The Edge of Tomorrow - The Review

The Edge of Tomorrow - The Review

For 30 years I've loved The Twilight Zone, a passion rekindled recently with the Blu ray box set. 

Those relatively cheap black and white dramas, many penned by Rod Serling, were either 30 or 60 minute ’what if?’ dramas. They created great premises for broader canvases, bigger budget, big screen offerings, some of which (Real Steel) were turned into A-list epics. 

The Edge of Tomorrow could have been another of Serling’s mini masterpieces, the ’what if’ tale of a soldier resurrected to fight an alien war on Earth. 

In this case Tom Cruise is William Cage, the cocky PR man railroaded to fight against an extra-terrestrial enemy. However, his unit is decimated in a Saving Private Ryan-style attack in Normandy, and Cage wakes up a few hours earlier to live the day over and hopefully glean enough information to defeat the enemy. 

Yes, it's a video game-style premise with Cage’s seemingly unlimited lives a handy perk as he tries to level up.

He's helped by Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), the poster girl warrior who may or may not know more about Cage’s condition than he first thinks. 

What follows, for the first two thirds at least, is a snappily paced mix of Groundhog Day, Starship Troopers, Aliens and The Matrix, as our heroes fight whizzing, murderous creatures with the aid of clunky exo-suits. 

At one point Cage’s automated metal skeleton runs out of energy and powers down. He steps from it and leaves it standing, an empty shell. And for me that is the third act. 

Whatever wonderful ’story battery’ powered this multi-million dollar vehicle simply runs out of energy and becomes a generic, by-the-numbers adventure, hampered by the same murky, digitally graded darkness that plagued X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Hunger Games 2. 

I'm so bored of action scenes taking place in darkness, especially when the antagonists are so abstract. 

Through it all, Cruise is his usual committed self, but Blunt steals the show as the fearless posh trooper, who lights up every scene she's in. 

In a nice nod to Aliens, Bill Paxton is the gruff Sergeant Farell, commanding his drop ship troops. The scope of the movie is impressive, and director Doug Liman handles the action with flair, but the ghosts of Mr and Mrs Smith and Jumper’s humdrum finales return to haunt us. 

Whether by design or accident there is a feeling we've been here before with Tom’s earlier work, notably Minority Report (outwitting the enemy with pre-emptive moves) or last year’s elegant but sterile Oblivion (hero attempts to destroy big alien brain intelligence thing and wipe out enemy forces in one fell swoop. Smart move, but yawnsomely predictable.) 

Sadly the final scenes are also a let down, as are the closing titles. Recent Marvel offerings Iron Man, Avengers Assemble and Thor: The Dark World have offered stylish, engaging credits, but EOT looks like it was created a decade ago with a generic closing song and a feeling that the budget had all been spent by the time those last bits had to be tagged on. 

I really wanted to like Tom’s latest. I adore his positivity and enthusiasm for big crowd pleasers like this, but feel that when you strip away the shell of the movie, you're left with a sub-standard Twilight Zone episode with a rubbish pay-off. 

A real shame. 

XMen days of future past. The review.

The future is rubbish. (Isn't it always in sci-fi epics?)
Shape-shifting Transform...er...Sentinels have laid waste to the mutant world. 
Making a Last Stand, (another one), Storm, Professor X, Magneto, Kitty Pryde, Frozonefrom The Incredibles (oh, apparently not), and a few other mutants playing Portal (for real) take on the mighty Destroyers from Thor (oh, apparently they aren't, though they seem to be variations of them).

Thankfully Ms Pryde has the power to send the long suffering X types back in time so they can get their collective derrières kicked again.

What our heroes need is someone who can go back to 1973 and stop Miles Dyson inventingSkynet... er, the little guy from Game of Thrones - Trask (the always wonderful Peter Dinklage).

The 'Sarah Connor' in this Terminator-style X-Men epic is Raven, aka Mystique, who still looks very blue and rather plastic. At no point does she 'put metal in the science oven'. Or will she get an Oscar for this. But Jennifer Lawrence is still one of the greatest young actresses you've ever seen.

So while she tries to kill Trask in 1973, Hugh Jackman shows off his stunning pecs (like crumpled wrapping paper stuck on an Action Man) and his rear end, for which millions of mums were truly grateful.

