Case in point: Battle: Los Angeles, an alien-invasion disaster piece so loud, ham-fisted and joyless-so aggressively lousy-that its only real usefulness is to make one better appreciate the deft touch of a Roland Emmerich.

| Jun 28, 2013

Terminally stupid.

| Dec 6, 2011

If the talk had been surgically removed, leaving only the sights and sounds of combat, this could have been a striking, semiabstract display of aggressive energy; as it is, any viewer over twelve will go for the laughs.

Full Review | Mar 21, 2011

One doesn't approach a movie like this expecting Shakespearean drama. Unlike some films with loftier ambitions, Battle Los Angeles pretty much delivers what it promises:

Full Review | Mar 20, 2011

The film constantly blows thick smoke up our a---s and calls it charity.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 20, 2011

The special effects are mediocre and the story is strewn with the type of plot inconsistencies and lazy dialogue all-too-typical of today's post-content blockbusters.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 18, 2011

Watching this nonsense after seeing tragic television images of the destruction of Japan somehow made Battle: Los Angeles appear even more meretricious.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 17, 2011

It is a well executed one-violent-trick pony, designed for the 12 year old boy the movie studios hope is still playing with toy soldier figurines inside us all.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 17, 2011

Like the aliens themselves, the cliches were coming too fast. Unlike the aliens, they are indestructible.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 16, 2011

After a brief introduction to the cliched characters, the battle of the title is a violent, over-amplified affair...

| Mar 14, 2011

Really need to watch District 9 again. Immediately.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 14, 2011

Feels less like a movie than the action scenes clipped out of one.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 13, 2011

With his hawklike profile and square jaw, the hyperstalwart Eckhart looks like a comic-book hero and acts like one, too. He's so stalwart he creaks.

| Original Score: C+ | Mar 11, 2011

Gosh darn it all if Battle: Los Angeles is hugely entertaining all on its own right thoughts about plagiarism or no.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 11, 2011

Battle Los Angeles is so derivative of superior films that you'll spend half the running time merely making a list of movies that you'd rather be watching.

| Original Score: 1.0/5.0 | Mar 11, 2011

This film feels so much like a videogame your hands keep reaching for controllers -- shoot the aliens, shoot the aliens, shoot the aliens.

| Original Score: C | Mar 11, 2011

Don't mean to boast, but I can suspend my disbelief as willingly as any credulous moviegoer. Yet not even an industrial crane would have helped here. Nope, Battle: Los Angeles completely defeated me.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 11, 2011

Pretty much cardboard, down to the heroic patriotic speeches, and less distinctive even than last year's scarcely stellar Skyline, which trashed the same city.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 11, 2011

It's just running, shooting, dodging, killing, not badly done but pretty numbing over two hours.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 11, 2011

Neither as serious as Black Hawk Down nor as lightheartedly fun as Independence Day.

| Original Score: 48/100 | Mar 11, 2011