Edge of Tomorrow

Dark Souls? Aliens? Groundhog Day? Starship Troopers? Source Code? The Twilight Zone? Saving Private Ryan? All of the above (and not nearly just them) are clearly recognizable in this movie. Fundamentally, this has it all - almost - just a respectable and proper ending is missing. However, the mandatory blockbuster inoffensive finale is luckily preceded by a sufficiently playful and peculiar cocktail of the aforementioned ingredients and not just a mere distillation of what you have already seen countless times elsewhere. (05/06/2014)

A magnificently filmed entertaining summer sci-fi blockbuster about the war between human and alien civilizations, in which the most affected person is a failed advertising manager who is condemned by the war situation to the role of a military propagandist and an unmanageable conflict with his superior to the position of an ordinary soldier. He is most affected because his fate is not to die once and for all, as soldiers die in battles, but thanks to a time loop he experiences the same day over and over again with the same bungled battle, which ends in a horrifying massacre, and he repeatedly dies in the most painful and bizarre ways. The morbid concept, however, thanks to irony, black humor, exaggeration, likable cast, and detachment, is easily digestible, and when I think about it, I can't find a reason why it shouldn't have the highest rating out of the original 4 stars. Tom Cruise is in his element as a blockbuster hero, and by being a coward and a guy who wants anything but to save the world, he is more likable than usual. But yes, criticism of the illogicality of the initial situation and the whole story is certainly appropriate, but honestly, who would want to dissect inconsistencies in the playfulness with a time paradox in such a relaxing genre? Some scenes definitely remind me of The Matrix or related genre productions, but that's just the way it goes in the crowded world of cinema, and I certainly wouldn't accuse Liman of cheap plagiarism. Overall impression: 90%. (03/07/2014)

This technological blockbuster, which in the long post-production process was given a coat by the special effects artists that models would die for, earns points mainly with the merciless thrill of the war. This war borrowed all over the place to wring out a surprisingly clever, pleasantly black-humored (headshots!) spectacle, which is only shattered by the skeleton's lack of a more driving conclusion to bring the film's entire video-game architecture to an absolute climax; otherwise, it's flawlessly acted, musically compelling, and directorially as confident as few in the genre in recent years. 4 ½. (06/09/2014)

An amazing film separated from the fifth star only by the more intense finale. Otherwise, its an inventive mashup of Source Code, Battle Los Angeles, Groundhog Day and Saving Private Ryan, with an ever better Cruise and full metal bitch Emily Blunt. The Edge of Tomorrow is a great evolutionary link in the fusion of games and film. The model of the shooter checkpoint and RPG development of combat and social skills of the character are imaginatively exploited at the moment when there is an acute threat that the film’s wheels will fall off. They don’t. Simply the best Liman since the first Bourne (which doesn't necessarily mean praise) and quite possibly the sci-fi blockbuster of the season. Reset! [80%] (28/05/2014)

Already a classic that you will gladly reach for when you’re feeling down. A great screenplay which borrows just enough, combines what we like from Aliens, Starship Trooper (more faithful to Heinlein’s book than the movie) or Groundhog Day. Amazing production design (reminds me of the Crysis videogame), it’s dirty as the sand on the beaches in Normandy (70th anniversary, hip-hip). Tom manages to get round both the yellow-bellied coward and the killer machine and Emily Blunt plays a tom-boy women’s hero in Ripley style, Paxton was pleasing. Clever, funny and mainly an entertaining blockbuster which suited me the most this season so far. Get up, you worm! (05/06/2014)