Bewitched and War of the Worlds
Last weekend was summer blockbuster crapfest.
Reasons to see it:
1. Steve Carell as Uncle Arthur
2. Nicole Kidman's wardrobe - actually unique and super cute
3. Jason Schwartzman's perfectly timed and exectued Tom Cruise impression
4. Half of the cast of the Daily Show and that Heather girl from Miss Congeniality - who is my new dead-pan, indie girl hero
Reasons not to see it:
Everything else about it, most especially Will Ferrell and also Will Ferrell with Nicole Kidman
1. Technology can and will be used against us. Actually, this is true. Think of September 11th. Our nifty planes converted into weapons of mass destruction. In the movie, our trains and cars become death machines. Thounds of people are uprooted, suddenly safer on foot. Perhaps the film encoruages us to live simpler lives - less technology and more old-timey ways. I'm sure the bloated special effects budget is a reverse psychological effort to encourage walking to ultimately save the planet ... yes.
2. Tom Cruise is smarter than the military. Say it ain't so! I don't want to live in a world where this is the case.
3. Tom Cruise has a nudity clause in all his contracts. It reads: Mr. Cruise must appear shirtless in at least one scene. His cut abs make him seem both taller and straighter. No, really, they do.
4. Humans are selfish ... and also selfless. And prone to mass hysteria and acts of love. And giving blood in surplus. And having their blood sucked out of them by "intellects, vast and cold and unsympathetic."
5. Be afraid of intelligent strangers. Be very afraid. They have deathrays and they will destroy your churches and use your own technology against you. Fear intelligence. Embrace the familiarly stupid. Vote Republican! Oh wait...
6. Our therapy-addicted, prescription drug-popping society can't handle emergencies. I actually liked this commentary. Devastation occurs so rapidly and on such a wide scale, that the family has no time to process or to grieve or understand what is happening. The humans are reduced to relying on their survival instincts - most of which are no longer in existence due to evolution. Thus, we resort to the selfishness and chaos as previously mentioned.
7. Speilberg can surprise me. Usually he just makes my blood sugar level sky rocket. This huge blockbuster movie contains no romantic love story. This is truly refreshing. Tom didn't even do everything he did in hopes of winning his ex-wife back. Granted, there is a definite love story between Tom and Dakota Fanning but that is a non-romantic love that is actually more powerful and believable and interesting than some sappy love story thrown in just because. See, Hollywood, it is possible!
8. Study History - especially the classics. Cruise uses the Trojan Horse trick to great blowy uppy effect towards the end of the film. Thus, I say this is a movie in favor of classical education. And not just because teenagers are too stupid to do anything other than fill in scantron bubbles and consume massively like good little robots. Or because I have my own agenda in regards to classical education, which will soon be shoved into the closet of collective consciousness and it makes me sad for the future. Woah. Off topic.
I give the film an 8 for entertainment, a 9 for effects and a 10 for being contradictory, misguided and silly in its life lessons. War seems to be a narrative treatise on what to do/what would happen in case of dire human emergency but its muddled delivery and American flags on every house make it too pandering for this movie goer. As Sarah said, "Give me 28 Days Later for the result of human coping in the face of evisceration."