BATTLE LOS ANGELES- Review

The makers of Battle Los Angeles have intimated that the Brothers Strause, the directors of Skyline, bailed out of their jobs as special effects artists on this one to make that one. It's an interesting story if true, but now that Battle Los Angeles has been released, it reveals that it is in fact on quite shaky litigious grounds. Skyline might be a little bit like Battle Los Angeles, but then Battle Los Angeles is a lot like many other films.

Aaron Eckhart plays Staff Sgt. Nantz, a Marine who's just handed in his resignation after 20 years of service and has a bad reputation after his last tour of Iraq went badly wrong. Before Nantz can say his goodbyes, however, a meteor shower in close proximity to the coast of Los Angeles prompts a military evacuation of the city, and he's drafted in to help out. But similar meteor showers have occurred all over the world, and it soon transpires that the meteors are cover for an invasion of Earth.

It's unusual for me, to hear a film's music score speak so comprehensively of not only the film's content, but of the film's quality. Brian Tyler, a composer on the likes of the Fast and the Furious franchise and the Final Destination franchise, has turned in the most generic and lazy assault my earholes have endured in a long, long time. We've recently seen a score elevate a film just by its presence, seeing as how Daft Punk's soundtrack to Tron: Legacy was the best and only reason for that film to exist, but Tyler actually creates a problem that brings the film down.

My hatred of the score is the most prominent thing to mention about Battle Los Angeles, because it's really just a big, loud and disengaged disappointment of the worst kind. I went in with a fair bit of anticipation for the film- I had liked the trailers, and I like Aaron Eckhart, and I was absolutely in the right mindset to enjoy it. My experience of watching the film was like constantly running after it and trying to get involved with it, but always being left some distance behind.

It's not that it's an especially complicated film, although its subplots tend to convolve the action, but it was like I was sitting in orbit of the action rather than ever becoming involved with it. There are films that have been likened to watching somebody else play a video game, and to me at least, this film is absolutely that. The cascade of disposable war movie characters are trotted out from the outset, to the point where it's impossible to tell who's getting killed off as the death toll ramps up, at least until the ending where there are only a handful of Marines surviving.

The Battle of the title is definitely the operative part, because the action is near enough relentless, in true video game style. As usual, we're siding with the humans in this battle, even though we get a very interesting aside at the outset of the action. Two snipers sitting atop a building and watching the encroaching aliens mutter about how they don't seem so different, pondering the thoughts and feelings of their opponents, which shows something of the war film the filmmakers were hoping for. The film then drops that thread as though it's a matter of total disinterest to the viewer.

Instead, we're asked to find some kind of relatable quality with characters who bitch about their personal issues with Nantz at a point in which the entire world has gone to hell. These remarkably self-centred characters are utterly ignorant of the huge world-changing events happening all around them. Just as soon as they're not shooting at them or blowing them up, that is. Aaron Eckhart gives a classy performance in a role that fits him like a glove, but Nantz is the only character whose name I wouldn't have to look up afterwards- that's how poorly these characters are developed.

The disinterest in the aliens is staggering. Some might like the way that we never get what anyone would call a satisfactory idea of what these adversaries look like, because they're only ever seen in long shots or extreme close-ups. I can see how some would appreciate being distanced from the aliens in that way, and left to come up with their own idea of what these world-invading bastards look like, but I can appreciate that someone, somewhere, actually gave some thought to the design of these things. So it's all the more maddening that we're supposed to be more interested in the human characters, who all come from Michael Bay's US military porn stock, Nantz excepted.

Battle Los Angeles has a couple of bits of properly exciting action and a decent performance from Eckhart, but all else seems so obnoxiously loud as to actually become quiet. Maybe that's what the excellent trailers were hinting at all along, because there's little of the implied subtlety of the Johann Johannson-scored trailer in the final film. The score is horribly incompetent, the camerawork is shaky and Bourne-like even in supposedly subdued moments and the character development is so negligible that you start to root for the aliens. However this battle turns out, everybody lost in the battle between this film and Skyline.

Battle Los Angeles is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Battle Los Angeles, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

RABBIT HOLE- Review

I never did get around to reviewing Blue Valentine, did I? If anybody's wondering, I thought it was very good, but it wasn't as affecting as expected. I'll go into it in greater depth to coincide with the eventual DVD release, but I noticed this omission because Blue Valentine is a film that a lot of people seem to be comparing to Rabbit Hole.

Based on his own play, writer David Lindsay-Abaire tells the story of Becca and Howie, whose four year old son was killed in a traffic accident eight months prior. Having exhausted the traditional channels of dealing with grief, Becca still finds herself in a deep state of anguish, and the couple's repression is damaging their marriage. After growing sick of bereavement groups, she lets her husband continue going to those sessions alone while she tries to find solace in more unusual places.

The comparisons to Blue Valentine do the film no justice. Although I think both are very good, Rabbit Hole is clearly a very different beast. The false expectation built up by these tenuous comparisons meant that the film was constantly subverting my expectations, as I expected it to take a left turn into tragic misery at any moment. For instance, when we're told that Howie's son died after being hit by a car and then see how little time he spends looking at the road when he's driving, you might have a certain expectation of where the film's going. But it doesn't go there.

Indeed, it actually trusts an audience to connect the dots and find an emotional truth in the events on-scree, rather than do anything silly like show a flashback of the accident to open the film. A mutual trust is established between the audience and the narrative as it unfolds, and it's most satisfying to watch. On the whole, the tone is actually decidedly more upbeat than expected, considering that it's a story about moving on from the death of a child. It's not that it's a funny film, although it's not above a couple of nice little comedy moments here and there, but it just has an optimism and a good humour that distinguishes this from Blue Valentine in so many ways that people might as well be comparing the film to A Clockwork Orange.

Moreover, Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart are worlds apart from the performances given by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling. They are of a similar calibre, and both Kidman and Williams deserve their respective Oscar nods in the Best Actress category, even if they're both likely to lose out to Natalie Portman. But at the same time, Kidman and Eckhart powerfully play their desolation out in the context of characters carrying on with their everyday lives. Eckhart's Howie might appear to suffer less, but that's because the central conflict of the film begins with Kidman, as Becca, deciding that enough is enough, and beginning to properly seek catharsis instead of wallowing in sadness and resentment forever.

The only major criticism I would have about the film, and about this approach, is the underlying cynicism about those traditional means of bereavement counselling. In the context of focusing on Becca and Howie, it works. When you grieve, your loss is the centre of your work, and so it's easy to sympathise with their frustration in the early scenes, in which another pair of bereaved parents talk about how their child's death was God's plan. But at the same time, certain developments in the film seem to imply that doing things conventionally can only lead to rack and ruin- I might agree on the God thing from an atheistic standpoint, but it's not to say that I begrudge anyone who actually finds peace through that channel.

In the later stages of the film, Becca sits down with Howie to talk about their future, even if only so far as to say what they're doing that afternoon. Such moments mark Rabbit Hole as a surprisingly warm and upbeat introspective piece on death and bereavement. Far more melancholic films have been made- much longer films in which characters do wallow in misery for the duration. It's a tale of empowerment insofar as it's all about Becca seeking to resume control over her own life, and trying to hold together her connection with her husband at the same time. It's also deeply absorbing, and really nothing like the weepie that some have touted.

Rabbit Hole is now playing in selected cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Rabbit Hole, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.