(no subject)
Battle: Los Angeles (2011). Directed by Jonathan Liebesman and written by Chris Bertolini. The film starts when supposed meteors are detected approaching Earth, with their destination predicted to be off the coast around several major cities around the world. The story switches to a micro view of the preparation at Los Angeles where the army are drafted in, particularly when said meteors artificially slow their descent, and then liberate an invasion force from the ocean to the beaches and further. Battle: Los Angeles follows in the footsteps of films like Cloverfield and Skyline, with the microscopic shaky cam view of a group of survivors. Much like both of these films the characters aren't particularly interesting, nor is the story. The action element doesn't really get going until halfway through the film, and that was the only real relief for me, except that it's protracted to the extreme - 30 minutes could have easily been cut from the 1h50m running time to make a far better paced albeit probably still dull film. The only real saving grace, aside from some of the action, are the aliens and their various machines which are quite well designed. For fans of derivative shoot-at-aliens action films. 2/5 (Poor)