The point here isn’t whether a movie is worth watching. If you throw a rock in Hollywood, you’ll hit a movie critic. Check them out for Hit the theater, Wait for streaming, or Avoid this stinking turkey.
What’s more interesting is WHY something is worth watching or skipping–and whether you’d watch it again.
Time-loop movies are fun in the same way zombie movies (early on) are a blast: no rules. Want to loot the gun store, then grab whatever you want from Safeway? Go for it.
That’s the promise of the premise. GROUNDHOG DAY is the most famous example of these movies because it does a great job of showing the wide variety of things that are possible. Bill Murray steals from an armored car, leads the cops on car chases, jumps off buildings, learns piano with his infinite time. It’s also fun to see Bill go through the same scenarios radically different way. I still laugh when he punches the insufferable Ned.
A MAP OF TINY PERFECT THINGS is a low-budget movie. No big stars, no amazing fights, no giant chase scenes, no CGI. Doesn’t matter. Entertaining as hell anyway. Why? Because of the story.
It’s not as varied as GROUNDHOG DAY in terms of what the do with unlimited time and zero consequences. There’s a little of that. What this movie focuses on is who you spend that time with, and not just in a romantic way. For once, this silly blog will not spoil the movie. But it’s not what you think, and I’d happily watch it again.
Now, on to other time loop movies, and how they twist this.
RUN, LOLA, RUN is another low-budget movie taking the opposite approach.
The movie uses the time loop to maximize tension and conflict. Lola and her boyfriend face death at the hands of the criminal underworld or the police. It’s a race and a puzzle: which choices solve it?
EDGE OF TOMORROW may seem like an action movie, and there’s plenty of action. The heart of it is character. The character played by Tom Cruise starts out as an arrogant jerk who’s useless in battle. You laugh every time he gets killed on the beach in silly ways. The more you dislike Cruise as an actor, the better the movie works.
In the end, Cruise suffers, trains, and sacrifices himself to beat the alien boss and win the war. Unlike 99 percent of thriller heroes, he has an actual character arc.
The movie works better because it doesn’t have the standard romantic relationship, but more of a mentor-protege with Emily Blunt’s veteran soldier.
GROUNDHOG DAY is similar in that it’s about Bill Murray moving from selfish jerk to decent human being, with that heart of the story wrapped with all the time-loop fun.
It would be hard to beat this movie for comedy and exploring all the things a person could do with infinite time.
BOSS LEVEL is a lot like RUN, LOLA, RUN in structure, with Frank Grillo trying to puzzle his way out of this.
There’s a ton of humor mixed in with the fights and explosions, and all the ways Grillo dies. It shares the same climactic device as EDGE OF TOMORROW by taking the hero out of the loop for the final run, meaning if he dies, he dies forever.
This is a highly under-rated movie that I’ve seen five bazillion times.
There are far more time-loop movies than you’d think.
Search on the YouTubes, google it, consult the hallucinating oracle known as chatgippity or the slightly less insane Claude, which is a terrible name for an AI machine. Maybe you could do worse. Karen would be bad, though Adolf and Lucifer tie for the worst.
If you have a favorite time loop movie, tell me about it!
Listen, I know you have seven different subscriptions to Netflix and Hulu and all that, yet struggle to find things of real value to watch and maybe binge the last season of Great British Bakeoff once again because the new season hasn’t dropped yet.
I have been there. Am plowing through clips of Justified on the youtube because I don’t have whatever subscription is necessary to watch entire episodes of that thing. And yes, all these subs are costing us the same or more as the old cable bundles we hate. Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.
HOWEVER: There is hope in the form of great movies, little gems hiding in the vast archives of places like Netflix, and this is about one such glittery diamond with subtitles and a rocking soundtrack. It’s getting remastered and re-released on its 25th anniversary or whatever.
Here, watch the trailer.
Somehow, I never saw this movie until yesterday, which is tragic. Who will pay for my therapy?
I’m going to lay out all the reason you need to fire up the interwebs and watch this thing.
