central structure, and it could use a bit more bite. The enemy is paranoia, really, which doesn’t set Murrow up as the sort of heroic presence he was.
“There’s also an unnecessary scene between Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson [playing a husband and wife working for or in league with CBS] in which Downey is questioning whether they, at CBS, are doing the right thing in taking on McCarthy. It’s better left assumed that there was some self-doubt involved, rather than leaving it to this trite and obvious exchange.
“Overall it’s pretty fun stuff, especially since Strathairn is never less than enthralling. It’s just that it could use a bit more zip.”
Okay then — a good film with maybe some side issues. Straitharn, at least, seems positioned to pick up some Oscar heat….maybe.

Forever Cronicas

[Here’s a re-working of a January ’05 piece about Sebastian Cordero’s Cronicas. This excellent film is finally opening on 7.8 so why not?]
A creepy investigation piece and a penetrating morality tale about a tabloid TV news team on the trail of a serial child killer, Sebastian Corder’s Cronicas (Palm Pictures, 7.8) is easily one of the year’s best.
And I’m not just throwing that out. This hard haunting little film is right up there with Hustle & Flow, Cinderella Man, Crash, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, The Beautiful Country and Last Days.

John Leguizamo during Cronicas round-table chat at Manhattan’s Regency Hotel — Monday, 6.27, 11:10 am.

Set in a low-income area of Ecuador and 98% Spanish-spoken, it boasts a first-rate cast (John Leguizamo, Damian Alcazar, Leonor Watling, Alfred Molina, Jose Maria Yazpik) and has been produced (or would grandfathered be the more appropriate term?) by Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro.
And it shouldn’t be missed by anyone, partly for the impact of the drama itself (which holds onto its ethical focus from beginning to end, and never drops into an excitement-for-excitement’s-sake mode) and because it heralds the arrival of a major new Spanish-language director — 32 year-old Sebastian Cordero.
Cronicas is not about catching the bad guy as much as a study of journalistic corruption.
A series of child murders, all the apparent victim of a serialist called “the monster,” has caught the attention of a three-person news team shooting for a show called “Una Hora con la Verdad” (“An Hour with the Truth”), which is hosted in-studio by Molina’s character.

Jumping right into this cauldron is a hot-shot TV reporter named Manolo Bonilla (Leguizamo), along with his producer (Watling) and cameraman (Jose Maria Yazpik).
And they happen to be right there and shooting when a seemingly decent, soft-spoken salesman named Vinicio Cepeda (Alcazar) accidentally hits and kills a young kid with his truck. This almost gets Cepeda killed by an angry mob.
When Bonilla later visits Cepeda in jail, where he’s awaiting trial for manslaughter, what seems to be a major scoop is dropped into his lap. Cepeda tells Bonilla that he’s met the serial killer and can provide crucial information about him…which he’ll pass along in trade for a sympathetic TV story about the accident, which may lead to his legal exoneration.
Cepeda’s information (or some of it, rather) turns out to be solid, which of course leads Bonilla to decide to keep his scoop from the cops so he can make a big splash. And this is all I’m going to say, except that the movie has a riveting ending that doesn’t leave you alone.
The thrust at the end is that Leguizamo’s character may be just as malicious or threatening as the child-killer he’s trying to get the goods on.

Cronicas was filmed in Babahayo, a capital city of the province of Los Rios, apparently one of Ecaudor’s poorest areas.
After leaving the first screening my 15 year-old son Dylan said, “It’s funny, but it’s like almost all the really good films these days are being made by guys from Mexico and South America.”
And Spain, I added. It’s certainly seemed this way over the past three or four years. It’s always fascinated me how the Movie Gods seem to serendipitously pick certain countries and cultures to produce especially vital and profound films during a given period.
The film industry, in any event, can add Cordero to the south-of-the-border Kool Kat list headed by Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros), Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy ), Alejandro Amenabar (The Sea Inside), Pedro Almodovar (Bad Education), Fernando Meirelles (City of God), Julio Medem (Sex and Lucia) and Fabiane Beilinsky (Nine Queens).

Grabs

Director-writer James Toback (l.) speaking to Museum of Moving Image director David Schwartz after screening of his 1977 film Fingers and prior to showing of Jacques Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped — Thursday, 6.30.05, 9:20 pm.

L train heading to Brooklyn — Thursday, 7.1.05, 12:05 am.

Hollywood Elsewhere contributors Rachel Sear, Jett Wells (now working for N.Y. Daily News columnist George Rush) at party for Palm Pictures’ Cronicas — Tuesday, 6.28.05, 10:25 pm.

