Tom Cruise Weekend

The wife watched Risky Business the other night and Collateral was on the TV late last night. Of course, I watched the whole thing. Got me thinking of Tom Cruise and what if he had only done his roles in Risky Business, Top Gun, Mission Impossible, Magnolia, Collateral, and Tropic Thunder. You'd think - Jesus Christ - this guy is a fantastic actor.

He plays a vulnerable, sexually naive teenager, who blossoms into a young man in one of the greatest high school movies of all time. He carries two massive Hollywood blockbuster movies as a charismatic leading man -- in one, playing sexy pilot and in another, a badass team leader. And then, he plays scene-stealing villains in several different types of movies. In PTA's Magnolia, he arguably gives the most standout performance in an ensemble of some of the greatest living actors at the time: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Phillip Baker Hall, Julianne Moore, etc. In Collateral, which might be my favorite of all his roles, he plays a sociopathic hired killer, draped in a tight grey suit and dyed grey hair, doing a Terminator impersonation. And then, the comedic turn in Tropic Thunder, which was much more clever than any of the DeNiro self-spoofs if you ask me. He basically makes the movie, which isn't very good, but the performance could be up there with Terry Crews in Idiocracy and Dudley Moore in Foul Play, where these single side performances elevate the films into worth watching.

All I'm saying is that there are many actors who get more critical "respect" who can't match these five performances, methinks.