THOMAS CRUISE MAPOTHER IV: HIS ŒUVRE

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Risky Business is showing at 11 tonight at my neighborhood arthouse...

Sooooooo good.

I only saw Risky Business last year and was stunned by "MUSIC BY TANGERINE DREAM" popping up in the opening credits.

i love risky business so much

the only thing I remember about it is the underwear dance, which was pretty great

it's gorgeously filmed and often feels like a long dream sequence

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Surprised Born on the Fourth of July was shut out. It's been ages since I've seen it, and obviously I didn't vote for it myself, but I remember him being very good for the first half, with a heavy-handed scene or two after he becomes an activist.

The love of Magnolia baffles me. Good to see Edge of Tomorrow place so high, though. It's too bad all the M:I movies had to be listed individually, because the version of Ethan Hunt he's played in movies 4,5 and 6 is qualitatively different (and much better/funnier) than the one he played in 1-3.

as someone pointed out, the Risky Business character is written very Jewish

I was impressed that Cruise participated in the commentary track to that one when it came out on DVD. Did Paul Brickman direct anything else?

with movies like Tom Cruise in them, you can't lose

Men Don't Leave was next, I think (Jessica Lange, Chris O'Donnell)

All is well.

unperson- magnolia is a bad movie but cruise's performance is the only good thing in it, close to great. he's the only one who doesn't come off mawkish when he cries like everyone else. the flip side of I'm a Doctor Bill Harford.

2013 interview with Brickman

The success of Risky Business was strange because I had Hollywood coming at me full throttle. I found it very uncomfortable. I moved out of L.A. immediately. Studio heads sent me wine goblets and food baskets. And people threw material at me right and left, and lined up to meet me. It gets uncomfortable. Some people like the visibility. I don’t. I’m more from the J.D. Salinger schoo.l

ooh man, "I'm more from the J.D. Salinger school" is of a piece with core, heart music

(obviously not as good)

A bunch of people are good in Magnolia!

WHM, Robards, PBH, and Cruise are the only performances that stand out for me. PSH and Moore verge into self-parody. the kid is good, the whole cast is great but the movie is so bad.

PTA said in a later interview that with the benefit of hindsight/experience he would cut Magnolia way down, and that's the version I'd like to see

Rewatched "Edge of Tomorrow," er, yesterday. It holds up really well, effects and Tom Cruise alike. He's really well cast in it, not just as Tom Cruise but as the character.

cruise as ethan hunt in the first m:i: underrated in this poll

Watched that epic Tim Rogers review of the original The Last of Us, and he kind of pinpointed the first Mission Impossible as when Tom Cruise just started playing Tom Cruise.

I feel like he was disproportionately amazing in Born On The 4th Of July but maybe it was just the ‘stache

Credit where credit is due, the guy is really never half assing it.

and he kind of pinpointed the first Mission Impossible as when Tom Cruise just started playing Tom Cruise.

I've only seen Magnolia, Tropic Thunder, seven of the 8 or 9 McQuarrie collaborations, and the two Missions that McQuarrie didn't do after this, but even in that selection, this doesn't track.

(Without checking out his other roles or a timeline, I'd guess that the shift to more explicitly playing hypercompetent asexual ciphers whom every person around them either praises incessantly or seethingly resents came with him g0ing cl34r, as well as finishing his Great White Male Directors bingo card, and the Cruise/Wagner partnership hindenberging out. The latter two may or may not be connected to each other, or to the first. [Even in the McQuarries, Jack Reacher is socially isolated and doesn't form collaborative bonds, and the Edge Of Tomorrow guy has to learn almost-barely-competence through live. die. repeat.ing hundreds of times])

(after being inspired by the primary sexual interaction of modern screen Cruise: a woman turns to look at him over her shoulder.)

Actors playing "themselves" is distinct from phoning it in. I don't think Tom Cruise has ever phoned anything in. It's either very good or a complete disaster.

I think he’s best in the Mission Impossible movies, esp the last few: it’s like he’s happiest if he know he’s got lots of crazy stunts to do

(as opposed to say, The Mummy where he has like 2 set pieces and spends most of the movie running or looking confused. do not watch)

Am looking forward to the Top Gun sequel - seems like the perfect conditions for some of that same kind of peak Cruise

Hmm, I'll have to think about it, but by "Tom Cruise as Tom Cruise" I guess I would say it's akin to, I dunno, Arnold playing Arnold in all those '80s action movies. That is, Cruise has been great in lots of movies, but to the credit of his instincts (Great White Male Director bingo or no), most of those movies are not great *because* of Tom Cruise. The Mission Impossible movies, however, they're all but built around him. Watch Tom Cruise do stunts, not "I hope Ethan Hunt finally finds closure re: his wife."

The greatest 'Tom Cruise as Tom Cruise' role was when he jumped up and down on Oprah's couch. There were more layers to unpack in that performance, reaching deeper into his psyche, than anything he has yet committed to the big screen.

