Looper Troopers.

So, I saw two wibbly wobbly timey wimey films this week that were basically the same thing in which everybody dies and nobody dies. Oops, that might have been a spoiler, sorry about that. You'll have to go back in time and shoot me in the head to stop me dropping any more.

The latest X-Men film is based on one of the most revered texts in the comic canon - 'The Days Of Future Past' which is used here as an excuse to do 'X-Men:Generations' and get the entire cast from the franchise up together on screen. For the most part it is great fun and it does a little time travel trick of its own in that it pretty much erases all trace of 'X Men:The Last Stand' from our collective memory, which is a good thing.

In the dystopian future mutants are being exterminated by giant robots that can adapt to the superpowers they encounter and thus wipe out all resistance. It gets us into the action straight away but fails to get us emotionally charged. This future looks like an alien planet or the third Matrix film rather than a believable alternative New York. Instead of being aghast at familiar characters easily slaughtered we're asked to root for a trio of new mutants who are clearly just there as canon fodder. They're pretty lame too. Blink can open portals which is a nice conceit and visually strong but what's with the guy with dreadlocks who has a big lazer gun and the guy whose mutant power seems to be pointing out the bloody obvious - "They've found us!" If this is the last thriving band of heroes then it's no wonder the mutants are doomed.

Fortunately Professor X, Magneto, Wolverine, Halle Berry and Ellen Page are hiding out in the ruins somewhere and have a "crazy but it might just work" plan. Apparently this X-Men holocaust all came to pass because at some point Mystique assassinated Tyrion Lannister. Women! Always mucking up history! What are they like? If only the x-MEN could stop that happening! Wolverine is despatched back to the seventies to destroy a water bed, alert Professor X, stop this chain of events and strut around naked. You'd have thought a better plan would have been to find a mutant with pre-cog powers and give them a kick up the arse, but no, we're going with plan A and so Ellen Page, one of the most capable and bravest actresses of her generation gets to cradle Hugh Jackman's head for the rest of the movie. That's it, that's what she does.

Back in the seventies lava lamps are in, Professor X has hair, Nixon has a conscience, Jennifer Lawrence gets to wear big hats and Wolverine struts around chomping cigars and doing that Eastwood impression thing without anyone pointing out what a total tool he is.  At least we are spared the sight of Magneto in flares.

The quartet of Stewart, McKellen, McAvoy and Fassbender are great and the film mostly works due to them, especially when it gets a bit exposition heavy in the middle. The most interesting new character is Quicksilver who is used well in a prison break set piece but the film feels light on action for a long time afterwards and anyway, is a 'bullet-time' sequence really that impressive in 2014? Back in the day we had Vodka adverts that were as good as this.

Anyhow you know where it's all headed, a big showdown with giant robots, but The Sentinels don't seem to fit right in the seventies.

This is what all powerful drone robots in the seventies look like in the film:

This is what they would actually have looked like:

When Magneto is unleashed the film really comes into its own but I'm not really sure how a mutant ripping up the white house wouldn't start a more destructive future chain of events than one bullet. Never mind, it's all part of the time twisty fun of these sort of films. With so many characters and so many paradoxes the film could have ended up a mess but it's entertaining, it's not stupid and I enjoyed it more than any X-men/Wolverine film since X2.

Another summer, another Tom Cruise mega budget sci-fi action film. The good news is that 'Edge Of Tomorrow' is miles better than last year's 'Oblivion' and probably the best film he has made since 'Minority Report'. It's great!

There's no getting around it - it's 'Groundhog Day' meets 'Starship Troopers'. That's a damn fine blend if you ask me.

It perfectly replicates the feel of playing a video game. You advance a little, try to solve a problem, fail through ineptitude, lack of knowledge or lack of experience and then have to start all over again until you reach the next save point. This essentially is what Cruise's character has to do as he relives each day in the combat zone. 

It helps that his character is a desk monkey with no combat skill who has to learn what to do as the film progresses. It makes it a thrilling ride for us as we have to make sense of this situation with him and you do feel for him as he fucks up again and again and again. It is so much better than just making him a badass from the word go. 

The real badass in this film is Emily Blunt. She was great in 'Looper' and is great in this - holding as much screen time as Tom. She has film star looks yes, but she convinces as a battle hardened warrior who is better than Cruise, better than the men we see around her and able to take the fight to the aliens.

The aliens themselves are a convincing threat: nasty, unknowable and with their own complex hierarchy and strategies. The setting is interesting too. Instead of a distant planet this is a beach conflict on a believable not too distant future Europe. The combat scenes have a 'Saving Private Ryan' intensity to them which could have come across as offensive in this 70th anniversary year of D-Day but it is actually an effective way to make the war zone feel real. It needs to feel real because we spend so much time there. But the threat and fear of death is always present. It stops the film becoming silly or cartoonish. It also helps that director Doug Liman served his apprenticeship on the Bourne films. He knows how to keep things kinetic, brutal and smart.

The FX are top notch too, the detail is rich and this is visually the best looking Sci-Fi film of the decade so far.

The plot is simple, there's no more exposition than there needs to be, no tiresome sub-plots, no heavy handed message - just foot to the floor action. It's great stuff and whenever you think it is going to become repetitive and tiresome it finds a new way to confound your expectations and pep you up by quickly jumping ahead to the next step. It respects the audience. It respects your intelligence. It seems to evolve with you as you come to grips with it.

If I was to fault it at all I would say that the ending does feel a bit anti-climatic. I was expecting some new twist, revelation or paradox that would make me want to watch it again. Unfortunately it does feel like 'game over' and that's it; but that's also exactly what finishing a video game is like. Thematically it is light. There's not much here to discuss afterwards. It's definitely more of an action film than a sci-fi film but even so this is thrilling blockbuster entertainment and probably the best of its type in a long while. The title is rubbish though. Edge of Tomorrow? Meh. Should have gone with 'Live.Die.Repeat'.