I read recently in Variety that Tom Cruise and United Artists have hired Ronald Moore (Battlestar Galactica!) to create a big-screen sci-fi trilogy for Cruise. Three big-screen sci-fi movies by Ron Moore? Yay! Starring Tom Cruise? Um....
This news got me thinking about Tom Cruise movies, which alone make up the following category: Movies I Like Starring Actors I Don't. It's nothing personal - I just don't like Cruise - his acting, his voice, his teeth, etc. But, man, he's been in a lot of good movies, a few of them just outstanding. He's starred in a some solid sci-fi, too, like Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, and War of the Worlds. In the top-notch movie Magnolia, he plays a slimy misogynist bastard, and he is just great at that role, but he usually plays a guy you're supposed to like, and I just don't. (Come to think of it, he was a believable bastard in Collateral, too.)
It seems to me that Cruise movies are good in spite of him, not because of him. But he keeps getting the parts, so I'll keep watching. It's kind of like following a pig to the truffles.
1 comment:
I am dubious about a project brought about by Cruise himself. I think he is best when someone else is at the controls. To test this opinion, I checked his production credits on IMDB. Vanilla Sky was the only (IMHO) worthwhile film he had producer credit for, and it was co-produced by director Cameron Crowe and a close remake of Abre Los Ojos.
I found the other big-budget Cruise vehicles (e.g. The Last Samurai and the Mission Impossible franchise) much more disappointing. A big budget sci-fi trilogy could turn out to be Cruise's Battlefield Earth.
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