Alien invasion! Send in the military! Shoot out! Blam blam blam! Aliens die! The end. If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed in alien invasion movies since forever, it’s the predictable storyline – which is fine, because I’ve come to accept not to expect anything more. Plus I believe that it’s possible to reuse an overdone story and still make a good movie out of it. It’s all in the delivery – and Battle: Los Angeles fails to deliver.

The last alien movie that I actually remember truly enjoying was District 9 and that was two years ago and since then I’ve yet to find an alien movie that surpasses its standards. Anyway, Battle: LA is about aliens invading LA and killing everybody in sight. The military is sent in to rescue some survivors, before the Air Force bombs the shit out of the area.

Aaron Eckhart plays the about-to-be-retired-but-sent-back-into-battle Sergeant Michael Nantz, who is part of a squad of horribly overused, clichéd and stereotypical soldiers. Along the way they meet Technical Sergeant Elena Santos (Michelle Rodriguez) who joins the party because everyone else in her team died. There’s nothing terrible about anybody’s acting here – just nothing special either. The big named stars could’ve been easily replaced with lesser known actors of the same caliber and it wouldn’t have changed a thing.

If you like watching movies for eye candy, I guess you’re in for a treat. The special effects in the movie are pretty good, nothing cheesy or bad here, the aliens, weapons and ships all look pretty good. But if you want some semblance of a decent plot line or perhaps a twist or two, you’re out of luck. To me, Battle: LA feels like a typical adaptation of a video game turned into a movie – it’s rarely done right and you’d rather be playing the game instead. And since the Battle: LA game was inspired by the movie, we’re stuck in a conundrum here. Anyway, Battle: LA gets 4/10.

Walking into the cinema, I had high hopes for the movie knowing that it had quite a number of nominations to its name, and it was a boxing movie – usually boxing movies win awards right? Look at Rocky and Million Dollar Baby… anyway I digress.

The Fighter is a biopic about Dicky Eklund (Bale), an ex-superstar boxer who has to deal with drug problems and mould his brother, Micky Ward (Wahlberg) into a boxing champion. Despite the movie being about Micky Ward, supporting actor, Bale, stole the whole movie for me.

Christian Bale’s performance as a drug addict/boxing trainer, Dicky, was just brilliant. I knew he could act, but I had never seen this side of him before. Mark Wahlberg was just his usual self, and dished out nothing extraordinary. He is one fit guy though – you can really tell he worked his ass off to play the role of Micky Ward in this movie. Supporting actress Melissa Leo did a great job as the manipulative, power-hungry, over ambitious mother, Alice Ward.

Being based on a true story, I don’t know how accurate it was since I didn’t read up on it, but I heard that the final fight scene was a replica of the original fight that happened. Regardless, the movie was well shot, and I came out of the cinema feeling pumped and keen to pick up boxing as a sport. It was well paced, and there was not a low point in the movie. If I had to complain about anything, it would be there weren’t enough scenes with Christian Bale (for his acting) and Amy Adams (damn, she is fine). The Fighter deserves every award it won at the Oscars this year and it deserves to be on your list of movies to watch this year. The Fighter gets 8/10.

I was told that James Cameron produced this sorry excuse for a movie, and that sort of raised my expectations a bit even though I wasn’t a huge fan of his own movies. I mean with such a big name backing the movie, it must have its merits right? I can tell you straight up – no.

Sanctum fits in the same category of movies I wished I never wasted 2 hours of my life watching. If you’ve seen The Last Airbender and Hisss, this movie would belong in the same pile. There is nothing, absolutely nothing redeeming about this movie. I went in with an open mind (I really had no idea what to expect besides the cave exploration I saw in the vague trailer) and was prepared for anything. I guess I was wrong. I wasn’t prepared for this.

Sanctum tells the story of a bunch of underwater cave divers who want to explore the largest, unexplored cave in the world. A tropical storm causes the cave to flood, and the explorers are trapped inside, looking for an alternative route to freedom. Predictably, they start dying one by one to accidents and one crazed man against the rest of them.

The movie is forced, the characters didn’t show a single shred of emotion, and it was terribly paced. By the end of the movie, I didn’t feel a single connection at all to the protagonist and I wish he’d died along with the rest of them instead so the movie would end sooner. I don’t even remember a single name of any character in the movie. In fact the only character that comes to mind is the tanned skinned dude that had to be euthanized to put him out of his misery near the beginning of the movie. The cast were truly that unmemorable.

Writing this review has infuriated me, and now I’m even annoyed at myself for writing the last three paragraphs when the first one alone would have sufficed. Avoid Sanctum like the plague. I wouldn’t watch again even if I was held at gunpoint. Sanctum gets 1/10.