Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

 "I'm going to tell you a story. At first, it's going to sound ridiculous.

But the longer I talk, the more rational it's going to appear"

-Major William Cage

In the beginning, I had my skepticism from viewing the trailer. From what I gather from the trailer, there is no real appeal to me. Time-travel is something we've seen before. Alien invasion, plenty done. Battle suit, no originality. Tom Cruise in a sci-fi movie? Remember "Oblivion" last year? I came into the cinema expecting a "meh" movie but in the end, I had a lot of fun watching it. It's safe to say that it's one of the best sci-fi films around! We may have seen plenty of the similar things done before, but they do feel fresh again when watching this film.

"Spoilers ahead, sonny!"

Tom Cruise was certainly full of himself in the beginning of the film, he definitely needn't act in that scene. The thing about his acting is that they are all very much similar from one movie to another. It's rare that we see him as a "character" from the film, and not just himself as an actor. I can only think of his performance as Colonel Stauffenberg from "Valkyrie" and Les Grossman from "Tropic Thunder" that break his usual mold of "Tom Cruise doing his thing". In this film like his every other film, I still see Tom Cruise as Tom Cruise, carrying that same charismatic bad-ass action hero performance. I'm certainly not convinced as him being a character who has never been combat ready and don't know how to handle a weapon, especially after seeing him do the impossible from all his previous movies, especially his role as Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible series. Heck, he even singled handedly scaled the Burj Khalifa tower in "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol", and he parodied himself as the ultimate agent in "Knight and Day". So to see him stumble in his battle suit and clumsily walk around in the battle field, it was certainly a joke there. It was not until we get to the point where he has gotten used to the suit and learnt from all his mistakes he made in his previous lives that we see him killing the aliens with precised accuracy, it was there that we finally get the Tom Cruise that we are all familiar with. From then on, it was fun to watch him do his thing.

Tom Cruise.. Tom Cruise everywhere.

Emily Blunt was awesome and she gave a very convincing performance as the "Full Metal B*tch". She adds herself to the list of strong willed female character that we are getting these days, making Joan of Arc real proud. However, she reminded me a lot about Sergeant Calhoun from Wreck it Ralph. Throughout the entire movie, she delivers her tough bad-ass look, nothing more. When we do get her to soften up with one of the quieter scenes with Tom Cruise, she hops on the helicopter and dies... and we are re-winded back to her being tough again. Still, I loved her look and the design of her battle suit. That splash of red on her armor and that crazily big sword she carries or drags, give her this iconic game character feel reminiscence of  Samus Aran from Metroid.
 

She'll make Joan of Arc proud.

Amazing concept, however it is very similar to the 2011 film "Source Code" where a guy gets to relive his life over and over again. But unlike Source Code, there's no alternate universe in this one, or at least we can only assume that at the end of every Cage's lives and the universe he lived in, just ceased to exist after he dies. Although unoriginal in idea and we've been getting a lot of similar time-travel or alternate universe themed movies these, the writers pretty much handled this idea in a fresh way. I was never bored at every rewind and it was really interesting and hilarious at times, to see how Cage would react or work in every life, especially with the people he meets again and again. However at every reset, he always wakes up at a particular moment on the military airfield with handcuffs on. What bothers me is that at his final awakening, why did he wake up at a much earlier time, the time when he just arrived at London? Very curious but it did give us a look at how he was treated when he walked around the base as a major at the end than the way he was treated as a mere private throughout the film. And boy, what an ending! The movie didn't bother to follow through the happy ending that we could only imagine what Cage would say. It certainly ended on a good "incomplete" note. But before they cut to the credits, we're left with a good look at the usual Tom Cruise's look and smile. They just bookend the film, don't they?

Had enough of this scene?

The alien "Mimics" design was really interesting and I must applaud the design team for coming up with something truly unique. We've certainly been getting a lot of aliens or monsters with insect-like design that it has become way too boring and predictable. This "Mimics" look is certainly a new idea and a concept never done before. Who would have thought to design the alien looking like a giant nerve cell with ferocious eyes and mouths? But when I first saw the alien look, I was reminded of a particular character from an old Star Wars cartoon. The design and concept of the military battle suit on the other hand, was something done over and over and over again. Solid examples would be the mech suits from Matrix Revolution, G.I Joe and Avatar. The suits in this film however, are still something to behold with the special effects of today, but ultimately they lacked originality.

 It's an alien invasion all over again.

