Watched this last night on in demand. Pretty unimpressive movie overall. Spoilers below so stop reading if you want to see this movie, but you should keep reading and just avoid this movie imo.

For a movie about an alien invasion of Earth it had a very meh feel to it, really lacked that epic fighting-for-survival feel to it. They make a big deal about how they have to hold Los Angeles and they are sacrificing other areas because holding LA is so important, but they never explain why. Having never been to LA, I can't understand why it would be viewed as such a stronghold.

The movie also had a ton of cringeworthy movie cliches, such as:
1. The character who handed in his retirement papers right before the aliens attack and now has to go on 1 last mission.
2. The soldier who is planning his wedding before the aliens attack.
3. The soldier whose wife is pregnant, and you know this because he kisses her belly...before the aliens attack.
4. The commander who is fresh out of officer training, having never seen actual combat.
5. The soldier who is recovering from PTSD and gets cleared for combat, right before the aliens attack!

Now I can forgive a few cheesy cliches if the movie is impressive (see: independance day), but this wasn't even a good alien attack movie. Most of the movie is from the perspective of a ground unit that is trying to rescue 5 civilians before an air strike levels a city. So the aliens are advancing, we have no idea what kind of weapons or technology they have, but it is SO IMPORTANT that we rescue these 5 civilians out of 20,000 before leveling the city. They never mention anything important about the civilians, so it wasn't like they were crucial members of society. In fact, I believe they sacrificed 20 marines to save those 5 civilians...