Battle: Los Angeles

Jon Starr said:
Well it has to do more with an actual event:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles

Conspiracy nuts say they were fighting aliens.
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That is right, I forgot about that. It would've been fun to see a movie were the aliens invaded during World War II. Sort of a retro-alien invasion film. I'd love to see what the war-time propaganda posters would be like if that happened, as they'd be pretty unintentionally hilarious.

Still though, BATTLE: [insert city name here] kinda works well for future installments if the first one is successful.
 
Batutta said:
Damn. I really wanted this to be good. Early reviews are not encouraging. Ebert especially raked it over the coals and gave it half a star.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110309/REVIEWS/110309992
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I just saw that review. Only read the last paragraph, but was amused by it.

I still fully plan on seeing the film on Friday. Ebert's a great critic, but his taste can be kinda stupid sometimes and I don't much care what critics (or audiences) say anymore. After all, Ebert liked Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (piece of s..t film), and audiences liked Avatar.

So I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy this as a B-movie popcorn flick. If I know a movie's not going to be a masterpiece, like Prince of Persia, I can usually watch them and enjoy them for what they are. I hate it when other people can't, because it tells me more about their unrealistic and frankly idiotic expectations for a movie than it does about the movie's actual quality.

Case and point: Transformers 2. Everyone knew it was going to be a s..t film, but it was a relatively fun s..t film. I don't get why everyone seems so upset to have "wasted their money." For god's sake, it was a Michael Bay movie... surely you weren't expecting an Empire Strikes Back?

</rant>
 
Michael Traven said:
I just saw that review. Only read the last paragraph, but was amused by it.

I still fully plan on seeing the film on Friday. Ebert's a great critic, but his taste can be kinda stupid sometimes and I don't much care what critics (or audiences) say anymore. After all, Ebert liked Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (piece of s..t film), and audiences liked Avatar.

So I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy this as a B-movie popcorn flick. If I know a movie's not going to be a masterpiece, like Prince of Persia, I can usually watch them and enjoy them for what they are. I hate it when other people can't, because it tells me more about their unrealistic and frankly idiotic expectations for a movie than it does about the movie's actual quality.

Case and point: Transformers 2. Everyone knew it was going to be a s..t film, but it was a relatively fun s..t film. I don't get why everyone seems so upset to have "wasted their money." For god's sake, it was a Michael Bay movie... surely you weren't expecting an Empire Strikes Back?

</rant>
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I'd never go off one review, but there seems to be a consensus among critics, even those who liked it, mainly that the script is dumb and some of the performances weak. I'll still probably go see it as well, but the "it's just an action movie so I'll forgive crappy filmmaking" attitude is not my thing. When I go to the movies, I expect a decent story, acting and characters I give two craps about, along with some whiz bang technical wizadry. Movies aren't a drug for me. I want more than just a meaningless high that gets me off.
 
Batutta said:
I'd never go off one review, but there seems to be a consensus among critics, even those who liked it, mainly that the script is dumb and some of the performances weak. I'll still probably go see it as well, but the "it's just an action movie so I'll forgive crappy filmmaking" attitude is not my thing. When I go to the movies, I expect a decent story, acting and characters I give two craps about, along with some whiz bang technical wizadry. Movies aren't a drug for me. I want more than just a meaningless high that gets me off.
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Oh, I certainly don't give them a pass. Haha, Gavin Hood didn't earn points in my eyes for X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He earned points for Rendition.

Michael Bay is still a s..t filmmaker, IMO.

I just think maybe I'm more accepting of a movie that isn't perfect than other people are. And I admit I have a tendency to get irritated when people slam a bad movie for being bad - my initial reaction is "Duh! What did you expect?"

I guess I just figure that without B-movies like Battle: Los Angeles and Season of the Witch, there wouldn't really be any great movies like The King's Speech and Inception. I don't respect the filmmakers any more for making B-movies, but I can still have a good time if I'm getting what I paid for.

BTW, just watched Aaron Eckhart talk about the movie on The Daily Show. The clip they showed looked pretty interesting.
 
