For the week of October 7th, Warner Home Entertainment is bringing Edge of Tomorrow to Blu-ray. Director Doug Liman's sci-fi actioner has already become a cause célèbre among blockbuster cineastes; despite receiving almost universal critical acclaim, the film struggled at the domestic box-office, barely grossing $100 million on top of its estimated $178-million budget. "How could this have happened?" people complained (none louder than the studio execs at Warner Bros.), and for once, the cries of the unhappy are wholly justified. Edge of Tomorrow is, by far, the best pure summer blockbuster since last year's World War Z, and the best film Tom Cruise has starred in since War of the Worlds in 2005. The first thing you need to know about the movie is that for all its action – and Liman's working at a scope here that far exceeds that of The Bourne Identity or Mr. & Mrs. Smith - it is very, very funny, and legitimately so. Though Liman and his screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie, John-Henry Butterworth, and Jez Butterworth have taken inspiration from Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel All You Need Is Kill, the dominant influence here is definitely the great Harold Ramis comedy Groundhog Day, with Cruise stepping in for Bill Murray as a craven, opportunistic PR shill who, after being forced into service against a seemingly unstoppable alien horde set on world domination, finds himself reliving the same D-Day-esque assault over and over again. Eventually, Cruise finds in himself the strength to face the aliens head-on, but to get there, he's got to die. And die. And die. And die some more. Narratively, each death affords his character a hard reset, and Cruise learns a little more about his enemy every time he squares off against theme (if nothing else, this might be the videogame movie, as Cruise is practically playing a Halo avatar with almost unlimited respawns) but it also becomes the movie's great running gag.
Liman stages his lead's many deaths like Looney Tunes punchlines; they all come a second or two before we expect it, and they're all remarkably fresh and varied (an alien impales him here; a truck runs him over there; a fellow soldier frags him often). If nothing else, Edge of Tomorrow will satisfy anyone who's been jonesing to see Cruise's smug smile get violently swatted off his face. Believe it or not, that's actually a compliment for the once-and-future Top Gun. As someone whose last few films have felt like glorified vanity projects (Oblivion, Jack Reacher, and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, all of which labored mightily to make Cruise seem like the bravest, strongest, most competent person in the universe), Cruise isn't afraid to seem weak or silly here, and the full-throated embrace of his character's many foibles actually makes his hero's journey more involving – by the time he's become an nigh-unkillable super-soldier, we buy the transformation because we've seen how hard fought the change has been. The result is his loosest, most engaging turn in years. Of course, it helps that Liman surrounds Cruise with such a good supporting cast, from Bill Paxton's cheerfully sadistic Master Sergeant, to Brendan Gleeson's no-B.S. General (and chief Cruise tormentor), to - most of all - Emily Blunt's fearsome fellow soldier. In many ways, her Rita Vrataski (and her first name is a cute nod to Groundhog Day) is the film's real hero, an effortless badass who acts as Cruise's conscience, faithful wingman, and moral exemplar. It's a great performance in a great movie. No matter what the reasons for its ignominious box-office showing – previews that masked the film's jaunty tone under a pile of doom-and-gloom portents, audiences' strained patience for Cruise and his antics, an ill-fated showdown with the box-office smash The Fault in Our Stars, a beyond-generic title that vanishes as soon as you hear it (and this Blu-ray package cannily tries to rebrand the movie as Live. Die. Repeat.) - Edge of Tomorrow deserved far better. Here's hoping it finds a long life on home media.