Reason No. 1: A great story
It’s common to find movies with one cool idea that they (a) completely pound to death like it’s a SNL skit, or (b) abandon halfway through because they don’t know how to stick the landing. We also run into (c) action movies and superhero blockbusters that flop because they shoeved seven different screenwriters in the kitchen and the studio edits turned it into a lifeless $350 million mess.
RUN LOLA RUN has a beautiful story that’s surprising and interesting. You want to know what happens times three, because that’s how many times the story loops back.
Reason No. 2: Re-watchable like hell
My acid test of whether a movie or novel is good cannot be simpler. Would I watch it again, or read it again?
Then I have an even more acidic test, like the blood of those monsters in Alien that can eat through deck after deck of a starship: would I pay money to watch it again, or read it again, or would you have to pay ME a pile of monies to suffer through it?
I would pay monies to watch RUN LOLA RUN again.
Time-loop movies like this are rare but not unique. You can certainly do them wrong. However, this one is like GROUNDHOG DAY and EDGE OF TOMORROW in how repeated viewings reward you with new little details.
Reason No. 3: You do NOT have to pay monies to watch it again
I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve paid an insane amount to rent a new-ish movie online, only to regret that choice about 10 minutes into the stinker.
Sure, you may not have HBO Max or Disney+, but I bet $20 you have Netflix, and this sucker is free on there. Don’t need to rent it, buy it, lease it, or whisper sweet words to it whenever you want to fire this thing up again. Make some popcorn and go wild.
Reason No. 4: It’s in German, with subtitles, and you WILL NOT CARE
Remember when you watched black-and-white French existentialist movies, maybe in college after taking your first philosophy classes? Subtitles can be a pain, especially when people talk fast.
This movie does subtitles exactly right, and nobody really talks too fast, or gets into silly complicated pretentious nonsense about the malleability of reality and the illusion of choice and the artificial construct of laws when they are simply an exercise of the monopoly on force.
RUN LOLA RUN gets into cool ideas and conflicts by showing you them. You could turn the subtitles off, listen to the German dialogue, and still figure out 99 percent of the movie. (Note: I lived in the Germany as a pookie, and the Holland, and took German both as a pookie and in HS, and yes, it’s a complex and interesting language, and yes, I’m impressed that you know what schadenfreude is, but you will not need any of that to enjoy this movie, and I’ve forgotten all my German except the buying of things and the swearing.)
Reason No. 5: Reality shows are probably more scripted than this movie, which is pure and good
Reality shows are not real. Even the ones that are somewhat connected to reality and not the script wishes of producers are so heavily edited that it’s a deceptive depiction of what actually happened. Back to the Great British Bakeoff–do you really think the footage they show five seconds before “time’s up” was shot five seconds before the deadline. Bahahahaha!
RUN LOLA RUN does not cheat, like Chrisopher Nolan in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES and MEMENTO and every other movie he does that is not historical Oscar bait.
RUN LOLA RUN is gritty and pure and has no CGI green screen nonsense, no artificial sweeteners, and no silly tricks. It does what it says on the tin. Go watch it.
Start somewhere familiar, in one of your favorite haunts, and follow a back road to hidden treasures, films you didn’t know existed.
There’s an explosion of obscure movies now, with Netflix, Amazon and others bankrolling films that wouldn’t have been made 10 years ago.
I’ll give a pitch for two: THE EDGE OF TOMORROW and SHIMMER LAKE. Here’s the trailer for the second one, which deserves a lot more love. Fire up Netflix and watch this thing. It’s a better movie-in-reverse than MEMENTO.
So I’ve been home almost two weeks after some surgery (I’m fine), and what do you do when you’re on painkillers, can’t drive and can’t write?
You read books. And you watch whatever is free on Netflix.
As a public service, this is the first of many reports on what you (a) must watch, (b) should try out and (c) can fire up if you want to make fun of something or are zonked out on meds, in which case everything is pretty funny.
CARTEL LAND is one of the best things I’ve seen in a long, long time, on Netflix or in the giant buildings where they charge you $9 for exploded kernels of corn that cost them 25 cents.
Here’s the trailer. Click on the thing.
Though this is a documentary, I have to compare it to the heavily hyped SICARIO, which starred three amazing actors: Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin.
