Draft Day (2014) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

November 13, 2014Posted in2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Sports

Draftday1

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary, Chadwick Boseman
screenplay by Rajiv Joseph & Scott Rothman
directed by Ivan Reitman

by Walter Chaw The first Broncos game I remember watching was on the couch with my father. October 16, 1977. I was four. They were playing the Oakland Raiders–hated rivals, I’d come to understand–and featured players from my eternal morning like Craig Morton, Haven Moses (who I had the pleasure of sharing a couple of pitchers and a few dozen hot wings with a decade ago), Riley Odoms, Louis Wright, and Otis Armstrong. I have all of their signatures on an old ball, gathering dust on a bookshelf in my office. I have all of their rookie cards in little plastic holders. Since that first game, I’ve seen every one in its entirety save four, most of them in real-time. (I was in the hospital for some reason or other for three of those.) When the Broncos won their first Super Bowl against the Green Bay Packers in 1998, I cried like a baby and worried for hours afterwards that there had been some mistake–that the universe could take it all away.

The Innocents (1961) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

November 10, 2014Posted in****/****, 1960s, 2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, FFC Must-Own, Horror, The Criterion Collection, UK

Innocents1

****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
starring Deborah Kerr, Peter Wyngarde, Megs Jenkins, Michael Redgrave
screenplay by William Archibald and Truman Capote, based on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
directed by Jack Clayton

by Walter Chaw Jack Clayton’s incomparable tale of sexual repression and a very particular vintage of Victorian feminine hysteria opens with shadows, wrung hands, and the sound of weeping. The Innocents is of a kind with Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” and Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”: that marriage of high burlesque and menacing metaphysics that is on the one hand dense and open to unravelling, and on the other as smothering and lush as a Raymond Chandler hothouse. By opening in the exact same way as Jacques Tourneur’s/Val Lewton’s I Walked with a Zombie–a flashback/forward to a non-diegetic scene, a sitting-room interview, a claustrophobic setting laced with musk and frustration and the ghosts of the sins of the father–it announces itself as an expressionistic piece orbiting around a Brontë heroine. Having Truman Capote adapt Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, right in the midst of his In Cold Blood period (two taxonomists of beasts in the jungle of the Id), is an act of genuine inspiration. Their shared illness infects the film.

The Normal Heart (2014) – Blu-ray Disc + Digital HD

November 9, 2014Posted in2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Television

Normalheart1

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C+
starring Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Julia Roberts
written by Larry Kramer, from his play
directed by Ryan Murphy

by Bryant Frazer The Normal Heart begins in 1981, as a ferry pulls into Fire Island Pines, the nexus of social life for well-off gay New Yorkers who prize sunshine and sexual freedom. Stepping off that boat is Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo), a writer from New York who seems at once titillated and disturbed by the buff, barely-dressed men suddenly surrounding him. Weeks, it turns out, is a notorious buzzkill. He wrote an infamous novel criticizing promiscuity (“All I said was having so much sex makes finding love impossible,” he objects when called on it), and he resists joining the party with his sexually active friends, instead watching from the sidelines when their dancing gets dirty. Still, he’s human, and wanders into the woods in search of more ephemeral–and anonymous–companionship. As he leaves the island, a newspaper headline draws his attention: “Rare Cancer Is Diagnosed in 41 Homosexuals.” And so it begins.

Interstellar (2014)

November 4, 2014Posted in2014, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Christopher Nolan, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

Interstellar

***/****
starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine
screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan
directed by Christopher Nolan

by Walter Chaw When my wife was pregnant with my daughter, we thought she would miscarry. We’d been through several miscarriages already; the doctors weren’t optimistic. I don’t know why we agreed to risk it again, the crippling grief and unrecoverable loss. We told ourselves that if we couldn’t carry this last child to term, we’d console ourselves with a long vacation, the two of us. The appointment with the doctor the day we were to learn the timing of our misfortune, he found a heartbeat, and we held our breath for the next seven months, through a difficult pregnancy and birth, until she was here. My daughter turned 11 last week, and she’s perfect. Her brother is eight, and he’s perfect, too. I spent the first several months with my daughter as her primary caregiver; I was teaching and writing and my wife was making our living, and I have a relationship with my daughter unusual for it, I think. I look back and it’s not her birth that was miraculous–as miracles go, that one happens a few hundred thousand times a day. No, the miracle is what I suddenly understood about the world now that I was the happy accessory to someone else’s happiness and security.

