Case in point: Battle: Los Angeles, an alien-invasion disaster piece so loud, ham-fisted and joyless-so aggressively lousy-that its only real usefulness is to make one better appreciate the deft touch of a Roland Emmerich.

Terminally stupid.

If the talk had been surgically removed, leaving only the sights and sounds of combat, this could have been a striking, semiabstract display of aggressive energy; as it is, any viewer over twelve will go for the laughs.

Our plot and attention is not split and spread to several places or groups of people around the country and world. We stick with one group the whole way through and that's the movie's strength.