Skyline [Blu-ray]

Obviously, the entire budget went to the special effects department…well, maybe they gave a buck-fifty to the writers. Even so, I am ashamed to admit that I liked the special effects, with or without the advantage of a workable plot…or actors who could actually act. After a cliche laden start, once the aliens were highlighted as the main interest, things picked up a bit (abrupt ending notwithstanding). I do like monsters, especially when they light up. Without an ounce of dialog, they were far more fascinating than any of the people involved. I did not feel it was a waste of my time or money. It’s a keeper!

Good movie but blu-ray scratched. 4k disc was good. This seems to be the norm these days. Quality control no longer exists.

I don't know why so many people are writing bad reviews about this movie. I saw the same movie and I thought it was very entertaining all the way through. Wow, I was scared!The special effects were great! Fantastic. The special effects alone deserve 5-stars.The main characters were basically just 5 people. I thought their acting was very good. During the movie, the aliens were overhead -- the characters were scared and running for cover --- I was scared and trying to hide under my chair. I don't have any complaints about their acting.The plot was this --- alien space ships were hovering above. They pointed their blue-light guns down at the ground. People looked at the light, fell into a trance and were sucked up and into the space ships. The aliens sent out smaller, scout crafts to look for people that were hiding. The scout crafts had tentacles just like in the War of the Worlds movie so they could stretch those tentacles around corners, grab people, and stuff their bodies inside the craft.The military showed up but they were no match for the alien's technology. F-14s and Blackhawks were wiped out immediately.During all of this, the space ships sucking up bodies, the military shooting at the hoovering alien mother ships, our cast of 5 people are looking out the windows of their Los Angeles high rise apartment, trying to figure out what to do. The movie follows this group of people as they try to figure out what to do, where to go and if they are going to be rescued. Among the group is a couple; earlier in the movie, the girl had just told the guy that she's pregnant. So as the aliens pick off the cast members one by one, this pregnant couple quickly become the focus of the movie.I was really hoping this couple would survive, however logic told me this would be impossible. Here's how the movie ends. (look away if you don't want to know) The alien mothership shines the blue light down on the couple. They are sucked up, kissing as they float upwards and into the space ship. We see them inside the spaceship, laying amongst a pile of bodies. Alien robots are grabbing the heads off of the lifeless bodies, one by one, and stuffing the brains into freshly manufactured alien robot bodies. With each implanted human brain, the new alien robot would jump up and start working to stuff a human brain into the next robot body creating an army of alien robots. It looked like an alien robot manufacturing assembly line process. We see an alien robot grab the guy's head from our couple, throwing his body into a pool of water, and stuffing his brain into a new alien robot body. This new alien robot now with our guy's brain inside, jumps up and looks around. He sees an alien robot grabbing for his girl friend. He intervenes and the movie closes with her realizing that this robot is her boyfriend and she says his name. [The End]I would have preferred the movie end with our military shooting down the alien spacecraft and winning. However, that seems highly unlikely because in reality, the aliens had the technology that was necessary to transverse space,time and gravity in order to come to Earth in the first place. We do not have this technology. The movie makes me wonder if something like this could be scheduled for December 21, 2012. The Cassiopaeans speak of similar events in the transcripts from 1994 to 2002. To see what I'm talking about google search The Cassiopaeans transcripts from 1994 to 2002. The information was received by Laura Knight-Jadczyk from extraterrestrials through a ouija board.