Graffiti on poster space at Queens subway stop near Kaufman Astoria Studios — Thursday, 6.30.05, 11:35 pm.

The real Domino Harvey, who will be played by Keira Knightley in the forthcoming Tony Scott film Domino (New Line, 8.19). Harvey was found dead last Monday night in her West Hollywood home.

The linkage between Johnny Depp’s Charlie and that other weird guy with light skin who hangs out with kids has again been pointed out by Time magazine. This idea never seemed to get much traction outside of media circles.

Get Estrada

“Thank you, Mr. Wells, for having written a viewpoint of the Russell Crowe telephone incident that makes sense. Should Mr. Crowe have thrown the phone? Of course not, but finally a columnist questions Josh Estrada’s contribution to the incident.
“Does the Mercer hotel go unscathed here? A guest is paying over $3,000 a night for a room and no one gives a hoot that he has no working phone in that room. Yet when he tries to resolve the problem he is met with indifference and ‘whatever.’
“Trust me, sir…I am a seventy-six year old woman, and I would have had some choice words for Mr. Estrada and the Mercer had I been in Mr. Crowe’s position. Does that hotel really expect their guests to come down to the Lobby at 4:30 A.M. to make a phone call?
“Someone should also mention that if Mr. Crowe wanted to hurt Estrada he would have used his fists, he certainly has been well trained to do so in the past year.” — RhodaM41@aol.com

“Celebrities do not rate special attention and respect because they are celebrities. All accounts I’ve read about the incident indicate that it was late and Crowe had been drinking and was being an ass.
“I don’t know when, if ever, you’ve worked in a service job, but having to deal with obnoxious assholes after they’ve spent a night out drinking is highly stressful. That doesn’t excuse Estrada from being unprofessional to a customer, but his inappropriate response would require a reprimand from his supervisor and not being assaulted by a petulant jerk.
“I’m not a fan of frivolous lawsuits, but according to some reports, Estrada was looking for an apology and a handshake and didn’t get one…If the humorless Crowe is going to behave like a spoiled brat then he deserves what he gets. Since juries never want to convict the famous, (unless they’re female and Martha Stewart) then maybe wasting a celebrities time and costing him some money and p.r. is the only way to go to teach them a lesson.” — Michael Zeigler.
“Do you honestly think that Estrada, the concierge at the Mercer, would give Russell Crowe a ‘whatever’ just because he’s some prissy narcissist? Estrada, I mean, and not Crowe. Seems highly doubtful.
“A concierge with that general attitude would have a gig at the Mercer for, oh, about two days tops, if he hadn’t already been weeded out by what I’m sure is a fairly vigorous vetting process at one of the top Soho hotels.
“So Crowe’s paying four grand a night for a suite and he can’t get a call out to his wife to reassure her he’s not in the throes of (a) alcohol poisoning, (b) an orgy, (c) in the clink, or (d) all of the above? Must be a swell marriage. Objection, yer honor! Sustained. Withdrawn.
“I suggest to you that Crowe pushed this guy to the living end over a period of days, but that he, as the concierge at the Mercer, could muster no other retort but the pathetically passive-aggressive ‘Whatever.’

“More to the point, to quote Brando in Larry Grobel’s book, ‘Vas you dere, Charley?’ I’m sure when the tape rolls (ands I hope it’s on Court TV) it’s going to be fascinating. I have many hours under my belt one-on-one with Crowe….not counting the junkets, the press conferences..and the dude’s intimidating, even when he’s trying to be nice. It’s all in the eyes, man.
“And yeah (chuckle) it’s also in the karate-stance he assumes after hurling a couple pieces of bric-a-brac at your head. If I’m Estrada, I’m suing. Or what’s a celebrity for?” — Josh Mooney
“I found your comments on the Russell Crowe phone-throwing incident absolutely amazing. To miss an opportunity to diss Russell Crowe puts you in a class by yourself. Yes, Russell was an idiot in losing his temper but not one person has commented on Estrada’a contribution except you — this incident did not occur in a vacuum.
“Describing Estrada as a ‘…waahh, I’m telling the teacher’ kid aptly describes a 10 year old who grew up to be a celebrity blackmailer.” — Lorraine Shaw.
“Thank you! That has been how I have felt all along. Sure Russell over-reacted. Guess what? He’s human. He has limits of tolerance. If a person is paying $4000 a night for a room he should be able to expect some service from the people working there. Thank you again for saying what I have been feeling.” — Vickie Sherman, Scappoose, Oregon.