Maleficent (2014) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

November 2, 2014Posted in2014, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance

Maleficent1

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C+
starring Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley
screenplay by Linda Woolverton
directed by Robert Stromberg

by Walter Chaw A gyno-centric reimagining of Disney’s own Sleeping Beauty, visual-effects guy Robert Stromberg’s directorial debut Maleficent (from a script by never-good Disney house-overwriter Linda Woolverton) takes all the ingredients for a horrible disaster and somehow wrestles a fitfully fascinating film from them. It hates men, that much is certain. Paints them as alternately servile and monstrous. Good men follow orders and are easily intimidated; bad men are sexually dangerous and violent. Good men know their place, led about on a tether and bullied into situations by women in groups or singly; and the rest, well…sufficed to say that Sharlto Copley, the most Ellis-from-Die-Hard human, is cast as chief BigBad, the good king Stefan. The film even goes so far as to suggest that romantic, heterosexual love is a sham, a dangerous one at that–something it tries to soften with a couple of doe-eyed exchanges during the epilogue, though I’m not buying it. In fact, had Maleficent truly committed to its themes of feminine empowerment and rage, had it linked them together hand-in-hand without entire agonizing stretches of Disney-fication, it could have entered into the same conversation as Tarantino’s Kill Bills. Here’s another film with a kick-ass female protagonist who finds strength in motherhood. Alas, for as often as it’s great, it’s limited by what its masters will allow.

Force Majeure (2014)

October 30, 2014Posted in****/****, 2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Sweden, Theatrical

Forcemajeure

Turist
****/****
starring Johannes Bah Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Clara Wttergren, Vincent Wettergren
written and directed by Ruben Östlund

by Walter Chaw As so few people saw the magnificent The Loneliest Planet (including a few who actually reviewed it), it's hardly a spoiler to say that Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure is essentially the droller, married version of Julia Loktev's masterpiece of relational/gender dynamics. Set at an exclusive ski resort in the French Alps, the picture follows handsome workaholic Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and his beautiful wife, Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli), as they spend a week with their two adorable children in what should be a winter paradise. On the first day, something terrible happens and, more to the point, Tomas doesn't act or react in the way one would expect of a husband and father, leading to a series of increasingly awkward conversations between not only the couple, but also their friends Matts (Kristofer Hivju) and Matts's much-younger girlfriend, Fanny (Fanni Metelius). The brilliance of Force Majeure is how carefully it builds itself to the "big event" and then, after, how perfectly Östlund captures the way people talk to one another, whether married with children or just starting off. It's a withering essay on masculine roles and ego–one, too, on the parts women play in easing or exacerbating those expectations. It's amazing.

Hell of the Living Dead (1980)|Rats: Night of Terror (1984) [Blood-Soaked Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

October 28, 2014Posted in1980s, 2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, France, Horror, Italy, Sci-Fi, Spain, Zombie

Mattei1

Virus
*/**** Image C+ Sound B Extras B
starring Margit Evelyn Newton, Franco Garofalo, Selan Karay, Robert O’Neil
screenplay by Claudio Fragasso, J.M. Cunilles
directed by Bruno Mattei

