An example of a movie review. positive.

A: Pendragon Pictures' new film "H G Wells' War of the Worlds", the first faithful adaptation of the original novel, has been in development for about 5 years. A theatrical release was intended for earlier this year (March, 2005) but this never happened. The DVD was rushed out to coincide with the release of Spielberg's version, which hits theatres June 29.

I liked this film, with certain reservations.

How faithful is the adaptation? It's not quite 100% faithful to Wells' book, but 90 - 95% faithful is good enough for me. At least several scenes were totally new, such as Ogilvy the astronomer's confrontation with a farmer, and the unnamed writer/narrator awkwardly having tea with his cousin. But on the whole, this film follows the book very closely -- certainly much more than the classic 1953 version by George Pal.

Its greatest fault is that it was obviously made on a very cheap budget. The majority of it seems to have been shot blue-screen and composited with digitally rendered backgrounds. This is particularly annoying during most of the interior shots, and scenes of crowded city streets. The overviews of 1898 London look like something from a video game. Numerous scenes in horse-carriages were faked -- I guess they couldn't afford to rent a horse. The only scenes shot for "real" seem to be those in open fields or forests.

But within those budget restrictions, they managed to do quite a lot. Artistically, the film looks right. The Martians and their tripods are quite well done, and very true to Wells' descriptions. I was particularly impressed with the heat ray. Although the Thunder Child sequence, which should have been one of the film's highlights, is very disappointing. It's a great shame that they couldn't afford more actual sets, or better quality animation.

The acting and direction won't win any Oscars. For the most part, they are competent, not bad, but not outstanding. The music is quite good also, though not on a par with any of the major Hollywood composers.

I'm actually glad this didn't get a theatrical release, because the budget limitation would have made it look much worse on a big screen. As it stands, I would rate this similarly to a BBC-TV adaptation of classic literature.

A few nitpicks: Most of the scenes are presented with various colored filters (mostly red). This may have been an artistic choice, but it is used very inconsistently, and seems more like a sloppy job of mastering the DVD. And the writer/narrator's obviously fake moustache mutates from scene to scene.

Bottom line -- Is it worth seeing? If you can look past the technical and budgetary limitations, and get into the story, I think you will enjoy this, especially if you've actually read the original H G Wells novel. If, however, you are easily put off by cheap production values, you'd best pass on this (unless you're a MST3K fan). Be warned, however that the film runs a full 3 hours, so I don't recommend watching it all in one sitting.

BTW: An entirely different version of War of the Worlds (aka "INVASION") came out on DVD the same month that Spielberg's hit the theatres: http://imdb.com/title/tt0449040/. This was also made on a budget, but is updated to the present day like the Spielberg film - but it's much better! And to top it off, Jeff Wayne is making an animated film of his best-selling album from 1978, but that won't be out until 2007.

An example of a movie review. negative.

A:
This is a confused and incoherent mess of interminable scenes of boring dialogues and monologues. That is no exaggeration: you have to make a tremendous effort to even try to become involved with it.

I sincerely thought Fassbinder would make something interesting in order to tell why does Erwin/Elvira suicides at the end, but instead of this, in every scene somebody is trying to explain: "when he was young, this happened..." and "he just came back from Casablanca and ordered to cut everything down there...", etc.

Soon in the movie, Erwin/Elvira is in a slaughter house talking with a friend prostitute (certainly a slaughter house is the best place for a pleasant little chat), and while telling her the story of Elvira's life, Fassbinder shows the killing of one cow after the other. It is difficult to choose between giving attention to the disturbing images or what the transvestite is saying. Of course we come to the very forced and coarse symbolism of "I have suffered much in my life, and am about to die".

In one of the sparse moments where actually happens something, Erwin/Elvira encounters a former lover, that only after performing a extremely gay choreography with two other guys (as if going for the necessary level of homosexuality) is that he recognizes Elvira.

There are some interesting shots and ideas, I must admit (such as when the nun tells the story of the young Erwin), but everything on the movie is wasted due to Fassbinder's self- indulgence.