Grabs 2

Big fat Roman-empire post office at corner of Eighth Avenue and 34th Street.

Video camera with super-telescopic lens aimed at Central Park West apartment building where Pale Male, the famous Manhattan hawk, was hanging toward the end of last Sunday afternoon.

This guy has been at the Museum of Natural History since I was five or six years old.

The just-concluded Marlon Brando auction at Christie’s brought in $2.3 million. Brando’s annotated Godfather script sold for $312,000. A letter from Godfather author Mario Puzo asking Brando to take the role of Don Corleone sold for $132,000. No word on how much these driver’s licenses went for.

Sunday, 6.26, 4:05 pm.

34th Street looking west from Eighth Avenue — Saturday, 6.25, 4:40 pm.

Pale Male on one of his periodic float-arounds.

Mural in underground lobby of Lincoln Plaza cinemas.

Worlds Apart

“I saw this last night…and I was very happy with the film overall, aside from a few believability issues here and there…nothing worth mentioning. But…
“Spielberg and Co.’s decision midway through the film to have Tom Cruise’s teenage son die added a great deal of emotional heft to the film, and I agree that the groaning of folks at the ending will have nothing to do with the bacterial problems that the aliens experience. That part of the finale is just fine and works wonderfully and pays appropriate tribute to Wells’ original story.
“But when Cruise and Fanning walk into Boston, find Miranda Otto and her entire clan in what looks to be the one neighborhood in all of Boston that wasn’t destroyed, I had to groan….but that was okay because I knew it was coming. No way Spielberg was going to avoid a family reunion of some kind. I could let the mother/daughter cryfest happen…whatever. The mom could have survived since we didn’t last see her running into a field of fire or anything.

“But then Justin Chatwin, the teenage son, runs out to his dad and I had to declare ‘bullshit’ on this movie. I mean come on…the kid was toast! How he managed to survive running into a battlefield that two seconds later was incinerated by alien death rays is utterly ridiculous.
“The worst part of this happy-ass reunion is that Chatwin’s supposed death had been such a refreshingly realistic event in a film where whole families are being dusted left and right. Spielberg had handled his departure in a very sad and abstract way, and when Cruise is insisting to Tim Robbins later on that his son ‘will just meet them in Boston’ it was a horrifyingly sad moment of parental denial that added so much resonance to the film.
“Then that’s all ripped away at the end. I’ve been a big supporter of Spielberg for years, and I’ve always felt he’s been a bit underrated in his efforts on many films, but he and his screenwriters chickened out here and robbed a potential masterpiece of lean mean sci-fiction filmmaking of an honest ending.
“I’ve been pissed off about it all morning. My advice to people is when the alien dies, leave the theater, and make up your own ending.” — Michael Felsher.
“I usually agree with you and could not agree more with you this time
about the endings of Spielberg’s films, and particularly the one used in War of the Worlds. I just saw it, and that ending really takes something MAJOR away from how great it could have been. As it is, I’d say it’s good. But Spielberg always does this with his more scary/thrilling/serious movies.
“Jaws is the worst offender. Having Richard Dreyfuss survive
really took something away from the tone established throughout the movie and steered the film even farther from the book. Think of how much scarier that movie would have been if, like the book, even your fancy shark cage and gadgets do nothing for you? Would we have been really upset if Dreyfuss had been eaten like Quint?

“Spielberg did it again with Saving Private Ryan. Having the old Ryan at the grave with every member of his family lamenting over ‘did I deserve it?’ really took something away from that movie for me and is the only reason why I think The Thin Red Line is better.
“There’s no question that one of the cornerstones of Spielberg’s rep is his tendency to pull some punches that really need to be landed.” — Jason Tanner
“The ending alone knocked the film down from being a problematic but entertaining three-star flick to a mediocre two-star.
“Does Spielberg assume that his audience is so dumb to believe that Cruises kid just somehow managed to survive the wall of fire and brimstone? Like Cruise finding the extra belt of hand grenades just in time to get snagged by the tripod, I found the conclusion an example of very lazy storytelling. More riveting would of been the son risking his life at the end for his dad and sister.
“But no…Spielberg had to have the bullshit happy ending which nobody in my audience except for the women bought.
“The film has one glaring inconsistency. As has been pointed out, the aliens use an electro magnetic pulse to disable all electronic items prior to their first attack. And yet in the first destruction scene we witness a guy operating a camcorder. He’s not just a background character either — Spielberg frames one of his ‘clever’ shots around the device.
“Plus the editing was choppy in parts. Cruise walks into the bathroom covered with human soot and then a cut later is fully cleaned up.

