“Groundhog Day” meets “Aliens”… I’d never thought I’d see that but here we are. “Edge Of Tomorrow” borrows heavily from two very different movies and is an enjoyable ride. It’s somewhat smart and exhilarating even if the finale feels disappointing.

In this film, we see a futuristic war in which soldier Cage (Tom Cruise “Top Gun”, “Mission: Impossible”) is forced to relive the same day over and over again. Nobody will listen to him except for a fellow soldier named Rita (Emily Blunt “The Adjustment Bureau”). As each day goes by, Cage gets better and better at fighting the alien army that is destroying Earth. It gets a little convoluted in the third act but the rest of it is quite entertaining.

Tom Cruise is alright here, there’s not much to say either way. Emily Blunt is really funny as she keeps killing Cruise every time he screws up so that the day can be reset. The chemistry between the two is pretty good. The aliens themselves are interesting to look at but the editing is a bit jarring at times so it is hard to get a good look at them. I like Bill Paxton (“Twister”) in this and Brendan Gleeson (“Troy”) is good as well.

“Edge Of Tomorrow” has some explosive action and a very intriguing set-up. I did quite enjoy the first two thirds of the film but I cannot deny the ending felt poor. I think it’s definitely of great interest when we see movies such as “Aliens” and “Groundhog Day” blended together because you get some weird and wonderful results. “Edge Of Tomorrow” will impress anybody looking for explosive action in the style of the “Transformers” films but with some really intelligent stuff thrown in to make it a cut above most action-packed films of the era.

“Beverly Hills Cop” had me laughing a lot and “Coming To America” had me in awe of his talents but Eddie Murphy’s feature-length, stand-up comedy, concert movie “Eddie Murphy Raw” or just “Raw” is really bad and never so much as cracked a smile during the whole thing and that’s a real shame because there is a talented man here but he’s wearing a big mask over it.

“Raw” begins with a sketch with a young Eddie Murphy with his family and that isn’t remotely funny. Then we get a quick part explaining how big Eddie Murphy and then we get the actual show full of what is known as ‘critical comedy’. Movies such as “Team America”, “Dr. Strangelove” and “Life Of Brian” have all successfully done it, some more so than others but “Raw” doesn’t even come close to making you laugh-out-loud. “Raw” is out to offend everybody (whites, blacks, rich people, poor people, homosexuals etc…) and the only few points it actually wants to make aren’t phrased well enough to make them work.

Eddie Murphy has a real knack for impersonations, being upbeat and talking really quickly but here he doesn’t do anything amusing with his talents, he clearly needs someone else writing his material. He uses an excessive amount of bad language but fails to do anything creative with it; a British film called “In The Loop” has obscene language but is funny due to the creativity that goes along with it.

“Raw” is disappointing and can be placed alongside many of the more recent Eddie Murphy films due to being about the same quality. I feel Murphy perhaps needs the censorship of movies because otherwise he delivers something that is merely offensive and it isn’t that is offensive that bothers me but rather that it just isn’t funny. If you want to see a talented man misusing his abilities then watch “Raw” but the rest of us will stick to the good stuff he’s done.

I’ve seen “Santa Clause Conquers The Martians” and I’ve seen “Robot Monster” and although they’re definitely turkeys, nobody makes them as a bad, as bizarre and as hilarious as Ed Wood as his “Plan 9 from Outer Space” is arguably the only film you should see because of its badness (it’s practically a guide on “how not to make a movie”). Equally strange but somehow successful director Tim Burton (“Batman”, “Beetlejuice”) takes this unique look at the master of awful films.

Ed Wood (Johnny Depp “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “The Tourist”) likes to make movies but as we see show business isn’t an easy business. He manages to talk people into giving him money and befriends and recruits star of the 1931 masterpiece “Dracula” Béla Lugosi (Martin Landau). Now he sets out about making some really bad (but really funny) films.

Aside from “Plan 9” (simply because it is just so bad) Ed Wood’s films are definitely not worth your time but you have to admire Ed Wood for the fact he liked making movies because he wanted to tell stories and wasn’t bothered about profit. Johnny Depp plays him brilliantly here. We see a lot of the Lugosi (almost as much of the film is about him as it is Ed Wood) and Landau’s performance is sheer brilliance. The only character I disliked was the one played by Bill Murray (“Ghostbusters”) as I despised the performance.

“Ed Wood” is a truly great film about how people can suffer for their art as portrayed perfectly in the scene where Ed Wood has a conversation with Orson Welles (it’s the best scenes in the movie). There are a lot of similarities between Wood and Burton as both make very zany and ambitious films and Wood tried to bring back Lugosi while Burton tried to have Vincent Price make a comeback but both actors died before they completed their films. This is a magical film and probably the only good thing Ed Wood’s name is attached to.

“Ebirah, Horror of the Deep” (also known as “Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster”) is the seventh instalment in the “Godzilla” franchise. Some people do not seem to care for this entry but I think it is fine. This is a fun cheesy monster movie.

