Showing from April 26: Oblivion ****

Stars: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko.
Director: Joseph Kosinski.
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Speciality Theatre. Fri-Sat 2:30pm, 6:30pm, 9:30pm. Sun 2pm, 4:45pm, 7:30pm. Mon-Thur 2:30pm, 6:30pm, 9:30pm.
Action, adventure,mystery.

The dystopian thriller Oblivion is a breathtaking collage of welcome originality and references to a huge common cultural bank of fantasy images and themes. It’s grandiose in scope and scale, attentive to important details like character and tone, and unafraid to tackle mature themes like love and loss, personal identity and redemption. If there’s a better science-fiction blockbuster this year, I’ll count us lucky.

The film stars an intensely focused Tom Cruise as Jack Harper, a futuristic repairman tending to weaponized drones that guard the giant rigs mining earth’s final reserves of energy.

The year is 2077, 60 years after an invasion by alien hordes devastated the planet. The remaining human population has relocated to one of Saturn’s moons. Only violent alien marauders remain on the surface, sabotaging the equipment extracting the planet’s last resources.

Yet Jack, five years after his mandatory memory wipe, can’t shake the feeling that this eerie brave new world is still his home. Who is that woman (Olga Kurylenko) who reappears so insistently in his dreams?

The film’s look is mesmerizing, combining hypnotically sleek industrial design, workaday grubbiness and immense landscapes so stunningly barren they elicit tangible unease.