“Why did Dakota Fanning have to scream in every scene? Was it in her contract? Why do all the kids in Spielberg films act the same way in scene after scene? Here you have world destruction and the kids are bickering over how Tom Cruise is a bad dad. It sucks you right out the movie because it’s forced drama. It’s borderline blackface in it’s vulgarity as it’s repeated over and over.” — Michael Meyerotto
“I’m scratching my head over your War of the Worlds review. Isn’t this the kind of review that usually makes you roll your eyes and become somewhat contemptuous? This sounds like one of those ‘if you just turn off your mind and don’t think about it much, it’s great fun’ reviews that you so dislike.
“In fact, your review made it less likely that I’ll go see this. Personally, I just don’t like the idea of giving my money to Spielberg and Cruise for something half-baked — I’m a bit sick of both of them, (especially Cruise), and lately I’ve gotten very particular about how I spend my movie dollar.
“I saw and loved Batman Begins. Before that, the last movie I’d seen was Sin City, and I walked out halfway through. I don’t go to the theater often for a number of reasons. One of them is the kind of movie you described in your WotW piece.
“I’m watching Letterman as I write this, and he just said something that hits home for me. He said, ‘Today was the big opening of War of the Worlds. It’s a film about space aliens that activate these enormous alien pods that have been buried in the earth for millions of … oh, who cares?” — Ray Garton
“The only thing that gets my goat about the movie is that the ending is the only overtly sentimental part of the flick. You had bodies being floated downriver, people turning to dust, someone getting blood sucked out of them and then sprayed over. How did this get a PG-13 again?” — Lee Goettl
“I hate it when you’re wrong about a movie because you infuriate me — but I think I hate it more when you really nail the thing, because I then have to admit you’re right, and that your words and emotions so precise and deserving that you pierce the heart of the matter. And in the case of WotW, you got my feelings exactly, and expressed it better than I could, so fuck you.” — Peter Martin.

“So I kept waiting for this awful, groan-inducing ending of War of the Worlds and it never came. What the hell is everyone bitching about? The final scene isn’t played with even a hint of sap or melodrama. The son is just there. There’s no swelling music cue, no shots of Dad and Lad running to each other, arms outstretched…just a warm smile.
“I think Spielberg — and the audience — earned that moment after sitting through almost two hours of terror, which is what this movie really is. This is one of Stevie’s greatest efforts, right up there with Close Encounters, Jaws and (dare I say it) A.I…speaking of movies with unfairly derided endings.
“And there certainly wasn’t any laughing or booing at the end. But there was plenty of clapping. And this was at an 11:30 a.m. show with half a house…not a psyched, rowdy Friday-night crowd. This movie’s going to score huge with most of America, and the NY/LA film snobs and snotty teenagers be damned.
“Roger Friedman at foxnews.com characterized the reviews as ‘so-so’ and Drudge has been running pretty much only the negative stuff about it. But the truth of the matter is that the flick has been generally well-reviewed, scored well at Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes and got absolute raves from Kenneth Turan and Variety, to name but a few.” — Sean Stangland

Tragic Synch

New Line Cinema’s decision to move the release date of Tony Scott’s Domino from 11.23 back to mid-August (which is when the film was originally scheduled to open for several months) may look like an exploitation of a tragedy to some…but apparently it’s not.
I was shocked to learn Tuesday that 35 year-old Domino Harvey, the former model-turned-bounty hunter portrayed by Keira Knightley in Scott’s action thriller, was found dead in a bathtub in her West Hollywood home on Monday night.

Edgar Ramirez, Mickey Rourke, Kera Knightley in Tony Scott’s Domino.

The daughter of late actor Laurence Harvey was facing jail time over drug-dealing charges after feds busted her a month ago. She was charged with conspiracy to distribute drugs (i.e., amphetamines), possession, trafficking and racketeering, and was apparently looking at a possible long sentence.
Domino, based on a sharply written script by Richard Kelly and costarring Mickey Rourke and Christopher Walken, is a partly fictionalized story about Harvey’s giving up modeling in the early ’90s to become a bounty hunter.
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New Line bumped the film from its 8.19 date to late November sometime around 5.25, which was about six days after the news of Harvey’s drug arrest hit the papers.
The reason New Line is now looking to push it back to a mid-August release, I’m told, is because another Keira Knightley film, Pride and Prejudice (Focus Features), is moving its opening date to November 11 from a previous opening date of September 23, and such a conflict would only hurt both films.
There’s also some mucky-muck about Knightley’s busy schedule (she’s currently shooting the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel) and her consequent availability for p.r. duties being a factor in pushing up the Domino release date.
Kelly talked to me earlier today about Harvey, whom he spoke with last year “for a couple of hours” during research for his script. “I know she was very troubled,” he said. He called her recent drug bust and death (which looks like a suicide, although no official ruling has come down) “a very sad situation as Tony was close with her.”

