FILM REVIEW OF ''PIXELS" (2015)

Combine “Independence Day” with “Ghostbusters” and then insert Adam Sandler in another of his immature man-child roles as the hero, and you’ve got the premise of “Mrs. Doubtfire” director Chris Columbus’ predictable but palatable “Pixels” (** of ****), a nostalgic science-fiction fantasy about the bygone video game arcade era.  Initially, you might think Columbus and "Mr. Deeds" writer Tim Herlihy and "Just Go with It" scribe Timothy Dowling have done little more than synthesize elements of “Independence Day” and “Ghostbusters” for the former “Saturday Night Live” alumnus.  Actually, the filmmakers have adapted French director Patrick Jean’s ephemeral, two minute short “Pixels” (2010) about extraterrestrial space invaders that masquerade as vintage video game characters.  Sadly, everything about Columbus’ “Pixels” adaptation is wholesome and lukewarm rather than imaginative and mischievous.  Since he slipped into middle-age, the 48-year old Sandler hasn’t made anything as audacious as his early, lowest-common-denominator farces: “Billy Madison” (1995), “Happy Gilmore” (1996), “The Waterboy” (1998), “Big Daddy” (1999), and “Little Nicky” (2000).  Later, Sandler appeared in comedies with a slightly higher IQ such as his critically acclaimed “Punch Drunk Love” (2002), “Anger Management” (2003) with Jack Nicholson, “50 First Dates” (2004) with Drew Barrymore, “Click” (2006) with Christopher Walken, and “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry” (2007) with Kevin James.  Just as he explored new facets with his image in “Punch Drunk Love,” Sandler ventured even farther afield with Judd Apatow’s heavyweight “Funny People” (2009) as a comedian stricken with cancer. Sadly, he doesn't turn any corners in "Pixels."

Sandler’s recent big screen efforts have overshadowed neither “Punch Drunk Love” nor “Funny Business.”  Indeed, “Pixels” is just as desultory as “Just Go for It” (2011), “Grown-Ups” (2010), its sequel “Grown-Ups 2” along with his two obnoxious farces “Jack and Jill” (2011) and “That’s My Boy” (2012).  Although nothing about “Pixels” is likely to affront or alienate anybody like “Jack and Jill” or “That’s My Boy,” Sandler’s shenanigans as a video gamer wronged in his youth comes off as strictly superficial.  Nevertheless, Columbus has fashioned a straightforward but humorless escapade with some amusing characters that are eclipsed by impressive CGI renderings of several 8-bit video characters, including “PAC-MAN,” “Donkey Kong,” “Galaga,” “Centipede,” and “Space Invaders.” 

“Pixels” unfolds in 1982 as 13-year old Sam Brenner (Anthony Ippolito) and his best friend Will Cooper (Jared Riley) swing astride their banana-seat bikes and spin off to the first video game arcade to open in their town.  Not only does Sam discover he possesses a knack for defeating Pac-Man and Centipede, but Cooper and he make friends with lonely 8-year-old Ludlow Lamonsoff (Jacob Shinder) whose only friend is his grandmother.  Eventually, Sam takes his gift for predicting video games patterns to a Donkey Kong Championship.  Unfortunately, he comes in second place to his chief adversary, self-centered 13-year-old Eddie (Andrew Bambridge), who dubs himself ‘The Fire Blaster.’  Interestingly enough, NASA seals up competition footage in a time capsule and blasts it off into space aboard a rocket. Optimistically, NASA wanted to establish peaceful contact with any alien civilization. Like the best laid plans, NASA's efforts prove futile. Meantime, since Eddie trounced him, Sam has turned into a perennial slacker. Basically, Sam has lived a low-profile life.  He got married, but his wife cheated on him with their pediatrician.  Now, he installs home entertainment systems for a living.  Basically, Sam is a loser who has accepted his place in society. Actually, Sandler looks clownish in his bright orange Nerds company outfit that resembles the UPS drivers' summer outfit.  Unfortunately, Sam is nowhere near as colorful as his outfit. Meantime, Sam’s obese buddy Will plunged into politics and now sits in the Oval Office at the White House as our President.  Nevertheless, Will has an appalling habit of putting his foot in his mouth whenever he ventures out into the public eye.  His latest debacle involved reprimanding a Girl Scout during a reading initiative at a kindergarten when the child corrected his pronunciation.  Their friend Ludlow (Josh Gad of “The Wedding Ringer”) has turned into a conspiracy theorist who covers his walls with crazy newspaper stories.

