Top 5 Tom Cruise Performances | Archive

What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today?

You're not interested in art?

No.

Well, look, we're going to do this thing.

We're going to have a conversation.

With Alejandro Gonzalez and Yari 2's Digger now in theaters, we have the return of Tom Cruise, actor. We paid tribute to Tom Cruise, actor, with our Top 5 Cruise performances back in 2017. Our producer, Sam, was nice enough to reprint our Top 5 list here for us. any surprises there without spoiling anything? Any surprises as you quickly look back? This is almost 10 years ago now. Would you take issue with a much younger Josh Larson?

I mean, the only thing that really would have affected it is that I have seen your number one pick, which I won't spoil, since we did this list. And it was a blind spot that I tried to get to, wasn't able to fill it in. Not sure. I mean, great movie. Love the movie. Not sure if Cruz's performance would bump its way onto my top five, but it might, it just might there at the end. So that's the only thing that might change for me. How about you?

Looking at it, it is that number one. I'm a little surprised I had it number one. Now I haven't re-listened. I don't know what my explanation is. Maybe I was just trying to be a little off the beaten path, try to not go so obvious because my number two and three, I think are fairly obvious, but I do love the performances in my number two and three slot.

If I, if I really had to be pinned down, I might move number one back to number five or four and just slide everything up a little bit. But otherwise these would be my five. I think I feel pretty good about these five, Josh. All right, let's do it. Let's hear it. You can hear other top fives, just like this one, interviews, reviews, whatever, by being a film spotting family member that gives you constant access to the film spotting archive, plus other benefits. You can learn more at filmspottingfamily.com. Now take a trip with us back to September 2017 for our top five Tom Cruise performances.

What possible good could come from putting Jessup on the stand?

He told Kendrick to order the code red.

He did?

That's great.

Why didn't you say so?

And of course, you have proof of that.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I keep forgetting. You were sick the day they taught law at law school.

You put him on the stand and you get it from him.

Oh, we get it from him.

Yes.

No problem. We get it from him. Colonel Jessup, isn't it true that you ordered the code red on Santiago?

Listen, we're all a little.

I'm sorry.

Your time's run out. What do we have for the losers, Judge?

Well, for our defendants, it's a lifetime at exotic Fort Leavenworth. And for defense counsel, Kathy, that's right.

It's a court-martial.

Yes, Johnny.

That.

was Tom Cruise. Oh boy, was that Tom Cruise. And I just knew that this had to be the clip that we played going into this top five, our top five Tom Cruise performances, because a few weeks ago, I was just flipping channels late at night. A few good men came on. It's on TBS or TNT, those channels all the time. And I don't usually stop to watch it, but I stopped it on this scene. And watching Tom Cruise as Daniel Caffey just absolutely go bonkers. I mean, just become completely unhinged. It mesmerized me, frankly. And of course, then I had to watch Jessup and I had to watch the courtroom scenes and see how it all played out all over again. And I just thought it'd be a perfect setup. Maybe we'll get to some performances here, Josh,

in our top five that are less unhinged.

Yeah, I mean, I think I said something in our American Made review about when his intensity gets a little too cranked up. That's what we have here.

I think we do. Now, I'm sure you'll have some set up and you'll tell us how you formed your list, but I wanted to kick things off with an excerpt, a brief bit from The Anatomy of an Actor, Tom Cruise's Anatomy of an Actor by Amy Nicholson. She is on the Canon podcast and she's formerly the film critic for MTV and LA Weekly. And we are going to hear from Amy Nicholson here as we get through this top five, but we're going to hear from her in prose form as I haven't read her book yet, but An excerpt was published over at RogerEbert.com when it was published, and Amy writes this. Cruise himself has earned three Oscar nods and lost. Therein lies the great paradox of his career.

In the three decades since losing it, he's become and remained the box office's biggest international star. Globally, his films have scored over $ 8 billion. Though he's adored by audiences and the most talented directors of his generation, one thing continues to elude Tom Cruise. Respect. He's been a Nazi, a paraplegic, an assassin, a redneck, a car salesman, a samurai warrior, and a drunk. He's played vampires and hustlers and Irishmen and elves. Despite his efforts, Tom Cruise's image hasn't changed. He's still misread as a one-note hero who relies on his charm, even though his characters haven't grinned in a decade. Never has an actor been so closely watched...

Here's the line I love, Josh. Never has an actor been so closely watched, yet so rarely seen, so successful, while still struggling for recognition. In this process of forming... Your top five list, Josh, did you see Tom Cruise?

Personally, I was already there. But I do think Amy's book kicked off a reappreciation of him. I remember a lot of conversation. And I think we were actually talking about what movie was that. We felt like we were coming to this list a little late. Like people had done their appreciation of Tom Cruise maybe two years ago or so. And we couldn't quite identify what movie that was hooked on. But now I'm thinking it was probably Amy's book that really kicked a lot of that off.

Yeah, I think the book was a big part of it. And I think it coincided with the release of Rogue Nation. It was around that time, 2014, 2015. But she stopped at Ghost Protocol. That's when she was writing the book. So it was up to Ghost Protocol that she covers. And if you want to read that excerpt, we will link to it in our show notes over at filmspotting.net.

So I did come into this top five as a fan already, you know, open to Cruise, maybe still under appreciated him a little bit because I hadn't taken the time to sit down and look at the entire filmography. It was also fun to put together on Facebook and Twitter with listeners. We got a lot of participation on this one. So there is a ton of enthusiasm for him out there. We've been a little more intentional lately about using hashtags for our lists. And we did top five Tom Cruise for this one.