The storming of the beach in France was AWESOME. Reminded me of the war film Saving Private Ryan's Storming on the Omaha Beach, which happened to take place in France as well. The battle scene is truly massive in scale, realistic and frightening, although it is sorely missing the grittiness and the blood, but the jaw-dropping war scene certainly left me awestruck. This is visual effect put to good use, unlike Avatar and the Matrix Revolution. But I guess when it comes to the visual effects nowadays, they have to be brilliant and always one step up from previous movies we've seen before. We can only critique the effects when they begin to slack. As for the battle suits, seeing them in action is really exciting but I find the battle suits have a lot more inconveniences than it actually does the soldier any good, with the exception for Tom Cruise of course. But unless it becomes a real-life thing, I won't bother discussing the flaws it carries.

Where do I begin? Bulky, heavy and slow. Superbly ineffective for combat.

Why does it even have a function to change the computer's language?

A draw back of this film would be the expository aspect to explain the physiology and the workings of the alien and the science behind the time travel. It does get a bit too complicated and you have to listen very carefully to the dialogue scenes and the scientific babble coming out from the scientist's mouth. Perhaps, you might need some basic knowledge on the human's central nervous system to get an idea of how the "Mimics" work and why going after the "Omega" is the key to winning the war. All the time traveling and alien science talk might leave you somewhat baffled and confused at the end but they don't really get in the way of enjoying the movie. There are plenty of good chemistry between characters, superb visual effects, good action and humor throughout for you to enjoy the movie without getting weighed down on the expositions.

 Trouble concentrating?

In the beginning, I had my skepticism from viewing the trailer and from what I gather from the trailer, there is no real appeal to me. Time-travel is something we've seen before. Alien invasion, plenty done. Battle suit, no originality. Tom Cruise in a sci-fi movie? Well, remember "Oblivion" last year? I came into the cinema expecting a "meh" movie but in the end, I had a lot of fun watching it. It's safe to say that it's one of the best sci-fi films around! Wait... didn't I already mention all these? Déjà vu much?
With all things considered, I would give this an 8 out of 10 edible playing cards.

 The one role that I love Tom Cruise in? Click above to Victory!

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

 "I don't want your SUFFERING! I don't want your FUTURE!"- Charles Xavier

Perhaps the best X-Men movie to date! Honestly, I geeked out! There are just so many things to love in this movie! I for one, am glad that the original cast are united back again to give us a story that continues on from X-Men 3. I'm so happy that Wolverine is finally teaming up again with his fellow X-Men to give us a proper X-Men movie. I mean, I love his solo outing but it has been too long indeed that we haven't seen Professor X and his team saving the world with their mutant powers. We also get to continue on with the story from where First Class left off. I wanted to see how they would continue Professor X, Magneto and Mystique's journey to become their signature self that we know and love from the comics and the previous movies. We're getting the best of both worlds (or both timelines, to be exact). This may be the second most comprehensive, unprecedented and epic comic book movie to date. Mind you, the first to me being The Avengers.

Mind-Blowing!

A work of a genius! Why? Let me explained. I was very concerned with how FOX is handling the X-Men franchise after their terrible outing with X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and the surprisingly good X-Men: First Class. The  big question is how should FOX carry on with the franchise without rebooting it? With the audiences now reacquainted with the new cast, the most obvious route would be to continue with a sequel to First Class. Keep going until you reach where the first X-Men film begin. Another likely move would be that FOX make another Wolverine-centric movie, I mean the first Wolvie (Wolverine movie) was downright terrible but under James Mangold's golden hands, the Wolverine was made "gold" again. But just how far can you carry our favourite Adamantium claw mutant, how far can you ram the stakes up for him? Keep spewing out more Wolvies until you just don't know what to do with him anymore. And the near impossible route was to continue with the unite back all the original cast and produce another sequel to the original trilogy, bring on X-Men 4! But you know what? They did ALL OF THAT in X-Men: Days of Future Past! Brilliant move, indeed! Alright, let's focus back on this film.

XPOILERS AHEAD!

Days of Future Past storyline has been one of the fan's favourite and we finally get to see it played out on big screen with the characters that we're familiar from the X-Men cinematic universe. But is it truly the Days of Future past we're looking for? The story is sadly based loosely to the original, and much of it is a new take with only few elements borrowed from the original. Apart from the dystopian future with Setinels hunting mutants and that an X-Men has to time travel back to stop an assassination to prevent the future from ever happening, everything else is fresh. And these changes are actually good, I must say. I couldn't think of anyone better than Wolverine to be sent back to the past, and just by his bad-ass character and nature, we know the chemistry he has with the younger version of his friends and enemies, would be interesting and fun to watch.

In the original comics, Kitty Pryde was the one who travelled back in time

while in the Animated series, it was Bishop.

