Firstly, I'm sick of the mugs who bitch like little high school queens trying to outdo one another for bad reviews. They come across like smug smartass film students full of theory and no practicality. 'Clueless geek' is the catchall term for batches of the bad reviews appearing here.
If you want to file a bad review, go slaughter Independence Day - a disgusting insult to the intelligence which mystifyingly still rates a 6.6 on here; gives you an idea of the mentality of those proclaiming to be sci-fi aficionados who have jumped to berate Skyline.
I'm no happy-clapper when it comes to giving up my time for a piece of someone's creative effort. I'll approach with cautious interest even the well-hyped and I'll call it how I see it, as my smattering of reviews will show.
I watched Skyline last night carrying a headful of the godawful reviews posted on here, and I'm sorry I paid them any heed at all. I'm a veteran of sci-fi movies, loving the genre since childhood, reading the classic novels, mags, comic books avidly. Always waiting for something to re-invigorate my enthusiasm for it...
Skyline is refreshing. Derivative as can be expected (alien invasion, Cleetus - there's not a whole field of originality to pick from), but laden with grim misanthropy, dripping with suspense, chock full of great special effects which are well concealed for the first half hour, giving them a greater impact when released on your taut senses.
Script - sadly, and ironically, many here site the script as a failure when in fact it is the EXACT opposite. It is perfectly pitched. No stirring heroic speeches. No intuitive insights into human nature or that of the terrifying aliens. Just normal people facing extinction in gradually increasing installments of denial/horror/grim realisation.
In situations like that, as in disaster zones or war zones, the last thing you'll hear spilling from people's lips is impassioned pleas/epiphanic psychobabble. They'll follow the line of quiet clichés, murmured despair. The dialogue plays second (or third) fiddle to the fraught terror of the situation, the characters' emotional reactions and mankind's imminent end. Correct.
And the acting is fine, understated and completely believable. Everyone is terrified, and rightly so. No-one feels like saving the world entire by hijacking octopod alien starfighters curiously designed to be just the right snug fit for a human biped. EVERYONE wants to get the hell away/hide from the monstrous threat.
This film does not do heroes, and thank God for that.
The aliens are brutal, remorseless and just perfectly, well, alien. They've no empathy for us - we're nuts to be harvested, cracked and the useful bits extracted for their own use. We are nothing, being pulped, hunted and farmed to nothing.
The chilling message is enforced here better than most. I grew to admire the hopelessness of it all, wincing at the dead end at every desperate turn.
Thoroughly entertaining, grippingly suspenseful, acted with admirable restraint, and well shot with great effects.
Well worth an hour and a half of your time and much much more credit than fussy tarantulas have given it. A solid SEVEN (7)
If you want to file a bad review, go slaughter Independence Day - a disgusting insult to the intelligence which mystifyingly still rates a 6.6 on here; gives you an idea of the mentality of those proclaiming to be sci-fi aficionados who have jumped to berate Skyline.
I'm no happy-clapper when it comes to giving up my time for a piece of someone's creative effort. I'll approach with cautious interest even the well-hyped and I'll call it how I see it, as my smattering of reviews will show.
I watched Skyline last night carrying a headful of the godawful reviews posted on here, and I'm sorry I paid them any heed at all. I'm a veteran of sci-fi movies, loving the genre since childhood, reading the classic novels, mags, comic books avidly. Always waiting for something to re-invigorate my enthusiasm for it...
Skyline is refreshing. Derivative as can be expected (alien invasion, Cleetus - there's not a whole field of originality to pick from), but laden with grim misanthropy, dripping with suspense, chock full of great special effects which are well concealed for the first half hour, giving them a greater impact when released on your taut senses.
Script - sadly, and ironically, many here site the script as a failure when in fact it is the EXACT opposite. It is perfectly pitched. No stirring heroic speeches. No intuitive insights into human nature or that of the terrifying aliens. Just normal people facing extinction in gradually increasing installments of denial/horror/grim realisation.
In situations like that, as in disaster zones or war zones, the last thing you'll hear spilling from people's lips is impassioned pleas/epiphanic psychobabble. They'll follow the line of quiet clichés, murmured despair. The dialogue plays second (or third) fiddle to the fraught terror of the situation, the characters' emotional reactions and mankind's imminent end. Correct.
And the acting is fine, understated and completely believable. Everyone is terrified, and rightly so. No-one feels like saving the world entire by hijacking octopod alien starfighters curiously designed to be just the right snug fit for a human biped. EVERYONE wants to get the hell away/hide from the monstrous threat.
This film does not do heroes, and thank God for that.
The aliens are brutal, remorseless and just perfectly, well, alien. They've no empathy for us - we're nuts to be harvested, cracked and the useful bits extracted for their own use. We are nothing, being pulped, hunted and farmed to nothing.
The chilling message is enforced here better than most. I grew to admire the hopelessness of it all, wincing at the dead end at every desperate turn.
Thoroughly entertaining, grippingly suspenseful, acted with admirable restraint, and well shot with great effects.
Well worth an hour and a half of your time and much much more credit than fussy tarantulas have given it. A solid SEVEN (7)