Cascading down.

[hannah]

Challenge #9

Rec Us Your Newest Thing. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Tom Cruise movies.

When you absolutely, positively have to distract yourself from everything else going on in your life.

It's not exactly "new" because I've been actively tracking down and watching them for the last six months or so, but in contrast to everything else going on right now, aside from original projects, it's still a fairly novel interest. After someone recommended the Mission Impossible movies as examples of well-choreographed action scenes where it's easy to keep track of all the participants, I decided to get them all from the library for a personal marathon. Then I figured I might as well put in hold requests for the Top Gun movies. Before any of those came through, I saw Edge of Tomorrow because I had access to the streaming service and it was the only canon from this vid I hadn't seen, and if it was as delightful as the other three, I might as well give that movie a shot. When I was finished watching it, I checked to see what else I had ready access to through the library and assorted streaming services and started working my way through everything available to me.

In looking over his movies, both the ones I'd seen at various points - Minority Report, Magnolia, Tropic Thunder, Risky Business, Collateral - and the ones I've recently watched, it's surprising how consistently good they are. Even the stuff that's not very good always has something going for it: enough jokes to be funny, enough solid material to imagine the much better movie hiding just out of frame, enough entertainment value to be worth the time it took to watch. Even when the movie isn't up to the standards of, for example, Born on the Fourth of July or Eyes Wide Shut, he's always giving a good performance. I'm not surprised the following he has, or the fact that there's still some old school fansites devoted to him with well-curated and well-organized photo galleries with scans of magazine articles going back decades. I'm genuinely enjoying this and I'm going to be a little disappointed when I run out of back catalogue.

In making an effort to watch pretty much everything he's done as a way to insulate myself from a lot of things that are far beyond my control and influence, from global wars to my brother's upcoming wedding, it's both inescapable and an escape to think about the nature of fame and celebrity, the concept of movie stars, the rise of clickbait media and the shift of how the public and private spheres are conceptualized. Much has been said about all those things, and more, by people who know what they're talking about, which is why I don't bother trying to articulate it myself. That said, I realized a little while ago that Cruise is both the world's highest profile cult victim and someone who possesses such a level of fame that it'd take a heavens parting and God speaking down to Earth level of miracle for him to get the kind of sustained removal and distance necessary for leaving any cult, much less that one.

I'm sure there's been plenty said about that, too, though it's not something I've deliberately gone looking for.

What I did go looking for were movies where Cruise is allowed to be short, because if nothing else, imagining Henry Cavill looming even more massively constantly amuses me.

Comments

[tjs_whatnot]

You know, I don't go looking for Cruise movies usually, so when I do, I'm always pleasently surprised at how good they are. I wonder how many I have to see to stop being surprised by that. I think mostly it's just that the kind of movies that he makes, aren't usually the kind that I seek out. It took me a long time to watch Maverick because I loved Top Gun so much and the reason I loved it--well, I don't want to say because I just realized that you DUH, haven't seen it and I'd be spoiling you... so come back to this and talk to me after watching, yeah?

♥ ♥

[hannah]

I saw it several weeks ago. Go ahead.

[tjs_whatnot]

Both of them?

So, the reason I didn't want to watch a continuation of Top Gun was because I'm such a fan, and get oddly attached to sidekick characters, so when Goose died, it BROKE me and I couldn't even watch the rest of the movie for a long time after. And so the idea of a Top Gun movie without him didn't make sense to me. But, then I told someone who loved Maverick about this opinion of mine and they urged me to watch it. They said it was sort of a love letter to Goose. And it was. ♥

[hannah]

There's been a few pieces here and there about how Maverick is a quiet meditation on aging and paying tribute to the past while still moving forward through grief. Bright Wall/Dark Room had a good one.

[goddess47]

The image of Henry Cavill looming over Tom Cruise made me laugh!

It is interesting what Tom Cruise has done captures the imagination. You are right, not everything is great but it is worth watching for that moment...

Nicely done! Thanks for joining in Snowflake today!

[hannah]

You're welcome, and I'm happy to get the laugh. There were a couple of small gags to that effect in the fourth and fifth movies, and still - to have him looming steadily throughout, just quietly radiating ominous vibes, would've been charming.