Rats – Notte di terrore
*½ Image C- Sound B Extras B
starring Richard Raymond, Janna Ryann, Alex McBride, Richard Cross
screenplay by Claudio Fragasso, Hervé Piccini
directed by Bruno Mattei

by Bryant Frazer It’s quite possible there is no better-known director of truly terrible genre movies than the late Italian filmmaker Bruno Mattei. Though I’ve not seen any other Mattei films, I feel comfortable making that assessment based solely on the “blood-soaked double feature” assembled here by the B-movie mavens at Blue Underground. By any rational measure, Hell of the Living Dead and Rats: Night of Terror are cheesy barrel-scrapings, budget-starved and blandly offensive horror counterfeits. But by the standards of Mattei’s oeuvre–which also includes nunsploitation, Nazisploitation, women-in-prison flicks, and mondo-style “documentaries”–they are the cream that rises to the top of the milk. Unless you’re willing to make a case for his nunsploitation flick The Other Hell, or maybe one of the early Nazi sexploitation pictures, these two films seem to form the cornerstone of Mattei’s reputation, such as it is, among genre buffs.

Stonehearst Asylum (2014)

October 23, 2014Posted in2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Theatrical, Thriller

Stonehearstasylum

Eliza Graves
*½/****
starring Kate Beckinsale, Jim Sturgess, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Caine
screenplay by Joe Gangemi, based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe
directed by Brad Anderson

by Walter Chaw Brad Anderson has made a few interesting movies that seem to be more interesting to other people. I like Session 9 well enough, The Machinist is fine, Transsiberian's fine; they're all fine. His latest, Stonehearst Asylum, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that's been adapted a couple of times already, is fine, too, I guess. It's the literalization of inmates running the asylum, following young Dr. Newgate (Jim Sturgess) as he travels to the titular nuthatch to begin his tutelage under good Dr. Lamb (Sir Ben Kingsley), who has some pretty unconventional ideas about how the best way to treat psychotics and the like is to not treat them at all. Also, there's a beautiful noblewoman with people-touching-her issues named Eliza (Kate Beckinsale), after whom the European version of this film is still named, which says something about what distributors think audiences will tolerate in our respective markets, methinks.

Motel Hell (1980) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

October 22, 2014Posted in1980s, 2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

Motelhell1

**/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Rory Calhoun, Paul Linke, Nancy Parsons, Wolfman Jack
screenplay by Robert Jaffe and Steven-Charles Jaffe
directed by Kevin Connor

by Bryant Frazer SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. If you give Motel Hell credit for anything, score it full marks for its infamous abattoir-set climax, in which an overalls-clad farmer wearing a grotesque pig mask and wielding a chainsaw battles the local sheriff–also wielding a chainsaw–over the body of a damsel in distress bound to a conveyer belt feeding an industrial meat slicer. Motel Hell wasn’t particularly original, even in the annals of American B-movies of the era, and it’s not especially scary or creepy–director Kevin Connor doesn’t have much of a taste for horror. But he was certainly able to recognize a spectacle. During a long career, Connor directed Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Mickey Rooney in a fantasy called Arabian Adventure, shot on location in Japan another horror film starring Susan George, and even helmed a TV biopic of Elizabeth Taylor starring Sherilyn Fenn. It’s the signature image of Farmer Vincent wearing a hog’s head and brandishing a power saw, though, that has followed him through the decades.

Insomnia (1997) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

October 21, 2014Posted in1990s, 2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Mystery, Norway, The Criterion Collection, Thriller

Insomnia2

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Stellan Skarsgård, Sverre Anker Ousdal, Bjørn Floberg, Gisken Armand
screenplay by Nicolaj Frobenius & Erik Skjoldbjærg
directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg

by Walter Chaw A rather astonishing feature debut, Erik Skjoldbjærg’s Insomnia is dour, surreal, nihilistic, and steadfast in its theme of masculine self-reflection. It’s as slippery to pin down and single-mindedly purposeful as its protagonist–a procedural only inasmuch as Oedipus Rex is a procedural. It’s a work of Expressionism, in other words: its exteriors are projections of its interiors in all their canted, perverse, blighted ugliness. An essential misnomer to call it a “noir,” Insomnia in its best moments is an absurdist nightmare that pinions male behaviour as these constant vacillations between violence and frailty. (This choice to discuss the world in terms of gender relationships is likely why it’s considered a noir at all.) It’s the movie that brought Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård to international prominence via a role that suggested a departure, hot on the heels of Breaking the Waves, though a quick peek at his earliest work (especially Zero Kelvin) hints at the volatility of Insomnia‘s Det. Engstrom. He’s the centre of a dark universe. Setting the film in a place above the Arctic Circle where the sun doesn’t set has the interesting effect of lighting Engstrom, as he commits his many black deeds, like a particularly ill patient in a doctor’s examining room.

Fantastic Fest ’14: Whispers Behind the Wall + The Duke of Burgundy

October 19, 2014Posted in2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantastic Fest, Film Festivals, Germany, Romance, Thriller, UK

Whispersduke

Die Frau hinter der Wand
**½/****
directed by Grzegorz Muskala

THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY
***/****
written and directed by Peter Strickland

by Walter Chaw Grzegorz Muskala's moody, sexy Whispers Behind the Wall updates Matthew Chapman's little-seen but well-remembered Heart of Midnight. Both films are about a young, vulnerable, single person in a new space, discovering Monsters of the Id hiding behind the walls. Where Chapman's film tossed literal apples at a quailing Jennifer Jason Leigh, Muskala introduces vaginal holes in his hero Martin's (Vincent Redetzki) new flat, the better to hide illicit diaries and, ultimately, ease egress into the climax. More, Muskala fills Martin's never-draining bathtub with red sludge, and hides in its drain, in one of several nods to Hitchcock, the key to the whole bloody affair. It seems that Martin, a student who looks just like Ewan McGregor in Shallow Grave, has secured his new, coveted lodgings on the strength of his willingness to allow a creepy caretaker to take a shirtless picture for hot landlady Simone (Katharina Heyer). It also seems former occupant Roger has disappeared, leaving Martin to eavesdrop on Simone banging her insane boyfriend Sebastian (Florian Panzer) before finding himself in Simone's eye, in her clutches, and in her bed.

The Guest (2014)

October 16, 2014Posted in2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Theatrical, Thriller

Theguest

***/****
starring Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Leland Orser, Lance Reddick
screenplay by Simon Barrett
directed by Adam Wingard

by Walter Chaw With The Guest, Adam Wingard continues his examination of '80s exploitation genre flicks–'90s, too: the film is among other things a canny update of James Foley's Fear, which was home to not only Mark Wahlberg's best performance but arguably Carter Burwell's finest hour as well. Like Wingard's You're Next, The Guest acts like what it mimics and, like any good predator, breaks from camouflage at the most unexpected moments. It's funny throughout for the fan familiar with this sort of thing, but it's really funny in its final shot, when it reveals an understanding that people love movies like this because of their absurdity and not in spite of it. Best is how in its focused nastiness, it highlights exactly how grim-verging-on-nihilistic '80s teensploitation often was, how low it was willing to go, how ugly it was willing to get. Yeah, I loved it.

Fury (2014)

October 16, 2014Posted in2014, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical, War

Fury14

*½/****
starring Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña
written and directed by David Ayer

by Walter Chaw Signifying not much, David Ayer's Fury is another of his brutal excoriations/celebrations of men under pressure that people like Howard Hawks did really well because people like Howard Hawks are geniuses. It follows Wardaddy (Brad Pitt), a tank commander in the 2nd Armored Division doing mop-up duty in the heart of Nazi Germany during the first months of 1945. His motley crew of battle-hardened, psychopathic misfits is composed of backwoods inbred "Coon-Ass" (Jon Bernthal); the quietly religious one who's going to go insane, Bible (Shia LaBeouf); Mexican guy Gordo (Michael Pena); and clean-cut-rookie-whom-Wardaddy-will-take-under-his-wing-and-see-himself-in-while-they-both-learn-something-from-each-other-they-didn't-think-they-could Norman (Logan Lerman). Episodic in the way of such things, it's a story of men and war told through a series of tank battles, intra-tank squabbling, and dramatic scenes like the one where Wardaddy makes Norman kill someone in cold blood, and that other one where Wardaddy makes Norman sleep with a beautiful young fräulein they discover hiding in the rubble (Alicia von Rittberg). Woe be to any woman in an Ayers joint, however. Spoiler.

