Tom Cruise's best action movie ever!: a review of Edge of Tomorrow!

Recipe for a kick-ass film. Blend the following ingredients: 
A cup of Tom Cruise
A cup of Emily Blunt
A table spoon of Brendan Gleeson
A table spoon of John Paxton
Hardware, lots and lots of futuristic military hardware
A dash of Run Lola Run
A sprinkle of Starship Troopers
A sprinkle of Black Hawk Down

Stir vigorously.  Set surround volume to HIGH. Place clean disc in player and leave it for 113 minutes. Serve with 2 (or more) cold beverages of your choice with a side of chips--and don't forget the guacamole dip!

Director Doug Liman's 2014 science fiction action thriller Edge of Tomorrow starring Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt and Brendan Gleeson is one of the most exciting and original action films from a director known for bringing Robert Ludlum's Bourne series to the big screen. Also known for the tagline Live. Die. Repeat., Edge of tomorrow centers around Major William Cage, a U.S. Naval officer--played by Cruise-- with zero combat experience who is unwillingly deployed to the front lines of a landing operation to battle with alien creatures that have invaded earth. There, he teams with Special Forces leader Rita Vrataski known as the Full Metal Bitch--played by Emily Blunt --and becomes caught in a time loop that resets every time he's killed. 

This is 1 of those films like Paul Verhoeven's 1997 film Starship Troopers that somehow managed to fly in under the radar. Having seen Liman's work on the original Bourne movie and his excellent 1999 film Go, I figured that if anything else, Live. Die. Repeat. would be fairly entertaining and have a decent script. What I wasn't prepared for was how easily the film would measure up with iconic films like The Terminator or even The Matrix. This is a muscular super-toy one can appreciate from a geek standpoint with all of the military gadgets like the combat exoskeletons the soldiers wear, to its humor, to its James Cameronesque level of action--everything about this film cries out for a sequel which is coming, I read, in 2020 and deservedly so. Tom Cruise is, as always, great in his role as a soft public relations officer who grows by experience on top of experience into a hard-core warrior. Emily Blunt is also great as a seasoned field warrior who mentors him. Brendan Gleeson is also great as Defense Force Commander General Brigham. And finally, the late Bill Paxton is great as Master Sergeant Farrell who whips Cruise and other soldiers into shape prior to the landing operation. 

Live. Die. Repeat or, if you prefer, Edge of Tomorrow, is a damn good film that proves that you can make  an entertaining movie that is under 2 hours. If you're a Tom Cruise hater you have no idea what you're missing out on!

Nymphomaniac is more than sex: a review of Nymphomaniac

Nymphomaniac is more than sex: a review of Nymphomaniac

A middle-aged bachelor (Stellan Skarsgård) finds a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in an alley covered with bruises. He takes her home and nurses her wounds. In return, she tells him her life story: her name is Joe and she is a nymphomaniac. Even as a child, Joe was aware that she was different and that she possessed an inordinate craving for sex uncomplicated by love and jealousy. She gets a job at a printing company and there, meets Jerome (Shia LaBeouf), who also happens to be her boss. One day without warning, Jerome disappears but not before raising her awareness to the fact that sex is good, but love is the missing ingredient. Her journey to find this missing ingredient will put her in some strange situations and also lays the foundation for this film.

Nymphomaniac is a 2 part European art film by director Lars Von Trier chronicling the odyssey of a woman who seeks connections to the outside world through sexual experimentation! This 2013 film contains sexually explicit situations that leaves nothing to the imagination. The film’s all-star cast includes Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard (Insomnia), Willem Dafoe, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Shia LaBeouf as Jerome, and Stacy Martin as the teenaged Joe. This film challenges the social conventions of sexuality through a woman who pursues her desires openly while eschewing any emotional intimacy with or responsibility for those affected, including men to whom she declares false feelings for nor the families that these men abandon to be with her. 

The film works psychologically, sociologically and as a metaphor of society’s desensitization to stimulation and its detachment from the emotional needs of others, a theme similar to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 film called Salo, based on Marquis De Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom. Instead of pleasure, that film describes civilization rotting to a point where it is incapable of distinguishing pleasure from shit. 

The use of CGI in this film is stunning. The sex scenes are real but performed by porn stars and not the films' main actors whose heads are digitally attached to the bodies of the actual performers. 

Charlotte Gainsbourg is incredible in Nymphomaniac as she is in Von Trier’s 2009 film, AntiChrist, which also stars Willem Dafoe. Since leaving the Transformers franchise behind, Shia LaBeouf has become a seriously good actor (He is stellar in this film). Also of note is Uma Thurman as the wife of 1 of Joe's many lovers. In a way, Uma's devastating performance in this film dominates the other performances.  As I said, this is part 1 of a 2 part film and if you like Lars Von Trier's AntiChrist and you don't have a bias against a film that is truly adult in every sense of the word, this film will be right up your alley.

Christopher Nolan leaving DC was the best thing to happen for Marvel Studios: a review of The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan leaving DC was the best thing to happen for Marvel Studios: a  review of The Dark Knight!

Director Christopher Nolan's 2008 film The Dark Knight is without any reasonable doubt 1 of the greatest films ever, let alone superhero films that transcended its genre by being directed at an intelligent adult audience. In this film, a face-painted psychopath calling himself the Joker terrorizes the city of Gotham to persuade Batman to reveal his true identity. Batman, meanwhile, is conflicted by his role and puts his faith in an up and coming District Attorney named Harvey Dent who works on the side of the law to replace him. The film stars Christian Bale as Batman, Aaron Echhart as Commissioner Harvey Dent, Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth, Gary Oldman as Lieutenant James Gordon, Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox CEO of Wayne Enterprises, and, last but not least Heath Ledger in his final performance as Joker. Nolan and his brother Jonathan co wrote the script that is based on a story by Christopher and David S. Goyer.