Suddenly, one night at a U.S. Airbase in Guam, a mysterious force attacks, leaves the base in a shambles of millions of cubes, and abducts a security guard.  The President assembles his advisors and summons Sam for his input.  One of the President’s advisors is Lieutenant Colonel Violet Van Patten (Michelle Monaghan of “Source Code”) who has just separated from her philandering husband.  Violet’s hubby cheated on her with his 19-year old Pilates instructor.  Before they race each other to the White House, Sam and Violet meet at her house after he arrived to install a home entertainment system.  The home entertainment center is a farewell gift from Violet's husband to his son. Violet and Sam sit in her closet and swap sentimental stories so Violet’s son Matty (Matt Lintz of “The Crazies”) won’t see her grieve. Anyway, an enigmatic alien race has acquired the NASA footage, but it has misconstrued it as a challenge to fight to the death.  Miraculously, Sam’s superb video game skills once again make him a highly sought-off individual, and President Cooper assigns both Sam and Ludlow to teach Navy SEALS how to fight these aliens.  Lieutenant Colonel Van Patten has analyzed the cube debris from the Guam base and has created light-blasting ray guns that shatter the aliens.  Incredibly, this is one of the few instances where a woman is allowed to compete with men and actually help them! President Cooper refuses to act quickly enough to prevent another attack, and the aliens destroy the Taj Mahal.  Imagine a disaster movie where no architectural icons aren't obliterated. At least, "Pixels" plays for high stakes.  

Later, to heighten the suspense, the aliens abduct Matty, but his life doesn't hang in the balance.   Predictably, our heroes whip the aliens with indifferent nonchalance in this PG-13 rated hokum.  The showdowns with Pac-Man and Donkey Kong generate the greatest suspense, and the special effects look terrific.  The funniest scene occurs when the fictional creator of PAC-MAN, Professor Iwatani (Denis Akiyama of “Johnny Mnemonic”), tries to reason with a gargantuan replica of his computer-generated son and gets his forearm eaten off.  Columbus borrowed the scene from the original Howard Hawks’ chiller “The Thing from Another World.”  Not even diminutive Peter Dinklage as the adult version of Eddie can imbue any spontaneity to this attractive but anemic laffer.  Altogether, “Pixels” qualifies as one of Sandler’s least memorable movies. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE BLOB" (1958)

 "The Blob" (*** OUT OF ****) qualifies as a cult science fiction film not only because it launched 27-year old Steve McQueen on a trajectory to superstardom, but also because it exploited the popular themes of alien invasion and teenage delinquency which were inseparable in 1950s   cinema. Interestingly, nobody in the Kay Linaker and Theodore Simonson screenplay ever refers to the amorphous, scarlet-red protoplasm that plummeted to Earth in a meteor and menaced everybody in the small town of Downingtown Pennsylvania on a Friday night as "The Blob." They refer to it vaguely as the monster. Steve McQueen won the role of Josh Randall, the old West bounty hunter in "Wanted: Dead or Alive," after producer Dick Powell saw this Paramount Pictures' release. Meanwhile, McQueen's attractive girlfriend Aneta Corsaut went on to star opposite Andy Griffith in the hit CBS-TV comedy "The Andy Griffith Show" as Sheriff Taylor's school teacher girlfriend Helen Crump. Of course, neither McQueen nor Corsaut were teenagers, but then rarely did actual teenagers play actual teenagers. Director Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr., made his directorial debut with "The Blob." Linaker and Simonson's screenplay synthesized four genres: first, the alien invasion; second, teenage delinquency; third, a murder mystery, and fourth; a horror chiller. Moreover, while the gelatinous substance assumes various shapes, it remains largely anonymous. In other words, the eponymous Jell-O neither talks nor communicates through telepathy. Instead, it kills without a qualm and discriminates against nobody. The ill-fated Dr. Hallen summarizes the Blob: "There's a man here with some sort of a parasite on his arm, assimilating his flesh at a frightening speed. I may have to get ahead of it and amputate. No... I don't know what it is or where it came from."The tone of "The Blob" is fairly serious in spite of its somewhat campy nature.

