Preview: War of the Worlds

(Paramount)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise reunite for yet another update of H.G. Wells's classic 19th-century alien-invasion novel, which has been re-imagined so many times that it's inspired its own genre. Cruise plays the inevitable antihero, a deadbeat dockworker and divorced dad who must save his kids, including a daughter (Dakota Fanning) prone to bouts of screaming, from a horde of aliens endowed with a bottomless tab at Industrial Light and Magic. Spielberg has a special talent for both schmaltz and effects, so expect the best of both.

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