In his Blu-ray review, Kenneth Brown wrote that, "Edge of Tomorrow is inspired summer filmmaking. Refusing to merely rehash, regurgitate or recycle post-apocalyptic sci-fi tropes, it forges ahead with a briskness, energy, and love of innovation and subversion that puts the likes of Transformers: Age of Extinction (lazy, tepid, and tiresome) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (erratic, convoluted, and forced) to shame. Cruise is a blast; breezy, funny, fast on his feet, and a force to be reckoned with in and out of an exo-suit...After a hilarious start as a trembling publicity rep, he eventually settles into the muddy boots of Tom the action hero. Cruise playing Cruise. But there are plenty of great scenes - both comedic and dramatic - in which the fearless actor buried inside the apple-pie superstar shines through. Not to be outdone, Blunt manages to hold her own and then some; tough, battle-hardened, and, most crucially, convincing as the war front's leanest, meanest soldier. Brendan Gleeson, Bill Paxton, Tony Way, Kick Gurry and Jonas Armstrong deliver as well, with supporting roles sure to please, while the aliens are a successful blend of old and new ideas, with enough visual punch, lightning-quick presence, and eerie purpose to make the tentacled beasties frightening and fascinating. There's also no over-stuffing. No over-crowded acts. No bloated subplots. No undercooked arcs. No fat to trim. No evidence of anything of substance left on the cutting room floor. Edge of Tomorrow clips along without a hitch, never letting go of its playfulness, losing sight of its endgame, or hindering whatever action beat is on the horizon."
From Universal Studios comes Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West. This raunchy western-comedy belly-flopped at the box-office, but unlike Edge of Tomorrow, it isn't hard to see why. A Million Ways to Die in the West just isn't good. At its very best, the movie ranks on the level of a middling-to-okay episode of Family Guy. It's very pretty - Michael Barrett's widescreen cinematography looks better than many of the Westerns A Million Ways to Die in the West is parodying - and some of the jokes are brutally funny (including a few cameos that are almost worth the price of admission. Almost), but as is MacFarlane's wont, he has trouble generating fresh material. It isn't just that you can almost feel his elbow in your ribs nudging you to laugh at the same jokes repeated ad nauseum (the biggest offenders: Neil Patrick Harris' mustache, the whiplash-line separating life and death in the Old West, and anything involving Giovanni Ribisi's courtship of Sarah Silverman's gleefully disgusting prostitute); as the protagonist, a cowardly farmer who's perpetually out of place in the Big Country, MacFarlane comes off like a bad M.C. at a roast, constantly rolling his eyes and breaking the fourth wall to ensure that we will think the material is as funny as he does. He's so aggressively on that you might find yourself hoping that Liam Neeson's taciturn gunslinger will shoot him down, if only so he'll stop pitching you on the comedy. MacFarlane's a great vocal talent (any fans of Family Guy and Ted can attest to that fact), but he isn't a compelling on-screen presence at all, and he makes a problematic movie seems so much worse. Ultimately, MacFarlane is just a vulgarian, and his relentless crassness isn't shocking after the film's very long 116 minutes (134 minutes in the logy unrated version). Sure, Blazing Saddles was also pretty crass, but that film also had a pretty savage sense of social conscience that is utterly lacking here. However, the film has one very bright spot, and I'm tempted to give it a mild recommendation for this lone strength: Theron gives what might be her most charming and funny performance ever as MacFarlane's "Western coach." Only Theron seems to get any real pleasure out of being naughty, but to her credit, she doesn't oversell the material à la MacFarlane's hacky talk-show host routine. She just grins and underplays, letting the jokes come naturally, and she's all the more appealing for the lack of force. MacFarlane could stand to learn from her example. So could the movie.
Jeffrey Kauffman's Blu-ray review noted that "A Million Ways to Die in the West has some effective bits, but much of the verbal humor comes from the deliberate clash of a contemporary patois colliding with Old West clichés. MacFarlane is of course not above (repeatedly) using potty humor (a big gag toward the end of the film has to do with diarrhea - hilarious) and sexual situations (Sarah Silverman portrays a local 'working girl' involved with a nebbish played by Giovanni Ribisi). MacFarlane's own peculiar brand of deadpan works best in bits like the big SFX laden hallucination Albert experiences while on a 'Vision Quest' with the local Native Americans. At other times, he seems to be attempting to channel a neo-modern version of Woody Allen, a tic-filled neurotic not quite able to cope with the 'modern' world, but ending up with the impossibly gorgeous girlfriend anyway. That turns out to be a somewhat risky gambit for a performer who has a certain likably smarmy element to his personality, something that's distinctly different from Allen's own patented brand of fum[bl]ing, stammering panic. Still, MacFarlane has an undeniable charm that fuels a lot of the film's momentum, and he seems to genuinely charm (and crack up) Theron, looking here like an updated version of Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead. The supporting cast (which frankly includes Neeson) is great, and MacFarlane engages in several pieces of stunt casting and blink or you'll miss them cameos."
