MOVIE REVIEW

EDGE OF  TOMORROW

Director: Doug Liman
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth
Stars:  Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton
Runtime: 113 minutes
Strength: Fantastic action and CGI, great acting and storyline
Weakness: Minor plot holes
Rating: 4/5
Plot: An officer finds himself caught in a time loop in a war with an alien race. His skills increase as he faces the same brutal combat scenarios, and his union with a Special Forces warrior gets him closer and closer to defeating the enemy.
Review: Edge of tomorrow is the film science fiction fans have been waiting for this year. Based on Hiroshi Sikurazaka's novel "All You Need is Kill", it's highly conceptual, set during the aftermath of an alien invasion. The fierce, octopod-looking beasties known as Mimics have a superpower which makes them invincible; they can control time, after a fashion at least. Tom Cruise plays Major William Cage, an Army public relations officer. He's never seen combat yet inexplicably finds himself thrown into the middle of a ferocious battle Millions have already died. Whole cities have been reduced to ash heaps. Cage dies on the battlefield. Then he wakes up and starts all over. Then he dies again and starts over again. He always knows he's been here before, that he met this person, said that thing, did that thing, made a wrong choice and died. Nobody else does, though. They're oblivious to the way in which Cage has come unstuck in time. Cage is a complex and demanding role for any actor. It is especially right for Cruise, in that Cage starts out as a Jerry Maguire-type who'll say or do anything to preserve his comfort, then learns through hard (lethal) experience how to be a good soldier and a good man. He changes as the story tells and retells and retells itself. By the end he's nearly unrecognizable from the man we met in the opening. This is the beauty of the film – it presents a growing, gradually developing central character which becomes larger than life in front of the audience. Emily Blunt (who had packed on some muscle for the role) is unexpectedly convincing as a fearless and elegant super-soldier. In all, though, "Edge of Tomorrow" is its own thing. The movie has an organic intelligence and a sense that it, too, exists outside of linear time. It seems to be creating itself as you watch it. With two main characters presenting solid acting performances, a fascinating and uniquely engaging story well told, aptly timed humour and really fast and good looking action, Edge of Tomorrow is a must watch this summer.

Reviewed by Zakir Mushtaque

***

HUMPTY SHARMA KI DULHANIA

Director: Shashank Khaitan
Writers: Shashank Khaitan
Stars: Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Deepika Amin
Runtime: 133 minutes
Strength: Great comedy and story, good acting
Weakness: Music and background score, a few weak moments
Rating: 3.5/5
Plot: When Kavya Pratap Singh, a chirpy, yet fiesty girl from Ambala, decides to make a trip to Delhi for her marriage shopping, she meets a young, carefree Delhi lad, Humpty Sharma. Kavya is unattainable for Humpty initially, which makes her even more endearing to him. But being a Delhi boy, he is not the one to give up so easily.
Review: Karan Johar`s Dharma Productions is out with another entertainer `Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya`. `Humpty..` is a tribute to the blockbuster hit `Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge`. Young Kavya (Alia) is bubbly and portrays a typical Punjabi girl from the city of Ambala and agrees to get married to a rich NRI guy (she has never met) her father (played by Ashutosh Rana) has chosen for her. She escapes to Delhi to live life on her own terms, for a while. There she meets the happy-go-lucky Rakesh aka Humpty Sharma (Varun Dhawan), a typical Delhi-guy. Over a couple of pegs, clubbing and adventure they fall in love with each other. Humpty now has to compete with the ideal groom who is back from America, Angad Bedi (Siddharth Shukla) and also win over his lady love`s stubborn father Singh `Sir`. The chemistry between Kavya-Humpty is adorable. The movie is a mass entertainer packed with romance, drama, punch lines and comedic action. It`s a typical larger-than-life Bollywood movie, the kind that Dharma Productions is well known for.

Reviewed by Broti Rahman

***

Classic Review

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) 

Director: Victor Fleming
Writers: Margaret Mitchell (story), Sidney Howard (screen play)
Stars: Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Thomas Mitchell
Runtime: 238 minutes
Plot: A manipulative Southern belle carries on a turbulent affair with a blockade runner during the American Civil War.
Review: The movie presents a sentimental view of the American Civil War. The movie approaches its 60th anniversary, quite simply because it tells a good story, and tells it wonderfully well. For the story it wanted to tell, it was the right film at the right time. Unlike most historical epics, it is a convincing feel for the passage of time. It shows the South before, during and after the war. The movie sidesteps the inconvenient fact of slavery. But to its major African-American characters it does at least grant humanity and complexity. The movie comes from a world with values and assumptions fundamentally different from our own--and yet, of course, so does all great classic fiction, starting with Homer and Shakespeare. A politically correct Gone with the Wind would not be worth making, and might largely be a lie. As an example of filmmaking craft, the film is still astonishing. Some of the individual shots in Gone with the Wind still have the power to leave us breathless, including the burning of Atlanta. And there is a joyous flamboyance in the visual style that is appealing in these days when so many directors have trained on the blandness of television. It will be around for years to come, a superb example of Hollywood's art and a time capsule of weathering sentimentality for a Civilization gone with the wind, but not forgotten.

Collected from the Internet