As Logan, aka Wolverine, is sent back to his 1973 body, he has to persuade Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and the young, doped up but still groovy Professor X (the brilliant James McAvoy) to help him break Magneto (Michael Fassbender) out of his plastic Penatgon prison and stop Mystique killing Trask.

Of course Magneto is the uber villain whose friendship with Xavier usually consists of a game of chess, saying "Charles" a lot, promising to help, and then betraying him with OTT set pieces involving twisted metal. It's like GroundX Day.

On the plus side, Fassbender is as great as ever and looks very cool in a hat. A bit like Bowiein the 1970s. All cheekbones and intrigue.

Thankfully our heroes are helped by Quicksilver, the breakout new star of the show whose lightning-fast reactions give us the movie's best set piece. A bullet-time kitchen scene filled with wit, style and panache.

Geeks of course spent part of the movie explaining to indifferent partners how Quicksilverwas also that kid in the post-credits sting for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Only played by someone else. And his sister is Scarlet Witch. Or will be. Only not in 1973. 
Still following? Good.

Director Bryan Singer has a lot of fun with his best film since X-Men 2. Yes he's spinning about 20 plates at once, but does a good job of keeping most of them rotating, even if he spends a little too long on young Xavier meeting his aged self.

The movie is hugely ambitious, brilliantly made, nicely edited and scored (both by John Ottman), and you can see where the budget went just by watching the credits. 15,000 people worked on the movie, and I'm guessing 14,000 were just slaving over laptops creating the impressive effects.

The whole thing is engaging enough and features some of the best thesps in movies. But for me it needs a sucker punch moment. That scene which grabs the heart strings and makes me a little misty eyed.

Sadly there was none of this here, possibly because when every other person in a movie has a gift, it's hard to be amazed. It's like the old Python sketch, Bicycle Repairman. In a world where everyone is a superhero, you yearn for someone normal.

Naturally I'll be among the millions who flock to see X-Men: Apocalyspe in a couple of years, and imagine another 15,000 folks will be kept busy animating bits of fractured metal and the like. However, I'd rather see a movie shot like the outstanding NT version ofCurious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, without a single effect on a simple stage, for the sake of one sucker punch moment, where I care about the fates of the protagonists instead of just being indifferent to their inevitable resurrection.

Sometimes less really is more Bryan.

Godzilla. The review

It's rare I get to feel like a kid on Christmas morning while watching a movie. More often than not filmmakers have contempt for the audience or signpost everything so far in advance, you feel like an A level student in a kindergarten.

Thank heavens Monsters director Gareth Edwards has given us such a terrific movie inGodzilla, or to coin a phrase for the text generation: OMGzilla

This is the sort of film Steven Spielberg used to make with Close Encounters and War of the Worlds: personal stories set against epic backdrops.

It's got the feel of Cloverfield, but without the stomach-churning found footage angle, or the annoying characters, and rubbish dialogue.

The great cast is the first piece of the puzzle to get right in Godzilla 2014, and in Aaron Taylor Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen (wonderful) and the especially good Bryan Cranston, there's a solid foundation for the fantasy that unfolds.

The story gives us enough of the right material to believe the motivations of protagonists and antagonists - nuclear testing; heroes forged by loss; grown-up hero desperate to keep his family, and others together; smart scientists and military folk colouring in the grey areas and giving us enough exposition to carry things forward. Cue final smack down.

There are some terrific touches, such as the HALO jump (scarlet flares scoring the misty skies) and assorted shots of the eponymous beast emerging through the fog like Night of the Demon.

The score by Alexander Desplat is classical and thrilling, while the effects range from the special to the okay.

It's tightly paced, brilliantly directed, hugely satisfying and doesn't outstay its welcome.

Edwards has successfully made the leap from indie filmmaker to blockbuster director with ease.

I can't wait to see what he does next.

The Amazing Spider-man 2. The review

For the most part, The Amazing Spider-man 2 is exactly what you expect: likeable teenager Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) continues to fight crime, while romancing gorgeous girlfriend Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone). 

We have plenty of stunts, shots of Spidey freefalling towards the streets of New York City, and several minutes of him swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper.

In 3-D, it looks fabulous. 

What's far less fabulous, is Jamie Foxx as the geeky underling who eventually becomes Electro: think Watchmen's Dr Manhattan, with clothes and bad monologues. 

His dialogue would have sounded embarrassing in one of those 1960s/1970s Saturday morning cartoons.

