Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013)

[tabuno]

A great movie even with the unnecessarily and perhaps outdated use of switches and manual instrumentation for Tom Cruise’s bubble cruiser, an almost nauseating voice-over narrative at the beginning unlike the acceptable to some voice over of Blade Runner (1982), a patently fake looking lunar moon, and the disappearance of a major female character occurring off camera. This is one of those movies where such flaws are easily overcome by the rest of the visual spectacle, artistic landscape and set design, and of course the storyline. What is fascinating about this tent-pole sci fi psychological action thriller extravaganza is that it isn’t all that original, but nevertheless with its tight fusion of previous incarnations that are so well weaved into the storyline, producing a substantive film with two compelling twists offering an American theme ending that it becomes more than its parts and becoming a very well made movie.

There are strong elements taken from Total Recall (1990) and improved on, devoid of the stereotypical arch enemy and false persona and replaced both by an underlying emotional humanity as well as a detached alien presence. There are elements of The Matrix (1999) but not as eerily and epic-like presentation retaining more of simplicity and uncluttered landscape of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1982) but incorporating elements of awesomeness as found in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and psychological unbalancing as found in Source Code (2011). The twists in this movie is similar to that found in Moon (2009) which focused more on the singular psychological and ethical aspect of a man confronted with loneliness and in which Oblivion finds a way to expand of the more tortured and dichotomous incongruity of the multiplicity of human life or that of a man having to face up to what had been an entire illusion one’s existence as in Planet of the Apes (1968).

Even so, Oblivion manages to retain a persistent theme of love and intimacy Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and as convoluted as Solaris (2002). The musical sound track resonates in places as symphonic as those found in Electric Dreams (1984) or Wavelength (1983). Other familiar themes may have been taken from Tom Cruise’s own Minority Report (2002) and Surrogates (2009) as well as one of the sci fi classics of all time Blade Runner (1982) that dwelt with human identity and emotional connections in a dystrophic future.

[Johann]

Visually it looks amazing. But I'll pass. Thanks for your thoughts tabuno.

I'll pass because I just don't like Tom Cruise.
I don't think he'll ever make a film that will impress me more than Eyes Wide Shut, and it wasn't because of his performance either- it was Kubrick.

I don't even know what kind of movie he could do to get me stoked. He's been in so many movies over the years that I don't think he has any faces anymore. I saw him on The Daily Show recently and he seemed to be campaigning to win fans back, saying he just wants to give the audience a good show. OK Tom. If reviews of Oblivion sway me, reviews that convince me that you put on the BEST SHOW you possibly could, I'll check it out.
But right now, your Mega-Buck career isn't blowing me away. And I don't know how you could do it, to be frank.
Eyes Wide Shut was 15 years ago. Kubrick didn't teach you anything?
Besides telling you to work with P.T. Anderson?
What have you done since?
You sat on top of the Burj tower in Dubai without a harness. Yay.

[Chris Knipp]

I would want to see this. There are a lot of other movie things for me to do right now so I don't know when I will though. Whether I will like it or not I don't know; it's a tossup. The Metacritic rating is 53, Kenneth Turan of the LA Times giving the best review and Manohla Dargis giving the worst one. I do not write off Cruise. He really has done plenty of good stuff all through the last decade, Johann. Look at his filmography. MI: GHOST PROTOCOL is great. MINORITY REPORT. The self-parody in TROPICAL THUNDER. Michael Mann's terrific COLATERAL.

[Johann]

I'm not writing him off- you can't write him off. He bounces back better than anybody.
I'm just not stoked.

I walked out of Minority Report and haven't seen it since.
the Mission: Impossible series seems like James Bond without a pulse. I'm just not stoked.
Tropic Thunder is worth watching for Robert Downey Jr ONLY. (and I think you'd need an ounce of good herb as well;)

Collateral is one I enjoyed- but, like Eyes Wide Shut, Cruise is secondary to the Master behind the lens...


Sometimes I really wish Kubrick had taken a chance on Val Kilmer as Bill Harford.
Stanley! You see? A married Hollywood couple meant NOTHING! Cruise and Kidman are divorced!
You should have hired Val Kilmer! He would've killed it!

[Chris Knipp]

I don't agree with you on debunking MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL, the latest one or Cruise's turn in it. It's great fun, a brilliant fantasy action film. New director. Cruise does a surprising job in COLLATERAL. I can't second-guess Kubrick in his casting of EYES WIDE SHUT, though of course Kilmer tried a greater range of things than Cruise early on. Cruise's performance in MAGNOLIA is important, not just Kubrick's suggesting he work with PT Anderson. Once you start debunking somebody, your steamroller never stops. And you do it well. But I don't see the points to be gained for undermining Cruise just because he is a superstar. He's already plenty tarnished. Let him lay. He's done some good work, and recently. Leave it to lesser men to trash him.

