Have you watched it yet? Ok, great. On with the review.

So as you can tell from the trailer, Battle: Los Angeles is set during an alien invasion. I’m all on for alien invasion films. It’s been a good while since I’ve seen a proper one (unless you count Transformers, and I don’t) so I was up for it.

At the same time though, as I mentioned in the earlier post, I wasn’t really expecting much from it. Yeah, it was a great trailer but I think it’s fair to say that if you expected all films to be as good as their trailers, you’d be sorely disappointed almost every time you went to the cinema. I’m not saying that to be contrary or anything. It’s just a fact. I mean honestly, when’s the last time you went to a film and thought “Wow! That was way better than the trailer made it look!”? Personally I think “Not as bad as the trailer made it look” is almost as positive as you can hope for when it comes to trailer vs. film…

Anyway, on to the film so that I can get to the real reason I’m really writing this review…

… Except that I should probably tell you a bit about the film first.

Ok, so we start off with aliens invading Earth but the film fairly quickly gets to it’s focus – One platoon (I’m not sure if that’s the correct terminology, let me know if I’m wrong) of Marines in Santa Monica who have one mission to do during this invasion. This is not some big drama / thriller encompassing the whole of the world and the effect of the alien invasion. It’s a war film focusing on this one group of people.

The fact is that, while Battle: Los Angeles is set during an alien invasion, it’s really an war/action film, with some beautiful special effects. To that end, I thought it was very well done. I found it reasonably well structured. I thought it was exciting. I thought we got to know enough about the characters (for an action film). I thought the battles were well choreographed. I thought the special effects were fantastic. I did think some of the music was a little… melodramatic maybe, but not so much that it became annoying. Yes, some of the dialogue was a bit clichéd and a bit cheesy and I may have laughed a few times but, it’s not a film that so po-faced that laughing would signal some kind of failure in it.

I also, predictably, if you’ve ever seen any of my comments about him, thought that Aaron Eckhart was very well cast as the tough, grizzled but handsome Staff Sergeant. He brought a bit of class to the proceedings. Ne-Yo? Well, put it this way, I had no idea there was a popstar in the cast and when I found out afterwards I couldn’t guess which one he was. So I’m taking that as a good sign. Michelle Rodriguez? I really don’t like Michelle Rodriguez generally, I find her good-looking bad-ass schtick irritatingly dull… but she didn’t annoy me in this. All the same I’d like to see her play against type some time. The rest of the characters were grand, I mean they were all grappling with the clichéd dialogue but I felt they all made it through. More on that anon.

Here’s the real reason I’m writing this review.

Over the last day or two I have seen a lot of negativity around Battle: Los Angeles. At last check it was around 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. Well I’m here to be one of the voices on the other side. I thought B:LA was class fun. Ok, it’s no Starship Troopers but it put me in mind of it and Starship Troopers is probably my favourite alien film of all time so… it’d be a bit lofty to hope that B:LA could reach those heady heights… but the fact that it put me in mind of ST is an achievement.

The main criticism I’ve seen of B:LA is that it’s cliché ridden. Well that’s true. I’m not going to deny that. The beginning is a bit cringe-worthy as they roll out the characters using every disaster movie cliché in the book. That turns out ok though, given the action later on, they had to introduce the characters early on and well, you have to have something interesting to say about them no? With hindsight, it was pretty efficient actually. The only way it could have been more efficient would be if they’d just lined them up and had them salute and say their names. But then they really would have just been grunts, no different from the aliens. As for the military clichés later on, well come on. You can’t have soldiers running around without at least sometimes shouting “Hoo-Arr!” or some other such rousing call. And let’s face it, it’s not a war film if you don’t have like, the rookie and pissed off fella and people making ridiculous sacrifices and so forth. It’s just how it goes.

Oh, oh! And the most annoying criticism I’ve seen of it is people saying “Is this supposed to be some kind of military propaganda? Are we all supposed to feel good about the war in Afghanistan now?”. Good Lordi people. Where the hell did that come from? It’s a film about people doing their jobs. It’s a film about being human. It’s a film about trying to survive. It never rams any kind of jingoism or any moral or political judgement of any kind down your throat. So the characters are wearing Marine uniforms, so what? If I watched a film about a really good chef, I wouldn’t assume that film is trying to encourage me to become a chef.

What else did I want to complain about? Oh yeah. This other idea I’ve seen bandied about some reviews – that we don’t get to learn enough about what’s going on on the aliens side. I don’t get that. We hear what they’re after and it’s made more than clear that their military procedures are pretty much exactly like ours. What more do we need to know? Ok, they could have, I suppose, shown us some of what goes on with the aliens… But like I said, the film is tightly focussed on this platoon and their mission. If they started doing other stuff it would have been a completely different movie, if you know what I mean. And who cares if we don’t see their faces? Why do I want to see their faces? Just to see how good the make-up people are on the film? What does it matter?