See it here, if you dare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQgXEkL3NV4

The Mission Impossible movies, however, they're all but built around him. Watch Tom Cruise do stunts

For sure from Ghost Protes on, but that's 15 years after the DePalma one, and he was still marking out Cameron Crowe, Spielberg, PTA, Kubrick and Michael Mann bingo squares for a decade.

(The big "look at this really being Tom Cruise risking his life" stunt in MI2 is bolted on to the front from a separate shoot in another hemisphere)

I wish the movie were called Ghost Protes.

(GhoPro also where McQuarrie came on halfway through the shoot and rewrote it to be built around Cruise; originally he was gonna leave the series at the end. Since making Rock Of Ages immediately afterward, he then hasn't made another movie without McQuarrie involved, as producer, writer, co-writer, uncredited rewriter or writer/director.)

I think he’s best in the Mission Impossible movies, esp the last few: it’s like he’s happiest if he know he’s got lots of crazy stunts to do

yah but and also: I used to think he was only ~really~ good in Risky Business and and Magnolia; rewatched Risky for the first time a month ago and he is really ace in it.

I guess most of his best work after that is playing an asshole of some kind, and Risky Business is his character learning to be a collaborative but self-serving and exploitative boss on-screen...

Risky Business is so good. I think it would have still be a good movie with someone else, but probably not as good.

It's kind of weird that he's gotten this action hero persona thing going on, because I think one of his gifts is flipping the switch from arrogant to vulnerable (if not quite sympathetic). He does that well in "Magnolia," but also "Jerry Maguire" (iirc) and the Spiellberg films, too. Certainly in "Edge of Tomorrow," sort of in "Collateral."

Is latter-day cruise more or less asexual than The Rock? Every scene with a woman in Ballers seems like it might be the first time he’s kissed someone.

Risky Business is dope because it’s like some hybrid of John Hughes and Michael Mann. Was pleasantly surprised when I first saw it a few years ago, was expecting something entirely different.

not about to watch Ballers to compare, but The Rock flirting and fighting with Vanessa Kirby* in F&FP:H&S managed to be weirder and creepier than Cruise flirting and fighting with Vanessa Kirby** in M:I-FO

*(14 years younger)
**(24 years younger)

flirtin and fightin it's all the same Livin' with Louie dog's the only way to stay sane

Yeah Risky Business has a bizarre, singular mood, circa otm

DeMornay might be more crucial to the mood of Risky Business than Cruise. The viewer can believe they have more of a grasp on her personality than Cruise's character does, but only by a couple of degrees.

You're right, and iirc Cruise's friends are total losers/cowards like him(at first)... I only saw this a few years ago as well and while I knew it was more than the living room scene (which was its reputation according to VH1's I Love the 80s), I was frankly astonished when I saw "MUSIC BY TANGERINE DREAM" in the opening credits. In my mind, Risky Business and Thief are films happening simultaneously in the same city.

Think this is the most popular thread I ever started lol

his œuvre

"Risky Business" is where he "becomes" Tom Cruise in lots of different ways, but especially how the naive character starts out at the mercy of De Mornay but seemingly ends up ruthlessly cold-blooded (lesson learned, capitalism!). But yeah, because DeMornay is so crucial she lends her character a real ambiguity, especially in the alternate (director's preferred) ending:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KnW9_viA7Q

Gah, that movie is so good.

Was flipping around on hotel tv and saw Cruise with Cameron Diaz. I thought, wait, what movie is this? Turns out to be something called Knight and Day. What the hell is that?

I thought he was really good in the new "Top Gun," charming, dramatic, funny, vulnerable, pretty versatile in the role of "Tom Cruise, movie star."

On the way to the theatre my wife told me one of her co-workers is his ... first cousin, once-removed? Cruise's first cousin is the co-worker's mother, whatever that makes her. So everyone was, of course, curious. Have you met him? What's he like? She said the only time she met him was at his mother's funeral, but that for years, every year they would get a pile of Scientology books and pamphlets from him, which they promptly threw out. This went on for several years, but at some point the Scientology stuff stopped coming and he started sending a coconut cake instead.

Apparently this is a Cruise trademark:

It is a White Chocolate Coconut Bundt Cake from Doan's Bakery that Tom Cruise sends as a gift to all his famous friends at Christmas. The cake is a moist coconut bundt cake with chunks of sweet white chocolate topped with a rich cream cheese frosting and toasted coconut flakes.

Incidentally, at the box office my wife asked the ticket seller for two to "Mission Impossible." The ticket seller just looked back blankly, and my wife doubled down. "Two for 'Mission Impossible,' please." And the ticket seller kept staring, frozen. "Um, 'Top Gun,'" I told my wife, and she turned red, and the seller and everyone just cracked up. Tomato/potato.