Water Levels, Nukes, Drones, and the Casual Diplomacy of "Oblivion"

Oblivion

Directed by Joseph Kosinski

Three and One Half Stars

Science fiction is less a genre than a society, and to join, one must pay tribute to the council of elders. More than any other genre, fans of science fiction scour their films for references to the titans of its heritage. The allusions are often scattered throughout as deliberate, coy visual cues, not unlike a word search. It is customary, for example, to represent any malicious artificial intelligence with the ominous red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" ("Red Planet", "Moon", "WALL-E"...). But that's just one example, and one of many that Joseph Kosinski conjures in the clever and striking "Oblivion", a science-fiction blockbuster in the classic sense, placing lavish visuals and exciting action in the service of simple and elegant political ideas.

Nothing Behind Us, Everything Before Us, As Always it is On the Road

On the Road

Directed by Walter Salles

Three Stars

Note: This is the first review I've written since the passing of my hero Roger Ebert. I'd like to dedicate this review in his honor.

I've looked forward to reviewing Walter Salles' adaptation of Jack Kerouac's landmark novel, "On the Road", if only because it would afford me the opportunity to write about the book itself, which is among my very favorites. Kerouac had captured, in vibrant color, an entire cultural movement. The Beats, they called themselves, an underground generation of progressive liberation, punctuated by sex, drugs, and jazz, that laid the foundation for the  hippy movement of the late sixties. He told a tale of the last days of an untamed American countryside, as the coasts had just begun to close in on each other, and cries of freedom still disappeared into a sprawling, wild openness, populated sporadically by strange and eclectic characters that seemed as if from another world.

Roger Ebert Remembered

Roger Ebert (1942 - 2013)

"Thank You." Roger Ebert opened his last blog entry this way, a gesture of gratitude and reflection that hinted ominously at tragedy. Ebert went on to confess that he would be dialing back the near superhuman output of reviews, blogs, and other writings he had maintained for years. He is not as he was, he told us, but he would continue on at a pace more befitting a man of 70 with recurrent cancer. Two days ago he wrote this. And now, today, while at work, a friend of mine texted me the news. Roger Ebert was dead.