The Daily Spectrum from Saint George, Utah • Page H5

5 Watching Tom Cruise die is a lot of fun, and of offers plenty of that. If planning on getting the Blu-ray, though, go searching for of want to keep your eye out for the rebranded cover: Die. And why change the title, at least on the Blu-ray cover? not because the movie was bad. On the contrary, this is prob- a bly one of the better Tom Cruise movies seen in a long time. Sadly, even the best movies can have horrible marketing, and as it turns out, of was a title audiences just care for.

The movie fare very well at the box office. Even I intrigued enough to see it in theaters. Now I regret that decision, because Die. Repeat. Edge of (as the spine of the Blu-ray case ays) is an imaginative tour de force, with amazing special effects to boot.

Ionly wish Warner Bros. had decided to pull the trigger sooner on the name switch. And, it should be noted, the film was originally titled You Need I after the Japanese and ater American graphic novels on which the movie is based. Tom Cruise plays Maj. Will iam Cage, an officer whose pecialty is public relations.

In fact, never been in combat. Not even once. his is a bit of a hindrance when ordered to go into battle to show the public how easily a war can be won against aliens called Mimics. ut things as simple as veryone assumed, and what as supposed to be an in-and- ut battle turned out to be much worse, and Cage ends up dying i combat. Only he Instead, he akes up the day before, only to live the whole experience ver again.

This continues, over a nd over, until he manages to save the life of warrior Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt). She notices Cage knows all the moves before they make them. Vrataski knows about ability to live, die and repeat, as it were. And with her help, Cage manages to become an i ncredible warrior too, and the two attempt to take down the entire alien race in the process. There are definitely frustrating parts of the film, and I would have preferred anyone but Tom Cruise.

But I was so invested in the plot that I actu- a lly surprised myself. he special features, although interesting, anything to write home to mom a bout. They include a featurette a bout filming a battle with the aliens and the challenges there are with having to fight an a rmy that exist until post- production, and another featu- rette showing the issues actors had with some of the weapons shown in the film. inally, a mini-docu- entary about director Doug iman and his filmmaking rocess. All three are just sickening ove letters to Tom Cruise and how perfect he is.

Seriously. here are also some deleted scenes, but none of them were oo interesting. he lack of really good extra features disconcerting, though, because the movie itself is great. just a shame Warner Bros. hammer down something less generic than of before it hit theaters.

Diamond Edition is crisp, beautiful rendition After watching the Diamond Edition Blu-ray, my hopes for a great series of re-releases had been cut down. Not much was offered in the way of picture restoration or sound quality with that film. uckily, the exact opposite is rue of For full disclosure, better point out that Maleficent has always been my favorite Disney character, so I could be (and most likely am) biased toward this film I think seen it hundreds of times. At least. However, that also puts me i a great position to compare his version to versions that ave been released before.

The icture is Blu-ray quality, and I ot to watch it on my HD TV, so course it was brilliant. But what I really noticed was the ound quality. I even heard things ever heard before. For ins tance, in the scene when rincess Aurora is climbing up the castle stairs to follow the green light that brings her to he spinning wheel, a high and eerie voice singing. Ialways thought it was a simple vocalization.

But, this ime, I distinctly heard it was a ord being sung: It ave me chills. I felt vindicated when, upon watching the special features, a ound engineer made the same observation just made. Alt hough, he seemed far more excited about it than I was. peaking of special features, I think my favorite thus far of the Diamond Collection is on the Blu-ray. a documentary called Art of Evil: Generations of Disney As a self- proclaimed villaphile, the title alone told me love it.

The documentary takes us on a trip through the various i terations of Disney villains, where inspiration was drawn and how each villain evolved over the production. It features interviews from some of the people responsible for the greats of Disney canon: Marc Davis (Maleficent and Cruella Vil) and Andreas Deja (Ja- ar, Scar and Gaston). Other special features include the Animation: A rtists in featurette, a taple on each Diamond Collection Blu-ray. This one shows us artist Brittney Lee as she ses paper to create a three- dimensional Maleficent. I was mesmerized.

say all Disney movies are worth buying more than nce, but in this case, rec- mmend grabbing your very wn copy of iamond Edition. Contact Matthew at mjacob- and follow him on Twitter, rumMatthew, and Face- book.com/MatthewJacobson- eek. is a bad title for a great movie Matthew Jacobson Couch Critic GANNETT Tom Cruise appears in a scene from the motion picture "Edge of Tomorrow." GNS Despite the protection of her fairy godmother, Princess Aurora fulfills aleficent's wicked curse when she pricks her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel in Disney's classic Sleeping Beauty.".