As the filmmakers point out on the Criterion DVD release of "The Blob," the movie opens uncharacteristically for a sci-fi horror thriller with our hero and heroine in a remote rural locale making out and kissing. Jane (Anita Corsaut) and Steve (Steve McQueen) see a large meteor fall to the earth and drive in search of it. Meanwhile, an elderly man with a lantern finds the meteor and pokes it with a stick. The meteor cracks open, and a slimy bunch of goop clings to the stick. When the old timer (Olin Howland of "The Paleface") gets a closer look at it, the goop attaches itself to his hand. The old guy runs screaming from the crater, and Steve nearly hits him with his jalopy. Steve and Jane pick the guy up and take him to see Dr. Hallen in town.

Hallen is poised to leave town for a medical conference when Steve and Jane bring the old guy to his office. Hallen phones his nurse to return since he may need to perform an amputation. Of course, Hallen has never seen anything like the substance on the man's forearm. Hallen sends Steve and Jane to find out what happened. Our heroes run into another group of teenagers that ridicule Steve's fast driving. Steve fools him into a reverse drive race, but the local police chief Dave (Earl Rowe) lets him off the hook. Steve and the teenagers visit the site of the meteor crater and find the warm remains of the meteor. After they visit the old man's house and rescue a dog, the teenagers split for a spooky late night movie while Steve and Jane return to Dr. Hallen's office. During the interim, the blob has entirely absorbed the old geezer, killed Hallen's nurse and attacked the doctor. Neither acid thrown on the protoplasm nor Hallen's shotgun have any effect on the blob. Steve catches a glimpse of the blob absorbing Hallen. When Steve and Jane go to the police department to report the incident, Dave is frankly incredulous, while Sergeant Bert (John Benson) believes that it is a prank. Bert has an axe to grind with teenagers because his wife died when one struck her car.

Steve and Jane take them to Hallen's office, but they can find neither hide nor hair of anybody, but Dave admits that the office has been vandalized. Against Sgt. Bert's advice, Dave turns the teens over to their respective parents. We learn that Jane's father is the High School principal. No sooner have Steve and Jane fooled their folks into believing that they are snugly asleep in bed than they venture out again. Jane's little brother in his pajamas with his stuffed Teddy Bear pleads to join her. Jane emphasizes the he needs to watch over their unsuspecting parents. They drive into town and spot the old man's dog that got away from them in front of a supermarket. When they go to retrieve the mutt, Steve steps in front of the electric eye door of the grocery store and it opens. They find nobody inside, but they encounter the blob. Steve and Jane take refuge in a freezer and the blob doesn't attack them. Later, after they escape, Steve persuades the teenagers that challenged him in a street race to alert the authorities because he is supposed to be home in bed. Police Chief Dave and the fire department arrive at the supermarket. Steve tries to convince Dave that the blob is in the store. About that time, the blob kills the theater projectionist and attacks the moviegoers. Suddenly, a horde of people exit the theater and Dave believes Steve. Steve and Jane wind up at a lunch counter that the blob attacks. The proprietor and our heroes hole up in the cellar and Steve discovers that a fire extinguisher with its freezing contents forces the blob to back off.

The authorities collect every fire extinguisher in town and manage to freeze the blob. The Pentagon sends down a team to transport the blob to the North Pole. As the remains of the blob drift down to the polar ice pack, the end credit appears with a ghostly giant question mark. Producer James B. Harris obtained stock military footage of a Globe master military transport plane depositing the parachute and its cargo.