Although the tone is fairly dark and serious, I'm glad there are moments which let us escape from all the doom and gloom. There are some great moments with Wolverine, especially with him meeting Beast for the first time but then all the fun came from Quicksilver. With his quirky character, we are given plenty of humorous moment during Magneto's prison break scene and one awesomely done bullet time scene which Quicksilver stole all the limelight. I never felt a bullet-time scene could be so fresh again, after being bombarded with tons of bullet time effect from the Matrix series and the Resident Evil series. Having my doubts initially over Quicksilver's presence in this movie, I for one, am quite happy with how the filmmaker used him. I can only hope Aaron-Taylor Johnson's Quicksilver delivers a better performance in the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron.

We're going to get two Marvel's Quicksilver on the silver screen and we haven't seen a Flash movie yet.

I can't help but feel there's a Terminator vibe to this. Like the usual Terminator movie, we begin the movie with a look at the dark future and one have to time travel back to protect a MacGuffin. In this case, we replace John Connor with Mystique and instead of preventing an assassination on Mystique, Wolverine have to prevent Mystique from assassinating Trask. A clear goal laid out for both the hero to protect and the enemy to kill, all of which will decide the fate of the future. Heck, we even got our muscular Wolverine buck nude when he came from the future. The reference to the Terminator couldn't be more obvious in the original X-Men: Animated Series in the "Days of Future Past" two-part episode, where Bishop being the one sent from the future, was referenced as the Terminator from the future. You know what would complete the whole analogy? Wolverine with sunglasses and a big shot gun, coming up to Trask and say "Come with me if you want to live, bub!"

Hugh Jackman's body is a road map.. and those bullet holes are Google map's pins.

Although the story involves all of our favourite X-Men, the story is very much focused on Professor Charles Xavier. After the events of First Class with his close friends, namely Mystique and Magneto, leaving him and the failure of setting up his School of Gifted Youngsters, he ended up being a "drug" addict depressed hippie. He has pretty much given up on everything at that point of time, and it was only through future Wolverine entering into his life that he begins to find hope in what he's doing. Indeed an excellent theme delivered through this movie, and a funny role-reversal indeed if we compare this to the first X-Men. "You're going to have to do for me what I once did for you." Professor X couldn't have made it more clear for us. This time it's Wolverine helping the lost Professor and giving him hope and a purpose in his life when once it was Professor X who helped the lost Wolverine. What goes around, comes around.

Can you count how many X-motif are there in this movie?

The cast all round gave an excellent performance. James McAvoy played Professor X hitting rock bottom wonderfully. He certainly sold that Professor X is the one person who could tell Wolverine to f*ck off without Wolverine getting his claws right through him. Jeniffer Lawrence perfectly delivered her Mystique as coming closer to Rebecca Romijin's Mystique. So beautiful, yet so deadly. One performance that is of note worthy but completely over-looked by many is Michael Fassbender as Magneto. He nailed down Ian McKellen's Magneto in his performance. Every line delivered and every mannerism he gives, you could imagine very well Ian McKellen doing the exact same thing with his Magneto. You can't quite feel this in First Class, but it's pretty obvious in this one. As for the original cast, not much focus was given to them apart from their presence in this movie, which is good enough for me. I'm already happy that they all return to their original roles. However, I am disappointed that Anna Paquin's role as the future Rogue is completely cut. For someone who played a major role in the first movie, I personally feel she deserved a place among the original cast. But be that as it may, I'm really happy to see her blink-and-you-miss-it cameo, as well as other X-Men cameo which you never thought would show up.

Michael Fassbender is pretty much Ian McKellen's young double.

As good as this gets, it's not all sin free. If you watch the series as awhole, especially the first two X-Men film, we get a feel that there's going to be a terrible war coming between mutants and humans, and somehow the ball has dropped when we reached X-Men 3. The last we saw Professor X, Magneto and Wolverine was at an airport during a relatively peaceful time, although "dark times are coming" was hinted. When we begin Days of Future Past, we are already deep into the dark times. So much has happened in between The Wolverine and Days of Future Past and we pretty much leaped through everything in the beginning narration. I believe all of that certainly deserved another good X-Men movie to build up to the events of Days of Future Past. With just approximately 2 hours of this film, the setting up of the plot came way too quickly. In just 15 minutes in to the movie, we are quickly introduced to a lot of things; the apocalyptic future and the dire situation our heroes are in, Kitty Pyrde has powers to send someone back in time through their mind, Professor X deviced a plan of sending someone back in time this future from happening, the one key event to stop is the assassination of Bolivar Trask by Mystique, and Wolverine is the perfect candidate to go through time because of his healing factor. If this film running time is stretched to around 3 to 4 hours, perhaps we could do a proper build up.