Please use it.

A ton of feedback from people, including Immaterial Mike. He's at MichaelBayer1. He said, Cruz is one of the only huge movie stars we have left. The guy just seems to love making movies, and I love watching the movies he makes. And that was helpful to me because it resonated with what I do enjoy and have enjoyed about him for a long time is the sense of joy that you get in his performances. And I think what's crucial about that is for me at least, it offsets the cockiness. And that was something that came later, and maybe that's why I'm more in that 90s era, because his first era was just pure 100% cockiness, right, that he managed to pull off. And then it started to get tempered a little bit by some experimentation, but also

some joy in being a movie star. And so those two things balance, and both are in play in a lot of my picks here. So I'll start with my number five. And it's actually a recent performance. It's Edge of Tomorrow. I do think that until its ending, which I'd say wimps out a little bit, this alien invasion flick is all about the deconstruction of Tom Cruise, action star.

He's not the super suave savior here.

He's a weasel.

He's this military officer who looks the part, but he's actually this ex-ad man who's now found himself in this cushy position in military PR. Near the start of the film, when he's ordered by a superior, played by Brendan Gleeson, to accompany a planned assault of the alien forces on the shores of France, he tries to wheeze a lot of it.

I'm sorry, the first wave of the beach, you mean the front? France!

Satellites show minimal enemy movement on the coast.

A little resistance.

A little excitement, something to tell your grandchildren.

I appreciate the confidence, General. I do this to avoid doing that.

Excuse me.

I was in ROTC in college. The war broke out. I lost my advertising firm, and here I am. I do what I do, and you do what you do. But I'm not a soldier, really.

So Cruz gets sent to the front anyway, and then the movie becomes this meta-commentary on the star's relentless, indomitable, can-do attitude. He dies pretty quickly in battle, but then finds himself alive again, forced to go back into battle. Live, die, repeat, as the movie's known now. And it's also just this idea of the unstoppable, ever-youthful Tom Cruise, right? But this time it's something of a curse. Now, as I mentioned, the climax of the movie does get more conventional. Cruise gets more heroic. But until then, it's really this fascinating performance of self-critique and meta-commentary. I think you could almost argue that the only other film where he pokes a hole in his inherent cockiness to this degree might be

his supporting part in Magnolia. Very different performance, but at least from his vantage point, I think there might be something similar going on there.

Yeah, that's a great pick. I do enjoy that movie quite a bit. I counted up all the movies he's made to date, 42 movies. I've seen 74% of them. I don't know where you would stand with that, Josh, but that's probably my highest percentage for any actor who's made over 40 movies, maybe even over 25 or 30.

They're just often films that slip through the cracks. And with Cruise so far, it's only 11 of those. And if you look at the 31 that I've seen, only 3%. of them, I think, just for purposes of simplifying this, I'd consider bad. Rock of Ages, Austin Powers in Gold Number, which I don't even remember him showing up in.

I had no idea he was in that.

Yeah.

Or forgotten, at least.

I don't even know if that counts. And then the Cameron Crowe misfire, Vanilla Sky.

Mm-hmm.

After that, I was mixed on War of the Worlds. I didn't love that Spielberg movie, but I wouldn't consider it a bad film. And Mission Impossible 2, I haven't seen since it came out in 2000. I do consider it to be, as many do, the worst of all the films in the MI franchise, but it's also not a horrible film directed by John Woo, so there's a pretty good batting average there. And speaking of those Mission Impossible movies, for number five, I'm actually going with his performance as Ethan Hunt. And I could just cheat and say, well, really, it's the same performance across all five movies. So it's him playing that character. Mission Impossible 3, which was directed by Abrams, which I do like quite a bit more

than most people do, at least when I see these rankings of the MI movies, that did try to personalize him a little bit more or humanize him, make him an actual living, breathing man in the world, separate from being Ethan Hunt, the world's greatest spy. And I like that aspect, even though I know that doesn't work for some others. But he's essentially the same character through all of these films. If I had to pick just one, I would go with the original, the Brian De Palma original, his performance in that film, even though I'd rank it at minimum third in the series, and I'd probably rank it fourth even behind MI3. The scene I'm going to point to, Josh, is probably one of the more famous ones in the movie where He is having that conversation

with Kittredge, the head of the CIA, or kind of one of his bosses. And De Palma's using those canted angles, those really tight close-ups. And he is discovering, Ethan Hunt is discovering, that essentially this whole mission, this mission that went terribly wrong, where he's the only one, it seems, who has survived at this point, it was really just a mole hunt. It was put on by the CIA to discover a traitor in their midst. So All these people died, and for what? And we see that kind of trademark smoldering intensity as that camera is fixated on his face. The anger is brewing. That tight shot can barely contain his fury at losing his team, the people he cared for. And there's another element that comes through

as well that I think you can trace through a lot of his characters. There is a bit of self-righteousness about that character, and I think a lot of Cruise characters, where they either start that way, they're convinced... that they have some kind of moral authority or that they're doing things the right way and others aren't, or they start out pretty cavalier and have no real direction and have to come to some kind of moral reckoning. But we see that righteousness and that righteous indignation in Ethan Hunt's character.

And watching it again, you really do see Cruise capture and express a lot of emotions at once. There is that anger I mentioned towards the CIA. There is, I think, sadness coming through thinking about the people that he lost. There's fear or at least recognition of the fact that he's now a target and he has to get out of here. And then there's that just sense of being perplexed at the fact that if this really was a mole hunt and he knows he's not the mole as he's being accused of being, then who is? I can understand you're very upset.