I'm glad I just use reviews as a suggestion, and don't follow the crowd on movies, or many times, I'd miss something good. I've found this to be the case on many occasions. This is one of them.I'm very much a fan of Sci-Fi, but sadly, there's so much crap in the genre, I'm often disappointed. Obviously, such was not the case here. It was executed very well, and I thought that the acting was good. For that reason, I'm not sure why apparently so many folks didn't like this movie.Without giving any spoilers, essentially the premise is that the Aliens have come, and they are harvesting us. An interesting twist is that they don't eat us... they use us as raw material ( or more specifically, a certain part of us ). We follow the two main characters (as well as extras), a couple, through three days of the invasion. I had seen at least one review complaining that it is never brought out why they want to use our material for their nefarious purposes... really? It's pretty obvious. It also had an interesting twist at the end, that I thought was very nice. And, it's one of those that continues the ending a bit as quasi-stills into the credits. I thought that also worked well.Yes, there are some aspects that were a bit detracting from the movie. I saw what one reviewer meant by saying the movie was something like Cloverfield meets Independence Day. Certainly, it's not that simple, but I can see elements in the movie that sort of back that up. For my part, though, the comparison is tenuous at best. But, I will say that the aspect of the movie that was Cloverfield-esque, though somewhat disappointing, does not completely ruin the movie. For my part, though, it would have been better if they had re-thought that aspect.The bottom line for me is, it was definitely worth the rental. I enjoyed it, and consider it to be one of the better Sci-Fi movies to have been released in the last several years ( in the Invasion Genre ). I also thought the ending was good. Yes, it does leave things up to you, but if you follow it through the credits, it leaves your imagination to wander a bit. It's not satisfying in the sense that everything turns out just fine, or necessarily even that there is a lot of hope ( which may be why so many people didn't like it ), but it does work with the rest of the story.If you like Sci-Fi, perhaps more specifically, Sci-Fi Invasion movies, I think you'll enjoy watching this movie as I did.

I've always liked this movie! Full of action and even a little love.

I’m just about to publish this review online and, before I give it an average rating, I can’t help but notice how many ‘1 star’ ratings it’s got. I remember when ‘Skyline’ was released it being critically panned. I waited a while to see it on DVD and, when I did, I was pleasantly surprised.It’s about a load of alien spaceships that rock up over Earth one day (yes, let’s skip why no radar system actually detected their approach) and starts abducting the world’s population en masse. Now, this is bad news for the average man on the street and even worse news if you’re residing in a Los Angeles skyscraper, for this is where our plucky group of heroes is going to make their last stand.Okay, so they can hardly fight off a seemingly infinite number of spaceships, but they can possibly survive the destruction of mankind there. It’s kind of a ‘siege movie’ where they play cat and mouse with one alien incursion after the next. And it’s not that bad – well, not unless ask anyone apart from me apparently.Most people agree that the special effects are pretty impressive and the destruction is well done. I guess most people get annoyed by the characters. They do tend to do one very silly thing after the next and there are a couple of bits in the movie (no spoilers here) that don’t really make that much sense if you think too hard about them.What you have here is a movie that feels like a particularly high-budget made-for-TV movie. If you think of it like that then you may just get something out of it. Perhaps the reason I like it is because I was aware of the general hatred of if before I sat down to watch it, therefore my expectations were suitably lowered.My girlfriend described it as ‘Jurassic Park with aliens’ – okay, there are some scenes where I can see where she’s coming from. But I defy anyone to not find the scene with the Stealth bomber exhilarating!Probably more 3.5 out of 5 stars, but I fear no one will ever speak to me again if I did that!

Not your typical sci-fi movie, it has a more realistic approach about what might happen if we were invaded by a superior race with advanced weaponry that only the American military could ever dream of owning. I really liked this movie because it was more about the interaction with the humans, the impossible decision to either fight or take cover and wait it out, somewhere safe. What would any person do in those circumstances?? The aliens were terrifying, something we haven't seen before in other sci-fi movies. The alien ships were impressive too. A brilliant movie for anyone who loves a good scary alien movie,. The sequel "Beyond Skyline" is a must see, it rounds off this first movie perfectly. Hope there is another!!