[tsuki_no_bara]

i'll be honest - the scientology makes me think of tom cruise as a bit of a weirdo but he has brilliant star power and you're not wrong that he makes very watchable movies and he's always worth watching in them. like, the mission impossible movies are really fun and even tho you 100% have to turn your brain off because the stunts and the plots are increasingly absurd they're also really well done and well choreographed and they're just great entertainment. (and i'll never get over jeremy renner saying "next time i get to seduce the rich guy" while doing knee bends.) and while i'm convinced tom is going to kill himself doing his own stunts i remain impressed as hell that he's still doing them.

i hesitate to recommend oblivion if you haven't seen it yet, because i haven't seen the whole thing (i randomly catch it on tv), but what i have seen is really interesting and if you're already seeking out tom cruise movies it's worth looking for. if you're at all interested in baby!tom - aside from risky business which is always a good choice - and you can find it, legend. (it came out in 1985 so not the one with tom hardy and tom hardy.) it's a fairytale and i have a soft spot for it but i also don't think it's among his best movies but it has tim curry and mia sara and is quite different from his later work.

the fact that you deliberately looked for movies where he's allowed to be short cracks me up. i love it.

[hannah]

I saw Oblivion because I'm piggybacking on my mom's Hulu account, and I managed to track down the director's cut of Legend - which is the closest he's come to making a children's movie in his whole career, so you're right it's quite different from everything else he's done. I need to listen to the full commentary track, because the only part I listened to was Ridley Scott saying one effect would cost thousands of pounds if they did it in CGI, but doing it as a practical thing of a tiny light bulb on some fishing wire attached to a pole cost pennies and was there in the shot.

The fact that it was there in the shot is one of the things which always has me thinking of that movie feeling like a story two kids would make up playing in a backyard, which is absolutely charming to me.

[tsuki_no_bara]

ooh, then i can ask - how was oblivion? i never watched it all the way through so i don't know how it ends but is it worth watching the whole thing? (i too can piggyback off my mom's hulu account. :D )

i'm intrigued by the director's cut of legend now! i'm curious what ridley scott has to say about it. how did you find it?

[hannah]

It holds together well, and provides a good narrative with a solid conclusion. Without going into spoilers, I thought it was only "good" without being "great" or even "very good" because I kept wondering how those characters got the bullets for their guns. If the movie hadn't spent a lot of time establishing the physicality of the world and the desperation, I wouldn't have asked. But it did, so I did, and it didn't have good answers.

I found Legend to be wonderful. I commented to someone else that it felt like a story two kids would make up as they played in the woods or like I was watching an elaborate stage play, and that it was wonderful to see as much stuff put in front of the camera as was possible because that gave it the believably and internal reality to carry everything.

[impala_chick]

Yesss, I agree that Tom Cruise movies are consistently good. My mom was such a big fan, I feel like I grew up watching Cruise movies. I have binged the M:I movies several times :D One of my favorites is A Few Good Men - if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend. That reminds me I still need to watch Risky Business, and Days of Thunder.

Thanks for that fanvid link, it's such a great watch!!

[hannah]

In rewatching Risky Business recently, I was struck how genuinely sympathetic it is to sex workers in general and trans Black women in particular.

[meridian_rose]

A lot of people were saying of Top Gun: Maverick that this is awesome, a sequel that doesn't alienate its core audience there for nostalgia nor push away newcomers, and that Tom Cruise might be batsh*t but the man's acting and work ethic is off the charts. And I agree, because every movie I have seen of his I've enjoyed well enough, some more than others, but never "OMG when will this be over?" or "I hated that", always "that was a fun watch" or sometimes "that was GREAT" :)
I'll be watching the latest Mission Impossible when it comes to my usual subscription channels :D

Re Edge of Tomorrow, that deserves a sequel and the possibility is raised every few years. I need to rewatch that one!

[hannah]

I was able to get latest Mission Impossible 7 on DVD from the library several months before it hit any streaming services. Unfortunately, for bonus features, I need the Blu Ray - and for that, I need a Blu Ray player.

Off to eBay.

[badfalcon]

I ADORED Tom Cruise in the 90s, he had so many good movies - some utterly cheesy but still really good and I forget how much I love some of them. You've got me wanting to re-watch a bunch, so thank you!