War of the Worlds

I knew I was going to absolutely love Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, but not this degree. This movie is no doubt in my mind the best movie of the year (Sin City was at the top before) so far. It's so good, from the actors and characters to the story to the perfect special effects, that I saw it an hour ago and I can't stop thinking about it, going through every scene in my mind. Just incredible work by Spielberg, very much in the line of his Jurassic Park, but with much more emphasis in the character work.

Based on the 1898 novel by H.G. Wells, and adapted by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, War of the Worlds is about Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) and his son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning) running from an Alien invasion in search of the kids' mother (Miranda Otto) who they hope is alive in her parents' house in Boston (they are in Newark).
Ray is a bachelor, the kind of guy who drives a Mustang and has a pinball machine in his living room and a car engine in his kitchen, and is a very messy house overall too. He's divorced, and so he doesn't care much. And even though he tried, he doesn't care much about his kids either, who have to sleep in the same room when they go stay with him, and of course there's no food in the refrigerator.
His kids know all this, and so they don't care much about him either. Rachel even kisses her stepdad goobye but just hugs his dad when she first sees him. Robbie ignores him, and tries to do what he wants though he knows he has to be there for his sister. But after the attack, the family unit runs together and Ray must protect them from this things, Tripods they're called, and they are amazing.

Make that Fucking Amazing. ILM's special effects are unbelievably mindblowing with these machines. Add that to the intense action from when we first see the Tripods to the moment when we get to Tim Robbins' basement and I my jaw was truly on the floor for those 45 minutes or so. The movie pauses a bit here, Robbins gives us some crazy talk and then the Aliens appear for the first time (awesome work with the Aliens' effects too) and my jaw was on the floor again with a scene that reminded me of one from Jurassic Park but was still amazing because is the first time we see the machines, or at least some parts of them, up close.

Tom Cruise gives one of his best performances ever in this movie, and it makes you forget all his real life craziness he's been promoting lately, because his Ray Ferrier is a true man, totally believable thanks to Tom's work. Justin Chatwin and Tim Robbins give fine performances too.
The true star of the movie is Dakota Fanning though, who also upstaged Robert DeNiro earlier this year in Hide and Seek. I've always been a huge fan of hers, so cute and all, but her acting is what I've always loved, and this is no exception, she's magnificent here.

Steven Spielberg is the star too, filming the story from the character's point of view, so we see what they see and not the cliched sequences of the landmarks of the world getting blown up like in every other sci-fi movie. The close camera work also gives us a sense of the fear the characters feel in every scene, keeping us at the edge of our seats all the time.
This is supposed to be a summer movie, and it has all the elements for it, but is not the mindless stuff we get all the time.
War of the Worlds is smart, it has heart, amazing characters, out of this world special effects and it has Dakota Fanning, and this little girl rules the world.