Excellent sounds and special effects

Rating: 9/10 (29 June 2005)

I just came home from movies... still feeling a little shocked and excited. I wasn't expecting too much. Maybe something like Independence day, Armageddon, all those total annihilation movies where humankind is about to be destroyed. Mostly I was concerned about Tom Cruise. I really expected this one to be Cruise's macho stuff with lots of American flags around and small NASA shuttles carried by running children in India, maybe even The President himself taking down the big alien in the end.
Thank you Mr.Spielberg for not making this one one of them annoying America-saves-the-planet movies. Instead, you created an exciting movie with lots of action and intense atmosphere. And maybe set the new movie body count record of all time.
I was really positively surprised. The film started right away and the suspense lasts really to the very end. The sounds and visual effects are awesome. Hopefully you'll have good sound system in your theater because this one has really well mixed sounds. Loud and low but without any painful hi-pitched ear-piercing sounds. You can feel those quakes and weird alien tuba sounds in your stomach. Tom Cruise acts well in this one, didn't annoy me at all. In fact quite the opposite.
I gave the high points for the sounds and visual effects, the two reasons why I went to see it in the first place. So for me this time it was money well spent.