Be Cool & War of the Worlds

Be Cool is not cool. Be Cool be sucks. Be Cool is be bad. Be Cool shouldn't be made. Well, actually Andre Benjamin was just about the best thing in the movie. Well, besides the playing of Bob Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door. Andre Benjamin was good with everything he did. Seth Green was utterly wasted. And the music sucked pretty much. Man, that sequel just didn't need to be made at all. Why was it made? Were there things that needed to be said after Get Shorty? And then there was the changing of the soundtrack, almost the entire cast, and especially the style.

War of the Worlds bothers me for a lot of reasons. Mainly it's that Miranda Otto and Tom Cruise would never produce a kid that looks like Dakota Fanning. Also, I was rooting for Tom Cruise to die. Not because he's Tom Cruise, but because he was wearing a Yankees hat. His son, of course was in good because he was wearing a Red Sox hat, well, at least he was until he decided he wanted to get up close and personal with the aliens. I have an inherent bias towards the story, due to both being a big reader of science fiction, a fan of Orson Welles, and especially, of a collection of short stories written about the invasion as imagined by a lot of real people. It was a fascinating collection, full of crazy stories, some better than others, but they're all interesting. Anyway, I am a big nerd, and I liked it even if most of the reviews didn't. The movie, on the other hand just feels like a crappy Hollywood film. The obvious linkage of the aliens to terrorism was the only interesting part of it, and even then, beh. Why bury the tripods underground? Why make that much effort to take over a planet and then miss out on figuring out that the atmosphere is toxic? It just doesn't make any sense? Is it right that I'm rooting against the humans? Every one in this movie is a moron. And the payoff was ridiculous.

Apparently it was crappy recent movie last couple of nights. Dunno why that happened. I am however planning a bunch of 60s non-Beatles pop music movies. Monkees and Herman's Hermits, here I come!