Kittredge, you've never seen me very upset.

Enough is enough. You have brought it, cajoled and killed, and you have done it using loyalties on the inside. You want to shake hands with the devil, that's fine with me. I just want to make sure that you do it in hell. His head is really spinning in this scene, and Cruise captures all of that, and as that tension builds and builds and builds, and finally that explosion as he makes his escape, what do we get, Josh, so gloriously? Cruise running. Cruise just jumping through the glass, and running at high speed through, I think, the streets of Vienna at this point, maybe Paris, but he takes off through those streets as the water recedes behind him, and it's Cruise doing what Cruise does best.

Yeah, and it's the combination, right? It's doing that intimate stuff at first and then being able to combine it with the physicality that makes him an action star. That is what makes him so good. All right, my number four, I'm a little nervous about this now based on some things you said earlier in the show, but I'm going with Tropic Thunder here.

I'm glad you are.

I'm putting it on the list. I am generally a fan of dramatic actors, big stars trying their hand at broad comedy. It doesn't always work out. You know, a little hint again for Massacre Theater. Sometimes things go awry. But that's what Cruise is doing here. And he's got this cameo as a studio executive slash fascist dictator, Les Grossman.

It's beautiful to behold. I just think it's hilarious, unexpected. full bore, you get a different sort of Cruise intensity here. I actually included his verbal beatdown of terrorists who are attempting to blackmail him on my top five movie phone calls list. That was way back, way back, Adam, episode 391.

Oh, you were just a pup then.

Yep.

We're not going to play that here. I think we had some FCC issues. Right out of the gate, I got us into trouble with the FCC, so I don't think we can play that one. Let's go instead with another B rating by video call, this time of the director, played by Steve Coogan, who has let the movie within the movie spiral out of control.

Hello, Les!

We got you loud and clear.

Here, Les.

I see you. I see you.

I see you.

Which one of you faces is Damien Cochran?

That's me, sir.

It's good to finally meet you at last.

Get some face time.

And who here is a key grip?

You.

Hit that director in the face really hard.

Every time Cruise appears in Tropic Thunder, he's channeling that trademark intensity into this profane comic rage. I mean, you have to think the guy is exercising something here. here, getting something out of his system that we're not aware of. Whether his experiences as a producer, we know he's very heavily involved in producing most of his films. But yeah, he's getting something out of his system. We just get to watch. We also get to watch the wonderful bonus end credits dancing scene, which I kind of could just watch on a loop for a while. It makes me happy.

Well, I'm a big fan of Tropic Thunder. I don't remember disliking Cruise's performance. I brought up my notes for that review while you were talking, and I actually didn't see one mention of Cruise in there.

What?

So I don't know what that means, but obviously it was not a strength of the movie for me. He is, you're right, as I said earlier, one of those actors who I don't necessarily want to see take on a character, which he's definitely playing there, complete with all of the various disguise elements, but It's just always Tom Cruise playing at something. For me, there's a sense of awareness and a lack of an ability to totally disappear into that character.

It just seems like he always knows and he's winking at you while he's doing it. Well, it's a winking movie.

I mean, every performance of that movie is winking.

You're right. Well, this movie doesn't have any winking in it. My number four, the performance is Ron Kovic. The movie is Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, another movie that we fairly recently did a Sacred Cow review of. I don't actually go in order. We've never talked about this. I don't know what your process is when you're making your notes, but I'd come up with my top five and then I just kind of dance around and write my notes down for whatever pick strikes me in the moment.

I actually have something to say. And in this case, I think I started with three and then two and then one. And then I work backwards to four.

And I, yeah, I usually rank them when I'm all done. Like now that I know what I've said.

Well, I usually move them around.

Yeah.

Right. After I end up writing down what I want to say for me, with Born on the Fourth of July, as I said, I had one through three done. I'd already had this slotted in at four, and then I said, well, I should go back and look at my notes from that review, that show that Matt Zoller Seitz appeared on, and we were talking about his book, about Oliver Stone, and we shared our top five Oliver Stone scenes, and I don't want to just repeat what I said there, but I acknowledged during that review right off the bat that this isn't really fair to say because at the time, and it's even true now, I haven't been re-watching a bunch of Tom Cruise movies, and Born on the Fourth of July was, of course, the freshest one in my mind,

and since I've never totally disliked Tom Cruise in a movie, the one that I've seen most recently is probably going to be one that stands out. And during that review, Josh, I suggested that I would rank more on the 4th of July ahead of his performance in Jerry Maguire and two other movies that are going to come up higher on this list. So, fine, I'm full of contradictions, but what I said then does hold true insofar as he was the biggest surprise for me on that rewatch of the film. Stone being able to take that presence away And that manic kind of energy and what I argued was he doesn't necessarily try to contain it but try to channel it and he does so very effectively and I drew a comparison to Maverick and Top Gun where

he plays him such a way physically that gives off this attitude that he's above everyone around him and this institution of the Navy and then you see a character like Ron Kovic and it's the complete opposite. this sense of admiration, this sense of having a call to service and to sacrifice. And he really embodies that well. And that scene that I love, I think, is maybe the most heartbreaking in the film when he says to his father, who's going to love me? And that whole sense of identity that he has is crushed in this film. And then, as we see ultimately by the end of the film, reborn or reimagined. And I just think about how many times in that movie you really recognize how broken that character is how desperate that character is and I think

Cruz captures it first.

Time I got hit I was shot in the foot I could lay down I mean who gives a now if I was a hero or not I was paralyzed castrated that day why so stupid I have my dick and my balls now, and I think to me I give everything I believe in, everything I got, all my values, just to have my body back again, just to be whole again.