All That Jazz (1979) [The Criterion Collection] – Dual-Format Edition

October 15, 2014Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Musical, Palme d'Or Winner, The Criterion Collection

Allthatjazz

****/***** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking, Leland Palmer
written and directed by Bob Fosse

by Bryant Frazer Celebrated as an incisive, self-lacerating backstage spectacle and razzed as an indulgent and pretentious passion project, genius director-choreographer Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz is one of the most ambitious American films of the 1970s. At this point in his career, Fosse had nothing to prove to the show-business establishment (in 1973, he won the Oscar, the Tony, and the Emmy, all for directing), but a 1974 brush with death–exhaustion, heart attack, life-saving surgery–put him in an introspective mood, and the results were spectacular. Not content with reaching a dazzling apotheosis in the on-screen presentation of song and dance, Fosse wove singing and dancing into a semi-autobiographical narrative chronicling the final days in the life of Joe Gideon, a genius director-choreographer whose non-stop work regimen is making him physically ill. Underscoring the threat, All That Jazz opens with a line attributed to the high-wire artist Karl Wallenda, who fell to his death during a performance in 1978: “To be on the wire is life; the rest is waiting,” Joe’s work is his life, and the irony is that his work–along with the pills and smokes that keep him going–is what kills him.

Fantastic Fest ’14: In Order of Disappearance

October 14, 2014Posted in2014, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Fantastic Fest, Film Festivals, Norway, Revenge, Thriller

Inorderofdisappearance

Kraftidioten
***/****
starring Stellan Skarsgård, Pål Sverre Hagen, Bruno Ganz, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen
screenplay by Kim Fupz Aakeson
directed by Hans Petter Moland

by Walter Chaw I’ve been a fan of Hans Petter Moland since his ferocious Zero Kelvin, starring a relatively unknown Stellan Skarsgård as a psychotic trapper alone with two other men in the wintry Norwegian wilderness. A wildly successful commercial director, Moland’s work is more contemplative than you might expect, considering. He was hand-picked by Terrence Malick, to give you an idea of his style, to take over The Beautiful Country for him when the director was called to another project (The New World). Moland returns to the frigid Norwegian winter with In Order of Disappearance, which opens with a man shaving, cutting a square swath through the foam on his face. Cut to the man on a giant snowplow, describing the same shape through a blanket of white. It’s a beautiful moment. Moland’s films are full of them.

Fantastic Fest ’14: Automata

October 12, 2014Posted in2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantastic Fest, Film Festivals, Sci-Fi, Spain, Thriller

Automata

Autómata
*/****
starring Antonio Banderas, Dylan McDermott, Melanie Griffith, Birgitte Sorensen
screenplay by Gabe Ibáñez, Igora, Javier Sánchez Donate
directed by Gabe Ibáñez

by Walter Chaw Though I've seen worse movies than Gabe Ibáñez's Automata, I've also seen Automata what feels like a few dozen times. Rather than turn this into an exercise in listing source materials, however attractive shooting fish in barrels might be, best to focus on how the picture makes Isaac Asimov's three rules of robotics into two (making it different!), and how its closest film analogue is probably somewhere in the junction between Kurt Wimmer's Equilibrium and Richard Stanley's Hardware. That'll have some of you feeling pretty excited and most of you either puzzled or properly dissuaded. Yes, Automata is a muddy piece of pseudo-profundity showcasing its creators' lack of vision, discretion, and judgment. It needed at least a few more passes through the typewriter, frankly, and a mid-film appearance by a distractingly-altered Melanie Griffith–altered by real-life plastic surgery, not in-film techno-debauchery–highlights exactly how brutal the Hollywood machinery is in destroying people like her and Kim Novak and Lara Flynn Boyle and on and on. Griffith's kind of like the girl-version of Mickey Rourke at this point. There's more sadness and auto-reflection embedded in how she looks now than in anything in the film.

