Movie Review

I think I've mentioned before, it's a rare treat for us to see a movie in an actual theater. With all the movie goodness out of late, though, we had to steal away to take in a summer flick. My bride had been itching to see War of the Worlds for weeks now - every time the trailer came on the tv, she had the same comment: 'that's a different role for him.' 'What, action movie, dodging explosions, trying to save the world?' 'You know what I mean.'

While the movie starts off as only vaguely interesting, it quickly degrades into the sci-fi equivalent of the Blair Witch Project. Apparently, what she meant by different was 'makes me want to scrape the memory of that movie off my brain with a dull spoon.' I've rarely seen an action movie in which so little actually happens - Not to spoil the movie for you, but humanity survives, and it's no thanks to Tom Cruise. Halfway through the movie, I found myself rooting for the alien invaders, in the vain hope that if they killed off Cruise the movie might return to interesting. The heroes of the movie are freaking protozoa (my 9th grade biology teacher would be proud that I recognized them). Seriously. Protozoa. I don't care if the plot is a remake of an H.G. Wells classic. If your hero is a single celled organism, your movie's in trouble.

To do a better job of keeping up with movies, we signed up for the UK Netflix equivalent - Screen Select. DVDs shipped right to our mail box, no late fees. I love living in the future. The only problem with this kind of service is that I tend to update my rental queue with a dozen of whatever's struck my fancy at the moment. Which leads to us getting every movie Danny Kaye ever made in one continuous stream. This time, my bride has her own login. And it's her responsibility to watch my selections and make sure we don't end up with a Chris Rock screen fest.