Counting Down The Fourteen Best Films Of 2014
In this totally subjective game of lists, there can only be one winner.
#13: Edge of Tomorrow, dir. Doug Liman
I just flat-out loved Doug Liman’s adaptation of the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill. The effects-driven war action is exhilaratingly kinetic, and this film deploys exoskeleton suits in a way last year’s Elysium only hinted at. It leverages both Tom Cruise’s smarmy charm and his bewildered action-hero mode, as his cosseted military PR schmuck learns to battle an alien foe by harnessing its ability to ‘reset’ time. But its masterstroke is casting Cruise opposite formidable English rose Emily Blunt as a celebrated supersoldier.
This year, the long shadow of World War II fell over films including The Book Thief, The Monuments Men, Fury and the forthcoming Unbroken. Despite its futuristic setting, Edge of Tomorrow is the best WWII film of them all, from the jaunty multinational camaraderie of Allied soldiers to the beach landing battle and devastated French landscapes. In a throwback to ‘the last good war’, Cruise and Blunt make saving the human race feel satisfyingly romantic.