This past weekend, Emily, Poppy and I went to the movies to see Edge of Tomorrow. It was released on Friday, and we went to see it on Saturday. “The theater must have been mobbed” you said? Uh, no..not exactly. I’d say there were 15 people in the entire theater, you know theater #6 – the big one? The one where you can access the row from either side because it holds so many people? Go figure…

I’d read a review of the film in The Atlantic that was most complimentary. Had it not been for that, I assure you I’d never have recommended we go see it. But the well-written review made the plot of the film sound interesting, and since Emily was spending the weekend, hey – why not? Of course, we went to the 1:30 showing, being cheapskates as showings before 4 PM cost 1/3 less than the evening price. So we went. And ya know what? We all thought the movie was great.

By now I’m certain you’re aware of the plot. Cruise is a soldier that, thanks to his foolish mouthing-off to a General, gets himself sent to the front lines of a war between earthlings and aliens. Sounds ridiculous, yes? On the face of it, yes, but the plot really was well-thought out. The acting was quite good, even from Cruise who worked really hard as the poor guy killed so many times he should look like swiss cheese. Emily Blunt did a complete body transformation for this film, and it was gratifying to see her taking charge and making Tom her do-bitch. Never have a problem with that, eh?

Yes, the CGI was, at times, a little blurry, but the pace and novelty of the story more than made up for a few moments of ‘what the heck just happened’ because of fuzzy special effects. The crux of the plot is that these aliens from another galaxy, maybe? Uh, these aliens come to earth to take over, and have the capacity to anticipate how earthlings will respond to their every action. Emily Blunt’s character Rita (lovely Rita, meter maid?…ah hem..) is dubbed the Angel of Verdun because yes, a woman, defeats the aliens at that hallowed ground in Belgium. But despite the accolades coming her way, smart Rita, with the help of some Aussie scientist who I swear was the original manager replaced by Jimmy ‘The Tonight Show’ Fallon in Almost Famous…um with his help figures out that the aliens let us win that to fool us into believing an all-out assault just like D-Day could defeat them. Hah! When Tom dies a few times, he’s clever enough to figure out there’s something amiss here (hey, quicker than Bill Murray was…) and thinks he’d better go looking for this Rita Angel of Verdun person to ask her why this keeps happening to him, since she appears to be the only person to succeed thus far against the wicked alien species. He and Rita form a team and by gosh and by golly, the world is saved, no thanks to the general who in a previous film played Winston Churchill and just got a little fatter since then. Imagine…

So with that confusing stream-of-consciousness description, I suggest you go check it out at the 1:30 showing. Worth $6. Hey, you’d pay that for a pay per view, yes?

P.S. I checked and yes, the actor named Noah Taylor was in fact the dumped manager of ‘Stillwell’ in Almost Famous. I can spot em, eh?
Oops! It’s not ‘Stillwell’, the band’s name was Stillwater. Stillwell was the fat kid whose mom played for the Rockford Peaches in A League of Their Own