EDGE OF TOMORROW: Fresh Repetition

Director: Doug Liman
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth
Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt
Runtime: 113 mins.
2014

What if a big budget summer blockbuster could be more than ingratiating?

What if that blockbuster didn't focus on visual effects at the expense of all else?  What if it treated every aspect of the film with respect and attention?  What if it tended to script, performance, pace, and tone in equal parts?

What if that script had a more pristine structure than some Oscar contenders?

What if this film came from a director whose filmography has been radically hit or miss?  What if it came from a team of writers who have arguably one excellent film between them--a film that came out in 1995?

What if the star was a former Grade-A man's man of a movie star, who has recently been perceived as "going off the deep end" and "box office poison"?

What if, despite the presence of said man's man movie star, the real badass of the film was the female protagonist?  What if the male protagonist was cowardly and hopelessly out of his league, and he had to learn the ropes from her?  What if the film didn't relegate her to the position of trophy girlfriend?  What if the movie didn't focus on their romance and instead allowed them to be real characters with a real, mature, and evolving relationship?

What if, in addition to all of this, the movie delivered on everything that is expected of a blockbuster action flick?  What if that delivery was a heavy dose of sci-fi and some of the haul-assed best mech action and convincing special effects this side of Avatar?

Actually I liked these effects better than Avatar's.

This is Edge of Tomorrow.

TIMECRIMES: Cold and Calculated Like A Ticking Clock

Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Writer: Nacho Vigalondo
Cast: Karra Elejalde, Barbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo
Runtime: 92 mins.
2007

Timecrimes, or Cronocrimenes, is a Spanish time-travelling film about a rather normal middle-aged fellow who stumbles into a rather abnormal temporal scenario.  This fellow Hector (Karra Elejalde) begins the film by relaxing with his wife in the yard of his new home.  As he is scanning the woods through binoculars for some unspecified reason, he spies a young woman in the woods who is calmly stripping for, again, no apparent reason whatsoever.  Of course our hero investigates this mystery, whereupon he discovers the woman (Barbara Goenaga) lying naked and unconscious.  He approaches her slowly, only to be stabbed in the arm by a bandage-faced individual with a pair of scissors.  This startling development leads him to seek shelter in a strange complex, and make contact with a mysterious scientist (Nacho Vigalondo) who coaxes him into a large machine filled with white, milky fluid, ostensibly as a place to hide from the bandage-faced dude.  Well, it's a time machine.  So ends the first act.

I'm not one for recaps-as-reviews, but it's kind of impossible to talk about this movie without some knowledge of the plot, because that's really all there is to it.  The acting isn't anything special.  The production values aren't anything special.  What themes there are are fairly straightforward, and rooted firmly in the plot.  The real draw of this film is how flawlessly it realizes its time travel scenario, careful to iron out all wrinkles as it speeds along.