One of the most anticipated movies on the year hits theaters this weekend with Battle Los Angeles.
The Hollywood Reporter has weighed in with their review. Here’s a sample:
Director Jonathan Liebesman (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) must have thought that shooting the whole film from a shaky, constantly readjusting camera perspective would give it the immediacy of you-are-there documentary coverage; instead, it makes it look like an affected TV show, provoking the nagging urge to fast-forward through all the speeches to get to the good parts.
The cliches are so abundant in the script by Chris Bertolini (The General’s Daughter) and the rah-rah stuff is delivered with such straight faces that, with just a slight adjustment in tone, Battle Los Angeles (the title of which features no punctuation onscreen) could stand as an effective parody of alien visitation pictures. If Mystery Science Theater 3000 was still around, the gang would want to put this one in its sights pronto.
You can read the full review HERE
Roger Ebert gave it half a star. I think I’ll wait for it to come out on video.
Pity, I had such high hopes for. Guess I’ll save my money & watch the ScyFy version this Saturday. I’m sick like that.
B-movie maybe? I can watch those when I’m in the mood. Maybe Red Riding Hood instead…everytime I see the trailer for that one I think it’s got to be Oldman..he almost always turns out to be the bad guy. Well I’m seeing at least one of them.
Oh no… I was looking forward to this one.
Saving my cashey money for SuckerPunch.
Well I for one was very disappointed. After reading all these reviews, I was expecting a terrible, cheesy movie with a few badly-CGIed ‘splosions. Instead, it was a pretty decent movie. Sure it was basically a “serious, non-comedic” remake of Independence Day, and there was zero character development on anyone other than the two leads, but other than that, it was pretty enjoyable.
This one and Sucker Punch will have to wait for cable or my Netflix queue.
As I said, “Yup, lots of **** blows up real good, but since they don’t show anything else in the previews that’s probably all there is to this thing.”
Another fine example of film reviews and reviewers spouting self-congratulatory drivel and keeping the target audience away from a very decent movie. Granted the movie wasn’t high art, but it was gritty and fun, admittedly one speech felt ham-handed, but as a former member of military (US Army) and a gulf war vet, these guys felt like a real combat unit. In that aspect it was a very good war movie. The special effects were great and seamless, the aliens were scary and formittable enemy and you couldn’t get comfortable with any of the characters, because you never knew who was going to survive. Recommend.
If the critics really hate it, I know that I will enjoy it – especially if Roget Ebert hates it. I agree with Chavalier, it wasn’t a “high art” film, but I don’t think that was the audience. It is a big budget, popcorn snacking, explosions, sci-fi, military fun! And I really enjoyed it!
Haven’t seen it yet, but want to, it looks like a decent war movie, and like it could be fun. My biggest beef from the trailer is questioning why do they keep blowing up the meteors they’re bombarding the planet with? A nice ground strike of even a 5m iron asteroid at even relatively low speeds should yield a nice 200 KiloTon explosion without too much radiation. Why detonate in the air, you loose so much kinetic energy and just cause terror and panic, oh well.
Haven’t seen it yet, but want to, it looks like a decent war movie, and like it could be fun. My biggest beef from the trailer is questioning why do they keep blowing up the meteors they’re bombarding the planet with? A nice ground strike of even a 5m iron asteroid at even relatively low speeds should yield a nice 200 KiloTon explosion without too much radiation. Why detonate in the air, you loose so much kinetic energy and just cause terror and panic, oh well.
Sean, This is revealed 10 minutes into the movie, so it’s not really a spoiler, but they aren’t detonating meteors. The “meteors” themselves are actually the aliens’ drop pod-type things.