It’s kind of weird — there’s nobody in Hollywood that attracts as much snark and derision as a personality than Tom Cruise, and yet almost all of his movies make money, there are so, so many of them, and more of them are good than bad. Is it his impossible good looks? His religion? His excessive enthusiasm and zest for life? The fact that most of the time he plays super-cocky guys that could stand to be taken down a peg or two? I don’t know, but I do know better than to bet against Oblivion, which opened this past weekend. Need proof? Cue up almost any of his 24 movies available on Blockbuster On Demand, lie back, and enjoy The Cruise.
A straight-A high school student (Cruise) meets an extra sexy young call girl (Rebecca DeMornay), drives his dad’s Porsche into a lake, and turns the family home into a whorehouse while his parents are out of town for the weekend. Princeton could use a guy like Joel!
A super-cocky Navy pilot (you know who) goes to train with the best of the best, breaks all the rules, shares some uncomfortably long stares with Val Kilmer, plays volleyball, and beats the Russkies in a dogfight without starting World War III. All in a day’s work!
A high-end car salesman (who else?) learns he’s been cut out of his estranged father’s will in favor of the severely autistic older brother (Dustin Hoffman) he never knew he had, so he kidnaps him in hopes of getting a cut of the cash. Everyone remembers Hoffman’s performance, but this was Cruise’s first meaty dramatic role, for which he drew (deserved) critical accolades.
Clear-eyed Long Island kid Ron Kovic eagerly enlists in the Marines to fight in Vietnam, but when he comes back paralyzed from the Read More