"The Blob" proved to be a drive-in hit and Steve McQueen's surge to stardom gave the film added momentum. Unless you are a juvenile, this little horror movie isn't scary at all, but Yeaworth and his scenarists create a sufficient amount of paranoia and sympathy for our heroes. They never show the blob actually assimilating its victims and leave this to your imagination, so "The Blob" isn't without a modicum of subtlety.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE DARKEST HOUR" (2010)

 “Right at Your Door” director Chris Gorak’s apocalyptic science fiction actioneer “The Darkest Hour” (** out of ****) qualifies as initially provocative but incredibly anti-climactic. Freshman scenarist Jon Spaihts formulated his outlandish script about a “War of the Worlds” invasion of Earth by invisible predators from a story that “Dante's Peak” scribe Leslie Bohem and first-time writer M.T. Ahern penned with him. If you’ve caught the trailer for this half-baked hokum, you know it pits a quartet of trendy, American, twentysomething guys and gals in Moscow against aliens determined to wipe out civilization while they extract all of our mineral resources. Basically, humans cannot see these extraterrestrials, but they have no trouble seeing us. These elusive aliens atomize anybody in sight without warning. If they don’t outright zap you, they snare you with a neon-like electric bolt noose and then vaporize you in a shower of dust and sparks. Despite the lethal edge which they have over humanity, these anonymous antagonists aren’t invincible. “The Darkest Hour,” as its Winston Churchill inspired title insists, charts a catastrophic course for the future of mankind. Our handsome heroes and beautiful hellcats have to figure out how to make these extraterrestrials visible before they can terminate them with extreme prejudice. Sadly, Gorak and company don’t outline the parameter in this alien procedural about what these aliens either can or cannot do. After an impressive warm up act which introduces these unusual aliens, “The Darkest Hour” collapses in the middle and then at fade-out comes to a screeching anti-climax. Indeed, “The Darkest Hour” paints humanity into a corner similar to the 2010 alien invasion opus “Skyline,” but the survivors here stand a better chance in the long run. Fortunately, mankind proves that the aliens are not indestructible. Of course, it is far too early to determine whether or not a sequel for “The Darkest Hour” will materialize where humans triumph over the aliens.

Software designers Sean (Emile Hirsh of “Into the Wild”) and Ben (Max Minghella of “The Social Network”) have been pals since they met in elementary school. Their mothers served together on the same PTA, and Ben’s mom prompted her brainy son to associate with Sean. Now, Sean and Ben are business partners. They have developed a seminal social website that points out the best party places on the globe. Our heroes are flying into Moscow to pedal their software with the help of a shrewd Swedish businessman. They are about to land when smart aleck Sean tangles with a Russian flight attendant over the probability that his cell phone could disable the electronics of an aircraft and make it crash. No sooner do our internet entrepreneurs set foot in the conference where they plan to pitch their application to investors than their Swede partner Skyler (Joel Kinnaman of “Easy Money”) informs them he has stolen their idea. Summoning security, Skyler gives our guys the boot. Sean and Ben wind up in a bar to get sloshed when they encounter two American tourists, a photographer, Anne (Rachel Taylor of “Transformers”) and her assistant, Natalie (Olivia Thirlby of “Juno”), who have followed them on the Internet. Adding insult to injury, Skyler shows up at the same bar. No sooner have our heroes chugged a few drinks than the lights go out. Curiously, everybody ventures outside for a dazzling light show comparable to the aurora borealis. Objects that resemble shimmering golden jelly fish plummet to Earth by the millions. A Moscow cop probes one with his nightstick, and he disintegrates into a cloud of dust. The crowd scatters frantically as these jelly fish aliens explode other humans one-by-one. Sean, Ben, Anne, Natalie, and Skyler lock themselves inside a walk-in fridge at the bar.

Several days later they emerge to find Moscow a place of desolation. Sean and Ben are plundering a police cruiser for equipment when an alien spots them. Any time they pass electrical devices, such as lights, car horns, cell phones, etc., the aliens activate them. Our heroes conceal themselves under the cop car, and the alien miraculously misses them. Afterward, our heroes venture out only during daylight. Naturally, they find the American Embassy in shambles, but they spot a life in a nearby skyscraper. A young Russian teenager, Vika (newcomer Veronika Ozerova), has holed up with an eccentric middle-aged Russian engineer, Sergei (Date Atbakhtadze of “Wanted”), who has constructed a cage of metal bars and chains inside his apartment to shield their own human electrical fields from the aliens. Moreover, he has also designed a “Ghostbusters” type microwave gun which can stun the aliens. Sadly, Sergei manages to prove that his weapon works, but the batteries don’t hold a charge long enough. Meanwhile, our heroes escape with the gun and head for a Russian submarine in the Moscow River which is broadcasting an evacuation signal. Sean and company link up with a militia group. The militia look like a bunch of medieval warriors with 21st century firepower. They wear makeshift suits of chain mail which consist of keys and car tags. They have even decked a horse out in similar regalia. Reluctantly, the militia agrees to escort our heroes and heroines to a rendezvous with the sub despite the heavy presence of the invisible aliens. Predictably, not everybody survives the gauntlet of aliens between them and the submarine. Ultimately, our heroes learn how to kill the aliens.

The best thing about “The Darkest Hour” is the aliens. The worse thing is we’re told squat about them. These extraterrestrials never communicate with humanity in the form of either warnings or ultimatums. Worst, since no friendly aliens live amongst us as in “Cowboys and Aliens,” we have no clue about why they have invaded Earth. A Russian militia leader speculates that the aliens have come to deplete our mineral resources and kill us in the process. Once the heroes create their microwave weapons, Gorak gives us little more than a glimpse of these enigmatic aliens. Essentially, they look like black shiny skulls with loops of chains gyrating around them. They cannot see through windows, and they have trouble operating over bodies of water. Gorak and his writers take their subject matter far too seriously and never take advantage of the goofy way the aliens appear or the crazy way that humans drape themselves with metal objects to shield the electrical energy. The 3-D version of “The Darkest Hour” has little edge over the flat, 2-D version. Meantime, neither breaks any ground where alien invasion movies are concerned.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE THING" (2011)

First-time Danish helmer Matthijs van Heijningen’s remake of the legendary 1951 creature-feature “The Thing from Another World” qualifies as formulaic but respectable nonsense. The original “Thing” preserved only vestiges of author John W. Campbell’s vintage 1938 short story “Who Goes There?” Instead, producer Howard Hawks, “His Girl Friday” scenarist Charles Lederer, and Hawks’ long-time editor Christian Nyby created the conventional alien-on-the-rampage plot at an isolated, snow-swept, scientific outpost in the Arctic. Not only did “The Thing from Another World” constitute one of Hollywood’s earliest epics to depict extraterrestrials, but it also was the first with a hostile alien devoid of compassion. The original “Thing” alien was a towering homicidal humanoid with the cellular structure of a vegetable who gave the scientists and the U.S.A.F personnel a royal headache before they manage to isolate its weakness and electrocute it.

In 1982, “Halloween” director John Carpenter and writer Bill Lancaster produced a sequel where survivors from the initial tragedy encountered a nearby community of scientists. The shape-shifting alien invader entered their camp as a Yukon husky and mayhem ensued. Instead of contending with a humanoid creature, the guys in “The Thing” confronted an ugly beast with tentacles, huge teeth, and a bad attitude that absorbed its victims and then impersonated them. The monster remained in one body until he shifted to another host. Consequently, nobody trusted anybody. Trapped in a remote outpost in Antarctica, the characters suffered from extreme paranoia. Principally, they suspected that one of their own had been cloned and threatened to not only kill them but also clone them. Van Heijningen and “Final Destination 5” scenarist Eric Heisserer have appropriated the complicated Carpenter and Lancaster approach rather than the straightforward, single alien invasion plot. Nevertheless, Heijningen and Heisserer have altered a thing or two. First, the hero of the new “Thing” (*** out of ****) is a woman. Second, the way our heroes test to determine the presence of the alien differs. Third, no equivalent to Dr. Carrington in the original exists in the group of scientists. If you recall, Dr. Carrington represented the fraction of scientists who did not want to destroy the Thing. Instead, they wanted to reason with it and learn from it. Mind you, the new “Thing” isn’t as creepy as Carpenter’s masterpiece with its abundant atmosphere, memorable Ennio Morricone score, and charismatic cast. Nevertheless, Heijningen and Heisserer deserve recognition for their fidelity to the source material and the sequel. Of course, it doesn’t hurt matters that two of the producers on Carpenter’s “Thing” also produced this remake.

“The Thing” takes place in Antarctica during the winter of 1982. Arrogant Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen of “Season of the Witch”) persuades a top-notch graduate student, American paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead of “Black Christmas”), into joining his Norwegian geological expedition. She accepts and finds herself freezing her toes off while the guys show her their top-secret discovery. They have found a gigantic alien spacecraft entombed in the ice for possibly a hundred-thousand years. The first scene shows how they plunged a snow-plow into a crevasse and found it. Unlike the original film, these scientists stumble onto the spacecraft deep in the ice, but they do not blow it up accidentally. Like the original, they locate the mysterious body of an alien that ejected from the crashed spaceship only to freeze. Carefully, they remove it from the ice and stash it in their research facility for examination. Eventually, the ice thaws, and the monster escapes. Our heroes realize that they are contending with a deadly alien and wield flame-throwers. They start to worry during an early autopsy when it becomes apparent that the creature can spit out replicas of their colleagues. Things reach a crisis point, and nobody trusts anybody, until the savvy Kate figures out that the alien cannot replicate inanimate objects. If an individual wears jewelry, has metal appliances surgically attached to their bones, or/and silver fillings in their teeth, the Thing cannot replicate these items. Unfortunately, some of the scientists don’t have silver fillings. They have porcelain ones. Ultimately, everything boils down to a suspenseful game of cat and mouse. Happily, Van Heijningen and Heisserer drum up an adequate number of scares to keep you poised on the edge. Moviegoers who don’t do horror movies might find “The Thing” a bit more demanding. In one scene, a gash appears in one character’s face, runs down his chest toward his stomach as both open wide like a mouth and elephant tusk-sized teeth sprout accompanied by a hideous howl.

Creature designer Michael Broom of “The Mist” and “Predators” has conjured up several memorable creatures. At one point, the alien absorbs two men so that it looks like a two-headed transplant walking on its arms and legs like a wolf. During another scene, a forearm detaches from one individual and attaches itself by the forearm to another fellow’s face and starts to graft itself onto the man’s face! When the monster is in its own ghastly form, it can project a slimy-looking tentacle that penetrates flesh and bone like a spear. Once the tentacle has perforated an individual’s back, its tip emerges from the chest and deploys into a four-pronged, grappling hook that retracts its victim into its voracious maw. The worst thing that you can say about the new “Thing” is that nobody delivers any memorable lines of dialogue, and the cast lacks the charisma of the first two movies. Suffice to say, all those Norwegian fellows look and sound identical with little individuality among them. Happily, they don’t turn Mary Elizabeth Winstead into a sexy Ripley from “Alien” clone. Joel Edgerton plays a resilient helicopter pilot who is reminiscent of Kurt Russell’s hero in the sequel. Shrewdly, Heijningen paces the appearance of the alien for maximum impact and predictably ratchets up the action in the final quarter. Like the Carpenter classic, the remake shuns humor. Ultimately, although it is a remake of the 1951 “Thing,” the new “Thing” shares more in common with Carpenter’s “Thing.” Despite the sense of déjà vu that accompanies this polished production, “The Thing” lacks the turbo-driven fright of Carpenter’s sequel, but it scores major points with its impressive CGI creature designs.

FILM REVIEW OF ''BATTLE: LOS ANGELES'' (2011)

If the tenacious enemy the U.S. Marines tangle with in director Jonathan Liebesman’s “Battle: Los Angeles” (*** out of ****) didn’t come from another planet, then this above-average PG-13 rated Columbia Pictures’ release wouldn’t qualify as a science fiction shoot‘em up. As it is, “Battle: Los Angeles” amounts to marginal sci-fi. The guys who wrote and directed this suspenseful but straightforward 116-minute saga strive for adrenaline-laced realism. They aren’t out to imitate the outlandish audacity of “Skyline” with its “Cloverfield” style monsters trashing a coastal metropolis. Ostensibly, “Battle: Los Angeles” seems like a Marine recruiting video. The scarcity of memorable characters and scene-stealing aliens are offset by its splendid computer generated special effects and Aaron Eckhart’s bravura performance.

Like last year’s “Skyline” and many sci-fi films dating to 1951’s “The Thing From Another World,” “Battle: Los Angeles” shows aliens plunging into the Earth in meteors that turn out to be spacecraft. Unlike “Skyline,” Liebesman’s movie boasts aliens that lack reptilian features with tentacles galore. Instead, the enemy look like the “Star Wars” storm troopers. Herein lies the chief problem that “Battle: Los Angeles” faces. Since it doesn’t look like your typical sci-fi tale and the filmmakers give the extraterrestrials the short shrift, many moviegoers and critics are maligning it without mercy No, “Battle: Los Angeles” neither wallows in political allegories like “District 9” nor does it assemble a speculative arsenal of weapons to destroy the enemy as in “Independence Day.” “Battle: Los Angeles” looks more like “Black Hawk Down.” You wind up caring more about the human characters. Nevertheless, you develop considerable respect for the pugnacious aliens. They track down and kill both civilians and military alike by targeting mobile radio and telephone communication. Unlike “Skyline,” “Battle: Los Angeles” concludes with greater optimism. Basically, this movie celebrates male camaraderie as well as the indomitable human spirit of survival.

After a false start that depicts the devastation the aliens have wrought around the globe, the action flashes back to the hours before the catastrophic invasion. During this prologue, Liebesman and "The General's Daughter" scenarist Christopher Bertolini introduce a number of young Marines and their leaders. Except for a few high-ranking officers, the Marines here are grunts on the ground. Aside from their platoon commander, these Marines are the followers who wind up leading the way. As the protagonist, veteran Marine Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart of "The Dark Knight") has served 20 years in the Corps. Nantz wants to retire because his last campaign in Iraq turned bittersweet when he lost several leathernecks but received a Silver Star for valor. Not surprisingly, Nantz doesn't care about the commendation. Moreover, the memories of the men that died under his command haunt him. Naturally, when the meteors start falling, the Pentagon deploys the Marines from Camp Pendleton, and Nantz finds himself reassigned to Echo Company, 2nd battalion, 5th Marine regiment. Predictably, there is a rumble in the ranks about Nantz's gung-ho attitude, and the young Marines believe that he will treat them like cannon fodder. Indeed, Nantz behaves like 'John Wayne' in one scene, and his company commander, 2nd Lieutenant William Martinez (Ramón Rodríguez of "Pride and Glory"), orders him to knock off the heroics.

Meanwhile, Liebesman and Bertolini parcel out only piecemeal information about the aliens. They crave water and exploit it as a source of energy. Their blitzkrieg blankets the globe, and they are aggressively trouncing mankind. Indeed, Los Angeles resembles Beirut. Television news bulletins provide the modicum of information that mankind knows about these pugnacious intruders. None of it is useful to the Marines who must eradicate these miscreants. Initially, Nantz and his platoon are dispatched to an abandoned Santa Monica police station to rescue a group of civilians and then escort them to a forward operating base to await evacuation. Martinez's superiors warn him he has 3 hours to complete his mission before the Air Force obliterates everything in sight. In some way, "Battle: Los Angeles" is like "Aliens" as these smug Marines lock and load for action. The attitude change that comes over them after their first encounter with the enemy is dramatic. Initially, they desperately lack cohesion. Only after they acquire cohesion do they come together as a unit and experience success.

“Battle: Los Angeles” differs from “Independence Day” and the “Transformers” movies because it shuns the multiple levels of characters that those films contain. Typically, sci-fi movies have scientists struggling to figure out how to kill the alien invaders while the politicians scramble to placate the public that everything is being done to accomplish this goal. Eventually, when the politicians and the scientists get a clue, they pass it along to the military and the killing commences. “Battle: Los Angeles” confines its action to the Marines on the ground. Since the Marines can only see what is around them, the film resembles a first-person shooter videogame. The aliens never get up close and personal as in a “Predator” movie. “Battle: Los Angeles” isn’t a horror movie. Occasionally, a soldier is dragged by the feet into foliage and killed. Primarily, these aliens are like marauding Apaches that rely on stealth to strike. Moreover, they can be killed. Eventually, when the Marines run into greater numbers of aliens, “Battle: Los Angeles” settles down to conventional close-quarters combat. Incredibly enough, most of "Battle: Los Angeles" was lensed on location in Louisiana!