People Shooting Other People from Offscreen. (ALTERNATE TITLE: Adventures Of The World’s Most Expensive Stuntman.) Tom Cruise skydives. Tom Cruise fights in a toilet. Tom Cruise rides a motorbike through Paris. Tom Cruise jumps across rooftops. Tom Cruise climbs a rope to a flying helicopter. Tom Cruise flies a helicopter while fighting. Tom Cruise dangles from a cliff… Y’know, I … Read More
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
Cruisin’ for a Contusion. Tom Cruise is espionage agent Ethan Hunt, in the big screen reboot of the 1966 television series, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, who has to go rogue against his own agency to weed out a mole. But the agency thinks it’s him! (I don’t blame them – with that insufferable smirk and that mole-ish snout of his.) Nonetheless, man-toy … Read More
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III
The Running Spy. Running. If you like running, you’ll love MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III. Because that’s all that Tom Cruise seems to be doing in it. Besides running, Cruise is also being IMF espionage agent Ethan Hunt. (When he tells someone that IMF stands for “Impossible Missions Force,” we realize how ridiculous it sounds, and why everybody’s trying to kill him). … Read More
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION
Mission TomCruise-able. You know what the real Mission: Impossible is? Trying to get insurance for Tom Cruise. Oh, there is eventually a signature in blood on the dotted line, or this film would not be greenlit, but can any layman truly speculate what devil’s percentage of the box office these insurance companies are demanding in return – to insure a … Read More
ROCK OF AGES
Crock of Ages. My flesh was crawling so vividly during every minute of the mindless, sanitized, second-rate karaoke movie ROCK OF AGES that by the time it ended I was sitting in one seat and my flesh was four seats over. I would sincerely like to kick this movie to death. This whole concept is a MISTAKE. From the Broadway … Read More
EDGE OF TOMORROW
Blunt. Cruise. Repeat. Dying in battle is the new way to meet chicks! Right off the bat, EDGE OF TOMORROW involves time-travel, so if you’re one of those chrono-geeks who’s gonna sit there with your slide-rule and try to finger the anomalies, best you leave right now… The Future. Extra-terrestrial aliens have attacked, and Earth armies are on the defensive … Read More
JACK REACHER
Reaching For Grate-ness. The name is from a series of books by author Jim Grant (pseudonym Lee Child); even so, casting Tom Cruise as a character called JACK REACHER is just asking for the inevitable gay gags, like Jack Reacharound. And what kind of epicness was Grant aiming for anyway? Did he want big chords every time someone said the … Read More
TOP GUN
Highway to the Gayer Zone. TOP GUN – the movie that wrested the crown from MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR as the Gayest Movie Ever Made. Tom Cruise is Maverick, the pop gun let loose in billion dollar taxpayer war machinery, one of the best fancypants F14 Tomcat pilots stationed onboard an aircraft carrier, though so smug, irritating and … Read More
OBLIVION
Oblivious to its progenitors? Up here in space / I’m looking down on you. My lasers trace / Everything you do. You think you’ve private lives – think nothing of the kind. There is no true escape – I’m watching all the time. I’m made of metal My circuits gleam. I am perpetual I keep the country clean. — Judas … Read More
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2
Highway to the Ambivalent Zone. Exciting? Yes. Stupid? Impossibly. Super spy Ethan Hunt (an incredibly smug Tom Cruise) must stop villain Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) from spreading a genetically modified disease in Australia. Taking his cues from every reputable pharm corporation, Ambrose wants to spread the Chimera virus in order to sell the cure, called Bellerophon, buying enough stocks in … Read More
EYES WIDE SHUT
Pants Wide Open. Stanley Kubrick directs EYES WIDE SHUT with his pants wide open. Elegant somberness, lurid themes, disturbing visuals, foreboding music, screaming colors. And tits. Tits tits tits. Not banana teats, cow udders or raisins either, but perfectly-rounded, gently-sloped baseballs to cantaloupes. On women ivory-legged, flat-bellied, pear-buttocked, butter-smooth, hungry-lipped, not one a notch below 9. Call it art. Call … Read More
KNIGHT AND DAY
Mission: Implausible. A movie built around its stunts. Ergo, if the audience was purely stuntpeople, KNIGHT AND DAY is awesome! But we’re just regular little cucumbers out here in the fluttering dark. As much as it thrills me to see a car flip over and miss Tom Cruise’s head by inches (even though thrills would have magnified had it connected), … Read More
TROPIC THUNDER
Bringing the Thunder. As gut-wrenching as APOCALYPSE, as heartfelt as RYAN, and as filthy as fuck, TROPIC THUNDER is another in the small oeuvre of Ben Stiller writer-director-actor comedies where Stiller goes “full retard” for maximum satirical jungle juice. Action movie juggernaut, Tugg Speedman (Stiller) and a platoon of spoiled-rotten actors (Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Brandon T. Jackson, Jay … Read More
VALKYRIE
Plight of the Valkyries. When I heard Tom Cruise was to play a World War II Nazi, I laughed my LMAO off. Tough sell for a non-actor. And by non-actor, I mean movie star. And by movie star, I mean he can’t act.But then it all comes clear. The role was Colonel von Stauffenberg, who was involved in one of … Read More
LIONS FOR LAMBS
Roaring Thunder for Republican Muttonheads. Lest we forget: Robert Redford once brought down Satan Nixon in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN; in LIONS FOR LAMBS, he goes for the neck-wattle of Demon W. Bush. Razor-sharp writing, controlled direction, magnificent performances, LIONS FOR LAMBS is a wake up call to America – wake up and smell the lunatic euphemisms the Republican administration … Read More
WAR OF THE WORLDS 2005
Spielberg and Cruise: Reign of the Smugs. One good thing can be said about the alien attack in WAR OF THE WORLDS – at least it achieved the mission impossible of wiping that insufferable smirk off Tom Cruise’s face. Steven Spielberg wields this remake of H.G. Wells’ 1898 classic tale like Mel Gibson wielded his recounting of the peacenik crucified … Read More
THE LAST SAMURAI
Samurai Hei. I love sushi. I also love Toshiro Mifune. Guess that makes me a prime candidate for a samurai warrior – at least, that’s all it seems to take for a Westerner in this movie to wear kamishimo and wield katana. Despite that conceptual annoyance, this film does craft a sincere portrayal of an outsider undergoing an assimilation into … Read More