"Skyline" is very clearly an interpretation of the classical "War of the worlds" novel by H.G. Wells and although it is not nearly as good as the great "War of the worlds" from 1953, it is definitely better than "Independence Day" and more or less as good as Spielberg's "War of the worlds" from 2005. You must however be warned, that the three last minutes are so incredibly stupid, that for some people they will probably spoil the whole movie. My advice is to simply disregard the ending and enjoy the first 90 minutes.As it is clear from the first seconds of the movie, this is a story about an alien invasion as seen by a group of people in Los Angeles. Immediately in the first minutes it becomes evident that this is a very VERY serious matter. Aliens in this movie clearly did invade some other worlds before, and when doing that they learned the hard way that there is no free lunch and for that reason when targeting Earth they came loaded for bear. The way they proceed has nothing to do with the ridiculous invasion in "Independence Day" - those guys mean business! Their skill and aggressiveness are a very strong point of this movie.Another good point is that aliens in "Skyline" are not invulnerable and indestructible - a laser guided 2000 lbs bomb, a "Hellfire" anti tank missile, an AT-4 shoulder launched 84 mm antitank rocket and even a 0.50 caliber anti-armor bullet shot by a human sniper, they all do damage when they touch (and when the nukes get involved, they do a LOT of damage). But those aliens are also VERY GOOD at survivability, damage control and quick repairs. They obviously heavily invested in bio-cybernetics and ended by hitting the pay dirt. The result on the screen is very pleasant and I am certain that any SF enthusiast will appreciate it.The design of alien ships and war machines is EXCELLENT! They all look REALLY alien - do not expect any kind of flying saucers or anything even remotely similar to present day human war machines. If anything, alien machinery looks rather like inspired by H.P. Lovecraft books, or H.R. Giger surrealistic paintings (yes, you are right, he is the guy who designed the creature from "Alien"). And we are finally left very much in doubt how exactly the REAL invaders look - until the very end I couldn't make my mind as to who exactly are the real crews of the spaceships and who are the bio-robots send to fight the war and harvest the resources... that is another strong point of the movie.As the previous reviewer already noticed there is a little similarity with "Cloverfield" - this movie also shows a group of (very) ordinary people faced suddenly by a cataclysmic life threatening event. The camera perspective of "Cloverfield" was not however used in "Skyline" and I think it is a good thing because in this way we can see more of the invasion and human counteroffensive - and believe me, it is worth watching. It is also a good thing that the cast did not include any major stars, because in this way we absolutely do not know who will make it until the end credits...The characters however are not very interesting - this is probably the second less satisfying thing in this movie. There is only seven people in the group we follow in "Skyline", with half a dozen of other people making shorter but significant appearances. Terry (Donald Faison) is a successful musician, who lives with his mistress Candice (Brittany Daniel). The night when everything begins, there are also some guests in his appartment: his assistant Denise (Crystal Reed), his collaborator Ray (Neil Hopkins), his best friend Jarrod (Eric Balfour) and Jarrod's girlfriend Elaine (played by Scottie Thompson, who is a VERY attractive young actress). A little later they are joined by the building manager Oliver (David Zayas). With the exception of Elaine, I really couldn't find ANYBODY I could care for - and for some characters I actually secretely hoped they would not make it...There is one scene in this movie that I count as one of the GREATEST war scenes I ever saw - it includes a swarm of unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs), mostly Predators armed with Hellfire missiles but also three Boeing Phantom Ray drones armed with nukes. In the real world those last UCAVs are not yet in service, but they should start flying in 2011. (UPDATE: the Phantom Ray prototype flew for the first time in April 2011). That is an extraordinary battle scene! Another air battle, later in the movie, when the real planes, mostly F-22 Raptors, enter the fight, is quite interesting too.To conclude, I think that notwithstanding the pale characters, I would be tempted to give four stars to this movie - but the last three minutes are a DEADLY SIN sin which can not be forgiven! For that reason I give it only three stars and I really hope that whoever thought the ending of "Skyline" will spend years in the place in purgatory reserved to the greatest über morons from our little planet...

A watchable film and its been on telly numerous times but I bought two of these because they are steelbooks.Neither one came sealed and were listed as used however, both discs and cases were mint condition. I don't think either had been used or even watched at all.I've not seen a UK version Skyline steelbook for sale either, these were from Germany or Switzerland, somewhere like that, can't remember.

The last two films of the skyline trilogy (beyond skyline and skylines). I really thought the first one was actually quite good, yes okay it might be on a small budget but the special effects and cgi is quite good and really impressive.I'm giving skyline a 5 star review (which I also done the same for both the 2nd and the 3rd) because imo it's quite a good film and I highly recommend the skyline trilogy to anyone who loves sci-fi.