Wednesday, July 06, 2005
War of the Worlds and Dark Water
Categories: Books • Life • Movies • Writing
Over the 4th of July weekend I watched both War of the Worlds and Dark Water. I paid for War of the Worlds, well actually I didn’t but thats another story. Dark Water was a free preview showing.
War of the Worlds was worth the money, Dark Water was not.
I have nothing against Dark Water. It wasn’t a terrible movie. The actors all did a fine job. The direction imbued the movie with the appropriate atmosphere. The problem with Dark Water was that it felt too much like watching a tame version of The Ring.
Of course the director original author was the same which gives a good reason for why this was the case. However, it just wasn’t original enough to make me think, “Great movie!” That is really all I have to say about it. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t good enough for me to care.
The fact that the theater staff confiscated my cellphone didn’t help matters much in terms of my state of mind.
War of the Worlds, on the other hand, completely surpassed my expectations. I was expecting to enjoy it (Spielberg is almost always entertaining even when he isn’t great) but I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did.
Tom Cruise did an admirable job as an immature father who is forced grow up in a matter of hours. Anyone else notice that he plays incredibly flawed people very well (Rainman, Collateral) and very good ones much less capably (The Last Samurai, etc)?
I had actually read the book that War of the Worlds was based on so I had some idea of what to expect. However, since I read the book quite a long time ago I remember very little of it, the ending being the part that stuck in my mind most. For this reason I was pleased to see this movie take basically the same route. It isn’t a big hollywood ending (Independence Day?) but it is the right one (even if clueless reviewers make comments about Spielberg not knowing how to end the movie).
Posted by Jamie at 07:19 PM
comments
so dark water wasn’t that great? i haven’t seen it yet, actually, can’t remember the last time i’ve been to the theater, but was wondering if it was good or bad.
i’m waiting for the original japanese version to arrive in the mail (via blockbuster), so maybe the original is a bit better… i’ll let ya know when i watch it.
great site by the way, love the header illustrations.
Posted by evan on July 12, 2005 at 07:47 PM
Evan,
It certainly wasn’t bad. It just borrowed too much from the author’s previous work. With horror movies especially the elements of surprise and novelty are important. Water played such a big roll in The Ring that it just wasn’t as scary this time around. It was very well done, just not very original. This is of course the American version I’m talking about. The Japanese one may be very different.
I’m not much of a movie goer myself. However, a friend of mine is so I end up at movies quite a bit more often then I would if left to my own devices.
Glad you like the site and my header illustrations. I spent way to much time tweaking those.
I’ve been to your http://www.evaneckard.com domain before and was especially impressed with your patterns. Is there a software program in particular you used for them?
Posted by Jamie on July 12, 2005 at 10:44 PM
Ever since having a couple kids, getting to the movies has been an adventure, so we don’t do it very often. Maybe when they get older, the wife and i can get out more.
i just use illustrator for the patterns. you basically start out with a square, bisect it to the pattern style you want, and then design within that area. replicate that, reflect it or rotate it, and keep going til it all lines up into a smooth pattern.
Posted by evan on July 15, 2005 at 10:51 AM