Last thing I’m going give out about is all these complaints about the shaky camera. Now. I hate shaky camera. I suffer badly from motion sickness, check my reviews of Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity to see how that can affect my enjoyment of a film. And I didn’t particularly feel it in this. It was a little dodgy around the start but as the film went on they toned it down and I really didn’t notice any ill effects from the camera shaking. If there was any, it was not excessive in my opinion.

I think that’s enough for now.

Oh no, just briefly as well. I keep seeing people saying “It’s like District 9 without the X,Y,Z” or “It’s not half as good as District 9” or “Go watch District 9 instead”.

Shut up.

First of all – and I did really like it, gave it the same rating as I’ll give this – but District 9 is not the be all and end all of alien films. Yeah, it was good but it’s not like it’s AMAZING. And secondly, I just don’t see how you can make the comparison anyway. All that’s similar about it is that aliens come to town. That’s all. Battle: Los Angeles is a war film that happens to have some aliens in it. You’d be better off comparing it to the likes of Green Zone than District 9.

Phew. I feel better now.

… Ok, ok, I’ll be a little magnanimous. I think a lot of people maybe went into this expecting something else. I don’t know what they expected but I know I expected nothing in particular, except some good special effects. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see characters and a plot and some good battles. I guess if you were expecting more than that then you’d want to find criticism wherever it may be.

Suffice to say, I really liked Battle: Los Angeles. If it sounds like your kind of thing, then go see it. Just don’t expect some ground-breakingly breath-taking new take on the alien invasion film. Expect a competent action film and you should be alright.

8/10

Well, kind of… I mean, I knew it was an action film starring Jason Statham. I may love Jason Statham but you can only hope for so much from his movies. In this case, unfortunately, I hoped for a little too much. In that I hoped for a bit more action.

I guess this is why I shouldn’t watch trailers.

You know what? I’m going to have a bit of a rant here. Why make something look like a straight up action film if it’s not? And while I’m at it; putting things in the trailers that aren’t in the film. What’s that about? I’ve noticed that cropping up a lot more lately and I don’t like it one bit. Stop lying to me trailers. This is why I become fascinated with my shoes every time I see a trailer of a film I think I might like. I don’t want to have unrealistic expectations. I fear all hope is lost for Priest and Sucker Punch mind, there’s no way they can possibly live up to those trailers. Battle: Los Angeles too. Not a chance.

I’m not done ranting though… The fact is, there seems to be this view creeping into cinema that it all rests on the opening weekend – like in music, where if a certain song or album doesn’t get straight to #1 it’s a failure. It’s an awful road to go down. It’s leads to this ridiculous mis-selling of films, mostly in an attempt to appeal to the 15-25 y/os who regularly go to the cinema. This in turn means that most of the gross -is- in the opening weekend. Not because it’s necessarily a bad film, or that people only want to see films when they’re new, but because it was marketed in such a way that it got the wrong audience to go along. Those folks hated it and off they went and told all their friends. Now even the right audience is put off because 1. it looks like a film for teenagers and 2. they’ve heard it’s crap. Poof. A good movie becomes a failure.

But I digress.

Anyway, I’m not actually saying that happened here. The Mechanic isn’t a particularly good film. It’s not a bad film per se… It just tries a little too hard to develop something that appears to beyond the capabilities of it’s director and screenplay writers. Or maybe it’s the editor that’s at fault. I’m not sure. I’m thinking the director though. The problem with The Mechanic is that it’s an action film that’s trying to build in a bit more um… motivation… than you generally see in these kind of action flicks.

I could probably throw a bit of blame on the actors here, I won’t. Not just because I love Jason Statham, but because I don’t think they’re given much to work with. I don’t know. Put it this way… I would have expected that Jason Statham getting a protege would involve him actually working with the protege in key scenes. Apparently not. I would have expected that the “getting to know you” phase wouldn’t have just been a 2 minute montage. Apparently not. I’m sure Ben Foster and our man Jase would have been able for the task but it just wasn’t put in front of them.

Ok. It’s not all bad. There are some good bits. Perhaps call it a collection of good scenes thrown into a jumble of irrelevent incidents. And shaken about. To be honest, I don’t know what exactly this film thought it was doing but if it was action film there was too little action in it and if it wasn’t… then what the hell was it?

It’s just weird. You have this supporting cast of interesting characters and these 2 leads who seem to be interesting characters… but none of them are put to real use to create any semblance of plot or emotion. It’s like the film skirts around the idea of having a real plot and creating real relationships between the characters but ultimately it never actually gets to saying what it’s wants to say. It’s supremely annoying. That is the main thing really. It’s not that it’s a bad film. I just think it could have been a really good film if more effort had been put into it.

