War of the Worlds

One of my favorite horror movies!

Great movie

Not a Tom Cruise fan, but this was a great movie!

Absolutely love this movie....

Apart from the bodacious special effects, perhaps the best thing in this film is Tom Cruise’s excellent performance as Ray: well-modulated and always believable, a likeable everyman. And the most annoying elements are Ray’s unbearably horrible children. The son is a snarky impertinent and callow spoiled egotist, whose anger is largely posturing (he spends half the movie with a curl in his lip or a grimace). And the daughter is even worse: a quintessential snowflake some years before the term became prevalent, who has panic attacks at the drop of a hat, during which she screeches and makes godawful scenes, having to be coddled at every step of the way, always having meltdowns at the most perilous moments, when any child of ordinary intelligence should know that this is NOT an ordinary state of things, and that making a ruckus might well result in death… again, a function of the narcissism and being so lily-livered one faints at the merest breeze. I short, I cringed through most of her scenes. I was reminded of the horribly bratty little girl in ROBOT MONSTER, and how relieved I was when Ro-Man finally did us all a favor by shutting her up permanently.There were some problems with the premise of the tripod machines being buried -- that many, buried all over the globe, and they were never detected? That strains an already quite strained credulity almost to the breaking point. I did like the homages, though. Setting the initial attack in New Jersey was a nod to the legendary Orson Welles broadcast. (Though in Jersey City, not Grover’s Mill—it has been pointed out that the fateful intersection where the tripod emerges has a street name, Van Buren, which is the surname of Ann Robinson’s character in the George Pal 1953 film. It is, however, also an actual street name in Jersey City.) They also quote the 1953 film, where General Mann says, “Once the tripods start moving, no more news comes out of that area.” There are a number of things harkening back to the original novel: the red weed, the scene where the train engulfed in flames passes, and the aliens harvesting people (to drink their blood). And a fine visual nod to INVADERS FROM MARS: when Ray’s daughter flees the farmhouse basement and Ray goes after her, he approaches a hillside down which a line of split-rail fencing snakes, and beyond which is a reddened swamp or fen, just like the swamp in the earlier film where the aliens were buried.The aliens seem to have only one, not two, rays; and it’s a bit beyond credulity how the heat ray works: any ray which would reduce the body to ash would almost certainly do the same to any clothing. But the explosion of ash and empty clothes IS an impressive effect.Unlike the 1953 movie, not a single landmark building is destroyed. I’m sure this was to avoid “the cliché” of such scenes, but then, in disaster porn, they’re part of the whole aesthetic.On the whole, a fun film, with some exciting and engrossing attack sequences, especially if you can wink at the illogical parts, and mute or fast-forward through the scenes with those flesh-crawlingly awful kids.

Had a slight problem with a multiple order of discs and this one was missing from the order. Amazon was great,providing a substitute DVD for another title and I picked this one up locally.No book reports of the story, characterizations or my opinions on anything other than the quality of the BluRay transfer itself. I do have the standard DVD version and now the Blu Ray.If you don't or didn't like the movie, than don't buy it. However, if you did like it, as I did, you must absolutely get War of the Worlds on Blu Ray. This is a DEMO disc for your audio system for sure. The transfer of the audio is DTSHD 5.1 and if the sound editors didn't get an Academy award for their work, they was robbed. The audio is brilliant, it is the star of the Blu Ray world with huge, deep bass, fantastic use of the discreet channels of your home theater system and clear details throughout the audio range. I am searching my head to find a better Blu Ray disc to demo a home theater system with and am coming up short. There are plenty of Blu Rays with great audio, even more without, but none that I have found that surpass War of the Worlds. If you find one with better audio, let me know.The video transfer is also very good. I paused the disc in several places, especially dark scenes, to find any grain or artifacts and found none. While the coloration will swing wildly from a greyed out scene here to a sharply colored scene there, all that you see is what the cinematographer planned for you to see. There are several scenes that do appear to be softly focused and might not be sharp enough for your expectations but, given the dusty calamity of the story line, my guess is that the soft focus was deliberate in post production.This is a demo disc for sure.There are plenty of extras with interviews of Steven Speilberg, Tom Cruise and others as well as a retrospective of the 1953 version I saw as a boy. There are no deleted scenes and the interactive menu was easy to navigate.All my movie reviews are of this nature and focus only on the quality of the transfer to BluRay so check them and see if they are of help as well.Hopefully, this review has been of some help to you in determining your purchase, hope I am on the correct path with a review of the transfer quality as opposed to providing plot summaries.Thanks