[Chris Knipp]

The opening paragraph of Manohla Dargis' NYT review of OBLIVION. Ouch.

If only it were less easy to laugh at “Oblivion,” a lackluster science-fiction adventure with Tom Cruise that, even before its opening, was groaning under the weight of its hard-working, slowly fading star and a title that invites mockery of him and it both. The agony of being a longtime Tom Cruise fan has always been a burden, but now it’s just, well, dispiriting. You not only have to ignore the din of the tabloids and swat away the buzzing generated by his multiple headline-ready dramas, you also have to come to grips with the harsh truth that it no longer actually matters why and how Tom Terrific became less so. No one else much cares.

But that of course shows she walked into the screening room with prejudices. How you can not do so I have no idea, however. I must say he just seemed to me a non-entity in JACK REACHER (which cinemabon liked).

[Chris Knipp]

I just re-posted my review of Francois Ozon's highly successful new movie IN THE HOUSE, which goes into limited US release today. April 19, 2013. I hope some of you will get to see it and maybe you'll forget about OBLIVION.

I also just say a preview of the upcoming limited release of Carlos Reygadas' POST TENEBBRAS LUX. Like all his work it's a mind-blower. My man Mike D'Angelo goes into it in detail in one of his Cannes AV Club dispatches last May. He leaves open that if there's some secret overall deep meaning he has missed he'd upgrade it dramatically (there's a lot of head-scratching stuff) but for now, he ranks it pretty low among his Cannes viewings. It's fun to watch stuff as wild and nutty and brilliantly original as POST TENEBRAS LUX, though. That's why D'Angelo wrote so much about it, and why he wrote that letter to Lars von Trier at an earlier Cannes making me start to follow his writing. This one is sort of like Shane Carruth's UPSTREAM COLOR, which, however, makes more sense, but hasn't quite got the scary wildness.

[cinemabon]

Oblivion directed by Joseph Kosinski

“Just another day in paradise,” Tom Cruise’s character, Jack, says as the film opens. Yet even during this voice-over narration in absence of any credits, we find hints of a life that had been and shadows of what once was – an Earth like the one we know, vibrant with people and activity, now gone, shattered, with only broken remains. Jack is alone on Earth with his partner, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough – a thirty-one year old East Ender whose smooth delivery and expert execution bring the level of the film up from your usual heavily laden special effects film). Victoria and Jack have been assigned to maintain the ocean reapers, which supply Earth’s survivors who have been transplanted to the moon, Titan. Every day they check in with the colony, the face of that authority being a southern belle named Sally (Melissa Leo) whose terse replies are somewhat suspect, as if she had to take a hard line with the subordinates left on the planet.

According to Jack’s narrative, Earth was attacked by an alien race. But the humans won the war. Jack and Victoria are the mop-up crew, taking out the few last stragglers of aliens still alive who are trying to gum up the works. The world of Jack and Victoria is a very clean one, made up of steel, glass, and white Formica with electronic devices that have a futuristic albeit convenience-oriented bent. They love one another and the affection comes through from the very first scene where we see them part after spending the night together.

When Jack is sent to investigate another sabotage on one of their facilities, he is rescued by one of the automated drones, flying, floating killing machines programed to rid the planet of the alien manifestation. Relieved to be alive after the incident, Jack makes a solo flight, “off grid,” to an isolated spot – a valley – one of the few remaining places left on the planet where life still flourishes. Jack has built a cabin on a small lake and has brought a number of “memorabilia,” books, and recordings there. These seem to jog his memory of another life, a past life perhaps. We are never certain. This harmonious day to day existence is all about to change when the couple discovers a beacon sent from the “forbidden zone” where radiation is high. The beacon is mysteriously directed to space and everything you thought the film was about, rapidly changes to the point that any further discussion of the plot would become a spoiler.

For “Oblivion” while resembling other science fiction films in certain aspects to its ending, is for the most part, a surprising breath of fresh air in the genre and full of so many twists and turns that to even hint as to what happens next would be a disservice to you, the reader, and to my integrity as a reviewer. There is a great surprise here, and that is Tom Cruise. He brings his whole game to this film. He surprised critics in his last Mission Impossible film and he will surprise you with Oblivion. Once more I would reiterate that there are so many twists and turns to the plot that will you be running to catch up, breathless when the final bit of irony is displayed. The powerful cast, along with actress Olga Kurylenko’s brilliant performance as Julia, the girl with the mysterious past, adds to the level of excellence.