A group of men steal a boat when one of them goes to search for his brother. The ship is soon attacked by Ebirah, a large sea creature, and the group are left shipwrecked on a mysterious island. On the island they discover a secretive organisation that is constructing nuclear weapons and they also find a slumbering Godzilla.

The human characters are okay but I think the opening scenes that bring the main characters together come across as rather forced. It would have been nice if they could have come up with a more logical explanation for them all getting on a ship together but maybe I’m expecting too much from a film where a giant dinosaur fights a giant crab. The villains are perfectly acceptable for this sort-of movie. It’s great to see Godzilla and Ebirah fighting. Interestingly, this film was originally set to star King Kong as the main monster but the decision was made to have Godzilla instead. Mothra also has a small appearance and there is also a giant bird that appears in one scene. It’s a shame Mothra is not in more of the movie.

“Ebirah, Horror of the Deep” is a fun film. The special effects are good, the set design is rather impressive and the battle between Godzilla and Ebirah is very amusing. The scene where Godzilla fights the giant bird is pretty poorly filmed, it might even be the worst battle in a “Godzilla” movie considering it is so hard to see what is going on but the Ebirah fight makes up for it. I also wish that Godzilla showed up a little earlier. It has its flaws but I’m still recommending this one.

Elvis Presley (“Blue Hawaii”, “G.I. Blues”) stars in yet another movie. These are the types of movies that would never see the light of day if Elvis wasn’t in them as apparently because he is attached to the project it suddenly makes it okay to actually make them.

In this film, Elvis stars as a U.S. Navy ‘frogman’ named Ted Jackson, who on his last day of his service discovers a sunken ship with a load of treasure. Then Jackson teams with his friends, who include a sea captain with a phobia of the water. They try to find a way to get to the treasure but a group of youngsters looking for fun hear about this and it then becomes a race to get to the treasure first through singing, dancing and a lot of silliness.

Elvis Presley is not really what I’d consider a good actor but he’s fun to watch as if you give him a good line, he’ll deliver it in a truly hilarious way. He’s obviously a brilliant singer and he doesn’t disappoint here but the songs are hardly among his better tracks. Elsa Lanchester (“Bride Of Frankenstein”) is rubbish as the yoga teacher. The rest of the cast are really weak but that’s no real surprise as this is an Elvis movie.

This is a very silly movie but it’s meant to be; with silly underwater sequences, badly choreographed fights, weird humour that isn’t really that funny and a few more things. This movie is really however just a vehicle for Elvis. Also, you have to be into this sort of thing to enjoy yourself. If you are fan of both Elvis’ music and films then you can’t really go very wrong with “Easy Come, Easy Go” but otherwise stick to something else instead.

“Earth Girls Are Easy” is a science comedy with musical numbers and is truly among the worst films in existence because it is so stupid and so weird that I honestly believe you’d have more fun staring at a wall for 90 minutes or so (the same length as the movie) because at least you’d have your own imagination to play with and not have these unfunny images thrust in your face.

Three aliens (Jim Carrey “The Cable Guy”, Damon Wayans “White Chicks” and Jeff Goldblum “Jurassic Park”) crash-land on Earth and meet a young woman named Valerie (Geena Davis “Beetlejuice”, “The Long Kiss Goodnight”). She then has to try and hide the aliens as she drains her pool so the aliens can fly home and what follows is a series of woefully unfunny scenarios, which are just plain bizarre.

The acting in this film is awful. There is a reason why when discussing any of the major cast members nobody ever brings this film up and that’s because people want to try their hardest to erase from memory. The aliens just make strange noises and scream a lot and the human characters are very dull. Nobody has anything interesting say.

The movie is ridiculous, I spotted a few plot holes, the acting is poor, the jokes are dumb, the music numbers are dud and I don’t know if this is meant to be a homage or a spoof of the sci-fi genre. “Earth Girls Are Easy” never made me smile; it just made me think there isn’t much hope for the human race when we are capable of producing such weak entertainment. Even some of the worst comedies out there can have you giggle at least once but with this film I didn’t know what to think. It’s easier to win an Olympic medal than it is to find anything engaging in this dreadful movie.

“Dunkirk” focuses on a particularly bleak period of war history as the Nazis appeared to have the British on the backfoot. This an emotive film from director Christopher Nolan (“The Prestige”, “The Dark Knight”) and it is very impressive but I question some of the narrative decisions as well as the casting choices.

As the Nazis continue to advance and France is effectively lost, hundreds of thousands of British soldiers line the beaches of Dunkirk, waiting to be taken home. Both military and civilian vessels set sail to evacuate as many troops as possible so that Great Britain can stand any chance of defending itself from a Nazi invasion.

The film decides to show the evacuation from multiple perspectives and while that would be fine, the constant back and forth can make it hard for us to relate to any of the characters. Kenneth Branagh (“Henry V”) is really good as Commander Bolton. Cillian Murphy (“Red Eye”) and Tom Hardy (“Bronson”) are both okay but I feel the constant back and forth made it too difficult for me to really invest in them. Most of the other performances are mediocre but there is one that sticks out as terrible and it comes from Harry Styles… the pop star. Whoever decided to cast him must surely have been doing it as a joke.

