Two movies into his feature filmmaking career, Joseph Kosinski has yet to establish a signature visual style or set of themes, but between TRON: Legacy and now Oblivion, he has provided us with a pretty good idea of what his dream house would look like. Trained as an architect before moving over into movies, Kosinski lavishes attention on the designs of his various worlds and has an obvious affection for structures that sport clean, sharp lines, have lots of open space (with plenty of glass windows) and are bathed in a harsh white light -- think Bauhaus meets a Williamsburg rave. Actually, your best reference point is probably the hotel room from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a movie that's stylistic impact on Oblivion is profound and all-encompassing. It takes brass balls to ape the various environments and props from Stanley Kubrick's seminal science-fiction favorite and act like it ain't no thang, but Kosinski goes about his extended homage with an obvious confidence that stems from his design background. And the results are there on screen: Oblivion looks fantastic, immersing audiences to a distant, post-apocalyptic future that's more authentic than most movies of its type. I like to imagine that Kosinski had his own Monolith positioned just next to the camera throughout the shoot, which he could occasionally reach over and touch for inspiration.

In general, there are two main approaches filmmakers can take to a time travel story. The first is to dive headlong into the logistics and consequences of trips back and forth in time, merrily twisting the audience's mind into knots by piling potential paradox on top of potential paradox (see movies like Primer, Back to the Future, Part II and the sorely underseen Spanish import Timecrimes). The other is to use time travel as a device to set the story in motion and introduce potential plot complications without sweating the details too much (see Back to the Future parts 1 and 3, Time Bandits and Midnight in Paris). In its early scenes, Rian Johnson's new action picture Looper seems like it's going to be the first kind of time travel yarn, but then switches over to the second. Since I'm the odd soul that prefers Back to the Future, Part II over the original -- few would probably rank the third one as their favorite -- I have to admit to being a little disappointed by Looper's change of heart. But credit where credit's due: Johnson has crafted a smart, inventive piece of mainstream entertainment that will likely find the kind of wide audience more cultish time travel movies like Primer didn't.