Its War!

[Pic Courtesy MovieWeb]

I remember summers even a few years ago where I looked forward to a Hollywood flick releasing every Friday and the same night - or worst case, the weekend - found me at the multiplexes standing in line. But the movies on my Summer must-see list have decreased over the years and this summer, I really wanted to see only three movies on the big screen - Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Batman Begins and War of the Worlds.

I have managed to see the first two already and the third movie in that short list releases today. Ofcourse it comes with a lot of expectations being a Spielberg film and Tom Cruise is icing on the cake. Their previous association, Minority Report, was a very intelligent film that won raves from most critics and won the first place in the year-end, top ten lists of both Ebert and Berardinelli. But Ebert is pretty harsh on War of the Worlds in his review today and Berardinelli's review isn't out yet.

Spielberg has dealt with sci-fi and aliens before in ET(which I liked) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind(which I didn't) but this is the first time he has the aliens as bad guys out to destroy mankind. As Berardinelli put it nicely, War of the Worlds is our chance to see how Spielberg would've made Independence Day!