I'm not whole.

I never will be, and that's the way it is, isn't it?

I'll have a little bit more to say about Born on the 4th of July in a bit, but first you mentioned Maverick. Let's get right to them. I've got Top Gun at my number three.

I love it. You don't even love this movie.

Well, here's what happened. I did not as a kid when I was prime age, maybe a little young, a little young in 86, but certainly saw it around then and should have loved it, but resisted it. I think, you know, the whole locker room bravado thing never did much for me as a kid. Just, you know, that sort of culture was not my thing. And so I think I saw it in Top Gun.

But you did play shirtless volleyball. With other dudes.

Yes.

Okay.

Spent most of my childhood doing that. So really, why didn't I like Top Gun? I revisited it, though, Adam. Just this last year, I was a guest on the Feelin' Film podcast in May, and they suggested we do Top Gun. I've always wanted to give it another look, so I said, why not? And I'm happy I did, because I came out liking it a bit more. I'm not going to claim it's any sort of classic, but first, let me say why it's on this list. And I think it's because no matter what you feel about the movie... This here is pure Cruise. He's distilled to his grinning, winning essence.

I did end up writing a full review on Top Gun for my site, so I'm just going to steal from that here. For most of the movie, the hero worship of Maverick is almost nauseating. It's as if everyone but Val Kilmer's Iceman melts around him. Cruise adopts a smirk that not only fits the character, but is also the look of an actor who knows he's about to become a huge star. The performance would be insufferable if it wasn't so convincing. Cruz slash Maverick believes in himself so completely, we can only assent and shield ourselves from the wattage of his smile.

In case some of you wonder who the best is, they're up here on this plaque on the wall. The best driver in Israel from each class has his name on it. And they have the option to come back here to be Top Gun instructors. You think your name's gonna be on that plaque?

Yes, sir.

That's pretty arrogant, considering the company you're in. Yes, sir. I like that in the pilot. Remember, when it's over out there, we're all on the same team.

So that's why Cruise is on this list. The reason that I like Top Gun a little bit more than I remembered is because I rediscovered how it ultimately pulls the rug out from underneath Maverick quite a bit in the climax.

Oh, sure.

Here's what I also found. Amidst all the high fives and motorcycle rides, it's easy to forget that Maverick doesn't win Top Gun. I'd forgotten that. That honor goes to Iceman, who all movie long has been criticizing Maverick for taking unnecessary risks and always thinking of himself first. And in fact, after Maverick's nerves are shaken in a crash, he doesn't regain his confidence until he learns to fly as part of a team. Could Top Gun actually be a portrait of the dark side of American individualism? Maybe even an argument for the value of community, if not exactly communism.

It may be hard to see that in the glare of Cruz's toothy grin, but the argument could be made. So I wouldn't go so far as to say Top Gun is subversive, but it subverts Cruz a little bit.

Yeah.

Right there when he's also at his brightest. And I kind of like that about it. You are still dangerous.

You can be my wingman anytime.

Bullshit.

You can be mine. Yeah!

Come on!

Well, I can't wait until his performance in Days of Thunder is your number two because it's basically Top Gun just with race cars.

Yeah, and Days of Thunder I don't think I've ever seen. Maybe because it sort of had that reputation from the start. And I was like, well, if the original didn't do it for me.

My number three is a movie that has come up here in some of our poll comments from listeners. And we heard from Jason Eakin with his voicemail. It's from Eyes Wide Shut, Dr. William Harford in that Stanley Kubrick movie. He's a New York City doctor. He's married to Nicole Kidman, who was his wife at the time. She's an art curator.

And basically, the whole movie unfolds over one really crazy night where he is set on a bizarre path out in the New York City nightlife, I suppose, after his wife admits that she once thought about cheating on him. And with Cruise, this has come up a few times already, we think of him as this physical actor, the running, the stunt work in those Mission Impossible films. Those aren't talky performances, and in fact, I think they've gotten less and less talky and more physical as the films have gone on, as that franchise has gone on. But there are plenty of his performances that are hyper-verbal. Jerry Maguire is one. Rain Man, I would say, is another. A few good men. I think Top Gun, actually, he does

use his mouth a lot in that film. He's just as sort of brash with the things he says as he is with the things he does. But even when there isn't heavy dialogue in a Cruise performance, he's always driving a scene. All of the action is revolving around him and his actions, and I think that his performance here in Eyes Wide Shut is the one exception, or at least one of the primary exceptions, because Bill Harford is an observer. The entire film, he is always reacting instead of acting, which is, as I said, a side of Cruise I had never really seen before, certainly not carrying an entire film. That confession... that sends him on a tailspin is one where he is listening and watching the entire time, and then he goes out into the world,

and everyone, whether it's male or female, and there's a YouTube video that documents this, but everybody wants him. Everybody becomes physically attracted to him. He's always reacting to that, and he gets caught up in these mysterious circumstances well beyond his control. Again, he's this observer. He's a reactive participant, and He's not just reacting, but he's being tested where he constantly has to hold himself back from acting on his desires. So that charisma that we keep talking about, that energy that we keep talking about with Cruz, in this performance, it's being repressed the entire film, which actually creates its own kind of energy, I think.

Victor, the woman lying dead in the morgue.

Was the woman at the party.

Yes?

Well, Victor, maybe I'm missing something here. You called it a fake, a charade.

Do you mind telling me what kind of charade ends with somebody turning up dead?

