Edge of Tomorrow

I don't think we will fully appreciate Tom Cruise until he is dead and gone. Sure he's a weirdo who always has that creepy smile on his face which says "Yes! I do inject my body with alien juice so that  I will forever look 30 years old!"; similar to my Colombian friend claiming that black people apply fried chicken grease to their face to accomplish the same. But regardless of how crazy he is, you always end up rooting for him and you become fully immersed in whatever drama he's involved in. He may never win an Oscar but you can never walk away from one his movies claiming that his performance was lacking. He has both the screen presence and charisma that defines what a true movie star is and he has had it for over 30 years. I know that these statements will raise a few eyebrows but just take a look at his IMDB page for a second and be honest with yourself about how you felt when you first saw those movies. It's like when everyone was hating on Michael Jackson for a while, it wasn't until he died that everyone all of a sudden remembered just how fresh Man in the Mirror was. And so the same will happen with Cruise; just like we forgot about the little kids and Mike, we will forget about Xenu and remember just how awesome Risky Business was!

By the way lucky for my Colombian friend, she was a bit tipsy and I love her to death; otherwise she may or may not have died from my throwing watermelon seeds at her ninja style, as we tend do while eating our dessert. But enough racism for one day.

In Edge of Tomorrow, Earth is under attack by an alien force that has the ability to adapt to whatever military strategy we bring at it. So Mack (Cruise) goes on a global recruiting mission to help build up our forces for one final confrontation with them just outside of London. But unbeknownst to him, his new commanding officer plans to put him in charge of the attack, which means that he would be physically on the field of battle. The problem is, Mack has never been trained for battle and tries everything he can within his power to avoid it. This leads to a confrontation between Mack and his commanding officer that eventually winds up with Mack being labeled as a deserter and forced into action as a lowly private. As you would expect, its not long before Mack dies on the battlefield but not before he meets Rita(Emily Blunt), who has become the face of the human resistance. Rita is a badass soldier who has the ability to take out hundreds of aliens with ease, thus earning her the nickname Full Metal Bitch.

But instead of death being the end for him as it is with most human beings, the second Mack dies, he immediately wakes up the day before the actual attack happened in the same exact situation as before. And everything that happened before basically repeats itself over and over again as he continues to die during each battle. No one believes him except for Rita, who during one of the attacks, tells him to look for her when he wakes up again. And it is through their teaming up and the use his knowledge of what is to come, that they work together to get closer to ending the war.

I give the writers credit for doing a fairly decent job in explaining why Mack is able to repeat each day as he does and for explaining why Rita even comes to close to believing him in the first place. And as opposed to just simply stealing ideas from previous alien invasion movies and creating a CGI diluted mess, they actually add something fresh to this genre with the alien's unique abilities. This is easily one of the best sci-fi action movies that has been made in decades! Doug Liman has thankfully ditched the shaky cam that he temporarily fell in love with and decides to film the action pretty straight. The first drop scene from the plane is breathtaking as you see a terrified Cruise thrown out  into the middle of pure chaos with attack ships, soldiers, and aliens buzzing all around him. Once he lands, it feels like you are taken back to the beaches of Normandy just like you saw in Saving Private Ryan. People are getting destroyed in brutal ways and Mack reacts in a manner that we can all identify with; and that is with ultimate fear and a desire to survive by any means necessary.

Although he does so to a certain extent just to give you a sense of the frustration and anger that eventually builds up within Mack, thankfully Liman doesn't frustrate the viewer by repeatedly showing you the same scenes over and over again. With each day, you slowly see Mack using his frustration to become more and more of a badass like Rita and he eventually becomes unrecognizable when compared to the Mack you meet in the opening scenes.

I have to admit that there were quite a few scenes that left me gasping and by the time he finally gets to the head alien, you are ready to jump in the screen and fight right along with him! Plus it was cool to see the kid from Attack the Block get some love in the US. I rate this movie as very FRESH and you suggest that you see it as soon as possible!

Oblivion

I’m not sure what’s with my recent fascination with Eastern European women; maybe it’s because they seem so submissive or perhaps it’s because they are so easily tricked due to the language barrier. But I just cant seem to get enough of them.  I blame the Bond girls in Goldeneye and beautiful Anishka, my lovely waitress in Prague who initially yelled at me “All American men are liars” and later invited me to the largest rave I’ve ever been to in my life. Sadly or thankfully I should say, this story didn’t end the way it could have; due to my friends informing me that because of the Czech Republic’s poor health care system they have a high contraction rate of AIDS there.

But these women seem to be following me! First it started off with this beautiful Russian woman coming up to me at work and saying the following “In Russia we say, that if a man beats you, that means he loves you”. Now I in no way condone or would ever put my hands on a woman in a harmful way but I do have to admit that I was slightly turned on by this. As if I needed yet another reason to go see Olga Kurylenko in Oblivion. Sadly she’s been the girl that no one wants to sleep with, check Hitman and Max Payne. And if there was anyone crazy enough to continue this tradition it would be none other than Sir Thomas Cruise. Oh and the fact that this was a sci-fi movie was the other reason I popped in on opening night.

So the creator of Oblivion, Joseph Krasinski, gives absolutely nothing away in the trailer for this film. It works out great for the movie going experience so that you can be pleasantly surprised by the story but at the same time, so little is shown in the preview that it just looks like Thomas Cruise is walking around telling lame stories while trying to avoid bandits. Do yourself a favor and see this film in spite of the trailer. The basic set up is this, the world was attacked by aliens that they called Scavengers. They destroyed the moon which put the world’s ecosystem in turmoil, causing massive earthquakes and floods. The humans left with no other alternative nuked the planet in order to defeat the enemy. The few remaining survivors had to leave the uninhabitable planet for a space station that orbits the Earth as they prepare to head for one of Saturn’s moons to live. Cruise and his lover/co worker Andrea Riseborough are the two remaining humans on Earth, who are there to protect the machines they have in place to take the planet’s natural resources and also to repair the drones they have in place to kill the remaining Scavs.