Those who followed Nolan's career from his debut film 'Following' (1998) and his game-changing reverse-chronological masterpiece 'Memento' (2000) were probably not surprised by the complexity and literature-like quality he brought to Batman which in my mind is a Criterion-worthy trilogy. The Dark Knight is the only-- THE ONLY-- superhero film that earned an Oscar in an acting category for Heath Ledger's retardedly brilliant performance as the Joker, albeit a posthumous Supporting Actor award. Nolan's Batman also distinguishes itself from other superhero films in how it mirrors our own society, complete with crooked politicians and crooked cops and face-painted psychopaths like the Joker whose face paint links him in our collective minds with domestic terrorists like the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh or 21 year old Christopher Sides who shot up a Florida theater in 2012 wearing Joker face-paint.

It was inevitable that Nolan's art-house interpretation of Batman would be replaced by Zack Snyder's franchise version but we can always go back and enjoy The Dark Knight and its sequels.

Prophecies of Doom: a review of The Terminator

Prophecies of Doom: a review of The Terminator

Some films age like wine. It's hard to believe that Director James Cameron's  inspired fever dream, The Terminator, is 34 years old. Its lean script, staccato editing and direction, and its human driven storyline are what gives it the staying power to outshine most of today's sci fi films even with technologies like CGI, motion capture, and 3D-motion photography at their disposal. But what makes Terminator a cut above other speculative science fiction films is the fact that almost all of its projections have come to pass like the flying unmanned "Hunter-killers" in the film that today we call drones that are dropping bombs in Afghanistan; there's the A.I. network called Skynet in the film that "gets smart" and there is Google's new technology Alpha Go that they claim is a "learning computer;" there's the Terminator in the film and there's the United States' defense agency called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the Atlas robot chassis they created that can climb and run on a treadmill; combine the Atlas with Google's Alpha Go designed brain and voila, instant Terminator. Then you have Facebook having to "unplug" 2 of its A.I. systems after these systems started talking to each other in a secret language they created. This coupled with government projections that in a couple of years 6% of U.S. jobs will be taken over by these smart systems and existential warnings from the likes of Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking on the threat A.I. poses to civilization. Then there's Sophia (look her up). And let's not even begin talking about self-driving cars which are already being used in France and that we will be sharing our streets and highways with in the next year or 2. Taking all this into account, plus the fact that even owning an electric typewriter in 1984 was a luxury, The Terminator is--in my mind--one of the most important films (and probably THE MOST accurate theatrical prophesy that has come true) ever made, even more so than Stanley Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece. 

Stripped down to its titanium skeleton, the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a cyborg from the future that travels back 40 years in time to kill a waitress (Linda Hamilton) to prevent her from giving birth to a boy who will one day destroy them and save mankind. Throughout all of this, there's a love story involving Sarah Connor and the soldier--played by Michael Bien--whom her son, John, sends back in time to protect from the Terminator

Terminator remains, even after all these years, James Cameron's best movie. It has the perfect atmosphere; most of the action is at night. The big `70's cars in the Terminator's chase sequences are reminiscent of the big cars in The French Connection's chase sequences. Unlike T2, where there's some setup between action scenes, Terminator's action scenes erupt out of nowhere. I could go on and on but the bottom line is that Terminator will be around long after most of today's science fiction rip-offs are obsolete.

"This is the end, my only friend, the end!"-- Apocalypse Now Redux review

"This is the end, my only friend, the end!"-- Apocalypse Now Redux review

Apocalypse Now is a 1979 war film written by John Milius, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Martin Sheen as Captain Benjamin Willard, a CIA assassin commissioned to locate and terminate the command of a renegade Special Forces operative named Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who is wanted for murdering Vietnamese agents and building a fortress in a Cambodian jungle where natives worship him as a god. The film is loosely based on Joseph Conrad's 19th century novella The Heart of Darkness about a voyage up the Congo River to the heart of Africa, the Congo free state. In Apocalypse Now, this river is renamed the  Nung River up which Captain Willard finds Kurtz and personal redemption. The film also stars Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, Robert DuVall, and Harrison Ford. 

This version of the film is called the Redux version due to 49 minutes of footage added to the original theatrical version in 2001. There is more action in this version such as the helicopter raid on Vin Bin Drop where Captain Willard begins his journey up the river. But the key added scene in the Redux version involves the French plantation outpost where Willard has a brief affair with a French woman by the name of Madam Sarrault. Why this scene was left out of the original is understandable because of that version's 2 1/2 running time; however, having this scene in this version provides a greater understanding of both Kurtz's and Willards' dislocation from reality. Another added scene is a continuation of the scene at the supply depot involving the Playboy bunnies. In this film, Willard and his crew find the bunnies further upriver. Even this small scene, thanks to editor Walter Murch, seems necessary to the film's overall theme. In all, the added footage takes the original 1979 feature from 2 1/2 hours to almost 3 1/2 hours and let me tell you that once you see this version you'll never go back to the original. 

I have the blu ray and the sound and color are worth the upgrade if you're coming from DVD. Can't say enough about this movie which is probably the best film about war ever. Very entertaining!