“Dunkirk” features some scenes that made me feel a real sense of British pride so it was definitely doing something right. Like many of the really good war movies, “Dunkirk” provides battle sequences that are brutal and while much of it may seem incredibly bleak, it ends with a sense of triumph that feels so appropriate given the mighty task that was dealt with so magnificently by British forces and civilians alike. Christopher Nolan has proved that he can tackle the war genre with “Dunkirk” and I think you should check it out.

Based on the cult board game of the same name, “Dungeons & Dragons” is a laughably bad fantasy film that makes the “Lord of the Rings” movies look like “Citizen Kane” by comparison. I know next to nothing about the board game but this is a bad movie regardless. Even if you can tolerate the bad acting, the special effects are awful and are on par with the disastrous “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation”.

Tyrannical sorcerer Profion (Jeremy Irons “Die Hard: With A Vengeance”) plans to overthrow Empress Savina (Thora Birch “Patriot Games”). The only ones that can save the Empire of Izmer are mage Marina (Zoe McLellan) and thieves Ridley (Justin Whalin “Child’s Play 3”) and Snails (Marlon Wayans “White Chicks”) by preventing Profion from acquiring a rod that control the red dragons.

Jeremy Irons is easily the best thing in “Dungeons & Dragons”. He is really having fun here and he is very entertaining to watch. I only wish he had more screen time. The Ridley and Marina characters are pretty generic fantasy protagonists. The performance from Marlon Wayans as Snails is unbearable. I would rather watch a feature-length film with Jar Jar Binks and Pauly Shore (“Bio-Dome”) than see another minute of Marlon Wayans as Snails. The dragons look terrible especially considering “Reign Of Fire” came out only a few years later.

“Dungeons & Dragons” will probably make you laugh with its over-the-top acting, cheesy dialog and horrendous special effects. Jeremy Irons is legitimately entertaining because he knows how absurd the whole production is but most of the performances are just bland. The most significant improvement the filmmakers could have made would have been to completely remove Marlon Wayans from this movie altogether. If you are a fan of fantasy movies then look elsewhere because even the first “Troll” movie is better than this.

“Dune” is not a painful film to sit through; however it is a boring and confusing one. Films like this don’t have to give you all of the explanation but “Dune” didn’t give me any so I lost complete and utter interest in anything happening in the movie.

The plot of “Dune” is as disjointed as its mythology. It’s about a man named Paul (Kyle MacLachlan “The Doors”), who may be the prophet that a galaxy has been waiting for. “Dune” takes place on several worlds and involves a substance known as ‘spice’, that makes it possible to ‘fold’ space in order to travel from one end of the universe to the other and it also makes it possible to extend life. Paul has to engage in various activities including riding a giant sandworm in order to prove he is the prophet.

The characters in “Dune” are as robotic as they come. Lots of the dialog in “Dune” is spoken as you listen in on the characters’ thoughts so it can be confusing midway through conversation it cuts to someone speaking in their head. The acting is terrible and nobody looks happy. Despite an all-star cast including Patrick Stewart (“Star Trek: First Contact”), Sting and Max von Sydow (“The Seventh Seal”) the film is very disappointing as far as the characters/cast section goes.

“Dune” is a real mess. Even things such as the special effects are not done well (despite having a massive budget by standards of the time). “Dune” has a couple of clever ideas but it doesn’t utilize them in a way to make them at all entertaining. The film flickers from place to place, from character to character, to external speech to internal speech that it makes it a real chore to understand what is actually going on and all the characters seem to so that just makes me more frustrated.

The first movie “Dumb And Dumber” starring Jim Carrey (“The Mask”) wasn’t a good movie but it wasn’t bad. However, this prequel is an insult to the original’s memory as it somehow manages to destroy every good thing about the franchise.

“Dumb And Dumberer” is a prequel and as you can guess, this film’s full title follows Harry (Derek Richardson “Hostel”) as he meets his new best buddy (or only buddy) Lloyd (Eric Christen Olsen). The two are at school together in their late teens during the 80s. They find out that their headmaster (Eugene Levy “A Mighty Wind”) is stealing money from the school or at least some of the other kids do, just Harry and Lloyd can’t contemplate that. Through various dumb antics they uncover, well I don’t think they’d say they had uncovered anything and they probably don’t know what it even means but they do uncover the headmaster’s sneaky plot.

Derek Richardson is bland and a little bit scary as Harry. He’s nowhere near as funny as the original version and that’s saying a lot because I didn’t think the character was originally that funny anyway. Eric Christen Olsen looks a little bit like Jim Carrey and sounds like him but has none of his wit. Eugene Levy seems to have sunken to a new low but I must say he is the best thing about this movie by far.

Being neither funny nor interesting, “Dumb And Dumberer” is an atrocious prequel that is so disappointing. The humour is foul and unfunny, the acting is poor, the script is poor, the premise is weak and just about everything is done to the absolute lowest of standards. Jim Carrey himself has said this movie is incredibly bad stating that “They rob your grave before your dead” and I’m inclined to agree with him as I witnessed the horror that is “Dumb And Dumberer”.