Oblivion

On an Earth rendered uninhabitable by a nuclear war against alien invaders (we won the war but lost the planet), a patrolman (Tom Cruise) and his mate and partner (Andrea Riseborough) maintain a fleet of drones extracting resources and mopping up surviving aliens—or so they think. Written by director Joseph Kosinski, Karl Gajdusek and Michael Arndt, the story is muddled and murky and, for a script based on a graphic novel, awkwardly dependent on exposition and narration (maybe that's why the novel, by Kosinski and Arvid Nelson, remained unpublished). What makes it watchable is Kosinski's (and cinematographer Claudio Miranda's) gift for breathtaking pictorial images—plus, of course, Cruise's undiluted star power. Supporting work from Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau doesn't hurt.