Today, June 29th, the Earth has gone to war. And no, it has nothing to do with freeing Katie Holmes from an increasingly loopy Tom Cruise and his Xenu-following Scientologists. Not that that’s a bad idea. Plus, when we meet his character he’s wearing a Yankees cap. *shudder* He makes up for it with the Bullitt era Mustang that’s machotastic.

Sure, I kid Tom, but the reality is that he makes a great movie hero. At no time do you ever not root for him and you always feel like he knows what’s best, even if much of his performance is a lot of running and hiding and looking up before freaking out. There’s a reason Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise and didn’t do Battlefield Earth, even as a Scientologist. He knows what roles will fit his gallant persona. After awhile, I would have been all, “Fine, whatever, zap me, the world will be super crappy for the next fifty years, anyway.”

	"Tom, you have been called by L. Ron Hubbard to save humanity ... Just kidding! It's just me, Bob, from special effects. Had you going there, didn't I?"

Not only is Worlds a remake of the 1953 movie, you’ve seen worldwide impending doom in movies like Deep Impact, been stuck in claustrophobic situations in Signs, seen similar-looking aliens in Independence Day. I call Copycat! At first, the aliens are curiosities, but the only reason these E.T.s are phoning home is for reinforcements.

So what stands out about War of the Worlds? The effects are immaculate. Stunning, even, as the alien “tripods” are always around the corner, even when you feel Cruise is in the middle of nowhere and should be out of reach. These things are really cool to watch, and have some serious lasers to incinerate humans and destroy buildings, bridges, Ben Affleck’s career, whatever’s in their way. The burning, speeding train is awesome in its placement to panic the audience.

Besides that, the close encounters of the bloodcurdling kind had some real suspense. (None of that fake kind like cats jumping off a cabinet.) There are close and daring escapes around every corner. There’s no way Randy Quaid is going to take out one of the ships all by himself.

Yeah, so I’m easy to frighten and I curl up in an Olsen twins movie about cute puppies, but seriously I was scrunching up in my seat. I didn’t want anyone around me see me jump, not that it mattered since they were too busy holding on to their 100 oz. Sprite.

I would like to thank Mr. Spielberg for making Dakota Fanning a young girl. Sure, at first you get the “kid smarter than adults” vibe, but that quickly changes when she actually acts like a child and gets unbelievably upset and squealy the worse the alien destruction gets.

Where the movie bogged down was by spending a little too much time in Tim Robbins’ Bizzaro World basement, but that’s really the only reservation. While they’re down there, Tim expositions for the tenth time what we’ve been talking about for the first hour, that these aliens have had their “tripods” ready to exterminate us for eons.

To which I say, really, the aliens have been planning this "for a million years"? I'm thinking it wouldn't have been a challenge to wipe out mankind back then, seeing as how there wasn’t anyone here. Or even as soon as 10,000 years ago so long as they zapped the pyramids first, or 1,000 years ago assuming they could raze a few castles. You get the point.

But who am I to judge? Oh, right, I’m a paying customer, so I’m exactly the guy with every right to judge.

So don’t think. This is an Event Movie, a flick to digest and then forget about by next week when Fantastic Four premieres. You know, like any other summer movies. One with Morgan Freeman narrating, and that makes anything smoother.