Kera Knightley in studio-issed still from Domino.

He said he last saw Harvey during filming of Domino last fall in Las Vegas. Her head was shaved, he said, and she looked a little worse for wear.
“She has a cameo in the Vegas sequence of the film…actually she is in the final image,” he said. He called the footage of her “very haunting, especially now that she is gone, as the themes of life and death and the precarious/arbitrary nature of both are huge themes in the story.”
A New Line spokesperson said nothing would be changed in the film as it’s “pretty much locked.”
Scott, who knew Harvey on a personal basis, said in a statement that she “never failed to surprise or inspire me over the last 12 years. She was a free spirit like no other I have ever known.”
Domino producer Sammy Hadida said, “We were enormously saddened to hear of Domino’s untimely passing. She and I had been conferring about her music to be used in the film only weeks ago.
“Although our film is not intended as a biographical piece, hers was the dynamic personality and indomitable spirit that spawned an exciting adventure, not just on screen but in real life.”

Pulse-Pounder

War of the Worlds is, on a certain level, a close-to-great, sonically haunting, occasionally scary summer superflick…and anyone who dismisses it by saying things like “it doesn’t suck but it’s not very good either” is being disingenuous, really and truly.
There is no way this film won’t deliver most of what you’re expecting, even after reading this sentence, and I realize how presumptuous this sounds but I’m not wrong.

Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) carrying daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning) as his emotionally and intellectually-challenged teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwick) glares at the world and wonders how to make his mark in his own way…get ’em, Robbie!

The film is not without problems — it has four, to be exact, including a stinkbomb of a finale that people will be talking about all across the country for the next five days — but it delivers your money’s worth and then some, and anyone who tries to tell you differently isn’t talking about what this film literally and actually is. Don’t listen to them.
War of the Worlds is surprisingly scary here and there. I thought I was CG’ed and FX’ed out and couldn’t be affected by another grotesquely expensive, broad-assed alien-invaders film…but I was wrong.
It’s not cold or savage or unembroidered enough, but even with its various weaknesses WOTW is the new standard-setter for what it takes to arouse a cynical, distracted audience with I-Pods and Blackberrys in their pockets into going yeah, wow…whoa!!…and sit up and stare and forget about going to the bathroom.
At times it is halfway between being merely visually “impressive” and a genuinely fearful thing to sit through, and that’s no small feat. Everyone’s taken note of the 9/11 recreations (there are several, but the most vivid for me is the powdery gray dust covering Tom Cruise’s head after the first alien attack), and this is certainly part of what the film summons.

Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning

But it’s the sheer flattening force of what the alien invaders do to everything and everybody (and especially the sound of all this carnage) that counts. Make sure you see War of the Worlds in a theatre with a fortified Tyrannosaurus Rex sound system.
Forget all that David Poland stuff about the lack of thematic elements or the metaphor not making it or the narrative threads failing to fuse together and make WOTW into something more than what it is. He’s partly right but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t get it.
I know I’ve hated films that eschew the delicate interior stuff in favor of gross physicality, but this is one of those occasions in which the exteriors are good enough that it’s easy to let the absence of interior values slide. Trust me, this film is as good as this sort of thing can reasonably be expected to be.
Except for four bad things: one mildly bad thing, one puzzlingly bad thing, one irritatingly bad thing and only breathtakingly awful thing.
There’s an opening and closing narration sequence — taken straight from the H.G. Wells novel and spoken by Morgan Freeman — that should have been cut. There are times when paying respect to the original author or the original film is a mistake, and this is one of them.

