Last movie watched...

[Frank]

I was 3 in the 80s

All of the eighties?

[Theblazeuk]

The curse was lifted in 1990.

[Recrewt]

Yeah, I often recoil from the concept of watching a Cruise movie, but in reality most of them are pretty darn good, and when they aren't it's very rarely because of his performance (see also: Tom Hanks). 

Yup, I'm always surprised when a new Tom Cruise movie comes out and you hear comments like "Tom was actually good in this".  Not a surprise really as he has been good in almost everything I have seen him in.  Seems like everyone just forgets and then is shocked when he does it again!

[shaolin_monkey]

Yeah, I often recoil from the concept of watching a Cruise movie, but in reality most of them are pretty darn good, and when they aren't it's very rarely because of his performance (see also: Tom Hanks). 

Yup, I'm always surprised when a new Tom Cruise movie comes out and you hear comments like "Tom was actually good in this".  Not a surprise really as he has been good in almost everything I have seen him in.  Seems like everyone just forgets and then is shocked when he does it again!

Yep, I have the same thing re Cruise, but I also used to get that feeling from Brad Pitt.  I'd recoil from watching something with him in it, 'cos I was just under the impression he was a vacuous pretty-boy.  But then Fight Club and Burn After Reading happened.  That latter film has put Pitt in my top twenty all time favourite actors - the character he played was just brilliant!

[JamesC]

Yeah, I often recoil from the concept of watching a Cruise movie, but in reality most of them are pretty darn good, and when they aren't it's very rarely because of his performance (see also: Tom Hanks). 

Yup, I'm always surprised when a new Tom Cruise movie comes out and you hear comments like "Tom was actually good in this".  Not a surprise really as he has been good in almost everything I have seen him in.  Seems like everyone just forgets and then is shocked when he does it again!

Yep, I have the same thing re Cruise, but I also used to get that feeling from Brad Pitt.  I'd recoil from watching something with him in it, 'cos I was just under the impression he was a vacuous pretty-boy.  But then Fight Club and Burn After Reading happened.  That latter film has put Pitt in my top twenty all time favourite actors - the character he played was just brilliant!

I liked Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys. Bruce Willis did a good job in that too.

[Link Prime]

I'd recoil from watching something with him in it

Despite the various levels of pragmatic common sense posted otherwise; Cruise actually does make me recoil.
Just...'cause.

I don't think even the release of '2000AD: The Movie' starring Cruise as Tharg would change my mind.

[Richmond Clements]

I'd recoil from watching something with him in it

Despite the various levels of pragmatic common sense posted otherwise; Cruise actually does make me recoil.
Just...'cause.

I don't think even the release of '2000AD: The Movie' starring Cruise as Tharg would change my mind.

I think it was Gina Davis who said that Brad Pitt was a character actor trapped in the body of a leading man.

[TordelBack]

I think it was Gina Davis who said that Brad Pitt was a character actor trapped in the body of a leading man.

Presumably before she saw Meet Joe Black.

Nah, I kid - Pitt is okay in my book.  Aforementioned 12 Monkeys earns him a lifetime pass from me, and he's just excellent as Achilles in the otherwise crushingly bad Troy (possibly the guiltiest of my guilty pleasures).

[Goaty]

I agree both Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt get better after Interview With the Vampire.

Tom was so good in his films, there some silly films like Knight And Day, he does got good comedy side in Tropic Thunder.

[Theblazeuk]

Oh my god, Tropic Thunder earns him a pass for life.

[Goaty]

Check this out;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLcNgawiCJM

[ThryllSeekyr]

Snake Plisskin is an out-and-out anti-hero; he's a dick, but the people surrounding him are even bigger dicks, and they're the ones to blame for this sorry state of affairs.

I'll think of that one next time I get called a dick.

It's ok for protagonists to be arseholes in the best 80s movies as we're not really placed in any sympathy with them beyond their struggle against the enemy - a Predator, an island full of crazies, even a shapeshifting monster (MacReady does try to save people though) - or because they are clearly trying to prevent some injustice, ala Matrix in Commando with his daughter or even Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. Venkman was comic relief and was more of a cocky wiseass than a proper dickhead - the ghostbusters get a paycheck at the end of the day, they are not superheroes.

How can I fit myself or Slaine into that equation?

Top Gun is however about Maverick being Maverick and takes itself so seriously I couldn't stomach it.

Top-Gun is the classic American-jet-fighter-pilot film of the 80's.

I can't believed you missed it this time around and for this amount of time.

I was 3 in the 80s and my jet-fighter movie was Independence Day, which has a far more likeable cocky protagonist and a better plot line.

I like that film as well, but I categorise it differently as sci/fi. Although, the War of the Worlds remake might be closer and it has Tome Cruise in it as well.

What about Stealth the Classic-All-American-Jet-Fighter-Film-of-the-Naughties.

Like Tom Cruise a great deal in Interview with a Vampire and have time for him in plenty else. He's a little shit in Top Gun though.

Most admittedly I like the film a lot more than the actor and it will remain one of my favorites.

Did anybody see the Tom Cruise impersonator in this super-hero-spoof.

[Daveycandlish]

Cruise has been around for a long time and you don't get that length of career without some sort of talent (although I wish someone would tell Jason Statham that).

[Theblazeuk]

Guardians of the Galaxy



Made me want a new star wars movie for the first time since I was 13 though.

[Professor Bear]

Guardians of the Galaxy - some of it was a bit forced, and it often felt an awful lot like a big-budget episode of Stargate SG1 - one of the later episodes when it was Farscape for some reason - complete with a dogged sense of everything being small scale despite people shouting that THE WHOLE WIDE UNIVERSE was going to end because of the season's McGuffin, and lengthy SFX sequences that were made on a computer that don't really give you much of a sense of scale or how the tide of battle is flowing until a character fills you in.  There's also a lot of telling instead of showing for something that cost this much and is so reliant upon spectacle, particularly character backstories being presented completely as exposition apart from a brief glimpse of Quill's dying-mom stuff, which was really clunky to the point that when she appeared again near the end I just laughed at the Freudian implications of his seeing his love interest with the face of his mum, and which in retrospect makes the whole angle of her making him a mix tape seem like they just changed the details of a dead girlfriend storyline around from a previous draft of the script.  The problem in telling and not showing like this is of course that if your actor delivering the basil isn't that great, it sort of derails things, and green lady is not exactly charismatic, nor is Star Man, though the latter makes up for it by at least being affable and having good timing, while the wrestler guy with facepaint is at least serviceable because his character is a bit of a one-note deal.

That all sounds like I had a negative impression of it, which certainly isn't the case thanks to a lifetime of watching sci-fi both good and bad and enjoying either at various times - I thought that overall, GotG was well-made and good fun, and I particularly liked the clean and discernible shapes and forms of the technology in use rather than the constantly-busy outlines and grungy details of fantasy tech in something like the Transformers movies.  To me, the dominant visual style of GotG harks back to the model-based aesthetic of early Star Wars where things like the Tie Fighters, X-Wings and Millennium Falcon all had simple, solid, iconic shapes you recognised instantly, rather than just being the fluid mess of edges and dirt favored by modern CGI-influenced production designers.  Unfocussed action direction aside, a lot of what was on display here looked like it could be an old sci-fi paperback cover if you took a snapshot of it at the right moment, and I love that about it, because often what I glanced of the covers of old paperbacks in the library as a kid fired my imagination a lot more than the occasionally-disappointing contents of said books did.  GotG was like someone took a paperback cover from that period and made a 90s action film based on it, and now Trek has shat the bed this is a welcome addition to the pantheon of big-screen space-operas.