Okay, Bill, let's cut the bullshit, all right? You've been way out of your depth. A scene there where he's confronting Sidney Pollack, about some of the terrible things he saw the night before. It takes him almost 10 seconds just to stand up and deliver the lines you heard there. There is a weariness and a weight to the performance as Bill Harford that I appreciate that to me does stand in contrast to the bulk of his other performances, if not all of them.

Yeah, it really is a good counterpoint and didn't make my list, but it was tough to keep off for sure. My number two, we're going to return here to Bourne on the 4th of July. You're right, our Sacred Cow review. It's pretty fresh in my mind as well. That was from episode 604. And I think he gives us some of that over-intensity in parts of this performance. And I think that may be what got the Oscar attention. There are those screaming matches he has with Caroline Kava as Ron Kovic's mother. I mean, those are big actory scenes.

But what really stuck with me are, you mentioned one of these quieter scenes with his father, played by Raymond Berry. I also appreciated another moment, and this is when Kovic is in the Veterans Hospital, and he's already been told he'll never walk again. But he insists on doing the daily physical therapy, and we see him in this scene hanging limply from crutches, lets out a big smile, and declares that he's improving, even though everyone else in the scene and us in the audience know that all he's doing is becoming better at dragging his legs. That combination of physical activity and confidence, I think, is a Tom Cruise moment, if I've ever seen one, but then underlined by this sad reality of COVID situation.

Yeah.

For my number two, I've got a little bit of listener assistance. This is a voicemail from one of our regulars now, Jeff Milo.

Hey, Tom.

It's Jeff Milo in Ferndale, Michigan, and I'm thinking about Tom Cruise for your next show. I think about the Cruise performances that stick with me. I think they spring from something like just rising to an occasion. If I could make an appraisal on Cruise, it would be that he really responds to a challenge, I think. I think most of his famous roles in scenes are when he goes toe-to-toe and face-to-face with actors who are generally considered a grade or two above him. Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, or maybe he's challenged by you know, intense, uh, eccentric, meticulous directors like Oliver Stone or Stanley Kubrick. Um, so I don't know, that may, that might sound like a backhanded compliment, but when he, uh, goes against Nicholson or

Max von Zaito or Jason Robards, I think, um, like an athlete making that last Hail Mary play, you really see him rise to, to that occasion. Um, The scene that's forever ingrained in my regard for him is his confrontation of his father, Robards, in Magnolia. I love the nervous, deep breaths he's taking. I love that he's kind of torturously pulled into crying for this man that he hates because he just can't control it. And that's it. You're watching a man lose his control over his hate.

I was there.

She waited for your call. For you to come. I'm not gonna cry.

I'm not gonna.

Cry for you.

It is gut-wrenching and heartbreaking and beautiful, and I love it when he rises to those occasions. Great show, guys. Take care.

Jeff there, I think, with a really smart take on Cruise overall as a performer and a great choice of Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia and that scene in particular, because that's where I'm at with my number two. And we had a few listeners like Jason Eakin earlier and Adam Wells wrote in and said, just look at 1999.

Forget a decade. I can pinpoint the year for me where everything changed. It was the year that we got eyes wide shut. And then He's with Paul Thomas Anderson making Magnolia. Now, this is one of those that would qualify as a supporting performance, one of two that is going to make my list here, but the first one that's come up so far, and you alluded to this earlier, Josh, that he is playing one of those hyper-verbal, ultra-charismatic characters full of that energy as this misogynistic motivational speaker teaching guys how to pick up women. The name of his series is Seduce and Destroy, I believe, and at least according to Wikipedia, Anderson actually, he said that he thought Cruise was drawn to this role because he had just

finished making Eyes Wide Shut, where he was playing, as I said, this totally repressed character, and now he got to just let loose and play a character that was outlandish, in PTA's words, and bigger than life. And those scenes are fun, of course, though also a little bit disturbing, but it's that scene when he confronts his dad, that catharsis scene, that really does stand out. There is that physicality to it, again, when you rewatch it, where He enters, and I just love this moment where Cruz puts his hands on his hips and he tilts his head, almost like he's saying, well, what do we have here? This is a nice scam you pulled off here, old man, getting me to come back. That's what that says to me.

But then he's just as quickly back to normal or what we would think a son would be feeling in that moment. You see the torment he's experiencing. It's in his face, his posture, his entire body, his breathing, as Jeff suggested. this man that he hates, and he hates that he's here, but it's obviously full of a lot of complex emotions, and most of the scene plays out in a long take. There's about two minutes just on Cruise with Robards in the foreground and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the background where we're just looking at Cruise, and he is letting out these feelings that even though Frank T.J.

Mackey doesn't hold anything back, he's clearly repressed these emotions and is finally now getting to even let those out With his father who can't talk back to him. And I did see a clip on YouTube from Inside the Actress Studio, which I remember watching this interview when it came out. But Cruz says there that he hadn't seen his own father in 10 years. And when he first read the script, he had a moment like that with his dad. They had a falling out. Hadn't seen him in 10 years. Gets a call, your father's dying. Goes to talk to him. And his father told him that he'd meet with him as long as they didn't talk about the past at all. And... He says in that interview with James Lipton that when he read the script,

he said to PTA, like, did you know this somehow? Like, how did you know? And he says, no, I just wrote the character and I thought you'd be good for it. But I'm not necessarily suggesting that Cruise is really good at tapping into his own personal trauma. I don't know what he's going through there. But there's a bit of irony in that all he does in that scene with Robards is talk about the past. He brings up their entire history in that moment. but he doesn't dwell on it.

