OBLIVION (Joseph Kosinski, 2013)

-

OBLIVION at its finest moments, is a stirring ode to humanity. Joseph Kosinski outdid himself this time, creating a futuristic vision that's loads better than TRON LEGACY although TRON LEGACY is on a league of its own greatness. 

Fragments of TRON LEGACY can be seen all over OBLIVION (music, production design, and story) with some hints of INCEPTION (without the ambiguous ending) and TOTAL RECALL. 

Tom Cruise in sheer, muscular form is Jack Harper, a drone technician who is weeks away from concluding his mission on a now desolate Earth. Alongside him is his communications officer and lover Vika (Andrea Riseborough), and together they are "an effective team". On a routine mission to repair two drones in separate locations, Jack encounters scavengers who try to capture him. But not everything is at it seems. 

On a desolate facade, with sunken ships and monuments, Earth is now close to its end. Aliens once tried to steal our moon and succeeded. Now, all of what's left of humanity has migrated to Jupiter's moon Titan, and our waters are being harnessed for energy. Jack and Vika are sent back to Earth to oversee a smooth migration, but somewhere in the deepest recesses of Jack's mind inhabit the most unsettling of memories- of a love that is lost. Or is it a deception? Or a foreshadowing?

OBLIVION works like a riddle during its first and second acts, with the story propelling from one point to another, until Kosinski takes us on a journey into the absurd. Unlike INCEPTION though, there is an explanation at the end of OBLIVION, but the labyrinthine plot progression makes for a guaranteed fun watch. Good thing the twist was revealed via images and not by Morgan Freeman in a voice over.

If you need a character to act as the film's de facto narrator, get Morgan Freeman. he has this innate quality that makes him an authority figure in the movie, which in turn leads us to believe everything he says. 

Olga Kurylenko has gone from a generic damsel in distress in HITMAN to Bond Girl to a Sci-Fi chick (although the 'chick' in this Sci-Fi is debatable because Andrea Riseborough renders equal hotness and badassness), but as flight crew Julia Rusakova, I had hoped for more character dynamic, because in the end she isstill the damsel in distress. 

"Are you an effective team?" quips Melissa Leo who plays Sally, Jack and Vika's commander. She repeats this throughout the movie in a mantra that you'd suspect something is wrong with her. Or with the setup of the story. Ah plot giveaways!

I liked the nostalgic tone of the movie, and the throwback to some of the best Sci-Fi films ever produced. Kosinski knows how to spin one entertaining Sci-Fi yarn. I just wonder if those shots of Cruise flexing his muscles were really necessary. Come on, OBLIVION will still work even if Cruise is less macho of a man. He's a spaceship pilot, not Jack Reacher. 

RATING: 3/5






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TUHOG (Jeffrey Jeturian)

-
Image
Film within a film-structured movies are always interesting watch. Not only do they provide a much-needed deconstruction of form and content of cinema itself, but also that much-needed emotional punch a cinephile would surely love.  Like in BAD EDUCATION (Almodovar, 2004), we witness the characters tell the back story via montage, as if we are part of the cast of characters watching an actual movie. The form was successful in evoking pain and regret, and also of empathy. In TUHOG, Jeffrey Jeturian and screenwriter Bing Lao tackles sensational media in the Philippines, especially in cinema. The film opens as a film producer hears a pitch for a possible movie- a story of a grandfather who rapes his own granddaughter.  The director of the film soon after visits the victim of the crime, Floring (Ina Raymundo). Coercing both she and her mother, Perla (Irma Adlawan) to sell them the movie rights to their story, we witness as exploitation cinema unfolds. To think of it, capitalizing on ta
Read more

ANINO SA LIKOD NG BUWAN (Jun Lana, 2015)

-
Image
* English title "Shadow behind the Moon" The best term to describe Jun Lana's latest film would be a cinematic charade- a game of identities, of motives, of suppressed passions, and of uncertainty. Or the film equivalent of a Russian doll, if you will. "Anino sa Likod ng Buwan" only has three characters- husband and wife Nando (Anthony Falcon) and Emma (LJ Reyes) and military man Joel (Luis Alandy). What started as a seemingly routine banter among friends gradually and intensely escalated into an examination of society, where the definition of immorality is blurred during a time of insurgency.  And in fact, the film does discuss the subject of immorality from various paradigms. When does adultery become acceptable, and to whom? Is sexual liberation more heinous than murder? Why is immorality always a double standard? The film plays out the ideas in endless games. Or are they really games at all? Lana could have stopped there, but he didn'
Read more

A study of spaces in Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's 'Happy Old Year'

-
Image
Space is both an overarching theme and visual signifier in Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's Happy Old Year . Its protagonist, Jean (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying) comes home from a lengthy stay abroad, determined to declutter her life, and along with it, old things that belong to a past she is desperately running away from. As we watch Jean plan the redesign of their family house into a more spacious and minimalist residential office, we also witness the transformation of the persons that inhabit the house, as well as their connection to other people, most of them absent from the frame. Jean the destroyer Millennials have often been criticized for being rash with their actions, and for having their way, no matter what. The filmmaker, a millennial himself, understands this stigma, and subliminally argues that millennials are the way they are because of a multitude of factors: rising cost of living, the evolution of discourse as a result of technology (such as film streaming se
Read more