"OBLIVION" and "THE COMPANY YOU KEEP": Briefs.

OBLIVION

Jack's Home in Space

"Oblivion" is an entertaining yet thoughtful film which has us pondering:  what will happen to humans once we kill  Earth and all living things by blanketing the precious planet with deadly CO2?  It stars Tom Cruise in yet another space, sci fi thriller, written by Karl Gajusek and Michael Arndt, directed by Joseph Kosinski.

It's the year 2077.  We find Jack (Tom Cruise) living in a glass box, with the coolest swimming pool ever suspended below. It is cantilevered  by a stainless steel leg over some asteroid orbiting a decimated, dessicated Earth.  Jack lives here with his wife (?), Victoria aka "Vicky," played by Andrea Riseborough.  Jack, a scientist/homeland security agent of sorts, is ordered by Sally (Melissa Leo), a bossy, snarky-voiced face on a screen ("Are you an effective team?"), on missions back on Earth to continue searching for any natural resources.  Vicky maps out Jack's intended location on a table top composed of screens, charts, maps, and pictures that she manipulates with a swipe of a well manicured hand. 

But Jack suffers occasional  flashbacks of images of New York circa 2013  and of a smiling dark-haired woman.  He tells Vicky; she says that can't be happening; you've undergone Memory Wipes (which sounds like something you'd find in Walgreens next to adult diapers).  Sally orders Jack back to Earth, which died due to global warming.   Jack, in a silver space suit, takes off in his shuttle.  Accompanying  him are spherical drones that resemble Chinese Demons, which scan foreign stuff and shoot anything down that doesn't compute. They're not stealthy and sneaky, like today's drones (which yah gotta admit- hate 'em, I know- they're kinda groovy lookin').   As they rise up from behind hills and over canyons, these drones make horrible, loud, grinding sounds like stripped gears on a tractor hauling eight-wheelers.  In one suspenseful scene, one even attempts to assassinate Jack. 

Angry Drones

As Jack's flashbacks recur, he begins to question his identity- who is the woman?  On one harrowing mission he discovers a tribe of humans who never left Earth led by none other than white-haired Morgan Freeman, in round shades with blinder-sides, playing a wise (what else) character named Beech.  With his pony-tailed, right-hand man, Sykes (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), they live practically underground in deep, dark caves, out of drone range.  Jack swears not to betray them.

Jack shuts off his tracking devices so neither Vicky nor Sally can find him and flies to his secret hiding place on Earth- an idyllic, Walden Pond like arrangement, unknown to anyone but Jack.  He goes there to think about stuff and to try to recreate memories of his life on Earth.  On his way back to space, he and his drones discover a crashed space ship strewn about with space pods containing humans in suspended animation.   As he peers into each pod's face plate, he sees THE WOMAN! Julia, played by Olga Kurylenko.  He checks her status and discovers she's been asleep since 2050, seventeen years.  The year everyone had to evacuate planet Earth.  He must save her!  However, the drones go into high dudgeon and blast away at the pods.  Jack blasts the drones before they can blast the woman's pod.  He manages to bring her back to his space pad, shooting his way out of canyons and valleys, downing drones every which way and it's like watching him play a video game (this happens a lot during this film).

Once home, Jack revives her.  Suddenly, the film is about relationships: Vicky is jealous.  But, hey, she is just part of his team, not a real wife, I mean, after all!  Especially after Julia helps him remember that they are married.  After a lot of suspenseful and life-threatening moments, including Sally's thwarted commands, Jack and Julia escape.  He takes her to his secret lair and leaves her.   Several years pass.  She and a toddler are tending a garden.   She senses something behind those trees.  Is she frightened?  Does she try to protect her child?  No.  Just curious.  The trees part-  there's Sykes followed by Beech.  Behind them are all these shabby humans.  I wondered: are they all going to live in that tiny area?  Can Julia's kitchen garden support them all?  And why isn't Jack with them?  Ta Da!  The humans part and who should step into view?


THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

Robert Redford and Jackie Evancho

"The Company You Keep", directed by Robert Redford, written by Lem Dobbs, based on the novel by Neil Gordon, starring Robert Redford, Susan Sarandon, Shia LaBeouf, and Terrence Howard.

I made a special effort to see this film before it left the theatres.  Despite its stellar cast, it didn't do so well at the box office.  Should you have been aware of the turmoil of the '60s and '70s with the Vietnam war protests, hippie counterculture, radical anti-war activists, Kent State shootings, and riots, this film might interest you as it did me.  It should interest others because of its historical background and as a measure of how things have changed.  It's a fictional account of a group of members of the Weather Underground, one of whom allegedly shot and killed a security guard in a bank in Michigan.  Before they could be arrested and brought to trial, they managed to disappear in plain sight for thirty years.  Yes, they were domestic terrorists who felt that the only way to stop the war, stop the shooting of innocent people here and in Vietnam, was through violent protests, since marches and the burning of draft cards, the thousands who protested at anti-war demonstrations, seemed to have no impact.  Today, the only demonstrations of any significance were those against the bombing of Afghanistan in 200l.  We are still there twelve years later.

"The Company You Keep" opens on a typical suburban scene of a husband taking his kids to school, saying goodbye to his wife doing the breakfast dishes.  Except, the look he gives her is freighted with meaning.  His wife is the shooter, Sharon Solarz (Suzanne Sarandon), a former member, who, at the time, implicated Nick Sloan (Redford).   Tired of hiding her real identity, she gives herself up to the FBI.  She can't implicate anyone else because she has no idea of where they live or who they've become.  The FBI, lead by Special Agent Cornelius (the ever wonderful, honey-voiced Terrence Howard) picks up any leads to find them.   Shia LaBeouf plays Ben Shepard, a hot shot reporter (to appeal to a younger audience?)  for the Albany Sun Times.  Shepard had seen an article in a rival paper about Solarz arrest; now nothing will stop him in his quest to be the first to get the scoop on these people. His boss, Ray Fuller (Stanley Tucci) keeps a tight rein on the budget, hampering his efforts. 

Terrence Howard as FBI Agent Cornelius.

Shaggy haired, craggy Jim Grant is an alias for Nick Sloan.   Grant is a successful attorney, a widower with a young daughter, Isabel, played by Jackie Evancho of  America's Got Talent fame.  Hearing of Solarz's arrest, he farms his daughter off to his brother, Daniel (the always watchable Chris Cooper) in a suspenseful scene involving an FBI stake out in a hotel.  Though asked to defend her, he won't fearing doing so will put his and his daughter's life in jeopardy.  Preparing to flee from the home and life he has built with his late wife, he goes in the closet and hauls out his trademark leather jacket, the one the authorities now use to track him down.   Why?  (The photos in the film are of Redford in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.")  As the film follows Sloan, it segues into scenes with other members, such as Mimi (Julie Christie).  Mimi was Grant's lover with whom he had a daughter.  They had given her up as an infant up to a trusted friend, Henry Osborne, played by Brendan Gleeson.  All this unfolds towards the end, following Shepard's dogged investigative reporting.  Mimi's been hiding out with MacLeod (Sam Elliott) in a beautiful home on a lake.  She has an alibi for Sloan as they were together at the time of the shooting and is the only one who can clear his name.  The other members are revealed: Donal Fitzgerald (gravel-voiced Nick Nolte), who owns a business,  and Jed Lewis (Richard Jenkins), now a tenured professor.  As the film progresses, you wonder if Sloan will find Mimi, and will she have the guts to stand by him and help clear his name for his daughter's sake?

Though rather slow-paced and methodical, which is Redford's style, "Company" keeps your interest.  It's shot in his signature golden-green hues, rolling hills and leafy streets, old, well-maintained homes, rustic boatyards, and sun shimmering on lakes.  Thankfully, he kept scenes of the FBI guys racing around in their dark outfits, shades, and SUVs to a minimum.  Shia LaBeouf provides enough heightened activity.  This is a movie worth seeing.  If you can't catch it while it's still in theatres, see it on DVD or by other means.