I don’t know if I liked this more than Guardians of the Galaxy or X-Men: Days of Future Past, but it’s very close, and since everybody saw Guardians and X-Men nobody saw this, this is the pick.
Which makes sense, since I spent a lot of time this year trying to get people to go and watch this movie. It didn’t work* - Edge of Tomorrow finished 29th in the box office this year, behind such memorable films as Ride Along, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, 300: Rise of An Empire, and The Equalizer. Don’t cry for Warner Brothers, though - the movie finished with $370 million worldwide, so they’re not hurting.
*To be fair, even if everyone I’d told to go see it had listened to me, I don’t think it would have made much of a difference on its domestic grosses.
A lot of people came up with theories for why the movie didn’t work here (Confusing Advertising! Complicated Premise! Strange Title! Tom Cruise Fatigue*!). I don’t care about any of those things. I just want you to watch it. Because it’s great.
*This sounds like a thing I made up. It’s not! It’s a real thing people wrote articles about!
It’s a smart, funny action thriller that handles the intricacies of its difficult premise perfectly. It’s paced in such a rapid-fire fashion that the possibilities for “Oh, this again?” dullness of its Groundhog Day plot are kept entirely at bay, even upon multiple viewings. It’s the rare science fiction movie that’s as interested in both keeping the plot sharp and taut as it is blowing things up in a gloriously exciting fashion. Most sci-fi opts for one or the other (and usually fails at both).
Its Metacritc score lists it at “Universal Acclaim” among movie goers, with a score that’s even slightly higher than likely Oscar winner Boyhood’s.
The people who saw thing movie loved it. Make yourself one of them.