It was a mix of Independence Day and Blackhawk Down... I was totally waiting for Bill Pullman to show up somewhere in the end of the movie with a cigar in hand.

Best line of the movie... "Maybe I can help, I'm a veterinarian."
 
I enjoyed this movie a lot! of course it has it's cheesy moments with dialogue and plots but i didn't want to watch this movie for that! if i want great dialogue or character development I'll watch a more artsy film. I wanted to see some alien killing action and that's what i got. With that said I think Erin Eckhart did a great job of acting in this. Cinematography was great as well. This movie was well worth it and i'll probably buy it on blu-ray when it releases.
 
inVINCEable said:
I enjoyed this movie a lot! of course it has it's cheesy moments with dialogue and plots but i didn't want to watch this movie for that! if i want great dialogue or character development I'll watch a more artsy film. I wanted to see some alien killing action and that's what i got. With that said I think Erin Eckhart did a great job of acting in this. Cinematography was great as well. This movie was well worth it and i'll probably buy it on blu-ray when it releases.
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I enjoyed the movie, but did you really think the cinematography was great? Sure the action stuff was on point, but the first 10 minutes were slow, semi-dramatic scenes all shot in an intense action style. That bugged the crap out of me. Then the aliens showed up and the movie got pretty awesome.
 
I just saw it and I liked it. It was pretty much a mash up of every war/alien cliche ever but it was still a fun to watch. That scene on the overpass was great. I think the critics were a little too hard on this one. I would give a solid 2 1/2 stars. Not epic, but no where near horrible. I even thought Ne-yo did a pretty good job. If you can get past the script issues it is worth the money. Landmark was high though, I took my wife and cost me $32! but at least they have a full bar! even though I only had water.
 
BATTLE: LOS ANGELES. Well he did give it half a star...

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES. Well he did give it half a star...

bilde


Battle: Los Angeles

BY ROGER EBERT / March 9, 2011

cast & credits
Nantz Aaron Eckhart
Elena Michelle Rodriguez
Michele Bridget Moynahan
Joe Michael Pena

Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Jonathan Liebesman. Written by Christopher Bertolini. Running time: 116 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sustained and intense sequences of war violence and destruction, and for language).


"Battle: Los Angeles" is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid. Its manufacture is a reflection of appalling cynicism on the part of its makers, who don't even try to make it more than senseless chaos. Here's a science-fiction film that's an insult to the words "science" and "fiction," and the hyphen in between them. You want to cut it up to clean under your fingernails.

Meteors fall to Earth near the coasts of the world's major cities (and in Ireland's Dingle Bay — that meteor must have strayed off course). They contain alien troops, which march up from the beach with their weapons of war and attack mankind. No reason is given for this, although it's mentioned they may want our water. We meet the members of a Marine platoon, and its battle-scarred Staff Sgt. Nantz (Aaron Eckhart). They're helicoptered into Santa Monica and apparently defeat the aliens. Since all of Los Angeles is frequently seen in flames, it's not entirely clear how the Santa Monica action is crucial, but apparently it is.

The aliens are hilarious. Do they give Razzies for special effects? They seem to be animal/machine hybrids with automatic weapons growing from their arms, which must make it hard to change the baby. As the Marines use their combat knives to carve into the aliens, they find one layer after another of icky gelatinous pus-filled goo. Luckily, the other aliens are mostly seen in long shot, where they look like stick figures whipped up by apprentice animators.

Aaron Eckhart stars as Staff Sgt. Nantz, a 20-year veteran who has something shady in his record, which people keep referring to, although screenwriter Christopher Bertolini is too cagey to come right out and describe it. Never mind. Eckhart is perfectly cast, and let the word go forth that he makes one hell of a great-looking action hero. He is also a fine actor, but acting skills are not required from anyone in this movie.

The dialogue consists almost entirely of terse screams: Watch it! Incoming! Move! Look out! Fire! Move! The only characters I re*member having four sentences in a row are the anchors on cable news. Although the platoon includes the usual buffet of ethnicities, including Latinos, Asians and a Nigerian surgeon, none of them get much more than a word or two in a row, so as characters, they're all placeholders.