Disney has two big releases streeting this week, one animated - Sleeping Beauty - and the other live-action - Million Dollar Arm. The Sleeping Beauty disc is a re-issue (the 2008 edition is now out-of-print and can sell for as high as $100), but given the success of its recent villainess spinoff Maleficent, it makes sense that the Mouse House would want to revisit an old favorite. In a lot of ways, the 1959 original is an odd bird – it is both more and less than the sum of its parts. One of the most surprising things about the film is how spare it is. For a picture with such a jam-packed framework – beautiful princess Aurora tries to find true love while staying clear of the machinations of vengeful, power-mad faerie Maleficent – not a whole lot happens here. To be sure, Sleeping Beauty has some thrilling, iconic setpieces: Aurora's sojourn through a dark, enchanted forest; Prince Phillip's desperate battle against Maleficent after she's taken the form of the most terrifying dragon in Disney History. But those exciting moments are the exception, not the rule, and I was surprised how much of Sleeping Beauty ambles along at a pace that makes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs seem like The Bourne Supremacy. There are lots – too many, one might argue – of static tableaus, plus enough comic shenanigans from Aurora's three faerie protectors and Maleficent's raven sidekick to make the wait for the dragon showdown all the more interminable. However, once you make the adjustment to Sleeping Beauty's ambling pace, the picture offers up enough visual wonderments to make the journey worthwhile. This was Disney's first 70mm entertainment, and the added visual and cinematographic depth ranks alongside live-action epics like Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia. Even the film's tableau-like competitions make up in beauty what they lack in kinetic progression: the great Eyvind Earle received free-reign to design the background art, and he modeled his environments off Renaissance-era tapestries. If Sleeping Beauty endures, it really shouldn't be because of the story or characters – Earle's breathtaking artwork singlehandedly turns the feature into an eye-popping installation piece.
Blu-ray.com's review calls the film "a bit light on story. It is a faerie tale in the truest sense, built upon a short fable about four paragraphs long. The film's main inspiration is the first section of Charles Perrault's La Belle au Bois Dormant; it is one of several tales published in Perrault's 1697 book 'Les Contes de ma mère l'Oie,' or 'The Tales of My Mother Goose.' Perrault was a significant figure in founding a new literary genre - the faerie tale; he predates the famous Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm by almost a century. Of course, Perrault's version of the dormant princess is not the first occurrence of such themes, but it is arguably the most well-known. As such, it provided a mere template for the Disney staff, who filled in some gaps generously, omitting and augmenting as they went along. The end result, as noted already, is a straightforward, none-too-intricate story where, ironically, the faeries seem more human than the humans themselves. This is understandable however, given that the main emphasis of the film is in its artistic and technical marvels. It is common knowledge among most film fans and historians that the era of television, sweeping into private residences post World War II, struck a blow to the film industry. With entertainment available for hours at a time, every day, from the comfort of your own home, why bother getting gussied up to head to the cinema? To combat this, films underwent a metamorphosis in style and tempting gimmickry. From stereoscopic 3D experiences to bargain priced double features, studios were trying everything. One of the most interesting and successful adjustments was the size of the film itself, stretching from the norm of 35 millimeters to 70 and beyond. Sleeping Beauty was one of these features, filmed with a 70mm technology sensationally named 'Technirama.' In addition, the film's music, consisting almost entirely of Peter Tchaikovsky's 1889 ballet score, was recorded in Germany with the best technology available, in a cutting-edge 6 channel stereophonic sound mix. Everything about the film exuded opulence, carried out and promoted in a fashion that only Walt Disney could achieve."
