(From The Hartford Courant -- By Deborah Hornblow)
Ladies and gentlemen, here is a paint-by-numbers popcorn movie.
STEVEN SPIELBERG's remake of WAR OF THE WORLDS is the director's homage to the type of sci-fi creature features that played the drive-in when he was a kid. WAR is Spielberg's close encounter with THE B-FLICK PICTURES of the 1950s, films like IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, THE BLOB, and BYRON HASKIN's 1953 classic THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. These are all movies in which average guys suddenly find their neighborhoods overrun by something big and awful, and who must either attempt to stop it or simply survive the onslaught, all the while protecting and caring for those they love.
Spielberg has assembled his crack team of longtime collaborators -- cinematographer JANUSZ KAMINSKI, composer JOHN WILLIAMS, production designer RICK CARTER and editor MICHAEL KAHN -- and the result is a well-crafted movie but one that fails to deliver the thrills, chills and pure camp that make the genre everything it can be.
Schmaltz Saps War Of The Worlds
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment