Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

  I didn't want to see this movie.  The reviews were not promising and all any real people could tell me was that there were a lot of special effects.  Then Rob bought it.  Since I've spent so much time cajoling him into trying new movies, I couldn't very well balk when he suggested we watch this one.  So I put my best "girlfriend" smile on over gritted teeth and suffered through it.

Now I plan my revenge.  I'm thinking something dark but sexy, like Secretary, or maybe go the other route and pick something retarded and girly.  I'll have to get with Christy on those titles.

I didn't like the movie.  That's what he makes me say now instead of something like "this movie sucked so hard CERN is still studying its effects".  Ugh.  Another alien invasion movie.  This one does for sci-fi what the 90's Godzilla remake did for monster movies.  I'm trying to think of a better movie to compare it to and I'm coming up with nothing.  District 9 was in a completely different league, hell, even Independence Day was fun to watch.  This was just a lot of noise.  Think War of the Worlds meets The Hurt Locker.

Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) has just put in for retirement from the Marine Corps after a disastrous last tour in Afghanistan.  Then a series of "meteor strikes" fall along the coasts of every landmass on Earth and he gets put in charge of a squad under a brand new lieutenant (Ramon Rodriguez, the new Bosley from Charlie's Angels).  Most of the Marines have some sort of PTSD and none of them are prepared when the word comes out that it's not meteors, but an alien invasion.  The squad is dispatched to clear a handful of civilians out of an overrun police station in Santa Monica before bombs are dropped to level the coastline.

This movie was so stupid I don't even know where to start.  How about how shocked everyone seems when they find out the aliens have air support.  No freakin' shit.  They travelled an interstellar gulf of nearly unfathomable distance and you don't think they mastered the art of jet propulsion?  Come the fuck on.  The movie ends with the obligatory "there's still hope" message but really?  If this were actually happening, by the end of the week -- a month, tops -- humans would be reduced to pocket guerilla groups just trying to stay alive.  I suppose we'd just be grateful the aliens didn't give us smallpox-infected blankets...

Yeah, I went there.