Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
June 11, 2014
Jay Barney: Minority Report was great. Ghost Protocol was surprisingly good. Top Gun Rules. Tom Cruise made a bad film?
Max Braden: At first encounter with this question I thought it would be hard to answer but after a quick thought, my favorite was an easy choice: Collateral. For good or for bad, Cruise is a very intense actor, and in Collateral he keeps it bottled up and apparently relaxed, but you feel like Foxx is in serious danger every moment they're together. Cruise looked the part, and it was great to have him featured as a villain rather than his typical leading hero. My second favorite Tom Cruise film is probably Mission: Impossible III because the intensity in that movie was so high and on the edge non-stop, and really gave something for Cruise/Hunt to take personally (his wife). After that, I want to pick his cameos: Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder and Stacee Jaxx in Rock of Ages. In both those roles Cruise took his intensity turned his typical character and performance in a completely different direction, and the result was over-the-top, hilarious characters. I think my choices of favorite/least favorite come down to which director he's paired with. I love the tone of Michael Mann's films, so to have him working with Cruise in Collateral was great. On the opposite end, my least favorite is probably Eyes Wide Shut, mostly because I dislike Kubrick's style so much. EWS was just so dreary and boring and trying too hard.
David Mumpower: I like what Felix did in saying that three movies is not enough. While I would not describe myself as a Tom Cruise fan per se, I am of the opinion that he has one of the strongest filmographies in the history of cinema. We haven’t even touched on Rain Man or Born on the Fourth of July in this discussion, as an example. I shortlisted the options to include the following that did not quite make my top three: Jerry Maguire, Eyes Wide Shut (did Max seriously just take the con position on Stanley Kubrick?), Vanilla Sky, Mission: Impossible III, Magnolia, Top Gun, Tropic Thunder and The Last Samurai. There are not five people in Hollywood today who have at least five non-sequel movies of this quality on their resume. I eventually determined that my three favorites are Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (narrowly edging its predecessor), A Few Good Men (Aaron Sorkin’s masterpiece) and Collateral (one of my 10 favorite movies of the 2000s). Say what you will about Tom Cruise. He picks movie projects at a higher level than anybody in the industry over the past quarter century.
Kim Hollis: I have a soft spot for Risky Business, which is the first R-rated movie I ever saw. Like several others here, I could easily list about six or seven movies pretty easily and perhaps even more. Ultimately, my favorites are Jerry Maguire, Interview with the Vampire (the first movie I ever attended where the audience applauded at the end) and probably The Firm. And I absolutely hate that I've omitted Minority Report, A Few Good Men, either of the most recent Mission: Impossible films, Collateral and Vanilla Sky. I guess Oblivion would be my least favorite, and I enjoyed it well enough. Oh, and I loved him in Tropic Thunder and the Stacee Jaxx character in Rock of Ages. (On a side note, I also truly enjoyed Edge of Tomorrow as well. I guess I'm a stealth Tom Cruise fan.)
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