If you can gloss over his take on Jim Carrey’s vengeful loser Edward Nygma in Batman Forever, the rest of the movie has a lot going for it.

The relationship between Parker and Stacey is magnetic; Dane DeHaan is fantastic as sick rich boy Harry Osborn, and there are good turns from the likes of a returning Sally Field, Campbell Scott and Chris Cooper.

For the most part it's entertaining stuff, but I was yearning before a sucker punch moment that director Marc Webb supplied with his first Spidey movie (the cranes scene), or Sam Raimi with the original Spider-Man 2 years ago (Aunt May’s packing up speech).

Thankfully TASM2’s third act takes some unexpected twists and turns, but those expecting to see a lot of Paul Giamatti as Rhino in the major clash promised by the extensive adverts will be sorely disappointed.

(Think The Underminer scene from The Incredibles, and you get the idea).

As good as Andrew Garfield is as the eponymous Web Slinger, it's Emma Stone who steals the show.

She has more substance than Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson in the original trilogy, and actually helps our hero instead of screaming a lot in the third act.

It's also refreshing that Spidey doesn't lose his mask every half an hour like in the Raimi movies.

So, not a perfect movie by any means, but thanks to that third act, Foxx’s earlier sins are (almost) redeemed. 

Transcendence. The review.

I wanted to like Transcendence more than I did.

The directorial debut of Christopher Nolan's favourite cinematographer, Wally Pfister, it boasted a top drawer cast and a great idea.

After all, any movie with Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy and Paul Bettany have to be worth a look, didn't it?

The tale of an assassinated computer genius who becomes a digital avatar/Godlike figure was pretty heady stuff. But while the tale unfolded intriguingly, it went nowhere fast.

Too many tracking shots of solar panels does not a great thriller make.

The special effects are pretty good, the performances are all top-notch and the script isn't bad either.

While I am all for sci-fi thrillers that are more cerebral than explosive, this was anti-climactic.

And that may be the main reason it underperformed in the states.

It's bound to attract a cult following on DVD and Blu-ray, but I doubt many people will be desperate for a second viewing on the big screen.

The Tom Cruise Effect

The other week I was lucky enough to attend the Empire awards.

A galaxy of stars were in attendance, as you might imagine, and some of my favourite actors and film makers got the plaudits they richly deserved.

Having dinner on the next table to Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry would have been amazing enough, but there were so many highs on that evening, it's hard to pick the favourite moment.

James Nesbitt's opening number was superb; Simon Pegg humble speech was emotional; Arnold Schwarzenegger was genuinely hilarious as he popped in, picked up an award and cleared off, and I was thrilled to see James McAvoy pick up a gong for his superb work on the movie Filth.

And then I met Tom Cruise.

           

Rather aptly, Professor Brian Cox was on stage to award to a gong for Gravity, but I would have been fascinated to see what he thought of the Cruise effect.

There are stars, there are super novas (which burn twice as bright and last half as long) and then there is the black hole that is Tom.

Toward the end of the night I watched from a distance as what seemed like whole room gravitated towards him, desperate to have their photo taken with the man himself.

Personally, I just wanted to shake his hand, and say thanks for a lifetime worth of blockbuster movies.

A photo would have been the icing on the cake. 

If there's one billing that summed him up, it would be:

Tom Cruise: Legend. 

That may have been a rare flop, but it seems to have summed up his entire career.

So, as he filed past, I half expected he’d ignore me. 

Thankfully, Cruise is not one of those blokes.

As you’ll have seen from his many hours spent signing autographs, taking phone calls and having photos taken outside movie premieres, he's all about the fans.

I reached out a hand behind a line of security guards and fully expected he’d ignore me. 

After all, I was just another nameless journalist who just happened to have spent 30 years watching, loving, being thrilled by his movies. 

I was the guy who was so excited about Legend, I made myself Ill on that opening night (and saw it twice in a week). 

I was the guy who was there on the opening night of Top Gun at my local flea pit, when a mate and his girlfriend fell out and left 10 minutes in. 

I was the guy, like millions of others, who spent months and years paying and queuing in the rain (before multiplexes) to (aptly) see Rain Man (twice), and Days of Thunder (couldn't get in - saw Spaced Invaders instead, which was awful). 

And then I landed a job writing about films, and was still paying to see Mission: Impossible, Interview with the Vampire (twice), Eyes Wide Shut, Mission: Impossible 2 (twice), Magnolia and all those other amazing, occasionally disappointing (Rock of Ages) movies. 

