Double Feature Review: Edge of Tomorrow & The Fault in Our Stars

Another double feature weekend. This weekend I checked out the Tom Cruise science fiction thriller Edge of Tomorrow and the much anticipated adaptation of John Green's young adult novel, The Fault in Our Stars.

Edge of Tomorrow
D: Doug Liman
W: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, Christopher McQuarrie
S: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson

Let's start off with a film that is a combination of Saving Private Ryan, Star Wars, and Groundhog Day (I never thought I'd review a film like that), Edge of Tomorrow. In this film Tom Cruise plays a military officer who is duped into the front lines of a D-Day like invasion to defeat an alien invasion force consisting of creatures called Mimics. But as Cruise storms the beach he and the rest of the soldiers are slaughtered, he then finds himself back on the previous day, reliving the same day. He gets help from a special forces soldier (Emily Blunt), who had been through a similar situation. As they train they try to figure how to stop the Mimics from destroying Earth.

First off, yes this is a movie with time travel elements in it, it more or less suffers the same problems a lot of other stories have, but I am more than willing to put all that aside. The main reason is because of the high energy, clever editing and storytelling, and spectacular action scenes are so well done that I can forgive it. They wisely decides to not show us the same exact thing every time Cruise travels a day, we get just basic repeats. The film also doesn't give us an exact number of times this is happening, for all we know these events could have happened over a billion times. The credit for that goes to both the editing and storytelling, but also to Cruise's performance.

The only thing bad things I can think of is that there isn't that much development for the supporting characters outside of Blunt and Cruise's characters. Also the time travel stuff can get a little.... well....

Yeah, that. Thanks Doctor. But as the film stands it is a solid enough action/sci-fi film. A good summer flick for a drive-in.


The Fault in Our Stars
D: Josh Boone
W: Scott Neustadler, Michael H. Weber
S: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Laura Dern, Sam Trammell, Willem Dafoe

I'm almost certain that this is the review most people are waiting for me to release, well here it is. Based on the monstrously popular young adult novel John Green, the story is about a cancer stricken teenager girl named Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) who, at the request of her parents, goes to a cancer support group at a local church. While there, she meets Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), who also had cancer, and had a leg amputated. Through out the film their friendship blooms into a romantic relationship. 

Let me just be blunt, this film was pretty damn good. For the record, I'm speaking as someone who hasn't read the book. Though it is on my to-read list.

Some of you are thinking, "Come on John, this is just a sappy teeny romance film." Well there are moments in the film when it felt a little schmaltzy to me, but this film avoided a lot of the HUGE cliches that plague these films. The trailers for this movie do NOT do the film any justice, what so ever. The trailer shows them romantically dancing, and kissing and all that stuff you see in movies. Some of those scenes are in the first five minutes, and during that time Hazel (the narrator for the film) pretty much says, "Yeah, that's bull s**t."

Speaking of Hazel, this was my first exposure to Shailene Woodley and I must say, she is absolutely amazing. She just fits into this character so well and I believe every emotion that she displays. I honestly want to go out and get every film she has been in so far (especially The Descendants). By the way, speaking of emotion, the emotions in this film feel very genuine, coming from real people. 

Also the crying in this movie, that's real crying that they're. The crying in this movie is not the sexy cry, you know a single teardrop going down their cheek, no this is full blown crying. Puffy red eyes, water works, and in a few cases snot work (sorry, got a little gross for a second). 

Speaking of crying, if you're one of those people who is an ugly cryer, you may want to wait for this to come out on DVD, or at the very least go to an extremely early showing. 

And yes I did teary eyed. I hold no shame in saying that.

Another thing I liked is the parents. Normally in these types of movies, the parents are WAY to protective and one parent (usually the Dad) is like, "you stay away from daughter, because... just because!" That is not the case in this film, and thank goodness. 

The only faults (pun not intended) that I can think of that it does get a little schmaltzy for my taste, and the Augustus's confidence can get a bit annoying, but those things are tiny and it never took me out of the film. So yeah, this was really good and I think I preferred this over Edge of Tomorow. You heard me right. 

Also, check out John Green's videos at Vlogbrothers and at Mental Floss. Any man who likes Mr. Rogers is good and my book. It would be awesome to meet him, and I certainly hope he's nothing like Peter van Houten (I bet he isn't).