So, my wife hates Tom Cruise, I, on the other hand, have always loved the guy. In a non-homosexual way. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Anyway, I think the dude takes himself way too seriously, but that boy can act. I have to think really hard to come up with a movie role where he did not just totally hit it out of the park. And secretly Ashley knows this to be true. But ever since his tirade against pharmaceuticals with Matt Lauer, Ashley is on a crusade against Tom Cruise.
The problem is, there are two movies I have been dying to see for a long time, and they both star Tom Cruise: Eyes Wide Shut and Vanilla Sky. I avoided all discussion about these movies for years in hopes that one day I could see them.
So Ash left town a couple of weeks ago with Hadley, and I decide to rent these movies, plus Magnolia, another Cruise movie thrown in for good measure. All three were both entertaining and flawed but very good movies, in my opinion.
Watched Magnolia first. Simply put, this movie just tried to do too much. It basically followed the lives of 9 different people over the course of a few days, and you learned throughout the movie that all of the people were connected to one another in some way. Some things I really liked about this movie: Tom Cruise's potrayal of a guru on how to score with women - just awesome (but this goes without saying, because it was Tom Cruise); Linda Partridge's role as the wife of a dying man; the whole sequence with the cop, played by John C. Riley, and his interaction with the chick with the coke problem. Things I did not like: the useless and annoying narration at the beginning; Phillip Seymour Hoffman's role as the nurse to the dying man; it was too damn long.
By the way, except for Tom Cruise, I had to look all of those actors' names up.
Ultimately, I think the writer just lost control of this movie and ended up making something that was all over the place and left you exhausted at the end. It had enough great moments to where I would recommend the movie, but I would never watch this again. And some of the acting performances were truly magnificent. Final rating: ****
Next up was Vanilla Sky. This movie was very interesting, but ultimately tried just a little too hard, in my opinion, to make you think. Again, as alays, Tom Cruise gave a very good performance. And it certainly had a twist that you never really saw coming. Penelope Cruz was very good as Tom Cruise's love interest, and Cameron Diaz brought a strong performance. Cameron Diaz is a very underrated actress, in my opinion, and when she gets a role like this that is not what you would expect, she generally nails it. The dude that was in Shasing Amy was in this movie, and that alone kind of annoyed me because Chasing Amy was so bad that I can never hear that guy's voice again without being annoyed. Plus I just don't think he is that great of an actor. Still, the movie held my interest the whole time, never drug, caught me by surprise, and stayed with me for a day or two. Final rating: ***.5
Next was Eyes Wide Shut, the final movie from Stanley Kubrick. A couple of Kubrick's movies (A Clockwork Orange; Full Metal Jacket; The Shining) are among my favorites of all times, so I really was anxious to see this movie. I knew it had sexual elements, but I never knew I was gonig to get to see the lovely Nicole Kidman completely naked, smoking a joint, and looking hotter than the Arizona desert. I mean GOOD GOD was shoe hot in this. Anyway, this movie is very difficult to summarize, but it is essentially a movie about jealousy between two married people, and what it drives them to do, and the guilt they experience (or don't experience). What's iinteresting is that there was all this build-up and everything, but ultimately neither the husband or wife really cheated. In fact, I think part of the movie was solely to make fun of Tom Cruise, as Kubrick had him running around the whole time trying to get laid to get back at his wife and he comes close but never is able to. Cruise is basically around very hot women the whole movie that throw themselves at him but he never gets so much as a hand job out of all his effort. The other interesting thing was to go back and ponder which of the things that happen to the people around Cruise are just circumstantial, and which were all caused by this shady group he gets mixed up in. This movie had lots of flaws, but it was perfect in alot of ways, too. Final rating: ****.5