And the thing that he says to James Lipton that I think is really insightful about his performance style or his approach to acting is he says he's always looking for the spontaneity. He does this extensive research, and he'll write these histories like a lot of actors do, so he knows them front and back. But in the moment...

He doesn't want to come with that kind of preparation. He wants to just exist in that moment. And you feel it with Frank T.J. Mackey. As I said, you feel it even in just the way he puts his hands on his hips. There's nothing calculated about any of his gestures there. There's one that's even really demonstrative in that moment where he's kind of holding back, letting something out as if he's clenching his entire body. Everything about it feels to me anyway like it all happened in that take. And we'd never seen it before in that moment. Now, whether or not that's the trick of acting or not, doesn't really matter. Cruise does convey that there. So I'm completely with Jeff and with a lot of our listeners

in loving that scene, even though I find it hard to watch, and loving that performance in Magnolia.

Yeah, Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut are probably fighting for my number six slot. So I'm with you on your last two picks. At number one, though, I went with Jerry Maguire, the film that didn't necessarily change my mind on him, but did completely sell me on him. Jeffrey Webb on my Facebook page had a good comment about Jerry Maguire. Too many to choose from, I think, but Rain Man, A Few Good Men, and Magnolia are at the top, along with Jerry Maguire. I give the edge to Maguire, as I feel he has to balance so many lines in that film. Sympathetic slash cocky, dramatic slash comedic, romantic slash aloof. That's all true and well said. What I also like about the performance is that it includes this little speech. Cruise gets a handful of speeches in

Jerry Maguire, but I really like this one. given to Cuba Gooding Jr., who plays the athlete that Jerry Maguire represents. I think it could stand in for what Cruise has done for movie audiences as a star for over three decades now.

I am out here for you.

You don't know what it's like to be me out here for you.

It is an.

Up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about, okay?

Help me. Help me, Rod.

Help me help you.

Help me help you. Help me help you.

He's been working hard for us out there for 30-some years now, Adam. You've got to appreciate it.

Well, a perfect transition into my number one. First, I will say that Jerry Maguire, I had pencils in at number five for a long time, and for me would be number six then, so my first honorable mention. My number one, though, after building up all this goodwill among, I'm guessing, a good chunk of our audience by giving all love and praise to Magnolia at number two, I'm going to undo all of that with a bolder, weirder choice for number one. But I stand by it. My favorite Tom Cruise performance, keyword being favorite, is Vincent Loria in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money.

It's my favorite.

It's another supporting performance, though. it's much more substantial in terms of running time than Mackie in Magnolia, but he is playing second fiddle to Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felsen. And yeah, I imagine I'll get a little bit of grief for this, but I find, Josh, that most people have never even actually seen this entire film. Or if they did, you're one of them.

I'm raising my hand.

There you go. Or you haven't seen it since it came out, and you probably don't really have much of a perspective on it. Now, if you Google best Tom Cruise movies. And there aren't a lot of lists out there that do retrospectives on his performances like we're doing. I found only one, in fact, that did that, a top ten list. But a lot of people did back in 2014, 15, around the time of the book. Amy's book, they ranked all of his films. And you'll usually find The Color of Money in the late teens to mid-twenties.

The Ringer, on their list, I'll give them some credit, had it actually at number five. And I'll link to that list in our show notes at filmspotting.net. But as I said, my favorite Cruise, I'll never tire of of watching him on screen with a T-shirt on that says his name on it, Vince, dropping pool shots and dancing to Werewolves of London.

So just based on the entertainment value, In watching Cruise in The Color of Money, it's my favorite Cruise performance.

But I do think it's an appropriate number one, too, because it ties back to some of Amy Nicholson's comments. This notion of respect eluding him. The part that Amy wrote right after the excerpt I read at the start of this segment is this. I have never thought it was as simple as just smiling through a movie, said Cruise.

I've had to work extra hard at everything I've done. Cruise dedicates himself completely to his roles. He has taught himself to play pool, fly planes. There you go. drive race cars, flip bottles, and sing. He's dangled from the tallest building in the world, suffered months in a wheelchair, and locked himself away for two claustrophobic years working with the Secret of Stanley Kubrick. He even trained underwater to blow a single air bubble out of his nose so Steven Spielberg wouldn't have to add it digitally in post.

Explained Cruise, The character he's playing here, Vince, makes Nineball look so easy, and he has so much fun doing it, that it's easy to not fully appreciate just how good he is, which is where this whole topic started for us. The level of talent and the commitment it took to get that good, we just completely take for granted with this character. And there is a need for respect that drives Vincent. He doesn't understand how to play the long game the way Fast Eddie wants, where he can dump games and be a loser only so he can win money.

He can be an effective hustler. He just wants to unleash hell because he wants to display that talent and he wants to dominate. And that childish need to get that respect, I suppose, is ironically what actually prevents him, the character, from earning the respect of his girlfriend in the movie. And also from Fast Eddie, who we could add as a father figure, I suppose, coming off my Magnolia pick as well. I think of an early scene in this movie where Eddie says to him, you're some piece of work. You're also a natural character. And he says to his girlfriend, Mary Elizabeth Master Antonio, you see, I've been telling her that. I got natural character.

That's not what I said, kid. I said you are a natural character.

You're an incredible flake. But that's a gift.

You guys spend half their lives trying to invent something like that.

You walk into a pool room with that go, go, go, the guys will be.

