EDGE OF TOMORROW: Terrible Title; Terrific Presentation

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

EDGE OF TOMORROW (Dir. Doug Liman, 2014)

First off, it’s a terrible title. It’s so generic; it sounds like a James Bond movie or Star Trek episode title. Maybe it should’ve been called: BETTER THAN OBLIVION.

Secondly, this really doesn’t need to be in 3D. It’s another one of those films that underwent a post conversion into the gimmicky format, and, as I’ve complained about many times before, it makes the image darker and less vivid.

But those gripes aside, Tom Cruise’s latest sci-fi action vehicle is a smart, funny, and insanely inventive entry in the summer blockbuster sweepstakes of 2014. Sure, its high concept premise can succinctly summed up as ALIENS meets GROUNDHOG DAY, but it takes that thread and goes its own clever places with it.

Cruise, as an army major who's so not a top gun, is forced into the front lines of an invasion of earth by squid-like aliens, nicknamed "mimics." In a Normandy beach battle, obviously reminiscent of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, Cruise, outfitted in bulky body gear, kills a mimic but then gets melted in a bath of its acidic blood.

Then Cruise wakes up on the previous day at the army base at Heathrow Airport. Everything that happened to him before - Bill Paxton as a FULL METAL JACKET-style Sergeant yelling at him, members of his platoon ridiculing him, and multi-tentacled monsters murdering him - happens again, despite his crazy-sounding warnings or attempts to reverse the situation.

Very amusingly, Cruise's day of death resets again and again, with our protagonist each time gaining a little more info on how to plot more successful moves throughout it. This is where Emily Blunt, harder edged than we've ever seen her, comes in as a heroic Special Forces soldier, who Cruise learns has once been a looper herself.

You see, as Noah Taylor as a scruffy scientist explains, the mimics have the ability to reset the time stream in order to improve their strategic edge in combat, and when Cruise and Blunt killed and got wasted in the remains of an Alpha Mimic, they absorbed their time looping powers.

In punchy training montages, that surely will be as scrutinized by film geeks trying to figure how many days or years Cruise relives the same day as Bill Murray's montages in GROUNDHOG DAY have been, our hero gets into shape, gains confidence, and, of course, falls for Blunt.

The movie, adapted by frequent Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John Henry Butterworth from Hiroshi Sakuraska's 2004 novel “All You Need Is Kill,” loses a bit of its power when Cruise himself loses his time-looping power, and its big action climax involving massive destruction of the Louvre is pretty predictable, but overall Cruise's sharp performance carries us through a series of gripping sequences making up one of the most compelling narratives I've seen at the multiplex in recent memory.

A lot of the fun is seeing Cruise's character evolve from being a stuffy coward to being a lean, mean fighting machine, something the man can still successfully pull off at 52 years of age. All the baggage that biases many movie-goers against Cruise - couch jumping, creepy accusations that he brainwashed Katie Holmes with Scientology, etc. - all disappear a few minutes into EDGE OF TOMORROW. 

The man's charisma even helps the exposition scenes to be engaging. In one of them, when he tells Taylor and Blunt “Terrific presentation, terrific!” he may as well be talking about the film itself.

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James Cameron's Populist Classic TITANIC Now Out On Blu ray

Having not seen it since its release in 1997, I had forgotten how damn long TITANIC is. I mean it’s an hour and forty minutes into James Cameron’s enormous money-making machine of a movie, which releases this week on Blu ray, before the ship even hits that infamous iceberg! 

Until then we have to wade through a set-up in which the historical background competes with the lame Leonardo Dicaprio/Kate Winslet love story, and that can be really tough going. 

Especially when the dialogue heavily appears to pander to teenage girls; take for instance this bit of Gloria Stuart’s (as the elder version of Winslet’s character) narration in the present-day wraparound: “It was a ship of dreams…to everyone else. To me it was a slave-ship, taking me back to America in chains. Outwardly, I was everything a well brought up girl should be. Inside, I was screaming.”

But the impressive scale of the film, happily obscures much of that ickiness. 

The almost full-scale replication of the ship makes for an astounding set, and there are many sweeping shots that show it off nicely. The history lesson embedded in the narrative also distracts from the sappy cheesiness of the star-crossed lovers scenario, but we all know that that scenario was what made the movie such a huge hit.

