5) Edge of Tomorrow
What makes Edge of Tomorrow quite so spectacular is how it makes a wildly complicated idea appear as little more than simple fodder for a glossy blockbuster movie. Repeated time loops are not as easy to convey as they might seem, and are even more tricky to make into solid entertainment – even if the effortless Groundhog Day did fool us into thinking it was a piece of cake.
Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill, the movie stars Tom Cruise as William Cage – a public affairs officer who is unwillingly thrust into a deadly war with an alien race attacking the earth known as “Mimics.” His first venture into the war-zone ends horrifically as he is promptly disintegrated by one of the attacking creatures, only to wake up where he was the previous day – in preparation to go to war. Cage continues to repeat the same day, repeatedly slaughtered on the battlefield, as his pleas repeatedly fall on deaf ears all around him.
There’s an admirable amount of substance to the movie, which throws some positively evil creatures at its star as he uses his knowledge of the day to try and win the war all by himself. Cruise is superb, with Emily Blunt and Bill Paxton also impressing in supporting roles that require a hell of a lot of patience, persistence and discipline. Director Doug Liman never gets ahead of himself either, managing to depict the same day in different ways to a consistently thrilling degree.
The only thing that fails about Edge of Tomorrow is its generic and forgettable title, which now arrives on DVD with the tagline Live. Die. Repeat.