Million Dollar Arm, on the other hand, is not – and will probably never be – as memorable as Sleeping Beauty. This high-concept dramedy follows sports agent J.B. Bernstein (Jon Hamm, basically playing a slightly nicer version of Don Draper) as he travels to India to bring two potential pitching phenoms (Slumdog Millionaire's Madhur Mittal and Life of Pi's Suraj Sharma) back to the United States, and if you're wondering what kinds of surprises this film has in store, here's a fun exercise you can do. Read that plot synopsis again, and think of the most clichéd ways it could play out. Chances are, what you're thinking isn't too far off from the end result. Whereas in his best film, Lars and the Real Girl, director Craig Gillespie took a high-concept premise and made it darker and more emotionally melancholic, Gillespie adheres strictly to format here. We get two culture-shock narratives - the first on Bernstein's part as he tries to adjust to India, and the second when he tries to get Mittal and Sharma acclimated to California living – placed alongside Bernstein's own Screenwriting 101 arc: he's a selfish, womanizing cad whose win-at-all-costs attitude begins to crumble under the influence of a) his new Indian wards, b) his affable family-man partner (the great Aasif Mandvi), c) his beautiful-but-pragmatic neighbor (Lake Bell, whose winning In a World... proved she's so much better than these stock love-interest parts she keeps getting), or d) all of the above. Heck, we even get Alan Arkin popping up and assaying another in his long line of Crusty Old Man™ bits as a crotchety old baseball scout. This all sounds pretty dire, I realize. That said, just as he made the Fright Night remake about twice as entertaining as it had right being, so does Gillespie work the same magic with Million Dollar Arm. This is just a well-made movie, and it hums so seamlessly from one hackneyed plot point to the next that you barely notice the clichés. Try as we might, we can't help but get sucked into Bernstein's redemption story, and that's a credit to Gillespie's filmmaking polish – and the great performances he gets out of his cast, even as they're saddled playing rote archetypes (special credit must go to Hamm, who gives this project the same gravitas and complexity he brings to Mad Men, and Bell, who's one of those rare performers that can make even the most rote and expository dialogue seem spontaneous and authentic) – and the screenplay by Win Win and The Visitor filmmaker Tom McCarthy, who manages to smuggle genuine human insights into what might otherwise be a formulaic feel-good story. Million Dollar Arm might be fluff, but it's utterly winning fluff. A nice surprise.
One of the week's biggest treats is Warner's Season One release of the Adult Swim cartoon Rick and Morty. Like most Adult Swim shows, Rick and Morty balances a high-concept hook with all manners of psychological and scatological grit. The title characters - a brilliant-but-eccentric inventor and his teenage sidekick (both voiced by the show's co-creator, Justin Roiland) - are a play on Back to the Future's Doc and Marty, and every week they travel through time, space, and alternate dimensions, but Rick, the Doc Brown proxy, is a violently unstable alcoholic whose brilliance proves just as dangerous to Morty as the various perils they confront. At times, this mix of absurdism, genre pastiche, and genuine trauma gallops over the line of bad taste; the pilot, for example, revels in casual sadism, like Rick's nonchalant murder of Morty's high-school bully, and throughout the series, we keep returning to the B-plot troubles of Morty's dysfunctional mother (Scrubs's Sarah Chalke) and father (Chris Parnell), who are constantly discovering more reasons - and I'm talking real, non-funny reasons, like vocational regret and romantic incompatibility - for why they should get divorced. However, Roiland, who cut his teeth on The Sarah Silverman Program and Adventure Time, has a not-so-secret weapon: his co-creator Dan Harmon. The mercurial and brilliant mastermind behind NBC's (and now Yahoo's - #sixseasonsandamovie) Community, Harmon excels in always finding the emotional core in even the most extreme satirical conceits, a condition in which Rick and Morty offers a master class. Over the course of the first season's eleven episodes, what lingers are the sharp, sudden jolts of feeling that puncture the animated chaos. A freewheeling, comedically dense Inception parody (the great "Lawnmower Dog" episode) gives way to a subplot about sudden advances in canine intelligence that proves equal parts terrifying and sad - it's as if you put Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the "Jurassic Bark" episode of Futurama in the Brundlefly machine. "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind" begins with a cloning-meets-Agatha Christie setup (sort of... it's complicated) as Rick finds himself under suspicion of murdering Ricks from other dimensions and mutates into a delicate look at love and the nature of affection. And speaking of "mutates," in the season's high-point, "Rick Potion #9," Roiland and Harmon graft teenage angst, post-apocalyptic mayhem, and monster-movie thrills onto an existential head-trip of an ending that suggests Primer as directed by David Cronenberg. The best thing about Rick and Morty is how singular it is - like it or hate it, the show is wholly its own beast - and that confidence proves bracing. One of the best first seasons of television that I've ever seen.