Not just an entertainment movie, though it seems to be

Rating: 8/10 (3 July 2005)

"War of the Worlds" may seem a lot like the typical summer blockbuster that you eat along with your popcorns and you forget right after you get out of the theater, as you've done with the last ten summer blockbusters. It's not. Worldwide hated Steven Spielberg redeems of his last flaws ("Catch me if you can", "Artificial Intelligence" and the somehow incomplete "Minority report") with this hell on earth caused by an alien invasion that has more in common with "Saving private Ryan" than it has with "Independence Day" (for example). At first, when we get into the life of Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) and his selfish, childish and rather inexistent relationship with his two kids, old-time Spielberg emerges from the shadows and, for the first ten minutes or so, the spirit of "Jaws" or "ET" comes back to life. His ability to depict the apparent routine of real life and, then, break it with the unexpected is superb, and in "War of the worlds", he does his best. The scene that breaks it all up (literally) and starts the journey is the one with the electric storm and the lightnings, probably the most terrifying scene filmed by Spielberg since "Close encounters of the third kind" (it makes you start to sweat with just some lightnings). After "uncle Steven" reminds us all he still knows how to frighten us with two bucks, the CGI madness begins (yeah, it begins with a camcorder that shouldn't be working, but that's, you know... madness): Brooklyn blown up, people disintegrated, trains in flames, corpses floating in the river and families destroyed. But throughout all these catastrophes, we slowly see a man, lost with his children somewhere, who is forced, little by little, to assume his responsibilities and to become an adult. And as being an adult means loosing, he has to go through the worst of all losses (he apparently sees his son die) to truly look into the eyes of his daughter and see his only salvation. Of course most people will say this film is mushy and shallow (they say that about any Spielberg movie), but that's just because they don't make the effort of looking more deeply. But Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, Guy Ritchie and Kevin Smith, they are the great directors of our time, and they're profound and complex. Of course, Kill Bill is profound: Uma Thurman spends the entire movie kicking the hell out of 239 people in a yellow suit, man! That must be deep!!! Not like Tom Cruise stylishly closing the door behind him, ready to kill a human being in order to save his daughter, while she sings the lullaby he wasn't able to remember, his worst fail as a father redeemed. We should remember that Hitchcock, Hawks, Walsh, and other directors were underrated and even hated in their time, until Cahiers du cinema, with Truffaut, Chabrol, Goddard and the others rescued them as critic sacred cows, and the same will happen with Spielberg. But who remembers George Stevens or Lewis Milestone? Who will remember Tarantino?