War of the Worlds

I was still sick today but went to work anyway. Now that's dedication. Plus there was the anticipated half day, and if I took a sick day there would be little chance of making it out of the house.
So I got through the morning with not too much grimacing but lots of nose-honking, then bid farewell to my healthy colleague and boss, and took myself along to the movies.
I saw War of the Worlds. Got my coffee choc-top and joined the stampede into the theatre. Got a good seat but you won't be surprised to learn that three people came and sat right next to me even though there were still plenty of empty seats all over the place. It's not surprising, is it? That kind of thing happens to me. People are inexplicably drawn to me in the theatre. This time it was three Asian teenagers, two boys and a girl. Naturally they kept the girl in between them and neglected to put her next to me. Not very considerate, is it? No.
Oh well, but at least the seat to my left was empty and so I didn't go into a claustrophobic fit.
Anyway, after half a million goddam previews of stupid dumb movies like that new Jennifer Lopez atrocity Monster In Law, the movie got started.
I haven't read the H.G. Wells book so you won't get any fussy eggheaded point-by-point comparison here.
Tom Cruise plays Ray Ferrier, a crane operator in New Jersey, a regular Joe Sixpack-type character whose domestic life has sort of gone down the toilet. His wife is with another much more *together* dude and she drops the kids over to spend the weekend with him. The place is a mess, Ray doesn't know how to cook so gets the kids to order food delivered, he's obviously not the perfect father, and he makes a lot of goofy gurning faces (not purposely).
The weather turns peculiar and they go look at it. There's some big strange clouds spinning round like the beginning of a Bizarro World tornado and they all go wow hey that looks pretty cool. Then it quickly gets UNcool when lightning starts striking right in their backyard.
Everything then goes quickly upside down when big tripod machines bust out of the middle of the street and start blasting everything with lasers.
That's all I'll say about the plot. It's an alien invasion movie right? You know what's gonna happen. Anyway, I don't won't to spoil it for you (whatever little there may be to spoil), although most people who read this will probably be Americans or Canadians who have already seen it. You bastards get the movies way before us, you bastards.
This movie was LOUD. They really cranked the volume up in the theatre I was in, it was easily the LOUDEST movie I have been to so far this year. I didn't mind though. If it's too loud, you're too old. Right? MAN?
The sound of the alien machines was pretty amazing too. Good job. If you haven't seen it, wait until you hear the sound of the machines cranking up their lasers. If you HAVE seen it, wasn't that sound EXCELLENT, when the machines cranked up their lasers?
The movie managed to effectively convey a REAL sense of confusion, terror and impending doom. People like to think that if there was an alien visit, it would be like ET, or that the aliens would be so advanced that war and atrocities and all that nasty business would have been left behind, and they would be all Star Trek and smiling and showing us their cool gadgets and maybe taking us for a trip around Uranus. But these War of the Worlds bastards are not like that. They are not nice aliens and the only technology they want to show you is their lasers, and they do that by aiming at you and blasting you into oblivion.
Tom Cruise is not one of my favourite actors, but he did a good job here. Forget about all that Scientology baloney, and his jumping up and down, and pretend you have never seen him before. You will then see that his acting job was right on the money. But something in his favour was that at no point in the movie did he do one of his big stupid trademark grins. There are probably people who love that smile. I'm not one of them. It makes my skin crawl.
The audience was well behaved. No mobile phone action and no whispering.
Sadly the man who yells YEAH! WOO! was not at this session.