Killing each other trying to get to you. Which, again, seems appropriate. for Cruz, right? Where he's been written off as that type of character, but he is someone who people don't take necessarily as seriously as they should. And Fast Eddie's actually telling him, you need to embrace that. That's your strength. That's going to be a benefit, a gift to you as you embark on your career as a pool player. So that need for respect, the natural overflowing charisma that comes through with the character and the dedication to a craft that comes through in what was clearly hours of repetition and practice in order to become that good, all do come through in that Cruise performance, even though it is one very early in his career.

So it's hard to sort of argue it's a culmination of everything Cruise has done. But for me, it does embody that.

Got to see it.

Yep.

Added to the list of Scorsese's I have to see before I can be a completist on him. But yeah, Paul Newman, Tom Cruise and Scorsese Definitely needs to be on my catch up list.

So I mentioned the Amy Nicholson book. We've talked a lot about her. We might as well hear from her as she did. And her Twitter bio informs us of this. She literally wrote the book on Tom Cruise. We had to ask her what's her favorite Tom Cruise performance. And anytime we do this, I get a little bit concerned that it's going to be one of the films that's on our list. Maybe it's an overlap. She says Born on the Fourth of July. We've already babbled about that.

Or Jerry Maguire. It's not going to add anything that we haven't already heard, the listeners haven't already heard. Well, we did not have to worry about that with Amy Nicholson.

Hey, guys.

Amy Nicholson here, the author of Tom Cruise, Anatomy of an Actor. So, of course, I wanted to call in with my favorite Tom Cruise performance.

Hear me out here.

Okay, and I'm saying favorite, not best, but maybe best, but definitely favorite. My favorite Tom Cruise performance is Lestat in Interview with a Vampire. And here's why. I don't know how much people remember the outrage when Tom Cruise was cast as Lestat. I mean, if we had had Twitter back then, it would have completely burned down. People were furious. They really wanted Daniel Day-Lewis or really like anybody besides Tom Cruise to play Lestat, this like fashionable, thin, red-haired European man who just like exuded sex appeal. You know, because the thing with Tom Cruise is even in his movies where he's like sexy and romantic, He doesn't get to exude sex appeal. Like, I mean, when you think

about him in Magnolia, he doesn't kiss anybody. He doesn't make out with anybody. He just talks a big game. And that's kind of been Cruise's MO, really. He's not that much of a romantic hero. Anyways, I digress. What I'm getting at is that Tom Cruise was so committed to doing justice to the role of Lestat. He read every single book in Anne Rice's series. He really knew Lestat's biography, not just the stuff that you see in the interview with the vampire and in that script and in that book. But Lestat's whole arc as somebody who loved in the past and lost and had all this fear about the people he loved leaving him behind. And you see Tom Cruise channel this really deep and empathetic knowledge of Lestat into the character. You see when he

plays piano for Kirsten Dunst and the way his eyes light up when he thinks that she's being nice to him and that maybe he can build this family that they never give him a chance to really build. They see him as this villain. pretty much from the get-go, you know, what I find so affecting about that role is that Tom Cruise is almost so good at Lestat that he ruins the movie because I think Brad Pitt intended to walk into it with just all of the audience's sympathy because Interview with the Vampire is so told from his point of view, from Louis' point of view, that Brad Pitt actually didn't even do any homework. Like, he told interviewers at the time that he picked up Interview with the Vampire, the book, and threw it into

the trash. So you're watching this whole movie, watching this mopey, mopey Brad Pitt, expect that audiences are going to side with him, that Lestat's this jerk, but Tom Cruise's Lestat is just so much more compelling and watchable and wonderful that, to me, the movie falls apart because Tom Cruise is just so good.

Now, are you happy, Lucy?

To thank you for all I have to learn from. In the old world, Louis, they called it the dark gift. But I gave it to you.

So that's my favorite Tom Cruise performance. And you might think I'm crazy, but for real, watch it again. Every little detail he does in that film is magical and that he could pull off that role When nobody thought he could, Interview with a Vampire for me all the way.

Thank you, Amy, so much for that. We will link to more information about her book in our show notes. And we will also link to an interview she did back in 2015 with Stacey Elaine Dasho called The Rehabilitation of Tom Cruise. That was at theall.com. And I think there's some really good insights there. But Interview with a Vampire is her choice. And, of course, it's one of the 11 Cruise movies. I haven't seen. I've just never been interested.

It's Brad Pitt, isn't it?

It's partly Pitt. It's also partly Tom Cruise, the two patron saints for me of don't let them play characters. And they're vampires. Playing characters, playing vampires. But if I'm hearing Amy, it works. Where I really feel bad, Josh, is that I could have found time this weekend. It's always so hard for me to find a movie with my wife that she actually wants to watch, a film spotting movie that she actually wants to watch. she totally would have watched Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt play vampires.

And I screwed up.

You didn't do your homework. You're not nearly as dedicated as Tom Cruise. This is not an oddball pick for me. I have Interview with a Vampire as an honorable mention for my list. I also had, as I said, Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia. I think Rain Man, I gave some consideration. We've talked about him possibly giving the better performance than Dustin Hoffman, even though Hoffman's pretty good there. Collateral.

Peterson W. Hill on Facebook said, has to be collateral. All the charisma and charm are there, but they are met with the deadness behind the eyes.

Accurate.

Really like that performance. And then here's one I'll go to bat for that is an oddball. Night and Day, a lark of an action spy flick with Cameron Diaz. Yeah, he's in.

That has Larson recommends all over it.

He's pretty pure cruise there. She's a lot of fun. Good film, Night and Day.

You like any goofy movie Cameron Diaz is in, don't you? Put her on the road, put her running from killers, and you're good.

A Life Less Ordinary, are you referring to? So good.

