Five great movies about living life on repeat, from Tom Cruise’s best role in years to Happy Death Day, a time-loop slasher thriller
- His performance in intergalactic war movie Edge of Tomorrow was one of Tom Cruise’s best this century, while who can forget Bill Murray in Groundhog Day?
- If you feel like you’re living life on repeat in lockdown, you might as well go there with your movie choices
The longer this Covid-19 lockdown continues, the more it feels like we are reliving the same day over and over again – just like in these five movies …
Palm Springs (2020)
One of the few genuinely great things to come out of 2020 is this delightfully fresh and funny romantic comedy. It puts a new slant on “one of those infinite time loop situations” by having two characters stuck in it together.
Sarah (the wonderful Cristin Milioti) arrives at the eponymous resort town for her prettier, more successful younger sister’s wedding. At the ceremony she meets Nyles (Andy Samberg), an affable slacker seemingly without a care in the world, but by the end of the evening she has unwittingly followed him into a nearby cave and wakes up on the morning of the wedding as if nothing has happened.
Nyles, who has been stuck in the same day for what feels like an eternity, now has a partner in crime. The pair embark on a series of increasingly madcap antics that pull them closer to one another, but inevitably leave an impact on the world around them.
Happy Death Day (2017)
Jessica Rothe plays Tree, a college student who relives her birthday over and over again. That might sound like one endless party, but while her evening does start out that way, it ends with her being brutally murdered by a mysterious masked killer. Each time she dies she wakes up back where her day began, hung over in the dorm room of her classmate Carter (Israel Broussard).
After a few deadly encounters, and similarly mortifying walks of shame, Tree realises she has no alternative but to catch her own killer and prevent her endless death. Happy Death Day is that rare beast, a horror movie that is genuinely funny, while also managing to be a comedy that will scare you silly. The sequel, Happy Death Day 2U , repeats the formula, and its success.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Tom Cruise is at his best when pushing back against his movie-star looks and playing flawed, unlikeable characters. In Doug Liman’s hugely entertaining adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need is Kill, Cruise does precisely that, as John Cage, a slimy media relations officer for the military.