Star Wars: A New Hope
Saw the whole thing for the first time last night (I had learned the plot through other sources, and seen the end once), and I can definitely see why Star Wars has evolved into such a huge media franchise. Very well done movie.
H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds (David Michael Latt version)
I was surfing through the channel guide on DirectTV at my grandparents' house last night, and I saw this on the Sci-Fi channel. Since I knew that Steven Spielberg directed a War of the Worlds film, and I thought that this was it, I decided to watch it. It was only when I looked up the film on the internet while I was watching it (I tend to do this whenever I watch movies), that I found out that there were three film versions of War of the Worlds released in the year that Spielberg's was, and this wasn't Spielberg's work. Although I was slightly disappointed, I decided to keep watching the movie anyway.
Honestly, I didn't think this was very good. For a movie about alien attacks, there was very little action. Most of the time the main character and/or people he was with were either cowering in fear or crying. It also ended very predictably.