On This Day in 2011: Remembering BATTLE: LOS ANGELES...

Today marks ten years since I saw the sci-fi action flick Battle: Los Angeles at the theater. I thought it was pretty exciting...even though the movie (which starred Aaron Eckhart, Ramon Rodriguez, Ne-Yo, Bridget Moynahan, Michael Peña and Michelle Rodriguez) would've felt more authentic if it was actually filmed in the City of Angels. Battle: Los Angeles was mostly shot in Shreveport and Baton Rouge, Louisiana—with Camp Pendleton being the only California setting where production was held in the Golden State. It's all good.

Here's my original review of the film back in 2011.

Edge of Tomorrow...

Yesterday, I watched the new Tom Cruise flick at my local theater...and suffice it to say, the movie was pretty darn entertaining. Edge of Tomorrow was a cross between Groundhog Day, Saving Private Ryan and Halo (plus Gears of War and essentially any other sci-fi video game you'll play on Xbox and Playstation). Clearly, the filmmaker was inspired by the D-Day landings of World War II (Edge of Tomorrow officially opened at theaters domestically on June 6, which marked the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy)...with the central plot revolving around how Cage (Cruise) and Rita (Emily Blunt) had to figure out a way to get their fellow soldiers off a French beach. This locale was a meat grinder as alien creatures known as Mimics (who came to Earth via asteroid and decimated much of Europe) mowed down the human invaders the same way the Germans mercilessly gunned down Allied troops trying to wade their way across the shores of Normandy in 1944. Of course, unlike the ultra-realistic but grim portrayal of D-Day in Private Ryan, there was a nice touch of humor as Cage desperately tried to survive the onslaught of Mimics charging at him on the battlefront—only to die and relive that moment over and over (which is where the Groundhog Day reference comes along) until he emerged victorious.



While Tom Cruise played the reluctant hero (unlike his fearless characters in other movies like say, Mission: Impossible and Jack Reacher) in Edge of Tomorrow, Emily Blunt showed just how comfortable she was in playing a bad-ass action hero who will do whatever she could to accomplish her objective. Also amusing in this film was Bill Paxton...who played a tough-as-nails master sergeant bent on making Cage pay for his initial attempt at deserting his army unit and avoiding the invasion of France. (Like in WWII, the Americans and British were amassing their forces in England and were going to strike at the extraterrestrials using the English Channel.) The Mimics looked pretty cool...with their designs reminiscent of the Sentinels from The Matrix trilogy, the Kaiju of Pacific Rim and the creatures known as Locusts from Gears of War. The special effects in Edge of Tomorrow were top-notch, and could've possibly earned this movie a Best Visual Effects Oscar nomination in 2015 if Godzilla, Transformers: Age of Extinction and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies weren't released this year.



All-in-all, Edge of Tomorrow was a fun and inventive sci-fi film. The story didn't lend itself to having a sequel, but Tomorrow was as entertaining (but not campy) a flick as 1997's Starship Troopers. Edge of Tomorrow was also similar to Battle: Los Angeles, but the humor that Cruise got to employ and the toughness of Blunt's character set their movie apart from 2011's action-disaster film. Here's hoping Tomorrow will find box office success during its theatrical run...it deserves it.

Red Tails... I saw the film earlier today, and it was pretty entertaining. Overlooking the historic racial aspects of its storyline, Red Tails is what 2001's Pearl Harbor should've been if it wasn't deliberately treated as Titanic set during World War II (and if you briefly set aside the obvious calamity that took place at the U.S. naval base). The movie, produced by George Lucas (who also directed some scenes during reshoots) and Rick McCallum (who produced the Star Wars prequels for Lucas), definitely wasn't perfect... The red-colored font (and even the design of the title itself) for the opening credits made it look like they were typed using Final Cut Pro (not that I have anything against FCP—I love this editing program), and it was pretty noticeable that Red Tails was shot with a digital camera. I'm a celluloid-lover, FYI. Leave the digital camera to TV sitcoms, thanks.



In terms of casting, Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Oscar nominee Terrence Howard were respectable in Red Tails, and it was amusing to see Bryan Cranston (of TV's Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad) play a racist U.S. Army brass in this flick. Never heard of Daniela Ruah until today, but she looked gorgeous playing the Italian love interest of hotshot pilot Joe "Lightning" Little (David Oyelowo). Ne-Yo, who I remember from last year's sci-fi film Battle: Los Angeles, played Andrew "Smoky" Salem. As for the rest of the cast, some of them look familiar but not familiar enough for me to mention in this review. Not to be rude or anything.



