Edge of Tomorrow

I have already rated Edge of Tomorrow as one of my top films of 2014.
Starring Tom Cruise as Major William Cage, an advertising man who is suddenly thrust onto the frontline of humanity's war against the invading Mimics, and Emily Blunt as Sergeant Rita Vrataski, the "Angel of Verdun", Edge of Tomorrow sees Cage stuck in a Groundhog Day-like situation where he continually relives the opening day of the human army's offensive.
In his first reluctant trip to battle, Cage watches on as fellow soldiers are killed around him, and eventually comes face to face with several mimics. He miraculously manages to kill an Alpha, and is covered in its blood moments as he dies. The only thing is he doesn't die - he relives the past 24 hours.
Eventually he comes across Vrataski, who happened to go through a similar ordeal as Cage. She offers to train Cage from his non-existent military background to a level of which he can take the fight to the Mimics.

This film is amazing.
I love the story, the performances of Cruise and Blunt are brilliant and the action sequences are top-notch. Bill Paxton's minor role as Master Sergeant Farrell was hilarious, while the surrounding members of the cast, particularly those who portrayed J Squad members, did all they had to to make this film work.

I can't rave enough about the design of the alien species. The beauty of science fiction is that the imagination is the only limitation when it comes to the design or depiction of alien creatures on-screen, and Edge of Tomorrow really played with the concept that these things didn't have to conform to our perception of physics or credible movement. Yes, they moved in a logical manner and though they couldn't slip through a hole in the time-space continuum, they still had enough alienness to have me suckered in. The occasional erratic movement of the aliens in which they seemed to spasm for a moment before retaking their "full form" really boded well. The tentacle-like nature of the beasts only added their design.
Groundhog Day will be, to me anyway, the original time loop movie, but Edge of Tomorrow will probably take the mantle of my favourite. As a big science fiction fan, Edge of Tomorrow may edge out its time loop rival based purely on that fact, but its one of those rare, edgy movies that comes off really well. This film could easily have been let down by a garbage plot, but Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth combine to develop Hiroshi Sakurazaka's All You Need Is Kill into an awesome cinematic experience. A lot of credit has to go to director Doug Liman and cinematographer Dion Beebe, as the look and feel of the film help make it even better.
With all of that said however, the story itself could have used a tad bit more refining as far as the earlier alien base is concerned, and the last scene was a bit too "gotcha".
Cruise and Blunt's performances help make this one of the best films of the year and by the end you're left craving more. Despite a sequel not being necessary and not even being looked at (though Sakurazaka is writing one), I would eat up a spin-off or a game based on this world.

Will I be heading back to the cinema to relive my viewing experience? Most definitely.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

The best X-Men entry in the franchise so far? It's bloody close.
Days of Future Past is the first film of the franchise to combine the cast from the original trilogy and those from First Class, and actually does the seemingly difficult job in a simple and effective way.

Days of Future Past acts as a sequel to both 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand and 2011's X-Men: First Class. The original cast - Hugh Jackman (Logan/Wolverine) Patrick Stewart (Charles Xavier), Ian McKellen (Magneto) and Halle Berry (Storm) - act as the supporting cast to the First Class cast of James McAvoy (Charles Xavier), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Raven/Mystique) and Nicholas Hoult (Beast), with Jackman's Wolverine ushering the newer cast through their side of the story.
The story revolves around a future in which Trask Industries have developed a series of weapons (Sentinels) that can absorb the power of and defeat mutants, and have wiped out almost all mutants apart from a select few of our favourites. The original Xavier (Stewart) and Magneto (McKellen) work together on a plan to have Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) send Wolverine back in time to alter history, and prevent Bolivar Trask (the outstanding Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones fame) develop the first Sentinels. His mission is to bring the younger Xavier (McAvoy) and Magneto (Fassbender) together when their relationship was at their worst.
I cannot fault this film at all.
Bryan Singer returns to X-Men's director's chair after leading X-Men, X2 and X-Men: First Class, and again proves why he is the man who should head up all X-Men films. He knows how to tell the stories in a way the layman or non-comic book reader can follow, similar as to how J.J. Abrams' effort on Star Trek and Jon Favreau's Iron Man. And with Days of Future Past, proves he can get the best out of this franchise.
The Sentinels are some seriously awesome machines, and the action sequences of which they're involved are seamless, inventive and downright amazing. The main driver of this film is the First Class cast, and the powerful Fassbender and McAvoy deliver. They steal every scene they are in, and you can seriously believe the McAvoy's anguish as he fights the darkest of battles within himself. Jackman is in the purple patch of his career, delivering top-notch performance after performance. His turn as Wolverine in Days of Future Past is no different, in fact I'm glad there isn't a "younger" Wolverine as I find it impossible to imagine anybody else in the role.
Days of Future Past is seriously the best entry in the X-Men franchise, but you don't have to have seen the others to follow the story. The only thing you may miss is a few character references (William Stryker for one, whose character appears in First Class and X-Men Origins: Wolverine), but a tiny bit of research after the film can fill in the gaps. The post-credits sequence has me even more excited for X-Men: Apocalypse, which is due to hit screens in 2016 - and with Singer in the director's chair again.

