thedukeofmovietown

he long awaited 7th X film that merges the universes of The Wolverine, X-Men and X-Men First Class is finally here! If you know anything about the X-Men movie franchise you know it's been a hit or miss series and in my opinion there have been more misses than hits and even then, the hits aren't misstep free. Now, any other studio would have just hit the reset button, so to speak, and rebooted the franchise with whatever pieces they wanted going forward. However, hats off to the writing team of Simon Kinberg, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn who instead undertook the truly herculean feat of not only telling the classic Days of Future Past story from the X-Men comics, but also writing a story that effectively rights all the wrongs done over the past 14 years of spotty movie making. Days of Future Past is quite possibly the best X-Men movie yet! The story is complex but in a nutshell, Wolverine is sent back in time to stop a series of events that start a catastrophic war in the future. Again, it is complex but the story is well put together and the cast is bursting at the seams with dozens and dozens of memorable X-Men and even more Easter eggs for the truly savvy fan. But you don't have to be a super fan in order to get enjoyment out of this movie. I'll admit I didn't know half of the mutants mentioned here, but I still left with a smile on my face. The special effects are great, the cinematography is first rate and the overall feel of the film plays like a gripping action thrill ride. X-Men: Days of Future Past does the seemingly impossible by making it OK to see even the bad X-Men movies. The bigger the mess is made the more fun it is to see it cleaned up I suppose. Of course, it is a movie about time travel and there are a few strange things in regards to that which made the movie a little confusing, but in the end its just small potatoes compared to the massive victory of a film this is. X-Men: Days of Future Past gets a 4.5...out of 5.

I saw EDGE OF TOMORROW!! That's right, I got to see Tom Cruise's new epic sci-fi summer flick and let me just tell you right now, it doesn't disappoint! The movie stars Tom Cruise as an Army Major who gets roped into participating in a live battle against an alien force as a PR stunt. Things quickly go south when his squad is ambushed and through a series of uncommon events, Cruise's character finds himself with the power to restart the day whenever he's killed. It's like mixing the movies Saving Private Ryan, Starship Troopers and Aliens with Groundhog Day which is pretty much like playing the game Halo on Legendary mode. Everything about this movie is a treat! The special effects are jaw dropping, the story is engrossing and the cast, headed by Cruise and Emily Blunt, puts forth a solid effort with especially entertaining work done by Bill "Game over, man" Paxton and Brendan Gleeson. This movie is bound to be the action movie event of the summer and it earns every bit of it's high praise. If you have the chance to see it in IMAX take it into consideration, if not, at least see it in a theater because it's bigger than big and more action packed than anything I've seen in years. Edge of Tomorrow machine guns it's way into a perfect 5...out of 5.

Christopher Nolen rides again with this massive scale sci-if journey story that braids cutting edge special effects, amazing performances and a supremely inventive story together to make what is sure to be one of the year's landmark films. The movie stars Matthew McConaughey as Cooper, a NASA astronaut forced to become a farmer in a world where earth's natural resources have dwindled down to nearly nil. As Cooper struggles to raise his children during what seems to be humanity's final throws, a team of scientists, headed by Nolen favorites Michael Caine, Anne Hathaway and David Gyasi, put together a daring plan to save humanity by searching for new inhabitable world's beyond our galaxy and require Cooper's skill to get them there.

I really dug the hell out of this movie. As a fan of space travel myself, I really have to say that they did a great job at capturing a lot of the real math and science theory behind space travel, relativity theory and even some of the more edgy ideas about the characteristics of black holes. It's clear that the Nolen brothers Christopher and Jonathen did their homework while writing this script. The performances are also quite good here and Jessica Chastaine, who plays Cooper's grownup daughter, is especially impressive. These things married with the IMAX scope and the bigger than life special effects make this movie an absolute joy to watch. Everything is not all aces here as the film is not without its faults. Perhaps the thing I had the most problem with was the film's third act. The movie spends a long time setting up a very real and for the most part, a scientifically sound universe that is on par with 2001: A Space Odyssey and even to some degree it makes fun of a tropish, nonsensical and dumb way that the story could end as if to say, "we're smarter than that, c'mon, what do you take us for?" only to give in and end it that way anyway. At first I was OK with it but the more that I look at the film, the less the ending makes sense and the more the film starts to eat itself which was needless to say, really disappointing.

Overall, I still liked the movie and despite my issues with the third act, I recommend it, and if you can, spring for the IMAX because the scope and scale of the visuals are ridiculous! No television could ever do it justice. This film is for sure to be in talks to win an award of some kind for special effects in the coming months and it's well deserved. If you love liked Gravity or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Apollo 13, you are sure to like this too. Interstellar gets a 3.5...out of 5.