Tag Archives: Tom Cruise

The Mummy (2017) review

17 Saturday Jun 2017

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Shouldn’t somebody be saying “There’s a storm coming”?

by Thom Yee

mummy-one

The Mummy (2017) images courtesy of Universal Pictures

The odds are you’re never going to talk to Tom Cruise.  I mean, that’s pretty obvious from the perspective of logic and reason and cosmological significance — the odds are you’re never going to talk to a lot of people, important or otherwise.  Even you and I are probably never going to meet or have a conversation (and you come here to read our reviews all the time, don’t you?). What I mean when I say you’re never going to talk to Tom Cruise is that you’re never going to get to know Tom Cruise.  You’re never really going to meet him.  Maybe you’ll be allowed to ask him a question if you’re lucky and get chosen out of a crowd at a press junket, maybe you’ll hear what seems like a personal anecdote about him from someone you know who works in Hollywood, but Tom Cruise, a world-famous actor, a franchise unto himself and an icon who’s likely to spend the rest of his life in the public eye and leave a body of movie work behind that will be watched, loved, and even studied for generations after?  That’s not someone you’ll ever have a personal conversation with or learn a lot about even if you do somehow find yourself in a position to say something to him. Continue reading →

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Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation

08 Saturday Aug 2015

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You’re getting old, Ethan Hunt

by Thom Yee

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol images courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol images courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

It feels like it’s been a while since Tom Cruise has done anything all that weird, and by now, even the most ardent KSW-questioning, couch-preservationing, short-person-hating, parents-should-spend-time-with-their-kids-believing critics should be able to admit that he’s made some pretty solid movies lately. And what more can we ask for than that? I don’t go to a Tom Cruise movie to watch him defend Scientology or explain why his last marriage didn’t work, that’s not why I go to movies and those subjects aren’t all that interesting even outside of movies. I go to movies to watch something entertaining and hopefully engaging, and in that way Tom Cruise continues to be the perfect action movie star.

The perfect 53-year-old action movie star. Continue reading →

Edge of Tomorrow

14 Saturday Jun 2014

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Sometimes shooting yourself in the head really is the best choice

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

We all know it’s impossible to talk about a Tom Cruise movie like Edge of Tomorrow without talking about Tom Cruise.

A working actor for more than three decades whose box office earnings have reached a combined, unadjusted total of more than three billion dollars, Tom Cruise is a true movie star, consistently able to draw crowds, whether it’s to his movies or to witness his oft-bizarre behaviour, much of which seems attributed to his beliefs as a Scientologist. The star of some of the biggest movies in modern history and an enduring fixture in blockbuster American cinema, Cruise has been attached to several Hollywood starlets, including marriages to Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes, and that’s about as much as I’m going to write about Tom Cruise, because, like it or not, watching movies is supposed to be about watching movies.

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Oblivion

07 Saturday Dec 2013

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by Thom Yee

Oblivion

Oblivion images courtesy of Universal Pictures

Here’s a list of all the Tom Cruise movies I’ve seen and enjoyed:

Jack Reacher, all of the Mission:  Impossibles except II, War of the Worlds, Collateral, The Last Samurai, Minority Report, Vanilla Sky, Interview with the Vampire, Born on the Forth of July, Top Gun, and Risky Business.

I enjoyed all of those movies, I feel they were all a worthwhile use of my movie-going time, and I think they all benefitted from Tom Cruise’s performances.

When it comes to Tom Cruise movies (and just about every movie he’s in is a Tom Cruise movie, no matter how large or small his part), I always feel like I have to explain myself.  It was about eight months ago that I reviewed Jack Reacher, and everybody I talked to couldn’t get past the Tom Cruise part of that movie enough to go see it let alone take my review of it seriously (not that we’re really angling for our reviews to be taken seriously).  Sure, there’s the Scientology, the erratic behavior, the maniac laughter, the obviously manufactured-for-public-acceptance personal life… but none of that’s bad enough that it should necessarily be a drag on his box office returns. Continue reading →

Jack Reacher

22 Friday Mar 2013

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by Thom Yee

Jack Reacher images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Jack Reacher images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

“Jack Reacher!?” I hear you cry out from across the room, the implication burning more brightly, clearly, and obviously than a thousand exploding suns.  “But… Tom Cruise… he’s f*cked up…!”

In my mind, and to the extent that I care, Tom Cruise is a perfect movie star.  He’s iconic, he’s been in movies I liked (Mission:  Impossibles 1 and 3, War of the Worlds), he’s been in movies that I will never see (The Firm, Valkyrie, Rock of Ages), and, like it or not, he dominates the scenes that he’s in without necessarily chewing up the scenery.  I believe that he’s the characters that he’s playing when he’s playing them, whether he’s playing to type (Jerry Maguire) or against (Collateral).  I couldn’t care less about anything going on around him when he’s not on screen, Scientology or not, couch hopping or not, having a weird effect on his latest beard wife or not.  I’m here to watch movies.  He could be murdering babies in the street and the rational side of my brain would be admitting how overpopulation is a serious issue as I sit in the theatre waiting for Oblivion to start (though that might have more to do with my belief that most aren’t capable of raising proper children).

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