That movie got a lot of attention from critics, and hey, I didn’t hate the thing, it’s just there’s no hankering in me see it again. Zero. Nada.
Sidenote: There should actually be a score for that, a useful tool for critics and movie-goers alike: how much would you (1) pay to see it again because you loved it or (2) ask to GET paid to spend two hours of your life in a dark room with this movie? Call it the Plus or Minus Money Rating, and I bet it would be more accurate than one, two, three or four stars, which really doesn’t tell me much.
SICARIO made me think of THE EDGE OF TOMORROW, which Emily Blunt also starred in. Her acting was equally good in both movies. However: despite the fact that her co-star was Tom Cruise, I happily saw that masterpiece of fun three times in the theater and probably six times on Blu-Ray, which for some reason has a hatred for the letter “e.” Sort it out, Blu-Ray.
But how much would you have to pay me to watch SICARIO again? $30, minimum. $15 if you provided dinner and drinks.
I’d happily watch CARTEL LAND again. It doesn’t feel like a documentary. The filmmakers shot it like a big, epic blockbuster, and the editing makes you feel like you’re there.
What’s most impressive to me is this: the crew who filmed this documentary clearly risked their lives to do it. They were in the middle of shootouts and midnight raids.
Without giving away the ending, the thing this documentary does so well is violate your expectations. It’s one of the few movies that make you feel smarter for having watched it, and not smart in “I learned sixteen facts about the drug trade” kind of way. There’s wisdom to this movie that doesn’t beat the audience on the head.
Watch it and tell me what you think.
What do you want to know about the deepest recesses of Netflix? Pick your favorite and I’ll write the review.
Not because the director the same amazing man behind THE BOURNE IDENTITY. And not because Emily Blunt and the other supporting actors nailed it.
I almost didn’t see this film because of my antipathy for Tom Cruise, and yeah, I’d lost respect for him the last few years. But this bit of cinema goes a long way toward rehabbing Cruise as a blockbuster star, though not for the reasons you’d expect.
Warning: spoilers. Also, I refer to action heroes as “he” for simplicity, and yes, Ronda Rousey and other female action stars are amazing.
5) Reversal of tough-guy expectations
Most action stars have an actual background in Being a Tough Guy.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was the king of bodybuilding. The rest of the cast of THE EXPENDABLES 12: ANARCHY AT THE AARP MEETING is full of martial arts maniacs, pro wrestling hulks and mixed-martial arts studs.
The fact that Tom Cruise is short in real life isn’t an impediment here. Jackie Chan, Jean Claude Van Damme and Jet Li could all fit in the back seat of a Yugo.
Doesn’t matter. They look big and tough on screen.
The difference? While he did all his own stunts in this movie, just like the toughest Tinseltown tough guys, Tom the Cruise can actually act. Shockingly, acting ability tends to matter on the big screen.
4) Humor that’s deeper than one-liners and puns
Another staple of action movies is a bit of comic relief to balance out all the explosions.
Bond is notorious for bad puns, like “She always did like a good squeeze” after Remington Steele dispatched Onatopp, who later fell in love with Wolverine.
Schwarzenegger is famous for his one-liners, too. I’ll say the phrase and you’ll know the movie:
“I’ll be back.”
“Consider that a divorce.”
“Stick around.”
For action stars, that’s about all the humor than can typically muster, unless their name is Jackie Chan or Jason Statham and they know how to make a fight itself funny.
The humor in action movies is almost always about other characters. The hero is a straight man.
EDGE OF TOMORROW has humor throughout, and it’s far more sophisticated and varied than puns, one-liners and physical gags.
That takes actual acting chops, which Tom has. He uses them, often to get laughs at the expense of his own character. It’s different and refreshing.
3) Acting range
ROADHOUSE is a cult classic that turned Patrick Swayze into a believable action hero, if only for one movie, despite the insane chasm between dirty dancing with Jennifer Gray and bar fights alongside Sam Elliot.
But the range of most of these stars goes like this: brooding while looking off into the distance, brooding while ignoring the love interest, brooding while training, brooding while handling weapons and gear and, finally, grimacing in pain while being tortured by the bad guy before he escapes, throws the villain down a bottomless pit and broods while walking off into the distance.