You know what else is a sin? The sentinel's design... looks nothing like the one we know and love.

Actually, you know what's best? Do a two parter! Have the Days of Future Past storyline be made into two feature films. One focusing on the future with the original cast, and the other focus on the past with the younger cast. Do a proper build up to the dark future, take time to explain how Wolverine get back his Adamantium claws and how Professor X resurrected from the dead. Show the growing persecution of mutants and the ultimately end the movie with a massive war between mutants and humans, but with humans having the upper edge with the introduction of the Sentinels. (And yes, please show Wolverine kicking some Sentinels' asses! Future Wolverine wasn't kicking anybody's butt in this!) Somewhere in there, explain how the key was to prevent the assassination of Bolivar Trask to stop everything from snow balling. When all hope seems lost, have Kitty Pyrde discover her new mind time-travelling powers. Follow this with the next movie where you can take time to actually show the younger X-Men story following the events from First Class. I personally believe Bryan Singer had a vision to bring Days of Future Past into fruition if he had been allowed to continue with the X-Men series. I can certainly tell the growing mutant persecution in X-Men 1 and 2 and the coming of war between mutants and humans, these could make an excellent lead into the dark future. But the ball was dropped in X-Men 3 and the studio decided to go on "spin-off" mode. But with what we had, I'm glad this entry pretty much saved the entire franchise. Now, if only I could time travel back...

So little time given for an X-Men 4...

Finally, I especially love the end scene, seeing everybody back in the school again like X-Men 3 never happened. And when I meant everybody... I meant everybody! (Ultimate spoiler alert!) Cyclops and Jean Grey are back and alive! It's good to see the President Beast from X-Men 3 and "the-blink-or-you-miss-it" Rogue's cameo. As for Wolverine's origin, we know now for certain Origins don't exist in this new timeline anymore. We are left with Stryker fishing Wolverine out of the waters and.. surprise surprise, it's not really Stryker is it? Our heroes and villains from the 60s are left in an interesting place where I really wonder where the next movie will take them, and as for our future X-Men, please give us X-Men 4... and give them their iconic costume for goodness sake, it's about damn time!

So with all these things considered, I would give this X-Men film a 9.5 out of 10 Sentinels. Why 9.5 and not 10 like the first two X-Men movie? Pacing. There are just too much crammed into the 2 hour run-time. We finally got the original cast to unite back together again but they weren't under as much spotlight as I hoped they'll be. Nevertheless overall, a great and ambitious X-Men movie!

 Click above to see the animated "Days of Future Past"

Godzilla (2014)

"Let them fight."- Dr Ishiro Serizawa

Godzilla has finally stomped back to our silver screen after his monstrous outing back in 1998. Growing up in the 90s and in Asia, I've got a bit of taste of the Japanese's Godzilla outing and also the God forsaken Roland Emmerich's Godzilla in 1998. When hearing Hollywood was going to do another live action movie on Godzilla, I was excited. I got all giddy when I saw the leaked photos of a model of what Godzilla might actually look like, and when the teaser trailer finally hit the web, I was thinking the King of Monsters is finally getting his spotlight and do justice to what a true monster movie should be. From the trailer snippets and the HALO jump sequence and music, we are meant to expect destruction, deaths, horror and dread of a massive scale. Boy, was I excited and pumped to face Godzilla in all his glory when taking my seat in the cinema... and boy was I left disappointed.

SPOILZILLA AHEAD!

So much tease and so little pay off. I would expect Godzilla to take the limelight in his very own movie. But honestly, the human drama and the life story of MUTO fills up almost 80 percent of the movie. I don't mind human drama at all. A matter of fact, I do want to see some human drama in the backdrop of a monster attack movie. I want human characters that we could all relate to, especially when facing a near apocalyptic event like this. But when you drag that out, it becomes too tiring and too boring. It comes to a point we're just waiting for our G-Man to come out. It feels like the first half of the film is just full of tease, like we haven't had enough with all the promotional material before coming into the cinema. We are given the destruction at a Japanese power plant and when everyone thought it was an earthquake but we as the audience and Bryan Cranston's character knew it wasn't, it was Godzilla! Years passed and we could once again relate to Bryan Cranston's character to not giving up research on what happened on that fateful day, and perhaps give us clues and information (and perhaps an expository) about the monster. And when it all came down to another destruction of the same power plant, we are then told who or what was responsible for all the destruction. Not Godzilla... Enter MUTO! Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism (Yup, he has no real name) Sigh.. we then follow MUTO around and learn everything there is about it, before we get to see our G-man.

