Edge of Tomorrow “THIS IS WHY WE GO TO THE MOVIES!” raves Cinema Blend. Hey, speak for yourself: I go to the movies to masturbate and shoot texters. Anyway, the picture is a Tom Cruise sci-fi vehicle about a military man who has to fight the same battle against marauding aliens over and over. Each day begins with the blaring of “I Got You Babe” from his alarm-clock radio, and brings another opportunity to court a pretty alien played by Andie MacDowell, who … sorry, guess I got stuck in a feedback loop there. Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) directs, and Christopher McQuarrie of The Usual Suspects fame had a hand in the script, so maybe the flick will be a notch above the average summer dross. Especially if you get to bust a cap in some jackass tweeter before FirstLook starts. (PG-13) – Steve Schneider
The Fault in Our Stars John Green’s novel about young cancer patients in love yields a date movie/weeper that’ll one day sit on your shelf next to My Girl and Mask if it plays its cards right (and if you don’t slash your wrists with a Netflix coupon first). When the book came out, the critical praise it received was interrupted only by a Daily Mail pan that consigned it to the “Sick-Lit” subgenre of juvenile fiction (yes, that’s a thing); can’t wait to see what choice words the Tories have for this adaptation, because I’m all about the jargon. One detail to watch: In the book, our protagonists bond over a viewing of V for Vendetta, and if the sequence made it into the movie, you know what that means: Somebody out there is finally going to see part of V for Vendetta! (PG-13) – SS
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X-Men: Days of Future Past Bryan Singer’s return to the X-Men franchise is a lot of fun – particularly in its exquisite reversal of the master-and-pupil dynamic between Professor Charles Xavier and Wolverine – but perhaps the most astonishing thing about the movie is that it’s as elegant as it is. Though the plot is almost ridiculously convoluted, cramming an absurd number of characters into the story and traipsing all over the planet, it all works. And while there’s surprisingly little “action,” at least on the scale we’re used to in comic-book flicks, what there is doesn’t feel like stuff we’ve seen a hundred times before. (PG-13) – MaryAnn Johanson
