Battle: Los Angeles *

Director: Jonathan Liebesman

Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez

Ramón Rodríguez, Michael Peña, Ne-Yo, Bridget Moynahan

Cory Hardrict, Noel Fisher, Jim Parrack

How can a movie where things explode very two seconds, be so freaking dull? That might be the biggest mystery in Battle: Los Angeles, and not why the leading characters never get hit by bullets, why the virgins die first and why are the aliens bothering with physical combat when they have such amazing weapons.

The film is essentially a handheld version of every war movie made during the last decade. Only difference is that the Middle Easterners have been replaced by aliens who have come to Earth to steal all the water (yes, a thinly disguised allegory for water replacing oil as the ultimate element of survival).

The characters include all the usual suspects, including Eckhart who plays an officer who just happens to announce his retirement the day aliens invade, Ramón Rodríguez as a newbie with a pregnant wife at home, Fisher as a geeky virgin and Michelle Rodríguez as a tough, butch chick with a heart of gold i.e. she plays Michelle Rodríguez.

The film was supposedly inspired on a WWII episode concerning mysterious lights that appeared above Los Angeles and watching this torturous film, you honestly have time to think that maybe filming that story would've been a much better idea.

The action scenes in the movie are deft but shockingly forgettable, the characters are under developed and other than Eckhart and Peña (who are always reliable) everyone else seems to not even bother with putting on a show.

Perhaps what results more vomit inducing about this movie is how biased it is about the idea of military forces being the families of the future.

We always wonder what keeps this people together as they travel the streets of the city trying to find civilians. Why aren't they more interested in their own lives? Since the performances are so poor, the only thing that bonds them is the actors' contract.

This forced love for the army the characters talk so much about comes off looking as a silly, even subversive method of drafting, not very different from what people in the 1940s would've thought.

At least this lack of soul, makes it easy to believe that no intelligent extraterrestrial force would bother with conquering a bunch of mechanical beings.

Machete **

Director: Robert Rodriguez, Ethan Maniquis
Cast: Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Jessica Alba
Jeff Fahey, Steven Seagal, Cheech Marin, Lindsay Lohan
Shea Wigham, Don Johnson, Robert de Niro

For a movie that has Jessica Alba playing a U.S. Immigration officer, Cheech Marin as a gun toting priest and Danny Trejo as a sex symbol, Machete sure is less fun than it promises.
Adapted from the faux trailer that came with 2007's Grindhouse, the film expands the basic premise of "man seeking revenge" and turns it into a full on blood and guts extravaganza with a message.
The film follows Machete (Trejo), a Mexican Federal betrayed by the force and hunted by the evil druglord Torrez (Seagal) who also killed his family.
Years later, while working illegally in the States, he's approached by a mysterious man (Fahey) who blackmails him to have him kill anti-immigration US Senator John McLaughlin (De Niro). He's betrayed once again and realizes that getting payback might get him closer to avenging his family.
If the basic plot is essentially the exploitative premise from the trailer, the film itself is a convoluted mess of cinematic references, more subplots than it can handle and a distasteful social message.
It doesn't take much to realize that the whole idea of this Machete is to make a comment on the preposterous position some American government officials have taken towards immigration.
The film grabs these, mostly Republican, beings and turns them into monsters like Sen. McLaughlin who enjoys shooting "wetbacks", taping it and then getting donations from people who get a kick out of watching this.
Yet for every monster cliché he can get, Rodríguez also delivers a heroic counterpart. Therefore we have She (pronounced Che and played by Rodríguez) a humble young woman who runs a taco stand by day and leads a resistance movement by night.
The idea of her counterrevolutionary methods isn't as out of place as the fact that she is shaped after one of the most controversial figures in history. Throughout the whole movie the director can't help but wink at us letting us know almost everything is referencing something else.
Hence we have Lohan playing a drug addict gone good, Johnson as the kind of corrupt creature he would've been fighting against in Miami Vice and Alba as a police officer who's both capable of beating the crap out of a gang but also has time to strike sexy poses while she showers.
If the idea behind Machete was to pay homage to the B movies that shaped it, Rodríguez seems to have forgotten that these movies were usually happy accidents and never strategically manufactured products.
These movies became legendary because they eventually came to represent something for people; whether it was female liberation, anti war movements or just plain old fashioned anti-establishment agendas, these movies originally were made just for fun.
Yet everything here is winking at something, recurring to cheap stunt casting or trying to preach about immigration.
It's here when the movie gets confusing, because when you try to deliver an important message about society it's risky to say the only people who can get it solved are murderous, vengeance-seeking outlaws. This could result hilarious to people in on the joke but might easily shock those who oppose the ideas the movie's against.
Rodríguez can't have his social message cake and eat it too!
This is why Machete often feels dull as a butter knife even when it pretends to be completely sharp.