Not a lot of range there. It’s like the famous internet chart, the Many Moods of Batman.
Tom has plenty of range, which he uses to connects with his co-stars — and connect with the audience in a variety of ways. Other action heroes typically focus on a variety of ways of dispatching bad guys.
2) Improving on the graphic novel
The movie differs from the original graphic novel, and this time, that’s a good thing.
In the novel, the alien Mimics reset the day with three separate ingredients: a Server alien, an Antennae and a Backup Antennae.
Bit complicated. And the novel has the Emily Blunt character turn on the hero at the end, because she figures out she’s the Backup Antennae and the day will keep resetting unless the hero kills her.
This is all too Connor McCloud vs. Duncan McCloud.
The movie simplifies things: there’s an Alpha alien that looks different than the others and has the power — along with the big, immobile Omega brain — to reset the day. If you kill the Alpha and get its blood splattered all over you, that power to reset the day gets transferred. The catch: you have to die, every day.
In the movie, Emily Blunt’s character doesn’t fight Tom Cruise and make him kill her. The climax does something great: it strips Cruise and Blunt of all their powers and gadgets.
Before, she and Cruise both had mech suits and Cruise had the power to reset the day. The climax takes those things away. Cruise only has one shot, one life, and they have to do it without the suits and guns. The stakes are much, much higher.
1) Go ahead and hate him in Act 1
A huge weakness of most action movies is there’s no character arc, no growth.
The hero is a smooth, handsome killer in Act 1. He breaks necks (and hearts) in Act 2 as a warmup, then mows down an army of bad guys in Act 3.
The hero doesn’t really change: he’s awesome the first time you see him, the most skilled and deadly killer around, and it takes an army of bad guys to even match up with him.
In this film, Cruise’s character starts out as a jerk and a coward. Not a little jerk. A big one. And not simply a coward, but a soldier who tries everything to avoid going to the front lines.
So if you started out disliking Cruise, as I did, his character isn’t trying to change your mind. At all. He isn’t saving the cat (Blake Snyder!) in the first scene. The script embraces your ambivalence or dislike of Cruise, and the movie works better if you don’t have a TOP GUN poster in your bedroom and all of his movies on BluRay.
Because the more you dislike or hate Cruise in Act 1, the bigger the journey will be by Act 3 — and real momentum comes not via intensity, but from the emotional distance traveled. If you love a character in Act 1 and love him in Act 3, there’s no journey.
The script doesn’t flip a magical switch, either, and say, “Okay, now you’re supposed to love the guy from here on out.”
Cruise’s character evolves, slowly, and not always in a linear way. There’s a great scene where he gives up. Instead of fighting the same battle on that beach for the 159th time, he steals a motorcycle, goes to London and has a giant pint of beer. This isn’t a throwaway scene. The director, and screenwriter, are surprising us by letting the character make different choices. The hero isn’t your typical action hero robot, plowing ahead to save the day no matter what. He’s human and flawed.
In the end, Cruise’s hero sacrifices himself to protect others. There was a lot of resistance, internally, to him making those choices. His character didn’t always do the heroic thing.
So there’s more to saying this movie is like GROUNDHOG DAY crossed with INDEPENDENCE DAY, and yes, I bet somebody on YouTube already posted a mashup called GROUNDHOG INDEPENDENCE DAY.
Bill Murray’s character in GROUNDHOG DAY also starts out as a selfish jerk. There’s no single moment that turns him into a nice guy. He does bad things and makes all kinds of bad choices. Only in the end does he figure out that becoming a better person takes more than charm and wit. It takes sacrifice and selflessness to get him there.
EDGE OF TOMORROW might have worked with another, unblemished actor. Matt Damon is talented and worked with this director before, and he put on a similar mech suit in Elysium, so I bet he could strap it on just fine. But the movie wouldn’t be as good.
Let’s give props to Tom Cruise: just as Robert Downey, Jr.’s past troubles helped make him the perfect choice for Tony Stark, Cruise’s long rise and fall from grace helped make him the perfect person for this movie. He nailed it in a way that a lesser known – and better liked — actor simply couldn’t.
The Red Pen of Doom 