Some movies benefit from star power and some sag under their weight.

Gone Girl falls in to the first category. David Fincher, Ben Afleck and Rosamund Pike contribute their bit and rescue ‘Gone Girl’  from the stigma of a B-grade film. It has enough twists to keep you hooked on till the end, and the unexpected ending though sounds abrupt, differentiates this film from other domestic thrillers.

Rosamund Pike deserves a special mention and she she plays her character to perfection…almost a ‘Meryl Streep’esque performance.

The subtexts about marriage and love though do not contribute much to the thriller aspect of the movie, does leave you wonder  if crime were behind every fortune and some marriages 🙂

Movies I was reminded of: Body Heat, Fatal Attraction, Sleeping with the enemy, What Lies Beneath, Geethanjali (Manitrathnam), Unfaithful, Chinatown, Mr.and Mrs.Smith, The Others, Jagged Edge, 8 Million Ways to Die.

This is my first movie rental on Google play which I chromecasted to a HD TV. It was a HD version for Rs.120…video quality is good, but that of audio is not up to the mark. Guess this is a feature with digital copies as well,  just like the physical DVDs and Blu-Rays available in India.

‘Rise of the planet of Apes (2011)’ is a decent science fiction with a good enough script that lends the required emotional wrap for an action film. It also sports spectacular special effects.

Here are some excerpts from reviews online (From Simian Disobedience )

 Here Caesar plots his escape and, with a developing species consciousness, devises a program of ape solidarity, while Rise becomes a very effective self-contained jailhouse drama, replete with nemesis guard (Tom Felton), prison yard bully (“Rocket”), and the wise old lifer (“Maurice”), a shaggy, melancholy baboon. (Director Wyatt’s previous film, 2008’s The Escapist, was, incidentally, a prison-break picture.)

At this point we’ve spent so much time with Caesar that our identification with the primate is complete, and the ensuing orgy of destruction is played more for a vicarious rush than horror. Some fantastic images follow: A tree-lined suburban street showered with leaves as an invisible army swings through the canopy; a zoo breakout, with apes repurposing wrought-iron fence spikes as spears; the age-old rivalry between gorilla and helicopter. The final shot denotes the ambitions of the apes and 20th Century Fox, respectively: Empire, and franchise.

and RogerEbert.com

That said, the movie has its pleasures, although human intelligence is not one of them. Caesar, to begin with, is a wonderfully executed character, a product of special effects and a motion-capture performance by Andy Serkis, who earlier gave us Gollum in “Lord of the Rings” (and returns in the upcoming “The Hobbit”). One never knows exactly where the human ends and the effects begin, but Serkis and/or Caesar gives the best performance in the movie.

A few decades back Harold Ramis made a small film called “Groundhog Day” set in the winter of Pennsylvania. The protagonist, a crank weatherman (brilliantly potratyed by Bill Murray), has to live the same day again and again, till he learns the lessons of his life and finds his true love. My notes here>>>>

I did wonder back then,  if the same material were picked up by a ‘big’ directors like Steven Spielberg 🙂 Well, guess it happened in some form, with Doug Liman (who directed the likes of ‘The Bourne Identity’, ‘Mr. and Mrs.Smith’ doing the honors, albeit with a futuristic setting and ‘Tom’ Cruise. 🙂

‘Edge of Tomorrow” is “Groundhog Day” with a  little bit of logic (or lot of it, depending on your predilection for science fiction stories) as to why Tom Cruise has to relive the same day/s and peppered with superlative action spectacles. The movie mounted on a US$178 million canvass, spares no expense and it shows on the big screen. But you don’t see is enough of stars, who hide in huge battle suits. Tom Cruise does realize this after an hour or so, and chooses to let go of his helmet. Emily Blunt and the rest of the star cast do what they can, without being trite.

Overall, the movie works at the action level, and makes it a decent watch for action sci-fi film fans. But, if you are/were a’Groundhog Day’ and Tom Cruise fan, then it would leave you a tad unsatisfied.

Tailpiece: Movies like these work with limited budgets? ‘Vantage point’ though not a science fiction movie but with a similar concept was made in USD 40mn and cannot match success of films like  ‘Memento’ (USD $9mn) and ‘Groundhog Day’ (USD 14.6mn).

Related links: 
Wikipedia’s list of films featuring time loops