Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.
A box office draw for three decades now, Tom Cruise has gotten a lot of flak for his cultish spiritual beliefs and his outlandish behavior, but he’s proven himself surprisingly adept not just at picking popular projects, but in selling himself to audiences with few hints of scandal. For a career as long as his, it’s truly impressive that he’s managed to remain at the top of the pecking order. After a four-year hiatus, Cruise is back on the big screen with a film that had been interrupted by COVID and rescheduled several times. This has given the filmmakers a chance to tinker with it to a point where it got a noteworthy standing ovation at the Cannes International Film Festival and early reviews have been largely positive, with many being ebullient.
Strangely, the last time he had a major blockbuster, this article series didn’t exist yet, so this is the first time I’ve had to look at his career. He’s not in the upper echelons of actors in terms of skill, but he’s managed to tone down his ego just enough to anchor some brilliant projects and, even in some of those, he’s played into his ego just enough to make the role work.
Rain Man (1988)
This was the first film that positioned Cruise as a serious actor. Before this, he was a just a bankable star. In Barry Levinson’s film, Cruise plays a grey market collectibles dealer who discovers that he has an autistic brother (Dustin Hoffman) who has savant syndrome, which manifests in a number of ways, including the incredible ability to recall details like Qantas airlines never having had an airplane crash. As Cruise and his girlfriend (Valeria Golino) travel across country to settle his father’s estate, they uncover the formerly institutionalized brother and spring him to bring him back to Los Angeles.
Hoffman is the actor to pay attention to in this film as he delivers a nuanced and personable performance as Raymond Babbitt. It resulted in his second Academy Award win and the film went on to win Best Picture. While it hasn’t aged nearly as gracefully as many other films of that period, it brought to light autism in a way that hadn’t quite been manifested on screen before and it helped normalize the condition at that time. It was a huge hit for being a smaller, acting-focused drama, thanks largely to Cruise’s winning performance in the film.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
When Stanley Kubrick broke away from the studio system in the 1960s, he did so in an effort to exert full creative control over his projects. This manifested itself in a string of stellar films that each stand as pinnacles of cinematic excellence, often cited as being among the best of their respective genres. It’s therefore a shade ironic, and rather galling to be honest, that Kubrick died shortly after this film was completed, but before it could be released. As such, the studio chose to avoid an NC-17 rating by digitally adding hooded figures into sex scenes in order to block the images. It was a mistake and the evocative segments were eventually restored in a 2007 release of the film.
For Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick’s final film, he chose for his source Arthur Schnitzler’s novel Traumnovelle. To star in the project, he selected then-power couple Cruise and Nicole Kidman, which revolves around Cruise’s character discovering that his wife (Kidman) has been unfaithful. He goes off into the city to contemplate cheating on her in revenge and comes close many times. The film, about fidelity, was one of the most contemplative of Kubrick’s works. Not because it tackled some philosophically deep subject matter, but because it took a potentially scandalous subject matter and turned it into something wholesome while pushing the boundaries of sex on screen to the extremes.
Magnolia (1999)
Throughout his career, Cruise has shown a proclivity to pick roles that position him as the single most important character with the occasional second-lead along the way. It is increasingly rare to see him as part of a large ensemble, but Paul Thomas Anderson successfully secured his participation in his third film, a follow up to his breakthrough hit Boogie Nights. In Magnolia, an interweaving narrative follows a number of figures connected to a children’s show. Among the stellar cast working their magic are Cruise as a motivational speaker, Melinda Dillon, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Alfred Molina, Jason Robards, Julianne Moore, and several other prominent actors.
As with Boogie Nights, Moore is sensational in the film and gives the standout performance, but like Burt Reynolds in that film, Cruise is second best, delivering a quality performance he would never quite approach again. Perhaps his association with Scientology is what informed his performance, but few motivational speakers depicted on screen have felt as fresh, realistic, or frighteningly successful. Hall, Hoffman, and Robards are all equally impressive in an already stacked cast. The film makes use of an eclectic song score written by Aimee Mann and the film is a fascinating blend of characters and situations that have long characterized Anderson’s work.
No original review available.
Minority Report (2002)
If there were ever a director to have a more impressive career at the box office than Tom Cruise, it’s Steven Spielberg. The pair united in this 2002 sci-fi feature based on a Philip K. Dick novella. In it, Cruise plays the lead detective investigating precrime reports. A trio of people who have precognitive abilities, the ability to see crimes before the happen, are used by the government in an effort to stop premediated crime by arresting and “humanely” imprisoning anyone foreseen to have committed murder.
When Cruise’s John Anderton is tapped for killing a man he’s never met, he goes on the run in an effort to clear his name. In the process, he uncovers some troubling information that puts into question the validity of the precogs’ prognosticative abilities. Spielberg often masters whatever medium he tackles and he’s no stranger to science fiction. This film fits right into his wheelhouse and its a stirring and exciting film that ponders philosophical questions about punishing individuals who have not yet committed crimes and about how far the government might go to create and to abuse such a system.
No original review available.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
While any of the Mission: Impossible films came close to inclusion on this list, I chose Cruise’s 2014 film opposite Emily Blunt as the final film for the week. Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill, the film presents director Doug Liman with his most accessible film to date. In it, Cruise plays a public affairs officer who’s forced to participate in a risky combat maneuver intended to thwart an alien invasion that has already claimed all of continental Europe.
As the troop to which he’s been assigned is slaughtered by the aliens, Cruise’s William Cage reawakens several hours earlier and soon discovers that he’s trapped within a time loop fighting the aliens over and over again, learning more each time he passes through the loop, but always dying at the end. For a science fiction film, this picture doesn’t follow the same thematic format as many of its predecessors. There are no overarching philosophical themes to explore, just a fascinating narrative that cleverly unwinds over the course of the film. It’s one of the most fun films Cruise has ever starred in.
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