Oblivion (movie)

The weekend was lovely - General's birthday was an endless beady stream of nice meals and intimate cosy moments with the three of us (Rockstar along.) like going to have pizza or to the shooting range or to buy G's bike or to the park to test the 'fetch far' or to sample the new ice-cream or to the movies... 

          We watched Oblivion, which I was very glad we did. Not so much the boys, prolly, because they would say there was a thorough lack of aliens and fighting. But that film was sooooo beautiful. Even the fighting - even the story - seemed unnecessary (though, obviously, necessary). The story, twisty and foreboding as it was, could have been told in half a sentence, but there was a number of clever little hidden troves within it, that I could appreciate. For example 'tet', being the Vietnamese new year, was also a nasty offencive business in Viet Nam by Viet Kong - a code for an effective blitz attack. It is also an Egyptian mark for 'good' and 'wheel'. 

           But I sat at the edge of my seat for the visuals of the duration.

      I cannot get enough of the movies this clear. (Also, I am starting to really, really like Iceland/Greenland scapes (aerial shots).) There is SO much glass. I pay attention to things such as clarity of surfaces and the element of cold, clinical environment the main protagonist is forced to appreciate, but cannot call home or connect to his soul. Even the porcelain beauty of his partner, down to her metallic ring of a belt, is a demonstration of his ambition: gravitation towards a lake cottage full of things that weren't made by machines and are not cleaned by machines. It was funny, in a way, that the only remaining adam was surrounded by three females: The god (Sally, played by a very headmistress-authority-on-a-cellular-level Melissa Leo). The reality (too-perfect-to-be-true character portrayed by Andrea Riseborough). And the flawed, fragmented fantasy in the direction of the salvation. (Played by the earthly majesty of beauty, Olgy Kuryenko.) Tom Cruise, in his fresh young fifties, looks 35. If nothing else positive could be said of the man, he certainly is the testament of greatness to beauticians and youth-surgeons.

           And also there was Morgan Freeman. (And even a little bit of Nicolaj Coster-waldau, all limbs, no less.) And I loved the moment in which Vika tells Julia she's the only survivor of the crash and Julia says 'What do you mean??..' The scene in which Julia starts to laught at the couple that rescued her is also very sad. Seen from her perspective, she handled her situation extremely well. 

I would have loved to read this comic.

Note how he's using an old empty bomb shell as a pot :D