Kudos also go to production designer Darren Gilford (who also worked with Kosinski on Tron) and art director Kevin Ishioka (who worked on Tron and Avatar) for their incredible sets and look of the film, bridging the contrast between the techno-society and that of the post-apocalyptic planet Earth. Richard Francis-Bruce has keep the fast pace of editing for the fight sequences and cinematographer and Oscar winner, Claudio Miranda (Life of Pi) has given us a rich tapestry of images that are swimmingly eye candy to dwell in.

All and all, Oblivion is a science fiction film that surprises and delivers all the goods you’d expect from a good film with the qualities one you would find in films you’d consider great. For Sci-fi fans and even those who just love a good story that is not predictable (I know the critics are split on this one), I feel the film is a refreshing break from the “villain” pictures one sees so often. I had a marvelous time and I hope you do to, even if you are skeptical of Tom Cruise as an actor. I only have one recommendation – highly recommended.

Tab you beat me to this one. You must have seen a midnight show.

[tabuno]

I sat in for the 8 p.m. Thursday, April 18th showing at the Megaplex Legacy Theater in Centerville, Utah. My wife said Thursday was a good day of the week for her considering her weird work schedule.

Utah's largest state newspaper movie critic gave it three and a half stars out of four.

While I beat Cinemabon's posting, he sure beat me on his excellent movie summary and tight movie critic writing style.

[Chris Knipp]

If you start citing reviews you can get yourself into trouble. I also notice that the best known local print movie reviewer, Mick LaSalle, gives OBLIVION a positive. But as I mentioned, the no. 2 NY Times critic, Manohla Dargis, has nothing whatsoever good to say about it, or its star. and guess who didn't like it? ROGER EBERT. It was one of his last reviews and it begins thus:

If nothing else, "Oblivion" will go down in film history as the movie where Tom Cruise pilots a white, sperm-shaped craft into a giant space uterus. The scene is more interesting to describe than it is to watch. Cruise's sperm-ship enters through an airlock that resembles a geometrized vulva. He arrives inside a massive chamber lined with egg-like glass bubbles. At the center of the chamber is a pulsating, sentient triangle that is also supposed to be some kind of mother figure. Cruise must destroy the mother triangle and her space uterus in order to save the Earth.

Like director Joseph Kosinski's debut, "TRON: Legacy" (2010), "Oblivion" is a special effects extravaganza with a lot of blatant symbolism and very little meaning. It starts slow, turns dull and then becomes tedious — which makes it a marginal improvement over the earlier film. It features shiny surfaces, clicky machinery and no recognizable human behavior. It's equally ambitious and gormless.
--Roger Ebert "Oblivion" review.

This is the guy who founds something to like in almost every movie he saw. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing it. But also showing in my area that I have not seen:

DISCONNECT. Metacritic rating 66 (OBLIVION'S is 55, remember) and about this one Mick Lasalle wrote a rave.
FROM UP ON POPPY HILL Metacritic rating 73 - Japanese animation by the son of Miyazaki
MY BROTHER THE DEVIL Metacritic rating 72. English film about a young Arab man in London in a gang
LET MY PEOPLE GO No rating. Finnish gay Jewish story (!?)
42 Metacritic rating 62. Everybody knows what this one is.

Furthermore I find that also showing here now is Shane Carruth's amazing

UPSTREAM COLOR. Metacritic 82.

I have seen that, but it is worth seeing again, in fact seeing it again is almost manadatory.

This is, admittedly, though not NYC or LA, an excellent place to see new movies. If you don't have the choices listed above, OBLIVION may be your best bet!

In fact, MY BROTHER THE DEVIL and LET MY PEOPLE GO! aren't listed as showing in LA. Those I listed above are currently in theaters in the East Bay. Over in San Francisco they are also showing these additional new or recent films:

ROOM 237 (Metacritic rating 81),
NO PLACE ON EARTH (Metacritic rating 61),
BLANCANIEVES (Metacritic rating 79),
THE ANGLE'S SHARE (Metacritic rating 68) Ken Loach's new one

The situation is pretty good right now. So with nine more highly rated new films that I have not yet seen currently playing in local theaters, why would I run to see OBLIVION first?

[tabuno]

I'd better stay away from professional movie reviewer comments I guess and stick to the actual merits of this creative feature films. Great art in my opinion is based on the use of many elements in a creative way that offers up a sensory feast that emotionally rivets and stimulates the mental faculties. The mass audience and its less than qualitative and quantitatively rich repository of a plentitude of films that professional movie reviews retain, Oblivion offers its this audience a rich assortment of a collage of elements, building from the vast rich history of sci fi films and creative a nicely balanced and smoothly connect love, sci-fi, action thriller story that has a huge impact on the eyes, ears, and mind. It leaves the audience with a haunting, dizzying feeling of wonderment, of huge, off-kilter scenes never really quite offered up before. It offers the audience a storyline that tilts reality and tosses one's reality of perception to side to side.