What's with all the insect-like Monsters/Aliens that Hollywood is spewing out these days?

Half way through the movie, we got a peek at Godzilla's entrance, mostly of him swimming and following MUTO's trail (Yes, halfway through the film and they're still teasing us) but that's after MUTO wrecked havoc in Japan and Hawaii. It was only in Hawaii that we get to see Godzilla in all his glory. The slow camera pan shot to give us the reveal of his whole body, the musical build up and finally followed with his iconic ROAR, that was perhaps the best part of the film. Just when you see Godzilla and MUTO ready to wrestle out and you think "Oh, We're going to get a Monster vs Monster fight!", we are quickly cut to a household TV screen with snippets of the fight broadcast... (One pay off and more tease...) It will be awhile again before we see Godzilla, but we're treated with more MUTO story... a matter of fact, we're given one more MUTO and taking one step further, we're also given an expository of MUTO's reproduction story and we're introduced to billions of MUTO's egg that just seem to say "Godzilla and our main characters better do something about the MUTO or we're going to invade the screen with a lot of lil' MUTOs."

 Perhaps the most or only interesting human character...

Like any monster movie, we need human "supporting" characters to fill the audience in with relevant information about the monsters and the potential destruction these monsters could bring, as well as for audience to relate the fright, horror and awe when seeing monsters destroying your city. I have to say, the drama taking place is good, at least they are a whole lot better than the comedic response the characters had in the 1998's one. Bryan Cranston's Joe Brody and Ken Watanabe's Dr Ishiro Serizawa are the ones that truly stand out in the main cast. It's too bad Bryan Cranston's Joe had to die early in the film, and Ken Watanabe's Dr Ishiro becomes pretty useless after the MUTO's hatching scene. All focus was given to Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen's character which I have to say contributes very little to the story which made me cared little about them. Of all the scenes in the movie and perhaps the best scene that truly stood out is the HALO jump sequence. The music, the cinematography, the heavy breathing in the mask and the silhouette of our monsters wrecking havoc in a hellish backdrop really brings out the tension, the fear and the horror of the situation they're called to be in. However, I was somewhat disappointed that what was shown in the teaser trailer is not the same as the one in the movie whereby only Godzilla silhouette was seen and not of MUTO's.
 

Much fire... Many Tense...So HALO... Very Cinematography..

Let's take a look at our G-man! His design is perhaps the best I've ever seen. He may be the biggest Godzilla ever. My initial reaction was that he looks a little fat, especially in his thighs. But on closer inspection of the original Godzilla's design, is that he had huge thighs too so, no problem there. There were great moments when he used his iconic roar. The scene was crafted as such that we could feel the roar in all his glory. Besides his iconic roar, what differs Godzilla from other movie monsters is his atomic breathe. The build up to his atomic breath was something truly magnificent and something to behold! I dare say it's beautiful in the eyes of fan boys. Everything about Godzilla is perfect! I can only wish that they top it all off with the inclusion of his original theme. It was ashamed that he was not in his own solo film as much as I would have hoped for. However, this take on Godzilla is not the city-destroying, unstoppable force of nature, atomic-bomb metaphor Godzilla that we knew and fear from the 1954's original Japanese 'Gojira' and the 1956's American Godzilla: King of Monsters. This take is very much of the later versions of Godzilla, with him being the hero in battling monsters of all sorts and nature, including King Kong himself. So, to say that this isn't a Godzilla film would be a lie. However, what I'm truly disappointed was that we're thrown into so many marketing materials that has given us the impression and expectation that this film is going to be very much like the 1954's Godzilla but we ended up with the actual thing being a completely different take. So, if you traced back to all the destruction scene in the trailers and previews, you can now realize that it's not of Godzilla's handiwork but it's of MUTO's.

 That's no marine iguana!

I feel like the filmmakers copped out in making a true 1954 Godzilla movie. Granted that this one is not as bad as the 1998's one and there are some great moments too, especially with the music, the cinematography, and every Godzilla's scenes. I really want to see Godzilla become the force of nature that he should have been. I personally think that the filmmakers should have remade the 1954's Godzilla as a way to introduce Godzilla back to our silver screen, and only then introduce the other monsters for him to fight with in future sequels. This not only make the stakes higher for our G-man but for our human characters as well. But with what we've got, I'm satisfied with it, especially knowing that it could have ended up as bad as the 1998's one. I would give this a 7 out of 10 atomic breathes.

Ever wonder what happens when Godzilla meets Bambi? Click above.