akiva

War of the Worlds/Batman Begins
I had high hopes going into todays double-feature; perhaps those hopes were a bit too high, because they were only partially realized.
My family and I began with War of the Worlds. I'll admit right off the bat, I'm a huge Speilberg fan. There are very few living directors who can work a camera as well as Speilberg can, and his last six or seven films have had a distinct visual style that make them a pleasure to watch. Unfortunately, those strengths aren't enough to cover the weaknesses of the film. To begin with, why are the aliens attacking us? No reason is ever given, which makes the behavior of the aliens throughout the film extremely puzzling. First, they walk around in giant machines vaporizing (literally) people left and right. Then, two-thirds of the way through the film, the aliens start harvesting humans and shredding them. So if the aliens wanted to harvest us and shred our bodies, why would they vaporize us first? There are those who believe that withholding motives from the aliens makes them more frightening. I am not one of those people.
Additionally, the characters are poorly developed, one-note, and, in several instances, terribly miscast. Do I believe Tim Robbins as a shotgun clutching survivalist maniac? Absolutely not. Do I feel any sense of tension when Tom Cruise's son wants to abandon his family and fight the aliens? No, because he's so poorly constructed as a character that I have no emotional investment in whether he lives or dies. Did Dakota Fanning start to get on my nerves with her wide-eyed and frightened little moppet routine? Christ almighty, yes!
Ultimately, the film lives or dies by its ending, and in this case, it dies. First of all, we're expected to believe that aliens are smart enough to build gigantic machines with death rays (which are undeniably cool, by the way) but they aren't smart enough to discover fucking antibiotics. And then, despite millions upon millions of people getting slaughtered, we're supposed to be happy that Tom Cruise and his asshat family made it out ok. That's asking too much.

From what my friends had told me about Batman Begins, I was expecting a super-hero film on par with Spiderman 2 or Superman. No dice, folks. Batman begins has it's own set of problems, and while it's not nearly as bad as the previous two Batman films, it doesn't come close to Tim Burton's vision.
First of all, Katie Holmes. Her courtship of Tom Cruise really doesn't affect me either way, but do you honestly believe her as a hard-ass assistant district attorney in one of the most crime infested cities in America? Hell no. This has nothing to do with her acting ability; she just isn't right for the part. It should have gone to someone older and more mature, and the film suffers overall because of it.
Additionally, for some reason Christian Bale felt compelled to try and use two different voices for his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman. When he's Wayne, he speaks all of his lines like a normal human being. When he's Batman, he has a sort of whisper/grown combination that is meant to be intimidating, but merely sounds silly. It was a huge miscalculation because every time Batman spoke, I couldn't get over how ridiculous he sounded.
The biggest disappointment of the film, though, was the action sequences. Maybe Christopher Nolan just needs to get some practice, because the fight scenes and chases felt like they were done by an amateur. Nolan and his editor employed quick cuts that had the unintended effect of making the action so disorienting that I couldn't follow what the hell was happening. It's hard to enjoy a fight scene when you can't tell who is being hit. This is symptomatic of another complaint I had about the film; the editing. Nolan seems to prefer non-linear storytelling, regardless of whether it serves the film or not. Thus, we end up with an opening third that has horrible pacing because Nolan is trying to show Wayne's training under Henri Ducard AND the formation of his guilt over his parents death and his fear of bats. The film would have flowed much better if it had simply started with Wayne as a young man, his parents dying, him travelling the world in search of the nature of evil, and then meeting Ducard.
That being said, Batman Begins was a big improvement over the last two Batman films. Rather than playing itself as camp or kitsch, Begins has the nerve to take itself seriously, which is exactly the way Batman needs to be. Furthermore, the supporting cast is the best that any Batman movie (and honestly, any movie at all) has seen in quite some time. Michael Caine, Rutger Hauer, Morgan Freeman, Tom Wilkinson, Liam Neeson, Ken Watanabe, Gary Oldman, and my personal favorite, the delectable Cillian Murphy. That man is so beautiful I almost creamed myself.
So, was it worth it? That's a tough call. Batman Begins was ok mostly because I snuck into it, and if it's free, it's me. War of the Worlds is definitely not worth the time or money, unless you have a serious thing for Tom Cruise, and even then you'd be better off just renting Minority Report.