I spent years interviewing his colleagues, such as Joe Pantoliano (Risky Business) and Simon Pegg, asking about whether Tom was as cool as he seemed or if he had a secret plan for world domination. 

No, he really was that cool. 

On the night of the Empires I could see why Cruise and Pegg were best mates. Both loved movies, both loved each other’s work, and both loved working with JJ Abrams, who later presented an award. 

Being a journalist it's seen as uncool to express too much emotion towards stars, but a degree of professional, mutual respect is fine. 

So I kept my cool... and then Tom shook my hand. 

It wasn't one of those ’Oh another random handshake, I wonder what's for dinner, mind on other things’ handshake. 

Tom Cruise was interested, committed to the moment 100 per cent, and when I babbled “Cheers Tom” he was genuinely grateful. 

For those five seconds I was the most important person in the room, and that is Cruise’s greatest skill.

To take a genuine interest in a stranger, albeit for a few seconds, is impressive.

There are great actors who may be awkward if you chat to them, and then there are megastars who earn every penny.

No prizes for guessing which camp Tom falls into. As he filed out of the hall, he was taking an age with the fans begging for selfies. 

I know it's not cool to like Tom in some circles. He's just a bit too successful for some Brits. We like to keep stars in check, build them up when they're on the rise to stardom and then melt their Icarus wings if they get too close to the sun. 

But that's Blighty for you. Cynical, wary of success because it's an alien concept.

We know where we are with failure. It's reassuring and comforting every time we fall, like a blanket. 

Movie stars tell us through screens that for two hours at a time you can forget reality and lose yourself in dreams. And if you work hard and mix in the right circles, you can reach dizzy heights and bask in the sun, even if you fly too close to it. 

So there you go. Thirty years of watching Cruise on screen, 23 years writing about him condensed into five seconds of thanks in one hand shake. 

Cheers Tom. 

Captain America: the Winter Soldier Review

Given the advanced reviews for Captain America: the Winter Soldier, I expected it was going to be one of the best Marvel films so far.

Maybe because I had just sat through Martin Scorsese's three-hour epic The Wolf of Wall Street, or maybe because the premiere was at midnight, but the sequel didn't grab me as much as I wanted it to.

It certainly ticks all the boxes when it comes to epic set pieces and impressive visuals. Alas, after a while I tired of the blurry hand-to-hand combat, and was a little bored during the third act, which felt too much like the deafening heli-carrier battle from Avengers Assemble.
(My spellcheck aptly changed that to 'headache' carrier.)

Okay, there is much to admire about Joe and Anthony Russo's film. The shadowy Three Days of the Condor/Jason Bourne style-plot marked a welcome change for a superhero epic.
But the sight of Robert Redford, with that extraordinary hair, giving a rather lacklustre performance, left me colder than Christmas.

Chris Evans is good, not great as Steve Rogers; Scarlett Johannson sexier than ever asNatasha Romanov, and Samuel L Jackson on good form as Nick Fury, as usual.
(Fans of SLJ's work will spot a nice little in-joke during a graveyard scene).

There are also good support turns from Jenny Agutter and Colbie Smulders, but it's just a pity that Neighbours veteran Alan Dale pops up and spoils any tension as a World Council member.

I did get a frisson of excitement like a child on Christmas morning when Steve and Nickentered a hangar with heli-carriers, but for me there were none of those moments like in the first film when I was moved as selfless Steve threw himself on a grenade.

In a previous blog, I said the problem with Capt America is partly down to Chris Evans. He hasn't got the acting chops to carry a film of the scale, but having seen the film the key problem is the fact that Cap is just not that great a hero. A little too goody goody for my tastes, and although he acts as a great foil for warriors like Iron Man and Thor, as the star of his own show he is a little disappointing.

One great addition to the Marvel universe is Anthony Mackie's Falcon. As a fan of the Capt America comics, it was great to see this iconic supporting character finally given his big screen chance.
Admittedly, some of his aerial action scenes tended to grate a little after a while, but Mackieis a great actor and I wouldn't mind seeing him in the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron or the inevitable Cap 3.

Stay tuned for the inevitable credits teaser for one of the next big Marvel films and some rather cool closing titles.
It's certainly not the worst film you'll see all year, but it could have been so much better.

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