Anyway, I feel like I should say something nice about it since I didn’t actually hate it. The action scenes were class… It does manage to have more plot than the average action film (for all the good that does) and um… Oh yeah, it looked cool. I liked the… what’s it called in film? Grading? Anyway, like I said, it looked cool.

And I liked his house. Now that the one from A Single Man is off the market I’ll have to start looking elsewhere… in preparation for when I win the lottery of course.

6.5/10

… that’s right, Piranha 3D is most definitely, and unashamedly…

… a B movie.

Then again, what were you expecting from a film about prehistoric killer fish?

Truth be told, there isn’t much to be said about Piranha 3D. It’s pretty much exactly what they promised. Between the fake website, the leaked set photos and the fact that it’s apparently used the most fake blood ever in a film, there was never another way Piranha 3D could go.

What surprised me though is that it’s actually pretty good. Not good like Snakes on a Plane, which actually had a plot and all, but good fun. This could have all gone horrible wrong. Lordi knows every time I think “How badly can you mess up a slasher flick?” I come across a film that proves exactly how big a mess can be made.

Fortunately, Piranha 3D has pretty much everything you want from this type of gorefest… Ridiculous deaths, miraculous escapes, plucky heroic acts, stupid cowardly selfish acts, hot girls, idiot men, dodgy techno, a floating penis… Alexandre Aja really crammed it all in there. Everything and the kitchen sink… Really, I wouldn’t be surprised if they only stopped at 80,000 gallons of fake blood because there wasn’t anything left down the fake blood bank. Personally, I could have done with slightly less boobage, I’m just not a big fan of staring at boobs, but I can appreciate how the film would have been diminished with less of them, so fair enough.

The thing I found most surprising about it was the quality of the support characters. I would have expected nothing but there were actually loads of people you’d know in this film, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd and Ving Rhames all made an appearance. Dina Meyer (Starship Trooopers), Ricardo Chavira (Desperate Housewives) and Adam Scott (who particularly stood out in the CSI and L&O episodes I’ve seen him in) may not be as well know but you’d certainly know them if you saw them.

I also want to make particular mention of Kelly Brook and Jerry O’Connell. Perfectly cast in their respective roles. I’ve always liked Jerry O’Connell, Stand By Me is one of my favourite films, he made Joe’s Apartment tolerable (no mean feat considering my morbid fear of cockroaches) and yes I’ll admit, I was a big fan of Sliders. As for Kelly, I presume this means that Ms. Brook has given up on the idea of having a real acting career? Ah well, at least she’s not doing crappy ads for breakfast biscuits with Johnny Vaughan. Shaking her tits in a Hollywood B movie is still 10 times better than that.

I suppose I have to throw a little criticism in here. It’s not perfect. There’s some stupid stuff in it, stupider than it should be… and I do think that Christopher Lloyd is criminally underused, though that might have been his choice. Also, there’s a few people I would have kept alive, it would have been nice to see them in the sequel. Given the critical response though I’m sure they’ll manage to rope in a few more names to fill their spaces.

Oh! Also, I’m still convinced that 3D films lately are much too dark. Would it really be that hard to turn the light up a bit? Maybe it is that hard but it’s still something they should work on. I, for one, am getting a bit sick of squinting at every dark scene in a 3D film. Avatar looked great so there’s no excuse. It seems like I wouldn’t be hard… just do it already! Of course, in the grand scheme of Piranha this was a fairly minor annoyance, I just though I’d mention it.

So the fact is, Piranha 3D is a triumph of its excess. I’m definitely looking forward to the sequel (presumably Piranha 3D 2?) and if you like a laugh and you’re not squeamish, I recommend you give Piranha 3D a look. Though not necessarily in 3D.

7.5/10

So, I wasn’t sure if I was up for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. It has one of those colon separated names… and it stars Gemma Arterton. I don’t like her very much… I don’t know why, she just annoys me when she’s on the screen. Well, to be fair (to me) she was crap in Clash of the Titans, The Boat That Rocked and particularly in Quantum of Solace… that’s probably why I don’t like her.

On the other hand I’d seen the shots from the set, I loved the computer game back in 1989 and I really liked Jerry Bruckheimer’s other big budget films, the Pirates of the Caribbean series so POP:TSoT had a few big things going for it too…

Also I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a ticket to a Walt Disney Ireland preview. That always helps.

Happily, I was not disappointed. First things first though… I really didn’t think the film would bear any resemblance to the games. After all, they’re platformers. How would they turn a platformer into a movie? As a result I had accepted that it was probably going to be Prince of Persia in name only. I was wrong, they did manage to keep the essence of the game… through the magic of parkour. It was pretty cool to see and fans of the game will appreciate it.

