With only two films under his belt, director Joseph Kosinski‘s architectural background rings loud and clear. From his approach to framing to the elaborate sets, everything feels deliberate. For Kosinski, that purposefulness doesn’t purely derive from painting a shiny picture, but from building character. For his second feature film, Oblivion, the director follows his dissatisfied protagonist, Jack Harper (Tom Cruise), through isolating and contrasting settings highlighting his dillema. Jack’s conflict is what drove Joseph Kosinski to spend the past few years of his life developing the project based on an idea of his own. The TRON: Legacy director wanted to make a character-driven science-fiction film, not a set-piece one. Kosinski’s film isn’t one packed with set pieces, making the movie rest on Jack and Cruise’s shoulders. Kosinski, despite his busy schedule, made the time to speak with us this week after the film’s successful release. Here’s what he had to say about the heart of the film, his favorite set, and how video games differ heavily from movies.

Welcome to another edition of the Reject Recap, where we highlight the past week’s best news and original features from this very movie site and others around the web. You might notice the format is slightly different this time around. You also might notice that we’ve only selected stuff posted to FSR. Part of this is because I’m at a film festival this weekend and didn’t have as much time to browse our friends’ sites. Part is because our writers banged out a lot of great stuff the past few days. Surely you’ll agree while playing catch up. Start your weekend right after the jump.

It’s pretty much impossible to avoid movie/TV spoilers these days, and that’s just a sad reality. Is it the worst thing? Not even close, but that doesn’t mean that those who partake in the spoiling are anything less than pricks. Still, is it possible they’re simply confused pricks? Pricks unknowingly trafficking in the art of premature infojaculation? The past week has seen two interesting discussions arise on the subject, and both of them stem from Tom Cruise’s new film Oblivion. The first one appeared on Twitter as people who had seen early screenings of the film shared their 140-character-long opinions as to what other movies this one reminded them of. They weren’t explicitly stating plot points, but in naming certain, specific movies in their comparisons, those plot points were made implicit and obvious. The second issue was voiced a few days ago by Calum Marsh in a post on Film.com about how film critics shouldn’t care about spoiling a film for their readers. There’s a kernel of truth to his point, but it’s drowned out by the rest of what he says (and how he says it). In both cases the originators claim these circumstances aren’t worthy of being called a real spoiler. In both cases these people are wrong. Before we go any further though, know that there will in fact be spoilers below for Oblivion and Moon as well as a handful of older movies (I’m talking decades old), so consider this your spoiler warning. See how easy that is,

Oblivion is the kind of science fiction movie that plays with a lot of other movies’ toys and forgets to clean them up afterward. Then we all step on a HAL 9000 doll in the middle of the night when we’re going for that last piece of fried chicken in the fridge, and the bruise reminds us to yell rhetorically at the Tom Cruise-starring movie the next morning. How many times have we told it to pick up its things? The movie’s created some mixed responses, but it’s also left behind some huge questions. Plot holes, really, if we’re being honest. It’s messy for how hard it tries to be smart. Some of those questions are inconsequential, some slightly annoying and some vital to what could have been sci-fi success. On their own, they could have amounted to nitpicks, but the sheer number of them (and the severity of a few) made for a truly confused experience. Spoilers for Oblivion abound so beware, but if you’ve already seen or just plain don’t care, let’s dive in to the bizarre question marks looming high in the sky over Joseph Kosinski‘s latest film.

What with Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Elysium, Pacific Rim and the myriad other blockbusting sci-fi movies coming out, 2013 is shaping up to be a great year for the genre. If by “genre” you mean “these four ideas repeated over and over again.”