Avatar ***1/2

Director: James Cameron
Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana
Michelle Rodriguez, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, Dileep Rao
Joel Moore, CCH Pounder, Laz Alonso, Wes Studi, Sigourney Weaver

There's a fascinating paradox at the center of "Avatar". On one side we have an open critique to how big corporations treat the environment, colonialist invasions and the destruction of ancient cultures but on the other side the movie itself is a product of an industry that has endorsed those very things throughout its existence.
Yes, movies made within a system can be critical and question said surroundings, but "Avatar"'s sense of self grandiosity makes its message sound almost ironic.
With lesser movies-in terms of audience expectation and several years of hype-there's always the benefit that comes with novelty, but "Avatar" has been surrounded by "most expensive movie ever" stories and there are few people in the world who don't know that James Cameron made the most popular movie of all time before this one.
Fortunately for Cameron, few will find the time or energy to finds flaws in his newest epic. The man sure knows how to tell a story and with "Avatar" he once again proves he's also the best at taking us right into the narrative.
Set somewhere in the future the film tells the story of Jake Sully (a wonderful Worthington), a paraplegic marine deployed to planet Pandora on a special mission.
He has to become a link between humans and locals called Na'vi-blue feline like humanoids with slender bodies and tails-who are against the invasion of their planet.
The human colony is in search of a powerful fuel called "unobtanium" for which they have to destroy forests and mountains so they plan to achieve diplomatic success by using half-Na'vi, half human creations named avatars which are accessed by putting the chosen human in a technological trance and uploading their consciousness onto the avatar which they can control during said "sleep".
Blinded by the possibility of having a movable pair of legs, Jake takes on the mission unprepared for the ethical dilemmas that will come from it.
He enters the Na'vi community where he's reluctantly taken in by Neytiri (Saldana), the leader's daughter, who's chosen to train him in their ways.
Before long Sully is working for three teams. There's the human scientists fascinated by the biological richness of Pandora who are led by Dr. Grace Augustine (played by Weaver, Cameron's sci-fi muse by excellence).
There's also the military team led by Colonel Miles Quaritch (Lang) who care little about the Na'vi as long as they can complete their mission and the Na'vi themselves who begin to take Jake as if he was one of their own.
Cameron lacks profound writing abilities (seriously the word "unobtanium" itself spoils the whole thing) and his story takes all the expected routes as Jae falls for Neytiri and has to decide if he will remain loyal to his army or his newfound beliefs. The movie most often feels like a CGI adaptation of Disney's "Pocahontas" as the Neytiri represent Native Americans (James Horner's score doesn't help dispel this notion as he recurs to tribal instruments and motifs that recall "Titanic"'s intense romance) and humans are the British in this case.
And the plot is plagued with inconsistencies we're supposed to take for granted like Weaver's strong willed character being shocked by the discovery that the soldiers are willing to kill the Na'vi in order to take over their land.
But Cameron is a sly player and what he lacks in writing genius he more than makes up in visual grandeur and with "Avatar" he doesn't just make us feel like his visuals are distracting us from plot holes and cliché, he pulls off something greater: convincing us that these things shouldn't
even play part of our viewing.
The director makes a deal with us: if we wanna take in his mastery of technological craft, we have to give up his inefficiency at achieving character depth.
He mostly gets away with it because "Avatar" is just magnificent to behold. Cameron's CGI innovations virtually create a photorealistic planet where every little thing is a world unto its own.
Scenes set in Pandora's jungles are like alien editions of National Geographic documentaries, with every plant and animal something exotic and beautiful to behold. Cameron has a ball showing off his creations and relies on huge "Out of Africa"-like vistas to make us try to understand the scope of this planet.
It helps that the Na'vi are nature lovers because this gives him the chance to concentrate on every little organism of the place. He's also spectacular with action scenes because unlike other directors he let's us see what's going on.
This makes sense given the hard work the effect team put behind a movie that's mostly made of computer images, Cameron evokes the magic that made our jaws fall to the floor as children and when one of the characters says "you're not in Kansas anymore" he's not only paying tribute to the wizard, he's also reminding us the long way we've come from 1939.
It's just sad that because of his story this comes with the tragic realization that if Pandora was real, we would already be destroying it.