Skyline: Another one where you root for the aliens to win

After a night of partying in Los Angeles Jerrod and his pregnant girlfriend Elaine are awakened by mysterious blue lights. Soon they discover that they are among the few people to have survived an alien invasion and must fight to escape the alien invaders.

No one will ever fault The Strause Brothers (who directed the film) for their abilities to create dazzling visual effects. The Brothers created the visual effects for films such as 300 and Battle: Los Angeles, so it should come as no surprise that the big battle sequences and those sequences which featured the aliens were among the most captivating and entertaining parts of Skyline. But therein lies the problem because all of those special effects could not mask the insipid story and vapid character within the story which were never developed enough to care about. It seemed like The Strause Brothers envisioned their movie as a sort of Cloverfield meets War of the Worlds mashup but in reality, it almost felt like an episode of The Real World L.A. as the survivors just sat around whining and moaning about everything (pre and post alien invasion). The two main characters the audience was supposed to connect with emotionally, Jerrod and Elaine, were so crippled by dreadful dialogue and a lack of depth that it not only made them hard to connect with, it also made them easy to forget. The story was never given proper direction or focus and tended to wonder aimlessly between those scenes of awesome looking visual effects.

Bad story plus bad dialogue plus cool visuals all added up to make Skyline a wasted opportunity of a sci-fi thriller.

Grade: D 

Battle: Los Angeles; Humans vs. Aliens, guess who wins?

Alien forces have invaded Earth. When they attack Los Angeles, California it's up to a platoon of Marines to stop them. But will they be able to?

Battle: Los Angeles played out like every other war film you have ever seen in your lifetime. The audience was introduced to a group of Marines, just enough so that their particular caricature (be it the shiny new Lieutenant who does not know what he is doing, the grizzled veteran Staff Sergeant who has a troubled past, the Corporal who is about to get married, the one badass female soldier (played by Michelle Rodriguez, of course), etc.) was easily recollected. Next they face the imminent threat, in this case it’s an invading alien force, which at first seems overwhelming but just might be defeated if they are able to band together and fight as a team. If you realize this is what awaits you with Battle, then you should be able to enjoy it for the action filled adventure director Jonathan Liebesman intended it to be. The film was almost like War of the Worlds meets Black Hawk Down as the Marines engaged in urban combat with the alien menace while the city of Santa Monica burned around them.

Sure, there were some obvious flaws which took the film down a couple of notches. The script, for example, seemed like it was cut and pasted together from various World War II, Vietnam and even Gulf War films and featured some rather trite dialogue and “forced” moments of emotion. Most of these emotional scenes involved the soldiers interacting with a group of civilians they were trying to rescue from behind enemy lines. But instead of making the soldiers seem more human and give them some other purpose aside from kicking alien butt, these scenes slowed down the action and felt completely out of place. Had Liebesman really wanted to get at the emotional core of the film, he should have concentrated more on the relationships between the soldiers (and he should have got another screenwriter too). Thankfully Aaron Eckhart (as Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz) worked through the cliché ridden lines and delivered a convincing enough performance to keep the audience engaged between shootouts and explosions.

Battle: Los Angeles is not another Saving Private Ryan, but the visceral thrills and nonstop action were enough to keep most entertained for its two hour running time.

Grade: B-