What happens when a legendary film critic brings is geriatric crankiness to an internet movie show? Film Jockeys follows the adventures of Carl Barker, his far-too-young production staff, the filmmakers and the movie characters that inhabit their world. Written and illustrated by Derek Bacon, it’s the perfect webcomic for passionate movie fans who want to fly Tom Cruise’s space helicopter. For your consideration, Episode #19:

Oblivion is many things. [pause for laughter from readers who've seen the film] It’s a thrilling mix of science fiction, action and discovery. It’s visually stunning and filled with beauties both CGI and natural. It’s a major step up from director Joseph Kosinski‘s debut film (Tron: Legacy). It’s a thinly-veiled commentary on drone warfare. It’s scored with occasional energy and life by M83. It’s a rare example of a film that almost demands to be seen on an IMAX screen. It’s the near epitome of style over substance. And it’s the most derivative sci-fi film since Avatar. Jack (Tom Cruise) is a repairman whose sole duty is keep defensive drones functioning. He and his teammate, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), are the last remaining humans on Earth after a devastating alien attack sent our species scrambling for new digs on Saturn’s moon, Titan. A handful of humans including Jack and Victoria’s commander sit aboard a space station orbiting above them, but when Jack’s curiosity regarding alien actions on the planet’s nuclear pock-marked surface causes friction he’s thrown into an unexpected adventure with far-reaching implications.

On this evening’s edition of Movie News After Dark, we take a closer look at Tom Cruise’s ride in Oblivion, get up close and personal with Silent Ben Affleck, see what Russ Meyer’s Star Wars universe might look like and get down and dirty with the Internet’s finest movie-related accomplishment: the Supercut.

Joseph Kosinski‘s Oblivion is a lot like a fireworks display on a Tuesday. It has no real reason to exist, and while the visuals are exciting, they only impress for fifteen minutes before things get faulty and repetitive. In other words, leave it to Kosinski to make fireworks boring. In the film itself, those fifteen minutes are scattered unevenly through a wasteland that feels much longer than its runtime. Around the third hour of the two-hour-long movie, Morgan Freeman‘s gruff survivalist character describes an outside threat as without a soul, without humanity, merely a beautiful machine. He might as well have been talking about this movie. Jack (Tom Cruise) is a handyman soldier stationed at a beautiful house that stands above the wreckage that used to be the planet. His job is to repair drones that have malfunctioned or been brought down violently by Scavengers — the enemy that destroyed the Moon, that doomed mankind to head for an interstellar refuge and that still lives in small numbers despite the utter devastation caused by earthquakes and floods. That war was sixty years ago, but Jack and his romantic colleague Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are doing a tour of earthbound duty  to ensure that a few giant, floating rigs are able to suck up the remaining sea water in order to harvest energy. However, Jack is plagued by dreams of a woman (Olga Kurylenko) standing atop the pre-war Empire State Building and can’t shake the feeling that he knows her. Eventually, that

This is the month we’ve been building towards ever since the start of 2013. This year was made for this month. Why did the Mayans postpone their destruction of our dear Earth? So they could see what Michael Bay‘s small movie was like. Pain and Gain is his first non-Transformers movie in nearly eight years, and it’s about time the Mayans and the rest of us saw it. That Hasbro series had its moments, but not in the way The Rock and The Bad Boys films did. Pain and Gain looks to fit into that half of Bay’s career. Summer comes early with his dark, ‘roided up comedy, and the same can be said for the movies we’re seeing from Danny Boyle, Shane Carruth, and Joseph Kosinski. In fact, Kosinski’s Oblivion is the only blockbuster on the list. April is shaping up to be a huge month for smaller movies.

Well now, this just seems cruel. While we’ve long known that the Earth would be getting busted up in Joseph Kosinski‘s upcoming Tom Cruise-starring Oblivion, no one ever said a damn thing about the moon (sweet, innocent moon!) taking some heat, too. Though most television spots for new films tend to be cobbled together from a bunch of previously-seen theatrical trailers, one of today’s two new Oblivion spots actually comes complete with some very intriguing new material (yes, like the moon-kablooey) that give us more insight to just what sort of things happened when the film’s aliens (or are they?) destroyed our planet. Yes, we’ve long known about some football stadium-related disasters, but it’s nice to get a larger sense of scope, particularly of the celestial body variety. Check out two new television spots for Oblivion after the break, including that moon-busting little ditty we’ve been teasing.

