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Tom Cruise once again tackles science fiction in Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion. Kosinski is the director of the notorious Tron: Legacy. Tron: Legacy was a movie I looked forward to, but afterwards, I wanted to burn my Mac mini. It was stupendously boring and superficial. Looks pretty like Olivia Wilde, but ultimately looks were deceiving. So would Oblivion be the same?

I digress. We were supposed to be talking about Oblivion, Tom Cruise, and the director, Kosinski.

Oblivion was written by Kosinski from one of his stories that became a comic book. I can see the comic book panels now and understand the langorious pace several issues would combine to match the first hour and a half of the movie. There was lots of mood setting placing Tom Cruise into the barren, post-alien apocalypse Earth. It took a while before we get into the meat of the story. Tom Cruise must save the remnants of the post-alien apocalypse Earth from the alien invaders. Or was is it the other way around? I should’ve put spoiler alert there. Or are you now keen on one of the many twists! Spoiler Alert!

Tom Cruise was Tom Cruise. Shirtless. Looks the same as he did years ago. Wears the same Yankees cap from the other alien invasion film: The War of the Worlds. He’s the star. Show him as much as possible. And don’t forget to have him running, running, running. Letting those little legs carry him as far and as fast as they can.

The thing most fascinating about Oblivion is that the it started to make sense once the movie began unraveling its mysteries. Things that felt like coincidence where actually explained. Of course, YMMV depending on if you buy the premise of the world Kosinski built. Early on I was not buying it; but the reveals made it worth while.

Oblivion was a lot better than Tron: Legacy. It had some of the same problems though: superficial, pretty, but it definitely made up for it with the twist and turns.

3 of 5 stars.

Admission suffers the same issues as Burt Wonderstone. It’s all over the place. Is it a romantic comedy featuring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd? Is it a stab at social commetary a la Mean Girls? Is it another movie? Yes. Yes. Yes. The problem was it was marketed as a romantic comedy at first and that social commentayr comedy second. But there is also another movie there about Tina Fey’s character and her long gone son given up for adoption. If you had told me there was this movie, I would not wonder what the movie was about. It was made into 3 movies by the creators of the film and all seemed fine. They didn’t sell it that way and that made it feel lousy. The movie deserved better, because it’s better as a whole.

3 of 5 stars.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a mess. It’s like a lame magic trick. You know its bad. You feel terrible watching it. And yet you keep watching hoping that there will be magic soon. The magic never appears and all you have is fake. Bad magic means a bad movie.

The mess is because the movie doesn’t know what to tone to take with the magic. Should it laugh at the practitioners? It did sometimes, but other times their earnestness came through. Olivia Wilde’s character, sadly misused, wanted to be a magician when she grew up. Same with the leads, Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi. Should it treat magic with ironic detachment similar to Blades of Glory? Maybe. It made fun of it and took magic seriously.

The major problem was Burt Wonderstone became a dick as an adult. He took to magic because when he was young because he was friendless and bullied. Yet, when we meet him as an adult he was jaded from the magic. I could not believe that change in him. He needed to find the magic again. Which was another part of the story.

Again, the movie was all over the place. Not very good. And that’s bad magic.

2 of 5 stars.