Fantastic Fest 14: The World of Kanako

October 9, 2014Posted in2014, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Fantastic Fest, Film Festivals, Japan, Mystery

Worldofkanako

***½/****
starring Koji Yakusho, Nana Komatsu, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Jo Odagiri
screenplay by Tetsuya Nakashima, Miako Tadano, Nobuhiro Monma, based on the novel by Akio Fukamachi
directed by Tetsuya Nakashima

by Walter Chaw Takashi Miike's Natural Born Killers, essentially, with a bit of the old Park Chan-wook ultra-violence (or is it Shohei Imamura's A Clockwork Orange? Tarantino's Hardcore?); I'm finding it next to impossible to talk about Tetsuya Nakashima's The World of Kanako free of larger contexts, and its short-circuiting of my hard drive is perhaps intentional. The film is extremely stylish, distractingly so–or it would be if not for a central, anchoring performance from Koji Yakusho as disgraced detective Akikazu Fujishima, demolished by a long drunk and roused back to furious, ugly action by the disappearance of his daughter, Kanako (Nana Komatsu). Yakusho is so good, so grounded in his self- destruction and loathing, so extraordinary, really, from calamity to atrocity to spurious bloodletting, that watching him in this Grand Guignol is something like a true privilege. He's manifested possibly the most disgusting hero in the history of such things (Mickey Rourke's Harry Angel? Eagle scout), a creature of this dank, abattoir noir who gets progressively filthier, baser, as the picture unravels. His performance, not to gild the lily, is fucking genius.

Fantastic Fest ’14: From the Dark

October 8, 2014Posted in2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantastic Fest, Film Festivals, Horror, Ireland

Fromthedark

***/****
starring Niamh Algar, Stephen Cromwell, Gerry O'Brien, Ged Murray
written and directed by Conor McMahon

by Walter Chaw Conor McMahan's From the Dark is a hell of a film. Sarah (Niamh Algar) and Mark (Stephen Cromwell) are taking a little detour into the moors when they're predictably bogged down as night approaches. What they don't know is that a peat farmer has just been summarily attacked in a stagnant pool after unearthing what appears to be some sort of bog mummy earlier in the day. It's a nifty set-up for a spam-in-a-cabin scenario, and indeed, Mark discovers a ramshackle farmhouse where he and Sarah decide to spend the night–especially once they're attacked by some unseen thing apparently repulsed by light of any kind. It's an amalgam, in other words, of The Descent and Nosferatu: a horror film resting on those genre pillars of transgression, transformation, and contagion that cannily milks every possible light source in its rural environment (cell phones, an old tube television…more would be telling) for surprise and plot points.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

October 7, 2014Posted in2014, Action, Adventure, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Time Travel, Tom Cruise

Edgeoftomorrow1

***/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson
screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth, based on the graphic novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
directed by Doug Liman

by Angelo Muredda Whatever one thinks of his weaselly insouciance as a performer, it’s hard to argue against Tom Cruise’s record of choosing solid collaborators to bring a certain kind of high-concept amuse-bouche to life. From Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion, a derivative film about derivatives, to the more or less solid auteurist permutations of the Mission: Impossible franchise, the results have varied, but Cruise’s reputation as the sort of star who can get moderately interesting pulp bankrolled and realized by moderately interesting talents has deservedly persisted. So we arrive at Edge of Tomorrow, Doug Liman’s first kick at the Cruise can–a clever, fleetly-paced sci-fi riff on Groundhog Day with all the paradoxes of Duncan Jones’s structurally similar Source Code but a more playful demeanour.