The fact that Joseph Kosinski‘s Oblivion looks just beautiful in its ads isn’t surprising – his Tron: Legacy may have been a giant disappointment, but that disappointment sure looked nice on the big screen – but now that the wow factor of the Tom Cruise-starring, future-set film has warn off, it’s time we actually examine the meat of what we’ve been shown so far. First of all, no matter what its tagline tells us, we’re fairly certain that Earth isn’t just “a memory.” In fact, we’re also fairly certain that Tom Cruise’s Jack Harper is actually kicking it on Earth throughout much of the film. Gotcha, marketing! Wait, we knew that already? What? Of course we knew that already, but why then is the film’s tagline the bizarrely obtuse “Earth is a memory worth fighting for”? We know that Jack’s down on Earth, tasked with drone repair on a plant ruined after a long war with an alien race (essentially, he’s Wall-E), and we know that he finds people (maybe?) still living on the desecrated planet – so why all this “memory” hubbub? Let’s hope Kosinski has an answer for us to make up for Tron. In the film’s latest trailer, we get more “memory” talk and a greater understanding of Jack’s day to day work. Check it out after the break.

Tom Cruise is in the entertainment news again, but not for the widely acclaimed and well received action flick Jack Reacher. No, the Hollywood powerhouse is once again being talked about because of his very close association with Scientology. Never a group to pass up a chance to take free shots at someone, headlines from semi-journalists everywhere announce “Tom Cruise to Save Fellow Scientology Members from Aliens Within.”  When I first heard that, I was intrigued of course. I thought maybe Cruise had gone off the deep end, publicly, but no, that’s not the case. What’s happening, in reality, is that Pulitzer-Prize winning author Lawrence Wright is releasing a book entitled “Going Clear: Scientology.” In it, the book will supposedly talk about Cruise’s billion-year contract with Scientology and the process of auditing — essentially stuff South Park has already covered. Cruise has been the butt of many jokes for many years, and it’s gotten old. It’s time to give him a break.

Years ago, commercial director Joseph Kosinski was one of the hottest up-and-comers, with a bright, bright future. Then we actually saw that his feature debut, Tron: Legacy, didn’t play as much more than a technically impressive showcase for the filmmaker. He took $150 million and had Jeff Bridges saying stuff like, “Bio-digital jazz, man.” Money not put to good use, I say. Kosinski was then written off as a director with nothing more than a nice eye, no true knack for storytelling. But after seeing the first full-length trailer for his new sci-fi epic, Oblivion, I think maybe some of us spoke too soon. This original science-fiction pic, starring Tom Cruise roaming a desolated Earth, seems like a fairly routine hero’s journey, albeit told on a far more ambitious canvas than what we saw on display in Tron: Legacy. This trailer does a fine job of setting up film’s the world and Cruise’s character, Jack Harper (not to be confused with Jack Reacher). Take a first-look at Oblivion for yourself after the break (or on Apple.com).

No matter how audiences felt about Joseph Kosinski‘s Tron: Legacy (point of fact, this writer did not feel particularly good about it), the film is undeniably a treat for the eyes, so it’s no surprise that Kosinski’s latest outing, Oblivion, already manages to look like a visual feast from a one-sheet poster alone. The Tom Cruise-starrer is based on Kosinski’s (and Arvid Nelson‘s) own graphic novel, and centers on “a spectacular future Earth that has evolved beyond recognition, [where] one man’s confrontation with the past will lead him on a journey of redemption and discovery as he battles to save mankind.” The film also stars Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Melissa Leo. We’ll get our first look at the film’s trailer on Sunday but, for now, this poster is jaw-dropping enough. Oblivion will be released exclusively in IMAX on April 12, 2013, with a wide release following on April 19, 2013. [IGN, via ComingSoon]

Welcome back to everyone’s favorite Friday afternoon mini-feature: Movies Getting Released on Days. Just kidding! It’s the Release Date Round-Up! Yee haw! This time around, we check out the latest dates for Summit Entertainment’s feature adaptation of a beloved YA novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which has been shoved safely away from either Liberal Arts or The Master (your call), along with three very special (read: very different) Universal films, all getting the boot around the release date schedule. Break out your day planners, and read on for new release dates for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Oblivion, Mama, and Rush.