One last issue that I want to point out about Red Tails was the ending. Not to spoil it for those of you planning to see this flick, but I found it clunky: The Tuskegee Airmen were mourning the loss of one of their best pilots after a major sortie over Berlin, but suddenly cheered when another pilot—who had to bail from his damaged aircraft and was taken prisoner by Germans on the ground earlier in the film, and later presumed dead—abruptly showed up at the airbase to celebrate and declare a new random nickname for himself. Apparently, this guy didn't get the memo that a memorial for a fallen flyboy was taking place at the time. (This moment may have happened in real life, but still, it was clunky.) Anyways... Other than that, if you want to see awesome World War II aerial combat, then Red Tails is the movie for you. Industrial Light & Magic worked on the visual effects, so you can be sure that you'll be watching a lot of cool (computer-generated) dogfights in this action flick. Carry on.

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES... I finally saw the alien-invasion film today, and needless to say, it was the sci-fi version of Black Hawk Down. Which means...I thought it was pretty cool! Non-stop action was waged throughout B:LA, much like in Ridley Scott’s 2002 war flick about the 1993 conflict in Somalia. Aaron Eckhart was awesome as Staff Sergeant Nantz; while compared to her gung-ho attitude in Avatar, Machete and the Fast and the Furious films, Michelle Rodriguez was somewhat tame as Tech Sgt. Elena Santos in B:LA. As Santos, Rodriguez didn't have the usual sarcastic quips that she had playing previous movie characters. Not that that's a bad thing. Nothing exceptionally noteworthy about the civilians played by Bridget Moynahan and Michael Peña, but I’ll give them props since my review about this flick is supposed to be a positive one. I just found out through IMDb.com that 2nd Lt. William Martinez, who was in charge of the Marine platoon before handing command over to Eckhart's Nantz and then sacrificing himself later in the film, was played by Ramon Rodriguez. In case you’re wondering who this is, Rodriguez played the wacky college roommate of Shia LaBeouf in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. But back to B:LA.



Battle: Los Angeles didn’t exactly have a deep message like 2009’s District 9 (which B:LA also borrowed elements from...namely weapons that cause explosions surrounded by bolts of lightning) did, but it was still a lot better than last year’s Skyline. B:LA didn’t have a "WTF??" moment at the very end of the movie like Skyline did...though as I said at the beginning of this journal entry, B:LA was obviously inspired by Black Hawk Down in that Eckhart and Co. go back into the battlefield at the film's conclusion to take care of unfinished business. Also, the battle in Los Angeles lasted for one day...while the 1993 battle in Mogadishu, Somalia lasted a day as well. Nothing wrong with that. My personal gripe about B:LA is that, like the Bourne movies (as in The Bourne Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum), it overdid it with the shaky cam. By now using this camera technique in war films has become a cliché, and unfortunately B:LA suffers from this tired method. It was cool in Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down...but try spending more time setting the camera up on a tripod or at least a Steadicam, folks—if there’s a sequel (Battle: San Diego, anyone?). Thanks. Another gripe is that the trippy song used in B:LA's theatrical trailers, "The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky Turned Black" by Icelandic musician Johann Johannsson, wasn't featured in the movie. Oh well.



Special effects-wise, the aliens in B:LA looked interesting...though were they using projectile weapons (RE: bullets) just like the humans were? I guess having the invaders shoot laser beams at the Marines would’ve ruined the gritty, realistic tone of the film. After all, this ain’t Star Wars. Or Star Trek. Or Independence Day. Or Transformers. Or Terminator. The same people who did the visual FX on Skyline also did the FX work on B:LA. The FX work was what saved Skyline since its CW Network-quality cast of actors wasn’t exactly the saving grace of that movie. That is all.

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES... Check out the newest trailer to this March's alien invasion film (starring Aaron Eckhart, Bridget Moynahan, Michelle Rodriguez and others) below. All I can say is, I AM STOKED to watch Battle: Los Angeles when it comes out in theaters less than two months from now. Hopefully, the actual movie will have that trippy song ("The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky Turned Black" by Icelandic musician Johann Johannsson) that's been played in the background of this clip as well as the teaser trailer that made its debut in front of the film Skyline last November. I saw the newest trailer in front of The Green Hornet after I watched it at an AMC theater yesterday (I might review Hornet on this Blog. Might). That is all.



The obligatory screencaps from B:LA:

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES... I obviously don’t know how good the alien invasion movie (which comes out in theaters next March) is gonna be, but HOLY S**T, the trailer for it looks totally bad-ass. You can tell by the screenshots I posted below...





And of course, here is the Battle: Los Angeles trailer itself: