WAR OF THE WORLDS

My first thought after seeing Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds was: Thank God for the aliens, because although the creatures themselves aren't particularly memorable - a gooey blend of the director's beatific Close Encounters visitors and H. R. Giger's 1979 Alien design - their spacecrafts certainly are. The ships' enormous tripod legs, crushing everything in their paths, exude a wriggling, snakelike suggestiveness, and they have vicious talents besides; these tentacles have the ability to either incinerate their victims instantly - making the human race resemble ants at the mercy of a magnifying glass - or toss them into the spaceships' grotesque "mouths," producing more grisly, prolonged executions. (A couple of killings are reminiscent of Steve Buscemi's demise in Fargo.) To the War of the Worlds aliens, humans are a combination of entertainment, nuisance, and snack, and whenever Spielberg gives us evidence of just how queasily horrifying an attack of this nature might be, his movie is gripping and evocative.

My second thought was: Steven Spielberg has lost his mind.

BEWITCHED

As needless films versions of "classic" '60s TV series go, Nora Ephron's Bewitched is even worse than endeavors such as I, Spy and The Beverly Hillbillies, because this one actually seemed promising.

BATMAN RETURNS

Many Hollywood blockbusters feel so generic as to have been formed by committee, and in Batman Begins, that committee appears to be comprised entirely of comic-book bloggers. Just how afraid of Internet fanboys have movie studios become? It has been widely reported that this new installment in the superhero franchise is a deliberate rebuke to director Joel Schumacher's beyond-campy Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, and I couldn't be more on board with that; Schumacher managed to turn Warner Brothers' moody franchise into a half-assed Mardi Gras spectacle, minus the debaucherous fun. (Only in Schumacher's hands could Uma Thurman come off as a depressed drag queen.)