Brilliant and touching

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The first half of this movie is pretty awesome. Tom Cruise is not perfect for the role of a blue collar dad but he does not do a terrible job in the film. Some of the script is not perfect. But the alien sequences are masterful. The visuals of them destroying the world are underrated Spielberg classics. The final half of the film is not as good the first but maybe one day we'll have an even better War of the World's movie? (PS - if you've never seen the old TV show it's terrifying!)

The film starts with the image of a disintegrated American family and ends with a reunified one. To get this result, 2 hours of non stop fighting against aliens were needed. The aliens are using huge robots which walk pretty clumsy the earth, XIX - Jules Verne style, with snake like tubes which get people like a monster. In order to make them powerful, the humans use the classical machine guns like in a SF of the 60's. Only once we see fighters and helicopters. And they are useless due to a shield. So the cheap Troy horse trick is obvious, the hero after being abducted into the belly of the robot, places a hand grenade, and all the huge machinery suffers a magnetic shock. One merit of the movie is to see no oil explosion. It's a movie from a different era, even if it starts in NY, I cannot remember seeing any minority. Only once, in countryside there is an Afro-American robbing a crashed airplane. Which is the opportunity of a hilarious moment when Tom Cruise asks the guy if he is a survivor, and 20 seconds later his tour comes to be asked the same question. In an America wrecked by earthquakes stormed by Alien machine getting out of the ground, where the streets are filled by destroyed houses, people, wrecked cars, even airplanes, there is all the time a clear way for someone with a car. The car represents the freedom. And is amazing that our hero, and the army are the only working cars. Only once, the street is crammed by people, but they still are driving through. The people attack the car. Tom Cruise gets out, and only when he sees that someone would pick the car not leaving out his daughter, he takes out his gun. This is a second powerful symbol. Tom Cruise is a responsible family guardian, when he had left the house, he took his gun out of a cipher secured box. And now, only in an extreme situation, he threats the others to keep the distance. He is like an European hero of XIX with savages because it looks like there is nobody with a gun, in US at countryside ... good joke In a such a dramatic situation, the statistic on interactions with the strangers of our hero is pretty bad, they are so few that I can describe all of them: 1. he discovers with the other people in the street the weird holes in the ground -> there is some common feeling, but then he runs by himself, like everyone else 2. he steals the car of a friend who repaired a car according to his advice 3. the tv crew shows him the news at a global level, but then they shut the door of the van in his nose 4. before taking the boat, he discovers an ex-girlfriend with her daughter, he doesn't help her to get on the boat 5. the only positive is when the Christian couple try to get his daughter out of the battlefield, when she is waiting alone for him 6. the crippy one is their lonely host who has food deposits for months, and the hero asks the host to talk to him never to his child 7. the second positive is the soldier who helps him to get out of the belly of the monster 8. the third positive is when the hero shows the birds on the head of the allien robot to a soldier who discovers from this the method to win against the alliens These are all interactions! conclusions: the isolation of people, the only support is from the army and a little from the Church. This movie has so many clichees, and use so much makeup, that it might be a parody, a trick to deceive the censorship. If this is the case, bravo, if not ... it's very said for its public.

Phones are out, power is out, cell phones are out but at the beginning with cameras?????? Come on

Cant even get 30 minutes in before "OMFG WHY IT IS SO LOUD!" to 5 minutes late "WTF DID THEY SAY?"(better pause rewind and turn the volume up), and "OMFG ITS LOUD AF AGAIN!". Seriously I had a decent memory of seeing this in the theater but trying to watch it at home its ridiculous. Other than that its trying to cram in some family story that you don't really have enough time to care about despite how good looking the actors are. Don't forget dad's dumb, and the little girl knows more than everyone else except when it comes to mechanics. Really hope the famiy turns out okay but to be honest I'd prefer more shots of the aliens and their technology. Just need to have the remote handy to turn it the volume down by 75% the next time they have a quiet talk again.