Well one day a small spaceship crash lands near Cruise’s home and it turns out to that it is carrying a beautiful Russian woman (Kurylenko) that immediately recognizes Cruise. He has also seen her in his dreams but what’s weird about this is, his memory has been wiped clean and she has been in cryo sleep for 60 years. The second these two start to communicate, Cruise’s world is turned upside down. The rest I will let you experience for yourself.

Krasinski almost to a fault, takes his time telling the story. Through Cruise’s secret desire to stay, he shows why we are so connected to our natural habitat and why leaving it would be so hard. At the same time, he uses caves and the night to create a setting that lets us know how vulnerable Cruise and Andrea are to their surroundings. There are several edgy moments that remind you of the scene where Will Smith is chasing after his dog in the dark building of I Am Legend. You want to yell, “Don’t go in there moron!” but unless you live in The Bronx, you won’t actually do it. Speaking of, this movie almost unaplogetically steals from a ton of other sci fi movies; which I am ok with because everyone does it. So before I go into any of the spoilers I will give you my rating of very FRESH! The only thing that keeps it from being tight is the crazy Cruise factor and the fact that certain scenes are exact replicas of other movies. But don’t lose sight of the fact that this is Cruise’s best movie in a decade and because he tones down the craziness, he’s actually pretty good in it. Oh yes, and Kurylenko is unbelievably tasty in it as well.

***SPOILER ALERT***

So as it turns out, the Scavengers aren’t aliens but in fact humans. And the space station that is orbiting the Earth is the alien life form that is sucking the Earth’s resources so that it’s species can continue to survive. Morgan Freeman plays the role of half Dennis Leary from Demolition Man and half Morpheus from the Matrix. He should have gotten fat for this role and had them steal Taco Bell.  He seemed to be having fun in it and is his usual solid self as he guides Cruise to the truth behind what's really going on. Also, if I were Tom Cruise’s character, the world would have just died. Because once I found out that there were thousands of clones of my girlfriend who all recognized me, I would’ve spent all of my time flying from zone to zone having sex with each one of them.  Screw going up to the alien spaceship Spaceballs style and attacking it!

It seems like Krasinski saw the third installment of The Matrix and hated it like we all did. So he set out to create the real ending to the trilogy minus a fat Morpheus, who in that movie was reduced to being the short alien sidekick to Lando Williams in Return of the Jedi. (my friend's joke not mine) 

Jack Reacher

In this holiday season, is there a better way other than seeing the latest Tom Cruise flick to remind yourself that your family isn’t all that crazy? Well you might answer maybe until you see the first 15 minutes of Jack Reacharound (as my friend calls it). During this time of the film there’s actually a pretty decent set up to the story and then all of a sudden you see the power of Xenu glowing through Cruise’s eyes and his wicked smile. And you’re instantly taken back to the sex party scenes in Eyes Wide Shut where everyone is wearing weird masks and cloaks. I’m 100% certain that the Cruise took Kubrick to one of his Scientology gatherings for inspiration for that scene.  But it doesn’t just stop there, there’s also a scene where you supposed to swoon at how sexy Cruise is even at the age of 70 (still rather infantile in Xenu years). He’s walking around shirtless while the truly sexy Rosamund Pike tries to contain herself. In the end however, he just looks like Iggy Pop does in his old age now; in shape but a dried up, leathery, reptilian looking shadow of his former self. If you don’t watch sports then you have probably never seen these commercials with 50-70 year old men who take this pill to give them the figure of young body builder. Can you imagine combining this pill with Viagra? I can only imagine the end result being some super old Incredible Hulk hobbling around saying “Hulk bang cougar!!”. Anyway, that’s what Cruise looked like. 

With that said, once you get past the opening set up, this is a pretty entertaining movie and Sir Thomas actually does a decent job as Reacher. You’re a little worried at first because it appears that it’s a pretty open and shut murder mystery as they present the killer to you from the start. But as you learn more about Reacher (a former military cop) , the alleged killer, and the crime itself, the true story starts to unravel. You find yourself at a loss for what really happened and why; and you have to put together the clues as Cruise does.  The movie starts out with a pretty chilling shot where Barr is setting up in a parking garage with a long range rifle and randomly starts killing innocent civilians as they start their day. The lead investigator immediately puts the clues together and finds Barr to arrest him. While trying to get his confession, Barr only writes one thing down and that’s “Get Jack Reacher”. The movie takes off from there.

There are a few overdone fight scenes but for the most part they still get the job done. What will stand out the most is the car chase scene. We all have seen over a thousand times the chase scene where a car drives the wrong way down a one way street and comes out unscathed while miraculously missing every car that’s headed its way. Well what’s cool about the way they filmed this is they put the camera in harms way the entire scene so you actually see the maneuvers it takes to avoid the head on traffic coming at you. And you see this awesome old school Camaro get destroyed as Cruise tries to avoid the cops. 

Im reluctant to talk too much about the plot but the end isn’t quite as fresh as the build up to it might suggest.  But the overall dark tone of the film and the actual ruthlessness of some of the characters makes up for this. There’s one line Cruise has where he says something to the effect of “I want to beat you to a pulp and drink your blood from a boot”. Now normally you would just laugh at something like this but I am fairly certain that Cruise has had human blood from at the very least a gauntlet before. Dude is just that crazy!

Overall I rate this movie as slightly FRESH and suggest that you go get a Reacharound from Sir Thomas like I did. It’s not as bad as you think.