[8] Nineteen year-old Tom Cruise made his star-making turn alongside Rebecca DeMornay in writer/director Paul Brickman’s directorial debut, Risky Business. Cruise plays a college-bound teen who’s forced to turn his parents’ upper class home into a brothel for one illustrious night in order to pay for accidentally destroying his father’s Porsche. DeMornay plays a call girl who proposes the whole endeavor. Along the way, they …
[6] Marginally the best entry in a franchise I never cared about. Some nicely staged action sequences – the Dubai tower scaling and dust storm chase are pretty wicked. I’d like to have been more invested in the characters. Part of the problem might be that Tom Cruise bugs me when he’s in a vanity role like this one (wish he’d do more stuff like …
[6] Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, The Usual Suspects director and screenwriter, reunite for this true story of German officers conspiring from behind Nazi lines to kill Hitler. Tom Cruise doesn’t quite disappear into the role of real-life renegade Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, but the stellar supporting cast includes Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp, and Eddie Izzard. The true story is a …
[6] I never cared much for the Mission Impossible film franchise until Brad Bird (The Iron Giant) took his turn in the director’s chair with the last installment, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. I’m not sure Rogue Nation — the fifth in the series — is better than Ghost Protocol, but it’s pretty solid action entertainment nonetheless. Tom Cruise, bless his insane little heart, is still …
[7] Jamie Foxx stars as an L.A. cab driver forced to chauffeur a hitman played by Tom Cruise. Director Michael Mann (Heat, Last of the Mohicans) works from a solid script by Stuart Beattie that balances action and suspense with plenty of great character moments. The film builds nicely, with Foxx’s character instigating a few surprising turns of events. Cruise’s character is the icy, heartless …
[7] It’s the future and an alien race has just about taken over all of Europe and Asia. Tom Cruise enters this scenario as a cowardly military spokesperson forced into the front lines of combat by a shit-if-I-care general (Brendan Gleeson). During his first big battle with the aliens (who look like Rastafarian tumbleweeds), Cruise’s character dies… and wakes up a day earlier, but with …
[7] In the final film from Stanley Kubrick, a socialite couple (Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman) get in over their heads when they decide to follow their adulterous impulses. This movie gets a bad rep, but I think it’s primarily because the casting of two superstars led to more commercial audience expectations. It’s a more intimate portrait than that, and beautifully made. I really love …
[8] Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Alien) directs this lavishly mounted fantasy film that’s high on style but low on action. The sets are jaw-dropping, whether it’s the huge, scintillating fairy forest or the fiery underground dungeons of hell. Makeup artist Rob Bottin (The Howling, The Thing) showcases some spectacular Oscar-nominated work. Just look at Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show‘s Dr. Frank-N-Furter) as Darkness, …
[3] Cocktail is everything awful about calculated ’80s studio film making. It’s as if Touchstone Pictures said, ‘Hey, we have Tom Cruise and a killer soundtrack — quick! Someone write a script!” And that script (based on a book by the screenwriter) throws in everything and the kitchen sink in a desperate attempt to recapture the success of Dirty Dancing, Top Gun, and An Officer …
[9] Steven Spielberg remakes H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s easily his best movie in many, many years. Through the eyes of a single father (Tom Cruise) and his two children (Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin), we experience the apocalypse — the end of the world — as towering alien tripods climb out of the Earth and begin destroying humanity …
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