Oblivion Reviews
Top CriticFeels ever more grounded and stuck ...
Was Cruise trying to beat out fellow Scientologist John Travolta for the honor of starring in the dumbest sci-fi epic ever?
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.
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| Original Score: 2/4
This is the sci-fi movie equivalent of a pretty damn good cover band.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Glossy, derivative, ambitious and fatally underpowered.
The story eventually devolves into a grab bag of sci-fi tropes but, as with so many other Cruise productions, the sheer scale of everything is so mind-numbing that you may not notice.
The sly, surprising and visually magnificent Tom Cruise vehicle that has forced me - and many other people, I suspect - to revise my first opinion of director Joseph Kosinski.
Oblivion is an okay blockbuster, a multimillion-dollar exercise in competence.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Kosinski offers plenty of action here, and he lets the plot reveals bleed out slowly (explanations keep coming right to the end). Yes, a great deal is derivative, but it's fast-moving derivative.
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| Original Score: B
A movie that combines a lot of different films, yet somehow remains less than the sum of its parts ...
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
More adventurous than your typical Hollywood tent pole, "Oblivion" makes you remember why science fiction movies pulled you in way back when and didn't let you go.
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| Original Score: 4/5
If you're able to forgive and forget, Oblivion isn't a bad place to start loving Tom Cruise all over again.
Director Joseph Kosinski focuses on cool visuals but stints on a compelling plot. It's a dazzler, but the story lacks the impact of the futuristic look.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The mystery posed by "Oblivion" as a whole is why its mysteries are posed so clumsily, and worked out so murkily.
The agony of being a longtime Tom Cruise fan has always been a burden, but now it's just, well, dispiriting.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
[Cruise] oversees some pretty impressive stuff here, from the drones that ping-pong around in the air to the bubbleship that Jack uses to go to and fro to that awesome house with its panoramic views.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Kosinski's personal commitment to gorgeous artifice above all other considerations only harms the film so much.
Oblivion gives us stars in the cast, stars in our eyes and it even tweaks a brain cell or three.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The film is rife with elements from its finest predecessors - Kubrick, Lucas, the Wachowskis and Pixar could be listed as creative consultants - but it has the spirit of a love letter to classic sci-fi, not an opportunistic mash-up.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Playing spot-the-influence is the most fun you'll have during this expensive-looking, slow-moving plod through familiar territory.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Instead of developing characters, Kosinski pours most of his imagination into the annihilated landscapes and futuristic gadgetry.
When you go to a futuristic, dystopian, post-apocalyptic barn dance starring Tom Cruise and his space guns, you expect a little zap with your thoughtful pauses.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
For all the bells and whistles - an electronic score by M83, a screen-busting Imax presentation and Cruise going full throttle - Oblivion feels arid and antiseptic, untouched by human hands.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The filmmakers don't even have the courage to see the story to its proper end, opting for a ridiculous finale that feels vaguely insulting.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Oblivion is imperfect but some of its imperfections result from being overly ambitious.
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| Original Score: 3/4
You start wondering whether director Joseph Kosinski and screenwriters Karl Gajdusek and Michael DeBruyn have any original ideas of their own. And then you realize they don't.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The mix of gee-whiz gadgetry and the day-to-day routineness of Jack and Victoria's lives is interesting enough, but the film is too glacially paced for it to work.
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| Original Score: 2/4
As its palpable sense of dread -- well-sustained in a gently cascading first hour -- gives way to dead ends, this Omega Movie shoots itself in the foot.
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| Original Score: 2/5
"Oblivion" may not live up fully to its grand ambitions, but it isn't for lack of trying.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
All the eye candy in the world can't mask the sensation that you've seen this all before...and done better. Too bad the movie's script wasn't given the same attention as its sleek, brave-new-world look.
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| Original Score: C+
Rendered with equal parts urgency and familiarity.
For those who enjoy the simple thrill of handsomely stylized image-making, ''Oblivion'' is mostly mesmerizing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Director Kosinski proves himself talented in ways his Tron: Legacy didn't suggest.
If the dialogue and the concepts of Oblivion had been as fresh and powerful as its art direction, we'd really have something here. Instead, it's something borrowed packaged inside something new.
A terrific-looking sci-fier that loses steam in the second half.
Kosinski continues to lavish far more thought on how his elaborate fantasy worlds look than how they work, and neither the politics nor the human stakes here coalesce into rational or relatable drama.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
A moderately clever dystopian mindbender with a gratifying human pulse, despite some questionable narrative developments along the way.
