Watched Saving Private Ryan recently (yes, it was edited for content, and I'm pretty sure they did a good job, as it wasn't nearly as graphic as I remember in my youth when watching R movies without guilt). An excellent and powerful movie. The message is important and striking. I also have Band of Brothers and The Pacific edited, so I hope to watch those soon.
Actually, I wanted to see Band of Brothers last night, but my wife talked me into watching the movie my father-in-law had loaned us: Battleship. Previews looked dumb, but I gave it a shot. If I could pick one word to describe the flick, I'd have to pick "cliches." Let's see, alien invasions aren't that new, but it's what you do with it that makes it interesting. This felt much like a Transformers ripoff (not that those movies are any good or very original IMO--didn't even make it through the second). Aside from the cliches and predictable lines, it was too far outside reality to be enjoyable. I mean, sure, I come to a Star Wars forum because I love a space fantasy, but I don't watch a film about real naval vessels for a fairy tale.
The planet in question is 22 lightyears from earth, meaning that our little signal would take 22 years just to get to the planet. From there, the aliens would have to construct ships that cannot even travel as fast as light. But let's assume they somehow found a way to travel faster than light, well, they wouldn't yet know of our existence till our signal got to them.
Okay, so let's assume we are dealing with such intelligent beings. Their weapons are relatively crappy given their capacity. Their projectiles (designed to look like the pegs from the boardgame) are rather weak and have no homing abilities. Their little spinning things that tear everything up were not particularly impressive for such alien tech. A massive gun shooting an alien 6 feet from you would destroy your ears and organs as well as knocking you off the ship. The aliens can place a giant shield over Hawaii, but a couple of our surface to surface missiles can take out their ships. Their ships don't really float on the water and don't hover either; they hop from place to place! They were invisible to our radars, but couldn't detect us in the dark either. The aliens are morons because they only attack if they determine something to be a threat (conventiently coloring it red or green to signify dangerous or safe). A ship fires a warning shot...they destroy it. Another prepares to attack it...they prepare to destroy it but another fires on it...so they destroy that one instead. The third ship again prepares to attack, but decides to turn away...and they ignore it. Minutes later, they destroy Hawaii highways. The aliens are too dense to actually get that they are being drawn in a particular direction. Arg, I don't even make sense as I try to list the crap from that movie. Cliches like arrogant male becomes hero, girlfriend is authority figure's daughter, two lines that I called, slow motion explosions, old men on the museum battleship Missouri walking in slomo in their moment of glory, the servicewoman who is tougher than most of the guys, avenging the lost family member (who was an idiot to provoke a response in the first place), and on and on and on. Was there anything redeeming in it? Well, they tried to mimic the nature of the game for a few moments with the guessing and firing on a coordinate ("Tango 13!"). Part of the implausible storyline, but at least it had a bit of charm to it. For that alone, I promote this movie from being a complete turkey to a turkey with stuffing in its rear.