*** SPOILERS ***
War of the Worlds, or: "Signs" meets "Half Life 2" meets "AI" meets "Threads". First, I was expecting a much worse film, and I was quite impressed by it, specially it's first half. Spielberg didn't drag the character development too much as it happens in other disaster movies, so in 10 minutes the whole plot is moving. When the Tripods first atack, there's a sense of catastrophe and bleakness and horror I haven't seen in a movie since "Threads", the whole sequence is very good, I was in awe, BUT... at the same time, it felt like he tried NOT to make it too scary/gory in order to avoid an R rating. I HATE when that happens! I hate when you notice sequences being tamed down for rating reasons! If you're going over the edge, GO over the freaking edge and make it an R movie, make the people explode in gory painful horrible-to-watch ways...!
After Cruise's character meets Tim Robbins' character, the whole thing slows down and gets a "Spielberg summer movie" feeling, a "Jurassic Park" and "AI" feeling... They all hide of the tentacle like the kids from Jurassic Park were hiding from the dinosaurs, Cruise gets captured by the alien spacepod thing that keeps a few humans for "snack" (and he has greandes with him! how convenient!), and the whole Spielbergesque happy-happy-joy-joy ending! If there's one thing I never enjoyed in "War of the Worlds" is the ending. If there's something I don't like about Spielberg is the ending of his movies, with "feel good everyone survives suspension of disbelieaf" kinda ending. I think there was an oportunity to shock the audiences and KILL the main characters, or at least kill the girl by some sort of desease or lack of food or somerthing, at least it would be ironic when the aliens died for that same reason.
All in all, a good movie, I'd rate 6.5 out of 10. Oh, and as I've realized in the worse way possible, it's not really a movie to take a date with.
