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Badmouth » tom cruise http://www.badmouth.net Look, Ma! No pants! Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:04:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Valkyrie http://www.badmouth.net/valkyrie-2008/ http://www.badmouth.net/valkyrie-2008/#comments Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:31:20 +0000 Brian McDonough http://www.badmouth.net/?p=986 [rating:4] Director: Bryan Singer Starring: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Brannagh When Angelina Jolie does a serious movie, people crawl out of the woodwork to moan that they can't accept her as a dramatic actress because they can only see the pouty-lipped tabloid goddess, overshadowing anything she might do. I don't get that. If there's anyone that should apply to, it's not Jolie, it's Tom Cruise, because he's been playing the same character his entire career. Specifically, he's been playing the guy who jumps up and down on Oprah's couch because he's finally been "cleared" of Xenu's "Thetans." "Nuh-uh," people say to me. "What about Magnolia?" Totally the guy high on the self-help fake-philosophy Kool-Aid, jumping up and down on Oprah's couch. "What about in Tropic Thunder?" Jumping up and down on Oprah's couch in a smugly self-loving fat suit. "But, but, Top Gun ..." Jumping up and down in a flight suit, same cockiness, more homoerotic undertones. Related posts:

]]> http://www.badmouth.net/valkyrie-2008/feed/ 0 Mission: Impossible III http://www.badmouth.net/mission-impossible-iii-2006/ http://www.badmouth.net/mission-impossible-iii-2006/#comments Fri, 05 May 2006 22:58:38 +0000 Brian McDonough http://www.badmouth.net/?p=243 Director: J.J.Abrams Starring: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne Mission: Impossible II opened with Tom Cruise scaling a mountain, the camera Matrixing around him as he dangled over, I don’t know, the Grand Canyon or something, defying gravity and common sense with the determined joy of a loopy movie star using Oprah’s couch as a trampoline. Okay, not that psychotic, but still, it was an over-the-top opening in which Cruise picked up the traditional mission recording and threw it right into the camera as it self-destructed in its five allotted seconds. What does that tell you? That tells you that you’re watching a cartoon, a screwy bit of special-effects fun that shouldn’t be taken as any more serious than the fat pink bundle of cotton candy that it is. Episode Three of the action franchise opens with a scream over a black screen as a grimly evil Philip Seymour Hoffman says, “We’ve put an explosive charge in your head.” Cruise’s agent Ethan Hunt is sweaty, dirty, bloody, groggy, and manacled to a chair. We’re already at the climax of the film, and the personal hatred between hero and villain is instantly put into boldface when Hoffman puts a gun to the head of Hunt’s wife, whimpering through duct tape in blind panic. So, yeah, we’re not going for the straight roller-coaster here. Related posts:

]]> http://www.badmouth.net/mission-impossible-iii-2006/feed/ 2 War of the Worlds http://www.badmouth.net/war-of-the-worlds/ http://www.badmouth.net/war-of-the-worlds/#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2005 03:21:50 +0000 John Marcotte http://www.badmouth.net/?p=206 Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds has a rather difficult hurdle to overcome: Why would anyone pay money to watch Operating Thetan Tom Cruise battle fake aliens on the big screen when they can watch him battle the real aliens that live in his head on live television three or four times a week? War of the Worlds is a series of technically flawless special-effects sequences held tenuously together by a disjointed plot that cannot remain true to its own roots as a character study.
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]]> http://www.badmouth.net/war-of-the-worlds/feed/ 9 Casting Call: The A-Team Movie http://www.badmouth.net/casting-call-the-a-team-movie/ http://www.badmouth.net/casting-call-the-a-team-movie/#comments Fri, 28 Nov 2003 03:07:00 +0000 John Marcotte http://www.badmouth.net/wordpress/casting-call-the-a-team-movie/ The A-Team was an action-adventure program that I watched semi-regularly as a child, although the "action" was so farfetched that even my quite-elastic, 12-year-old credibility was often stretched to the snapping point. The show followed the exploits of a crack Vietnam War commando squad acting as mercenaries in the Los Angeles area after getting framed for crime they didn�t commit. There were a few things I could count on every episode:

The A-Team would shoot more live ammo at their opponents, than was expended during the Korean War
They would not actually hit anyone with any of this ammo (see any episode of G.I. Joe for more insight into this phenomena)
They would get captured by the bad guys
The bad guys would lock them in a fully equipped machine shop and ignore the sounds of miter saws, arc-welders, industrial grinders, etc.
The Team would create an armor-plated car/truck/bus/scooter and drive around knocking off bad guys who refused to go indoors where there were far fewer armor-plated vehicles
The end.

The show followed this template religiously, only slightly changing the details from week to week. I remember a favorite episode where instead of making an armor-plated car, they made a machine � and I am not making this up � that shot cabbages: a cabbage gun. Probably a trick they picked up from Charlie in the backwaters of Long Tan. Despite the ridiculous plots, or perhaps because of them, I tuned in every week. I think it was mainly due to the cast. The actors were certainly much better than the material, and they often managed to elevate the absurd to the sublime. Like every other mediocre television show ever made, rumors of an A-Team movie have been swirling around for years. Unlike some other shows, I think The A-Team might have a good shot of making it. But who will replace that cast that made the original series so watchable? We have a few ideas on that subject� Related posts:

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