Which I haven't seen night and day, but in comparison, it's probably Citizen Kane. I don't have any honorable mentions that stand out as unique here. I suppose I will say, I've always been a fan of some of his early 80s movies, not only Risky Business, his small part in The Outsiders. Love that movie, love that book as a kid.

And I've always been a fan of all the right moves, so I'll give him some credit there. Now, if you do want to trace the over-the-top, unhinged Tom Cruise, you can trace that all the way back to Taps, another movie I saw a bunch as a kid, where he has one of the best lines ever as he just unloads on people with a machine gun in a burst of violence. I'm just going to leave it there. I'll let you YouTube it and see if it's out there, but it's Cruise at his unhinged best.

It's beautiful, man!

It's beautiful! Tom Cruise there as David Sean. I didn't know that character had a name. I just knew him as the beautiful man, beautiful in 1981's Taps Cruise, as I promised at his unhinged best. Now I had my number one Tom Cruise performance as Vincent from The Color of Money. I think agreeing with Evelyn that that choice more about favorite perhaps than best. I don't even know how really to distinguish that with Tom Cruise. Mark Larson in Salt Lake City, Utah has my back. He says, I was surprised and completely thrilled that you picked Tom Cruise in The Color of Money as your number one.

That movie is one of my all-time favorites, and I've always felt Cruise's performance as the flaky, immature Vincent is a highlight of the movie. It's one of the few times I forget I'm watching Tom Cruise and actually see the character he is portraying. Watching him slowly deflate when Fast Eddie calls his flakiness a gift is more subtle than Cruise gets credit for. His transformation by the end of the movie is both believable and real.

Young son Kim from Oakland, California also shared his list. At number one, he is Born on the Fourth of July, one of my favorite films and a harrowing performance by Cruise. Number two for him is The Color of Money, a very underrated film. Cruise is just so fun to watch. In my opinion, his performance is what elevated Newman's to an Oscar win. Love the scene in the stairwell where he breaks the handrail. Number three, Rain Man. Cruise does all the heavy lifting. Hoffman, while good, is pretty much one note. Cruise plays the character who changes and basically has to play against a green screen that is Hoffman's performance.

That's one way of looking at it.

Number four here, Jerry Maguire. Cruise's most human performance and most comedic. Number five, Magnolia. Balls out collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson.

Brilliant.

Although the bedside scene was clearly heavily influenced by Brando's bedside scene in Last Tango in Paris.

And Young Sun has an honorable mention. Can I just say I love Amy Nicholson? Interview with a Vampire was a milestone for Cruise. I'm not a huge fan of the movie. But Cruise proved everyone wrong with that performance. As she mentioned, by the mid-90s, there was this sort of Cruise fatigue going around with his celebrity and success.

He couldn't fail. People were starting to question his actual acting skill. Then the news of him playing Lestat became a massive cultural debate. I was living in Hollywood at the time, and it was just crazy. Everyone, including Anne Rice, publicly hated the idea. But then it came out, and in my opinion, Cruise saved that movie. He single-handedly saved what otherwise would have been just a dreary movie. The public and press immediately went silent, proving again that Cruise was king. To me, this was a major marker in his career.

What's the last freaky thing like that he's done? I'm trying to look up his filmography right now.

It really feels like a departure.

Yeah.

Wasn't there like a musical not too long ago, right?

There is far and away, but that was even before.

No, no. I'm thinking like the most recent years. Like I was just thinking to myself, is he due? You know, like I had a little smidge of fatigue with fallout because of the status he's at. And so I'm wondering, is he due for a Lestat-type performance? And here, maybe Rock of Ages would be it, which is 2012, not too long ago. That would be an out-there choice for him, for.

A guy who's re-established.

Yeah, I didn't see it, so I can't really make much judgment besides when I heard about it, oh, that's interesting.

You don't need to see it.

He's been on a run here of not always super successful. There's The Mummy. but pretty much star vehicles.

Yes. And I think we all probably did feel that fatigue. And that is why, as I recall, when we did our top five Tom Cruise performances list, I was a little bit surprised as I looked back through his filmography at just how many movies I genuinely enjoy. Some I genuinely love. He has consistently made a lot of very good films. And I do think we take him for granted. Yeah.

I'm not complaining about the recent run he's had, but I'm personally ready for something a little goofy.

I would be up for that. as well. I'm going to completely contradict myself, though, after just pointing out how venerable a run he has had as an actor. And note that I'm still not convinced he could pull off Lestat. I haven't seen it, but I kind of refuse to believe that he's as good as Young Son and Amy Nicholson argue. And it's impossible to disagree with Amy Nicholson because she is so wonderfully eloquent on the topic of Cruise in that film. She makes me a believer, but I'm I somehow still have a hard time buying that he nails that role. Obviously, no, even a year later, I still haven't caught up with it.

Yeah, and I would like to revisit it. I probably mentioned this at the time, but the first published review of mine ever was Interview with the Vampire. So I had no idea what I was talking about. So I would not trust my judgment.

Is that in the Arsenal Film Archive? Can I dissect that? Probably not, because.

That would have been in the weekly regional news. And I don't think things were digital then.

Probably not. Those are our top five Tom Cruise performances. We would still love to hear your picks or any other comments about the show. The email is feedback at filmspotting.net. I wouldn't have expected that.

Would Digger make either of our lists? That's a question maybe we'll get to when we offer our Digger review here soon on the show. Reminder that access to the Film Spotting Archive is just one of the benefits of joining the Film Spotting family. You can easily do that and support the show by going to filmspottingfamily.com.

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