You gotta see the alien battleships in this movie. They seem to have been assembled by the proverbial tornado blowing through a junkyard. They're aggressively ugly and cluttered, the product of a planet where design has not been discovered and even the Coke bottles must look like pincushions. Although these ships presumably arrived inside the meteors, one in particular exhibits uncanny versatility, by rising up from the Earth before the very eyes of the startled Marines. How, you may ask, did it tunnel for 10 or 12 blocks under Santa Monica to the battle lines at Lincoln Boulevard?

There is a lazy editing style in action movies these days that assumes nothing need make any sense visually. In a good movie, we understand where the heroes are, and where their opponents are, and why, and when they fire on each other, we understand the geometry. In a mess like this, the frame is filled with flashes and explosions and shots so brief that nothing makes sense. From time to time, there'll be a closeup of Aaron Eckhart screaming something, for example, and on either side of that shot, there will be unrelated shots of incomprehensible action.

When I think of the elegant construction of something like "Gunfight at the OK Corral," I want to rend the hair from my head and weep bitter tears of despair. Generations of filmmakers devoted their lives to perfecting techniques that a director like Jonathan Liebesman is either ignorant of, or indifferent to. Yet he is given millions of dollars to produce this assault on the attention span of a generation.

Young men: If you attend this crap with friends who admire it, tactfully inform them they are idiots. Young women: If your date likes this movie, tell him you've been thinking it over, and you think you should consider spending some time apart.
 
Wow, I'm very surprised that was Ebert's review. I enjoyed the movie. I think whoever compared it to ID4 and Black Hawk Down was right on.
 
Like I wrote on my Facebook: Battle: LA was like a Hershey bar... a lot of "sweetness" without any "richness"
 
WildTrackDave said:
Wow, I'm very surprised that was Ebert's review. I enjoyed the movie. I think whoever compared it to ID4 and Black Hawk Down was right on.
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It seems Ebert disliked Top Gun as well giving it 2.5 stars...

Out of curiousity, I saw the film and it was semi-entertaining as a popcorn flick,
but not a great movie by any means... ID4 and Top Gun are better picks in the genre...

However, does Ebert have a problem with Pro-Military movies? I think he doth protest too much...
 
Personally, I think Robert Ebert is full of malarky at times, he's bagged some of the best films I've ever seen, and promoted some of the worst. His preferences aren't even specific, he'll praise a Dogme 95 film if it manages to not put you to sleep, but he'll bag a movie like Battle: LA when it accomplishes everything it's supposed to; I thought the film was grand, it was heck of a lot of fun, extremely intense, emotional, and unlike what Ebert's saying, I felt like the film played out extremely well. About the only negatives that I attributed it to is that I felt like they should have used a higher frame rate or something, every time the camera moved you couldn't make out a thing until it stopped, and that this film was obviously made to promote the army (count how many times the soldiers say something along the lines of "The Few. The Strong. The Marines.") and I can bet that a million people will sign up after they see this film. Other than that, it's one of the best action films of the year so far (next to Number 4, a surprise hit for me!), very solid impact, and a very good feeling at the end. It really kept me on my toes, and I loved Cloverfield after all, so this was pretty indulgent for me. And heck, I thought the acting was both superb and a bit of fun, the female character even brought that old fashioned 90's diversity cheese to the mix, which I thought was actually a nice touch (there was a face for everyone to relate to in this film!) and it really brought the importance of her character's survival to full circle at the climax.

One thing I want to talk about though is the quality of whatever they shot the film on. I saw the film at a theater that had recently updated their projectors completely, and not a tiny atom of the picture was off the screen, warped, or weird, it was a crystal clear picture that was entirely proportional to the screen like it was carved from diamond, and it felt so "strong" as opposed to being a weaker projected image. I noticed how grand this was throughout the entire film, and I also paid attention to so many details of the film (and I believe it was shot digitally, I saw rolling shutter in one shot.) and the film was crystal clear. If it was digital, I believe it was without a doubt 4k+ going on. It made me feel very bad about how my camera only resolves around 640P, there's no way that 640P will hold up like that on a screen as big as the one I just saw; I looked over at the exit sign near the screen, and 640P is like 1/8th of the exit sign's size! In ratio, 4k isn't that much bigger (two exit signs? four exit signs?) but I bet it'd make a difference, especially with a film like Battle: LA where the importance of realistic detail is really what counts.

