Remember how last weekend had a couple of great new movie options? Well, go see those. This weekend’s offerings are significantly less thrilling.

The best of the lot is “Battle Los Angeles,” a solid collection of war-movie cliches applied to an alien invasion. Nobody’s gonna LOVE this movie, but it’s sturdy, entertaining stuff.

Then there’s “Mars Needs Moms,” which is lifeless and uninteresting, and “Red Riding Hood,” which is a fairy tale filtered through a “Twilight” lens. Don’t see either of them unless someone makes you.

I posted an embarrassing old artifact this week: a paper I wrote for a film class in 1997, when I was a few months shy of 23, stridently defending “Independence Day” as a great movie. Enjoy.

At Film.com, “What’s the Big Deal?” discusses “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and I made some recommendations on how some recent movies could edit themselves out of their R ratings, like “King’s Speech” is doing.

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