The Blu ray transfer looks fantastic, bringing out the shiny cinematography of Russell Carpenter which is undoubtedly his best work - though for a resume that includes SHALLOW HAL, MONSTER IN LAW, and a couple of Katherine Heigl films, that’s not saying much. I did find myself thinking that the lighting during the end scenes was unrealistic for the situation, but that's one of those things you can let slide with the ole 'eh - it's a movie' excuse.

Only a real cynic would deny that the “disaster related peril” (per the PG-13 disclaimer) that dominates the second half of “Titanic” - i.e. the ship sinking - is pretty spectacular stuff. It’s in those bombarding chaotic sequences that the film is able to truly bring together its themes of class divide, and depictions of the best and worst of humanity.

On an 1998 episode of Seinfeld that aired a few months after the release of TITANIC, George Constanza (Jason Alexander) tells Jerry that he just saw the movie and asks: “So that old woman...she’s just a liar, right?”

That nails what’s one of the most unsatisfying and frustrating aspects of the film: Why did that old woman throw the diamond, the “Heart of the Ocean” into the ocean at the end? Felt like a stupid selfish choice after Bill Paxton and his crew flew her to their Titanic-stationed salvage ship, and heard her tell her long detailed story, in hopes of finding that precious artifact, and she secretly discards the diamond when she’s finished. WTF?

Paxton tells the old lady’s granddaughter (Suzy Amis, who probably has 3-4 lines tops) that after three years of thinking of nothing but Titanic, he never really “got” it before. Well, that’s good because he’s sure not getting that diamond.

This new spiffy Blu ray of TITANIC, which follows the film’s 3D theatrical re-release, contains two and a half hours of new special features, in addition to the four hours that were previously available on DVD, so if you can’t get enough of TITANIC you are in for a treat. The bonus material includes 30 deleted scenes, 60 featurettes, and something called “Titanic: The Final Word With James Cameron,” that I bet isn’t his final word.

Interestingly, this week also brings the release of Bob Dylan’s 35th studio album, “Tempest,” which just happens to have an almost 14-minute track about the 1912 Titanic sinking. Dylan references the movie, name-drops DiCaprio, and describes the disaster in time to the Celtic country flavoring of his backing band.

Obviously, one hundred years later, folks are still making a fuss about the Titanic tragedy. Cameron uber successfully made the event into an event movie, that brought about years of backlash, but must be regarded as a populist classic. 

I'm sure Film buffs will still scoff at it, even when appreciating the excellent visuals of this exquisite new Blu ray edition, but I bet even they will admit that it’s much more preferable to our current TWILIGHT times, at least in the realm of teen romance epic wannabes.

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Gina Carano owns Steven Soderbergh's HAYWIRE

HAYWIRE (Dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2012)



Although I had not seen a trailer or read anything about it going in, I caught on quickly that this film is simply an excuse to string together a series of acrobatic fight scenes showcasing the mixed martial arts skills of Gina Carano.

Thing is, it’s a pretty good excuse.

The plot, something about the CIA trained Carano getting set up and betrayed on a mission, really doesn’t matter, because this movie is all about the kinetic, extremely well choreographed, and superbly shot fight scenes.

Surrounding Carano is a cast of familiar faces: Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, and Michael Fassbender, but I believe had those same roles been played by a bunch of unknowns, it would have the same effect, because, again, it’s all about Carano’s game.

On the run from an international manhunt, Carano hijacks the car of the scruffy Michael Angarano in upstate New York, and she tells him (and us) how she got there, so we get flashbacks of set pieces in opulent settings.

For instance, a hotel suite in Dublin in which Carano and Fassbender have a brutal scuffle; it’s polished violence with class as the couple is outfitted in expensive evening wear.

With its snazzy jazzy soundtrack by frequent Soderberg collaborator David Holmes, HAYWIRE bops along enjoyably from brawl to brawl. It’s a durable diversion especially compared to its competition (*cough* CONTRABAND) in this January dumping ground.

From 1989’s SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE to last year’s CONTAGION, Soderbergh has dabbled in just about every genre (can’t wait for him to tackle Westerns), so why not an espionage revenge thriller with a kick ass hottie, who actually can kick ass in real life?

Here Soderbergh throws his new heroine into the ring with Laura Croft, “The Bride” from KILL BILL, and Lisbeth Salander (either Noomi Rapace or Rooney Mara - it doesn't matter), and by the end of it you’ll be convinced that Carano would be the last one standing.

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