Kurt Loder Reviews Oblivion and Upstream Color
The new Tom Cruise movie Oblivion is a light sci-fi snack of gently pre-chewed elements from other, meatier futuristic films, writes Kurt Loder. Biding your time as these familiar tokens drift by -- the Blade Runner identity games, the hovering white pods and menacing red HAL eye of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a half-buried urban landmark not unlike the one in Planet of the Apes -- you think: not bad, not bad. Then you go back to biding your time.
Upstream Color, on the other hand, is a picture that's baffling from beginning to end, at least on first viewing; but it's also woozily beautiful. And since self-taught writer, director, producer, and editor Shane Carruth is clearly no poser, we at least have to accept that this is the movie he really, really wanted to make.
