Oblivion (8/10)

There's always more good when the director is also a writer, especially when he's new and has eight years to fine-tune the story. Just like when M. Night Shyamalan first started out. And thus Oblivion is such to Joseph Kosinski.

And I liked Oblivion much more than his first big budget movie, TRON: Legacy.

I thought the storyline was very well thought out and has enough detailing to plunge the audience into Kosinski's world. Even though the background may be a little sketchy due to the nature of the storyline, but still it gave me enough to have my own thoughts and interpretations.

This was one of those stories that leaves you with more to talk about and discuss after watching it, a la Inception. Although it may not be up to the latter's calibre, however this stood well on its own against many others already this year.

*Spoiler alert in the next couple of paragraphs.

One thing I found sorely lacking was the whole alien bit towards the end. We as the audience didn't get to understand much about those machines and their purpose of invasion.

The other thing I didn't get was why Tom Cruise's character had to eject the pods that contained Olga Kurylenko's character when they were approaching the unknown entity. Or why Kurylenko's character wasn't shocked when she discovered Cruise's clone. If she had been asleep all this while after Cruise ejected her, then she would be more in the dark. But her reaction was quite the opposite.

Given the opportunity I would watch this movie again, just like Inception, so that I could perhaps understand further or fill in all these gaps. But it definitely was very interesting. The pacing especially was well done.