Was it a good film though? Personally I thought Prince of Persia was great craic. It was nice to see an action film with a bit more story than usual. I did think it got a little bit long in the middle – it’s just under two hours long – but it’s difficult to see where they could have cut it from. There’s quite a lot going on, which is good, so I guess they could have just shortened some of the scenes. I think it would be fair to say that it’s very similar to the Pirates films in that sense; it’s not just a whole heap of running, fighting and explosions, there’s actually a story and there are real characters in it. Mind you, they’re pretty stereotyped characters, so it’s not as though they had too big a job to do on characterisation.

I didn’t even find Gemma Arterton that annoying. Ok, she was a bit annoying and the chemistry with Gyllenhaal could have been a little better, but it could have been a helluva lot worse too so, small mercies…

Ah, maybe I’m not being fair, there is chemistry there – definitely more than there was with Sam Worthington in Clash of the Titans anyway. I think perhaps this brings us to the crux of Prince of Persia though…

… Jake Gyllenhaal is fantastic in it. And I’m not just saying that because he buffed up for it. I ain’t into them muscular types anyway… He’s just really good in it. He was funny, believable in the action shots* and he was convincing in the character as well. I wasn’t expecting that – I wouldn’t have pegged him as a action star – but maybe that’s why he’s so good in it. He’s actually an actor, not just a body who can recite lines.

So anyway, I probably don’t need to say much more than that. I thought this was a really good film. I mean it’s not… taxing on the brain in any way. It’s not without its mis-steps either, like I said, it’s a little long and yeah, it’s pretty clichéd. Time travel can be a difficult and confusing subject for some but they took the option to steer clear of anything too messy and that’s probably to their advantage – it’s a subject that can sometimes (not always) alienate wider audiences. At the end of the day it’s a big budget, big action popcorn flick. Don’t expect anything more than that. Don’t short change it too much either though, this could have gone horribly wrong and it didn’t.

I hope it does get a few sequels. Totally deserves them. I just hope they can keep the story up. And keep Jake Gyllenhaal too, he definitely get the chance to do a few “less serious” roles.

Oh I forgot to mention one thing… just so you aren’t surprised. They all have British accents. I’m not sure why but they do, even Gyllenhaal… and might I mention, he’s good at that too.

7.5/10

* obviously there were stuntmen but looking at the shots he was in

Early reviews have been extremely positive, actually it’s currently at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes… that kind of thing always worries me. I had the good fortune to see this film at a preview, courtesy of Simply Zesty and Universal Pictures about a week and a half ago so I hadn’t heard anything about whether it was actually good or not. That’s the way I like it, expectations as low as possible.

I have to say, I thought it was a great movie. I wouldn’t say it was an amazingly fantastic movie but it was great fun, a great laugh. I’d worry slightly that people are going to go into this thinking that this is some kind of landmark in superhero movies. It’s a solid, funny, action-packed yarn but that’s it really.

But I don’t want to put it down, I just want to keep people’s expectations in check. Particularly because I did think it started a little slowly, there’s not loads of ass-kicking all the time from the start. Which is good, because they’ve actually bothered having a story. It’s not just mindless action and wonder if that might put people off a bit. Be assured that you will see a whole load of ass-kicking but that’s not all you’ll see. So don’t expect that.

That said, I’ve started to realise that I have quite low standards… when it comes to films. I’ll let film makers away with dodgy stuff all the time. As far as I’m concerned I’ll let a bit of crappiness and stupidity or whatever go by, as long as there’s some really good scenes and a half decent plot and characters. In this case, I don’t expect action films to have much of a plot, if they have one at all. So, when one comes along with even a modicum of character building or thematic structure, I think it’s great…. and with Kick Ass I’m just a bit worried that I might have fooled myself into thinking it was great.

But I don’t think so. You’ll just have to go see it and decide for yourself.

There are two things I want to mention before I send you on your merry way though.

One. Kick Ass is rated 16 for a reason. Sure, it’s about superheroes, but it’s definitely not suitable for kids. Quite apart from the language, which isn’t something that bothers me at all, the violence is significant. I watch all sorts of films, plenty horror and slasher films and the like and I was still a bit shocked by some of the violence in this. It’s not worse than anything I’ve seen and I wouldn’t even call it that excessive, but it shocked me a bit because it was more realistic that I was expecting.

Two. I didn’t find Nicolas Cage as painful to watch in this as I usually do. It’s kind of strange because he is absolutely awful in parts of it but I’m pretty sure he’s doing it on purpose in those instances… at least that’s how I rationalised it. In any case, I know there are plenty of people out there who, like me, can’t stand Nicolas Cage and I just want to assure them it’s ok. He doesn’t ruin the movie.

So… that’s all I have to say really. As always, I’m intrigued to know what you think of it. Comment and let me know…

8/10