Both Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and Oblivion at one point taps into the America pride, centering on our flag and nation, fighting against some "enemy" and in the case of Olympus Has Fallen it taps into the father-son connection and in Oblivion into the deep man and woman connection and even more. Unlike Moon (2009) and its singular focus on one man's extended quest of an isolated self-mystery or the isolate man's surrealistic survival on a space module (2011), Oblivion offers a fusion of both riveting action, gorgeous epic scenery, a man's real man's fantasy getaway, and variations on love and the torture of less than what many of us understand as idealistic movie love, deliciously confusing the audience even more in an mind-opening look at future possibilities (something great movies do).

[cinemabon]

I'd like to compare apples with apples in this case. I find it interesting that Ebert, who has been gone for two weeks and was in fading condition before that, managed to screen the film so early (although it is possible). It is interesting to note that "Oblivion" is part of a new class of films that are no longer printed on 35mm stock but transferred to theaters via digital media (either as DVD or streamed). I saw it electronically translated (DLP) on a huge screen in my Cineplex (Raleigh has about a dozen or so scattered around our tri-city area) and the picture quality was superb - no longer the scratches, pops, transfers from one reel to the next or variations in sound from sound heads.

I believe Kosinski focused on the story and did not rely too much on the special effects. I believe that when effects were used, such as the "bubble" vehicle, it was used to great effect to enhance Jack's superior nature (at first) in the film before he comes to earth (the ground) and begins to explore. The way it was designed, the bubble, was on purpose by both Cruise and Kosinski, so that Miranda could move his camera in close and shoot right through the glass at his actors while the action happened around them.

********SPOILER********

Yes, there are parallels to other films (An Affair to Remember for one; I disagree with Corliss about Sleepless in Seattle, et al the previous mention), however, the most obvious one is "Independence Day" and I didn't want to mention that because the reader will immediate draw their own conclusions. If you did, you'd be wrong... and Ebert gives the same impression in his review and he is wrong. That is not the end of the film nor is it "the climax" although it is certainly one of the most fascinating parts. I felt the events leading up to the "insertion" were even more revealing when the contents of the "black box" peeled back more of the onion to show us that the core to this film was far more complex that we first thought. This is the great surprise that will come as welcome to fans of sci-fi, that at last a screenwriter could twist a plot that wasn't so predictable, that a villain wasn't doomed to blow up at the end and the rest was simply resolution. We just didn't know how it would end... and wasn't that welcome.

For the critics (cream of the crop), the film had a 50/50 response - about half liked it and most of those are younger reviewers whose eyes were not clouded by comparing the film to so many science fiction movies of the past. Whether an homage or not, Kosinski seemed to have borrowed ideas that worked in other films and incorporated them into this film. Even I admit that. But others just didn't like Cruise and no matter how hard Tom tries, they still don't like him. NYTimes reviewer Manohla Dargis confessed to be an admirer of Cruise and found it difficult to review the film because of her disappointment with recent news stories. This sort of admission of prejudice should have disqualified her review from the start (I suppose her honesty was refreshing).

[Chris Knipp]

If you've seen any science-fiction film worth a crap in the last twenty years, you've already seen a better version of Oblivion, I promise you.
--Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central, review of "Oblivion".

So I guess that means that if your being a "young critic" means you have not seen any of the science-fiction films worth a crap made in the last twenty years, you're just the person who can like OBLIVION.

[Johann]

I was downtown Toronto yesterday and happened upon a Universal Pictures media van that was promoting Oblivion.
I poked my head in and two young guys invited me in. They gave me some free Oblivion swag (but not unless I had my photo taken with the swag): a plastic bag water bottle with a carabiner attached to it and two paper toys for kids- the bubble sperm ship that Cruise rides in.

Both items had "Oblivionmovie2012" stamped on it, which means that this movie was scheduled for release last year.
The film you see now must've been tweaked to compete with the like of The Dark Knight Rises, which would've slaughtered
Oblivion at the box office.

That's why we see it in April 2013.
It wasn't good enough to run with the big boys.

[cinemabon]

Yes, Chris, but the critics are evenly divided...

“Oblivion” is a technical triumph rather than a philosophical breakthrough, demonstrating how beautifully digital effects can be blended with real people and real sets, demonstrating that neither Tom Cruise nor the 1970s will ever die, and announcing the unexpected arrival of a major science-fiction director. - Andrew O'Hehir

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/19/pick..._source=feedly