The narration was passable when Sir Cedric Hardwicke read it in the 1953 George Pal War of the Worlds, but Freeman’s reading sounds too storybooky and “once upon a time”-ish. (People began to snicker almost immediately at the screening I attended.)
I appreciate the urge to have H.G. Wells’ opening line digested, but literary tributes are fairly off-track in a film of this sort. The visuals say it all. We’re living in an age of sub-literacy and as nuts as this sounds, sometimes it’s best for filmmakers to just go with the sub-literate flow.
There’s a very queer idea in this film about the alien tripods not coming down from the heavens but buried and waiting under the earth’s surface for a long time and being activated by lighting bolts carrying aliens or alien vessels or whatever.
This is obviously nonsensical…unless, of course, one throws out credibility and just accepts it as metaphor. We are being destroyed by elements from within. This doesn’t add up, but …what?…malignancies in our systems, ourselves, our souls…waiting to be cut loose by time or fate or some built-in trigger?
Why do the aliens have to come from inside the ground? I suspect it’s because Spielberg fell in love with the idea of a tripod bursting its way out of a Hoboken street (it’s a fantastic thing visually, I have to admit) and said to screenwriter David Koepp, “Make it work.”
I ignored it, waved it away…but it bothered me later. People weren’t buying it outside the Zeigfeld theatre on Monday night, I can tell you. One guy was saying, “What the hell was that about?”

The son of Cruise’s Ray Ferrier, called Robbie and played by Justin Chatwin, should have been killed early on and stayed that way.
Chatwin is a good actor caught playing a badly written role. Robbie is a total dumbass. He’s feeling lots of anger and resentment about his irresponsible dad, see…but this emotional posture is unaffected by a smidgen of practical caution or strategic intelligence when the aliens start attacking. But he is sure is emotional!
Robbie and Ray and sister Rachel (Dakota Fanning) are driving through the carnage with one of the world’s last remaining working autos. (The others have had their batteries neutralized by an electro-magnetic pulse.) Ray asks Robbie to take the wheel but tells him to stick to the back roads and avoid crowds for obvious reasons. What does Robbie do while Ray is catching some z’s? You have to guess?
That settled it. Like Frankie Pantegelli barking at Michael Corleone about the hated Rosotto brothers in The Godfather, Part II, I was telepathically text-messaging the same message over and over…”I want this kid dead…mort!”
Then Robbie makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to join the National Guard while they’re trying to stop the aliens from advancing on the populace. Utterly ridiculous, of course, but at least the fucker is gone, I was telling myself. He’s been zapped to death, turned into dust…great!
And then…no, I can’t say it.

Spielberg’s alien tripods aren’t that different from this comic-book depiction from at least 50 years ago, if not further back than that.

The final scene of War of the Worlds is beyond bad. It is so diseased it will send you into grief spasms. There’s a sense of quiet jaw-dropping horror at what Spielberg is choosing to show us and the way he’s gotten dp Janusz Kaminski to shoot it (it’s almost as treacly as the fantasy scene when Anne Baxter waltzes down the steps to meet Montgomery Clift in I Confess) and the actors he’s chosen to cast in this scene.
This is the kind of terrible, terrible finale that only Steven Spielberg is capable of. Jett said as we were leaving the theatre, “Why did he do that? He almost had it!”
Why can’t Spielberg restrain himself on this sentimental shit? If WOTW had been a bit tougher and colder and had excised the emotional cushioning it could have been brilliant. But no…Spielberg has to be Spielberg. He has to pick up that shotgun, he has to put the shells in the chamber, he has to aim it at his left foot and blamm!
I shared this reaction with a director friend yesterday, and he said, “Well, of course…this is Spielberg, the most egregiously sentimental and pandering filmmaker anywhere except for George Lucas.”
This guy, who’s been around for 30 years and knows everyone and all the stories, said that Spielberg is actually a very cold and manipulative guy deep down (Julia Phillips used to say this too), and that he injects sentimentality into his films because he thinks it sells, and he’s right most of the time, but that’s not who he really is.

I don’t know how to go from loathing the last scene back to a sincere admiration of the whole, but that’s what this movie is. As bad as the shitty stuff is, it doesn’t get in the way of the portions that are stunning. I can’t emphasize enough that I was knocked flat and awestruck throughout most of it.
Cruise the Scientology meltdown nutter was out the window and gone in a matter of seconds. The 9/11 references seemed superfluous and unintegrated to me, and it was obvious WOTW would have been better off not referencing it so strenuously.
War of the Worlds could have been 20% better…it could have been staggering if Spielberg had pruned the crap and the sentiment out. It could have been scarier still if Spielberg had tried for a chillier tone and more of a “take it or leave it, life is hard and alien invasions are really hard and brutal…deal with it” type of thing.
But that’s not Spielberg and it never will be. The man is his own worst enemy.