The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (2002)
Varda’s follow-up to her seminal film is too self-aggrandizing. Instead of revisiting the people or places she met in the first movie, she reads congratulatory postcards from viewers. This pretentious film almost cheapens the power of the original.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
When he questions the orders of his superior General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson), public affairs officer Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) is sent to the frontline in mankind’s war against an alien invasion and dies after being sprayed with alien blood.
The blood enables him to “reset” after he dies. Waking up at the same time every morning only to die in the battle, he repeats the same loop numerous times. Fortunately, he finds Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) who had experienced the same thing but lost her ability after a blood transfusion. Together, they use his ability to neutralize the alien threat.
The movie does a good job of approximating the experience of a video game. It doesn’t matter if you die, you can always try again, learning from previous attempts until once difficult levels become easy.
Cruise is good, but I would have preferred the film to have gone in a less obvious direction. The initially cowardly Cage seems like a facade for the action figure hero we know is lurking underneath. Emily Blunt is good and her chemistry with Cruise is believable, but Bill Paxton and Brendan Gleeson are wasted.
This mashup of Groundhog Day (1993) and Aliens (1986) almost worked, but it’s forced romance and happy ending deviate significantly from Japanese source material and don’t feel earned.
Of Miracles and Men (2015)
This delightful entry in ESPN’s 30 for 30 explores the Miracle on Ice from the Soviet perspective and reminds us every great victory brings an equally devastating defeat.
As much as the win meant for United States morale in the Cold War, it was a sucker punch for an entire nation who’d been led to believe their team was invincible.