If you fancy a night in watching a DVD, then take a look at the selection available at Island Libraries. At just £1.50 per night, they’re a great bargain. Ed
The dilemmas of confusion in the millennium could well be that a comparison between the documentary ‘102 Minutes That Changed America’ and the science-fiction fiction epic ‘Battle: Los Angeles’ reveal an understandably paranoid mind at work.
Some viewers consider the original 1950s version of ‘The Body Snatchers’ do be a sub-text on The McCarthy hearings and hatred and fear of communism.
Applying a search for the subtext of ‘Battle: Los Angeles’ isn’t too difficult. It’s about Los Angeles being attacked and showing off some spectacular effects in the process.
The more frustrating experience to understand is why soldiers are so much the focus of attention in the film, rather than gangs doing the justice.
Lame propaganda
It could have been ‘Warriors vs. Aliens’. Instead it’s lame propaganda at the best of times and the lameness expands to such a degree that the only way to have fun with it, is to try eating a large bag of chips with garlic dip and wonder if that’s the reason the movie is so loud.
And boy is it loud? – Pheweee, you would not believe how mindlessly loud it is – let’s rock out to a movie that is technically impressive, but hollow as war propaganda can be.
Bang, bang, bang
How are the aliens? Who cares? Shoot them quick! But this all glorious fun in a movie but alarming displays of contradiction are held within ‘102 Minutes The Changed America’ – Firemen being heroic and civilians dealing with real terror and unable to be rescued.
Cliche-tastic
The question has to be one of taste here. What is Jonathan Liebsman on for heaven’s sake? If there is a subtext in ‘Battle: Los Angeles’ it runs all over the place and rarely has explanation been ruled out from a script.
Instead every cliche is included as if to wink at the camera and suggest it’s just a movie folks – don’t take it so seriously.
Mindless
Fortunately ‘Battle: Los Angeles’ is as mindless as caffeined-up video-violence can be, is impressive with the effects, but still insists getting in some horrendous moralistic ‘twoddle’.
As a piece of enjoyable utterly meaningless cack its right up there with ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’ – some confusion however in what the feeling of despondency in America actually is presently. It must be in a bad way – look at some of the movies it’s producing!
Money better spent elsewhere
You could have an intellectual discussion or consider the true horror of how much time and effort has been wasted making a movie like this.
Surely with so much concentrated effort, it would have been much easier to have done something brilliantly simple instead. Such as give the budget to earthquake victims and make them happy.
Battle: Los Angeles is a total waste of everything and maybe that’s why it was made. Full on mindless drivel from the start and it makes ‘Cloverfield’ seem like ‘Ben Hur’ by comparison.
Do yourself a favour and study Buddhism for a couple of hours or work on growing your hair longer if you can – but give ‘Battle: Los Angeles’ some wide births. Or watch ‘102 Minutes That Changed America’ – there’s a documentary film to be respectful of. This is a step in the totally wrong direction.