When director Joseph Kosinski revived Disney’s sci-fi classic TRON with the belated but visually dazzling 2010 sequel TRON: Legacy, the results were a mixed bag to say the least. One thing that pretty much everyone could agree upon when it came to that film, however, is that the score by French electronic group Daft Punk was the best thing it had going for it. Eschewing a traditional film score in favor of the pulsing, electronic sounds of Daft Punk worked wonders when it came to bringing the world of TRON to life and really making it hum, and it’s not hard to imagine that the film could have been far less effective without such a perfect marriage of image and sound. TRON: Legacy isn’t the only film that’s gone the nontraditional route when it comes to finding its music in recent years, either. From Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood scoring Paul Thomas Anderson movies, to Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scoring David Fincher films, to The Chemical Brothers providing the music for Joe Wright’s Hanna, bringing a mainstream musician in to score your film instead of hiring one of the well-established film score composers seems to have become a full-scale trend, and a trend that has so far provided us with some amazing music. Since it worked for him once, Kosinski is looking to go back to that well for his next sci-fi adventure, Oblivion. The Playlist reports that in order to find the musical accompaniment for this Tom Cruise-starring tale of

Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski’s upcoming sci-fi project Oblivion has grown in hype quite a bit since it was first announced. Mostly that’s due to the fact that Tom Cruise signed on to be its headliner, and whenever that happens a movie suddenly goes from being a project of the director to being a “Tom Cruise movie” in the hearts and minds of the public. But, spotlight-hogging by Cruise aside, Oblivion is a movie that’s been quietly developing into quite the little ensemble piece over the past few weeks. The film is about a man on a post-apocalyptic world who discovers a crash-landed space ship containing a mysterious woman. Cruise is playing the lead, of course, but Olga Kurlyenko has already signed on to play his wife back home, Andrea Riseborough has signed on to play the crash-landed woman, and according to Deadline Nashoba, not only has Morgan Freeman signed on for a critical role, but Game of Thrones’ Jamie Lannister, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, has also agreed to come on playing the role of Sykes, who is said to be a badass weapons expert. After seeing what he has to offer playing a smug warrior in Game of Thrones, this is a role that I’m confident Coster-Waldau can pull off.

Talk about cinematic whiplash. Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinksi‘s next project has already gone through myriad incarnations, and the project doesn’t even have an official name yet. Count that as one of the incarnations, I guess, because it’s already had two names and is currently title-less, despite the fact that it’s an adaptation of a graphic novel that Kosinski himself has supposedly written that, you guessed it, has a title. Kosinksi conceived of and wrote the graphic novel, known as “Oblivion,” with Arvid Nelson for Radical Publishing, and the book was the primed for a film adaptation before it even hit the page. The story is set in a future where the Earth has been irradiated to the point that humanity can no longer inhabit it, and follows a man who lives “above the clouds, safe from the brutal alien Scavengers that stalk the ruins. But when surface drone repairman Jak discovers a mysterious woman in a crash-landed pod, it sets off an unstoppable chain of events that will force him to question everything he knows.” Tom Cruise has long been attached to play Jak, but the film’s two female roles (Jak’s wife back at home and the lady he finds) have been the subject of speculation for months. Jessica Chastain was attached to the wife role back in September, but had to leave the project, thanks to her now-crammed schedule. Other ladies that tested for the role, including Olga Kurylenko, Brit Marling, Noomi Rapace, and Olivia Wilde, might have been called back, because

 Get ready to hear the name “Jessica Chastain” much more in the coming months (a little bird tells me that you can even expect to see a couple of reviews for a Chastain film on this very site within the next few days). The actress is set for the big leagues, thanks to being plucked from relative obscurity by Terrence Malick to star in his The Tree of Life that finally opened earlier this year, followed by roles in Take Shelter, The Debt, Texas Killing Fields, and the upcoming star-fest that is The Wettest County. Now Chastain has landed a prime leading lady position opposite Tom Cruise in Joseph Kosinski’s sci-f film that is…well, apparently without a title as of now. But you may know it as Oblivion or Horizons. Let’s call it Obli-zons and be done with it. Tron: Legacy director Kosinski is helming the film is based on an upcoming graphic novel that he himself conceived of and wrote (with Arvid Nelson) for Radical Publishing. The script for the film has been adapted by William Monahan, with a rewrite by Karl Gajdusek and a polish by Michael Arndt. The story centers on the character that Cruise will play, a repairman named Jak. But Jak’s life is just a smidge different than that of any other sort of repairman, because he lives in a future where an alien invasion has irradiated the Earth so severely that it is no longer inhabitable. The population of the planet now lives in the