Editorials
The 5 Best Tom Cruise Movies!!
I was so bummed that I missed my press screening of Edge of Tomorrow on Monday due to traffic. Not only do I really like Tom Cruise (and Emily Blunt), I’ve heard from many people I trust that this movie is f*cking fantastic (unlike Oblivion). I’ve also heard that it’s easily director Doug Liman’s best movie in almost 20 years.
So while I wait for a window to go check out Tomorrow this weekend, I figured I’d toss a list together ranking my favorite Cruise films. None of these are horror movies, but that’s what “The Further” is for.
This is the kind of thing where the rankings (and indeed the entries themselves) could change any day of the week, so I respect and welcome any disagreements. Check it out below!
5: Jack Reacher
This movie didn’t really set the world on fire (nor did I manage to see it in theaters), but I’d argue that Christopher McQuarrie’s 2012 film (along with Mission Impossible 4) set the stage for the Cruise comeback (in terms of public perception, his earning power hasn’t actually flagged that much) we’re seeing today. In many ways Jack Reacher is a perfect 90’s movie. It feels like the kind of film that would have been a massive budget buster in 1998, but it seems small by today’s standards. Which is great. It gives the film plenty of wiggle room to let Cruise’s character and his actions determine the stakes.
4: War of the Worlds
War of the Worlds is much stronger than people give it credit for. Spielberg made an excellent disaster film in 2005, only to see it overshadowed by the public’s response to Cruise’s personal life during the press tour. Not only is the film itself strong, but Cruise himself is fantastic here. Playing a loser dad who finally has to man up and make some intense (and morally divisive) choices during an apocalyptic event, he brings a real sense of urgency to one of his everyman roles.
3: Risky Business
Not Cruise’s first film, but the one that most assuredly launched him to stardom. And for good reason. His turn here as Joel, a repressed, wealthy high school senior struggling with college placement in the suburbs of Chicago is actually quite nuanced (and a lot of fun). He traces the arc from virgin to pimp (literally) deftly and thoroughly. And the movie itself is a blast.
In Michael Mann’s 2004 masterpiece Collateral (on some days I like it more than Heat, it’s leaner and more propulsive), Cruise is able to parlay his trademark sense of urgency and intensity into the role of Vincent, a hitman with a tight schedule who happened to pick the wrong cabbie in Jamie Foxx. Watching Cruise and Foxx play off each other is a delight, and there’s a sense of fairness to Vincent that Cruise is able to get more mileage out of than most marquee names I can think of.
I’m a huge Paul Thomas Anderson fan, so naturally this was going to be near the top (even if it’s not my favorite PTA film). I imagine you’ve seen Magnolia, but seek it out if you haven’t. I’m not sure Tom Cruise actually gives the film’s best performance among the Altman sprawl here, but I think it’s a hugely brave one. It’s a testament to him that he was willing to take such a gamble on a choice this bold. Most movie stars would have likely found a way to imbue the odious Frank T.J. Mackey with sympathetic notes earlier on, but Cruise waits until the very end to sample his redemption.
Now you can go to the comments and yell at me for leaving Top Gun off. It’s a good movie, but I actually think it contains one of Cruise’s most conservative performances. I should note that I love Cruise’s take on Lestat in Interview With The Vampire, it’s the best thing in a movie that I don’t completely love.
Editorials
‘A Haunted House’ and the Death of the Horror Spoof Movie
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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