Oblivion
Overview
Earth lost a war with aliens, humanity moved off-world, and Jack Harper stayed behind to fix drones. That's the setup Joseph Kosinski gives Tom Cruise in one of the sleekest-looking sci-fi films of the 2010s. Jack patrols a drowned, shattered planet with his partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), his memory wiped for security reasons, counting down the days until he can leave. Then a ship crashes, he pulls a woman out of a sleeping pod, and she knows his name — even though he's never met her. Or has he. Olga Kurylenko plays the stranger, Julia, and Morgan Freeman turns up as the leader of a resistance that shouldn't exist, asking questions Jack was told never to ask. Oblivion borrows pieces from a dozen sci-fi classics and doesn't hide it, but the production design is gorgeous — all glass towers, white suits, and real Icelandic landscapes — and M83's score gives the whole thing a dreamy pulse. If you like your sci-fi clean, quiet, and built around one big unraveling secret, this one's easy to enjoy.
