David here, with a review of this week's biggest super-massive release, Oblivion, while Nathaniel's off in Nashville.
"Seconds left on the clock. So Hubie throws a Hail Mary. Touchdown!" He may be seventy years in the future, and one of only two humans currently living on planet Earth (maybe), but Tom Cruise is still Just Like You. Cruise’s Jack just a regular Joe who likes baseball, Conway Twitty and younger women. Not only has he got one back at base – Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) is his partner on their mission monitoring the planet and repairing the drones roving the barren planet – but he’s got one in his head. Images of the world that was haunt him, as he dreams constantly about Julia (Olga Kurylenko) atop the Empire State Building. When the woman herself crash lands on the planet, impossibly replicated from his dreams, Jack’s uncomplicated life starts to disintegrate.
Oblivion’s title promises the vast grandeur of the most epic blockbusters – the mononymic title booms out of the dark to a blast of noise that’s somewhere between the Inception meme and the THX blast on the aggressive-noise scale. More...