Godzilla (2014)

 The return of arguably the most famous kaiju to Hollywood copped quite the flogging in its reviews but 2014's most anticipated monster movie had a lot to love.

Much of the preview criticism centred on a few things: the lack of Bryan Cranston, a Godzilla that was a little tubby around the edges, and a lead character (Ford Brody, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who makes it very hard to connect with.
I agree with two of those points, but the amount of care on Godzilla's appearance - so what? Godzilla is a mythical monster, who cares about his size? Cranston is brilliant as ever as nuclear physicist Joe Brody (Ford's dad), but everyone else in the film just feels one-dimensional, wooden, and simply boring. The way this film (or any other version of Godzilla should be) told, they are all simply supporting talent to the massive on-screen presence of Godzilla. But they don't have to be so bad.


Taylor-Johnson just lacks some of that appeal, and I think I would have been happy to see he and Cranston switch roles. While it might have been difficult to buy Cranston as a military man, it might have made the film a lot better.
The story itself is not overly bad. With the Japanese tsunami and the ensuing chaos surrounding Fukishima's nuclear plants still fresh in the memory, writer Max Borenstein feeds off this to give a fair reasoning as to why Godzilla and a handful of his kaiju buddies appear. They feed off radiation, and manage to tie the United States' atomic bomb testing in as a cover for trying the wipe out these creatures in 1954. One day the father-son Brody pair are arrested and held for trespassing in a Japanese facility, with Ford left handcuffed in a vehicle while Cranston steals the scene with one of his special "going nuts" sequences. Finally we get to see a massive monster/kaiju emerge from the egg in the middle of the installation, escape and wreck havoc.
I didn't mind the film until the sequence where Ford is looking after a young child on a train in Hawaii that just happens to be following a line straight into the path of the fighting kaijus. The visual effects of the tsunami, Godzilla's emergence and the winged kaiju (and their fight) are all outstanding, but story-wise it's about the point when it falls apart.
How does Ford Brody just happen to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, so often? How can he fly across the world and continually run into these warring kaiju? I don't mind a central human character to follow but make it a little believable. The 1998 Godzilla was horrible (even though I loved it as a child), but at least we could believe Matthew Broderick kept managing to run into trouble because he stayed in the same place. Old mate Brody flew across the world, across the United States, and happened to be on the spot when the kaiju first appeared AND during the climactic battle.
That doesn't mention how the US armed forces can have several helicopters in the air, fly out to and circle a desert facility, then take a few minutes to discover the HUGE trail leading from the facility to the massive kaiju wrecking havoc in Las Vegas. Ugh.

**********SPOILER ALERT*************

I have a serious problem with the ending too. Shave the last few minutes off and I'm okay with how it ends. Godzilla doesn't have to wake up, wink to the camera, be followed by a news station (where they slip the "King of the Monsters" reference in) and leave a completely destroyed San Francisco behind as he swims back into the ocean.
Unnecessary.

**********SPOILER OVER*************

All in all, Godzilla was not as bad as a lot of critics made it out to be, but it was in no way the best it could have been. The teaser trailer had me amped in the months leading up to its release, and it was devastating to discover that most of the footage was from the last 20-odd minutes of the film. I guess it was somewhat naive of me to expect that to be from the opening stages of the film.
Still, it was leaps and bounds better than the 1998 version, and for that we should be at least a little thankful.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

I've already seen early 1990s twins Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, so I am familiar with the story behind Wyatt Earp. We could say the story of Earp is the Robin Hood or the Bible of the Wild West - no two versions or interpretations are identical and the between the "good" and "bad" guys is continually blurred.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral focuses heavily on the lawman Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster) and the construction of his relationship with gunslinger John "Doc" Holliday (Kirk Douglas) before the famous gunfight that made Wyatt Earp a Western legend.