And honestly, the aliens could have been a bit less goofy looking, the most enduring shot was when they come out of the water and they look much more like battle tanks and big rounded figures than ball heads that can climb around everywhere and get downright clumsy near the end. And unlike what Ebert is saying, biomechanics have been the subject of a billion films, it's not unusual to see aliens with robot parts attached to living bodies. The film also doesn't make it a mystery why the aliens are there, it says multiple times they need water, it shows them needing water, and the scientist guy bothers to explain that water is very rare. It also explains colonization and how it's happened in a million civilizations over time, and that the invasion is no different. All in all, the film took me to another world for a few hours and the whole time I was hoping the film would not end (and it filled up it's length so well, I'm very, very glad of that), and while the storyline of a brigade of like 15 soldiers going after a couple civilians in a city where thousands of people have already died (and then over half of those soldiers dying to save only what ends up being a woman and a little boy) is almost silly, but in the end the team serves a big purpose. So yeah.

I hope there's a sequel, I'd love to go see the surviving team battle it out in another city trying to take down another of the command stations, and heck, I'd love to see what defense the aliens could cook up in response given time for them to plan, I felt like this film left them seeming a bit silly for how dangerous they were in the beginning. Also, one reason why this film will really be a hit is this is the exact genre that's popular among video gamers right now, and I have to say that this film made me feel like I was truly in a video game, it was truly very intense. Despite that it was not 'camcorder recorded' in the style of Cloverfield (although the camera style was in many ways exactly the same), it actually did a better job of putting you in the action and making you a bit tense about what's around the next corner or the feeling you'd get being somewhere dangerous and surrounded by aliens. At times it was funny, at times it was tearjerking, at times it was intense, and at times it was simply interesting.
 
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Snapper123 said:
One thing I want to talk about though is the quality of whatever they shot the film on. I saw the film at a theater that had recently updated their projectors completely, and not a tiny atom of the picture was off the screen, warped, or weird, it was a crystal clear picture that was entirely proportional to the screen like it was carved from diamond, and it felt so "strong" as opposed to being a weaker projected image. I noticed how grand this was throughout the entire film, and I also paid attention to so many details of the film (and I believe it was shot digitally, I saw rolling shutter in one shot.) and the film was crystal clear. If it was digital, I believe it was without a doubt 4k+ going on. It made me feel very bad about how my camera only resolves around 640P, there's no way that 640P will hold up like that on a screen as big as the one I just saw; I looked over at the exit sign near the screen, and 640P is like 1/8th of the exit sign's size! In ratio, 4k isn't that much bigger (two exit signs? four exit signs?) but I bet it'd make a difference, especially with a film like Battle: LA where the importance of realistic detail is really what counts.
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I know you always have trouble trying to get your head into the game, but I wouldn't worry about the resolution. There were some very obvious places where another camera was probably used (the last wanna-be epic shot of the group standing, sun's to their backs, they're silhouette) which I'd wager might've been a pick-up, and some of the shots were punched in on.

You're right about feeling like you were in a video game. I felt the same way... which was bad and good. The camera action hurt my eyes and my brain the first fifteen minutes of the movie. It's like it was made for a home theater setup and not the big screen. That's probably where Ebert began disliking it, and unfortunately the entire first twenty minutes of the feature...which are supposed to engage you... is shot like this for what reason I cannot name. It does not engage you, it disengages.

I think he just misses traditional cinema, like Super 8, where you can soak up the world and become a part of it instead of chasing it around with your eyes and ears.

I didn't mind this movie, by the way. I'll actually buy it on Blu Ray because it was fun to me, but I can see why it's getting panned.


"I'm a veterinarian..."

Fool me once, shame on you...

"Thanks for doing that."

Fool me twice, shame on me.

"I only work on animals and aliens."

Fool me thrice, fml.
 
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