This film is superb.

Having watched a few older westerns in the last few months as part of my university studies I found I had a much higher appreciation of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. While it is won't be on par with greats The Searchers and A Fistful of Dollars (you'd be hard-pressed finding any), I have to put this film up with some of my favourites.
The storytelling is simple, yet effective; Douglas and Lancaster are great as the leading men; the script, while obviously dated, is still fantastic - I loved everything about this film. The supporting cast, including the likes of Rhonda Fleming, Jo Van Fleet, Dennis Hopper, Lee Van Cleef (even only if for a few minutes), John Ireland and Lyle Bettger, all did exactly as much as they had to to give their characters the sense of realism the film craves, as well as add a lot of colour to what could easily have been a boring story.

Give it a look - it still rates as well as the later reimaginations of the Wyatt Earp tale.

The Dangerous Throw from State of Origin I

As originally published at League Unlimited (@leagueunlimited).

If anything, Josh Reynolds and Beau Scott should be thanked for putting the dangerous throw back under extreme scrutiny. The New South Wales pair have been in the spotlight since Wednesday night's Origin opener at Suncorp Stadium, in which the Blues stunned their Maroon counterparts 12-8.

But it's the 27th minute tackle on Queensland winger Brent Tate that has had everyone talking. As Tate ran the ball from dummy half, he was met in a terrifying tackle from Reynolds and Scott which saw the North Queensland Cowboy suplexed into the turf. Further review of the footage shows Scott hitting Tate around the chest before Reynolds drives in with shoulder and ultimately lifting the Maroon.

The ugly incident, after which Tate said he had never felt more frightened, saw both Blues charged by the Match Review Committee - Scott with a grade one and Reynolds with a grade two. Reynolds successfully challenged the judiciary last night, leaving Queenslanders seething and New South Welshman celebrating the release of their saviour.

The biggest issue at play here, for me anyway, is the absolute ignorance by the NRL and their crackdown on the dangerous tackles. When Melbourne Storm's Jordan McLean was suspended for seven games after a tackle on Alex McKinnon left the Newcastle Knight in a coma, the NRL came out and announced a crackdown on lifting tackles, with harsher penalties to face any player who put the ball carrier in a dangerous position.

Just weeks after the incident, the NRL's fan base is up in arms with the inconsistent nature of the comments and subsequent incidents, which saw Greg Bird's charge downgraded to miss just two games and Reynolds downgraded to a grade one, meaning he misses no games. What message is this supposed to send to players and fans? As the Reynolds incident has seemingly shown, any player with a clean record can just about spear tackle their opposite number without fear of suspension - provided the ball carrier escapes serious injury. It is an absolute mockery of the rules, and raises more questions than ever.

What the NRL need to do is step in, send a clear message and STICK TO IT. I'd would be supportive if David Smith or Todd Greenberg came out and said "this is the crackdown, anyone found guilty of putting players in a dangerous position will sit a minimum one week out".

In my ideal world, if a player is put in a dangerous position, all defenders involved in the tackle receive a minimum one-week ban, and the bans/gradings are identical. As it is now, and as was shown by that incident, two players involved in an illegal tackle can somehow receive different punishments. You can't get two blokes in a tackle and then argue over who had more of an impact - they're rugby league players, not physicists. The fact is, there's two blokes in the tackle, they've both contributed to the dangerous position, and they should both cop an equal penalty. If they have to make them harsh, make it harsh - let's ensure we are never faced with another McKinnon, and avoid other players forced to play with a turtle shell like our man Tate. It might make players think twice about lifting tackles, but more importantly, it will send a message to EVERYONE in the game, which could ultimately make the game safer.

Even though the dangerous tackle count is rare as it is, I'd expect the rate to go down even further, and we could even get a boost of participation at grassroots level as parents know something is being done.

VIDEO & IMAGE CREDIT: Channel 9