When I watched Interview with the Vampire I noted that it was the only Tom Cruise movie in which he played a villain. I hereby retract that statement after watching Collateral. Cruise plays a highly-trained assassin named Vincent who uses his pistol and his sophisticated grey-tinged beard to take down informants in a drug-related prosecution.

Jaimie Foxx plays opposite Cruise and severely out-acts him as cab driver Max Durocher. I wonder if you could call Foxx the black Tom Cruise – he too is an extremely charismatic, small-framed actor who leveraged his natural charm to become one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. I guess the difference is that Foxx is a little more talented than Cruise but maybe a little less willing to look like a nincompoop. Perhaps it’s because he’s more self-aware.

I like that Tom decided to play an antagonist because one of the criticisms you could have against him is that he is always trying to be likable. On the other hand his character in Collateral is clearly written to be likable – Sure, he’s a sociopath, charming, manipulative, and uncaring, but his wisdom and practicality also motivates the major character change that drives the movie – inspired and disgusted by Vincent’s expertise and motives, Max slowly transforms from a passive to an active participant in his own life and becomes the hero in his own story.

Structurally, Collateral is kind of odd because it is really two movies – the first half is a Midnight-Run-esque travel movie where two characters ride around in a car and talk to each other. The second half is an action movie where various participants try to stop Vincent from committing more murders. I really enjoyed the first half; it plays on the conversations that everyone has with their cab driver – some people find them interesting, some people find them annoying – to what extent they mean anything varies based on situation and context. The movie opens with Jamie Foxx arguing with Jada Pinkett Smith about optimal car routes through L.A. I liked that movie, I wanted to spend more time watching that movie.

The action thriller that covers shootouts traversing various dance clubs and parking garages for the second hour of the movie is pretty dumb. The good news is that Director Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider, etc.) and Writer Stuart Beattie (nothing, literally nothing interesting) spend so much time establishing the characters at the beginning of the movie that I cared what happens to them. But it doesn’t really make sense. Vincent is basically a superhero – he shoots with pinpoint accuracy, dodges bullets, and always appears in the perfect location to cause a ruckus – but by the end of the movie he’s beaten by a cab driver who about an hour ago couldn’t even talk on the phone to his mother.

Also notable, the cameos: Mark Ruffalo, Jason Statham, the aforementioned Ms. Pinkett-Smith, and Peter Berg (the creator of Friday Night Lights!) also pop up as do numerous other actors who will make you say “Hey it’s that guy!”

I think it’s appropriate at this time for us to revisit the stages of Tom Cruise’s career:

-1. The Pre-Maverick Years (1981-1985) – mostly co-starring roles in teen-oriented comedies and dramas
-2. The Apprenticeship Years (1986-1990) – a combination of blockbuster hits and co-star performances with big name actors and directors
-3. The Kidman Years (1991-1999 eyes wide shut) – a lot of romances, a lot of experimentation
-4. The Movie Star Annuity Years (1999 Magnolia – ??) – WHERE THE FUCK IS MY OSCAR

Another career transition comes soon. Stay tuned.

Next: Tom Cruise Jumps on Oprah’s Couch

Tom Cruise plays a Civil war vet named Nathan Algren who has been spending the last 10 or so years since the end of the war riding around the old west with General Custer and murdering Native Americans. But he feels bad about it so that makes it ok. He is hired to go to Japan and lead an army of Imperial Japanese troops against the Samurai, who the movie parallels to the Native Americans in their customs, battle tactics, and ways of life.

Nathan quickly realizes that the Japanese Imperial troops suck at battles and the Samurai are great at them. Then he gets captured by the Samurai and gets to know the Samurai leader, Katsumoto, played by Ken Watanabe. He sympathizes with them because he feels bad for murdering a bunch of Native Americans and because he’s cared for by the hot wife of a Samurai he killed during the battle in which he was captured.

He knows that eventually the Samurai are going to get slaughtered by the Imperial Japanese regardless of how superior the Samurai are at fighting, because the Imperials have superior weaponry. Sure enough, when the Samurai have their big showdown with the Imperials at the end, they are slaughtered by cannons, gatling guns, and rifles. Katsumoto dies and Nathan doesn’t. The end. Somehow this takes two and a half hours.

Hey, the obsession with masks continues! Tom Cruise doesn’t wear one himself, but there is a great deal of focus on the attire and masks of the Samurai. Near the end of the movie, he changes his clothes. I know that doesn’t sound exciting but trust me it’s a big moment for everybody involved.

There are also some legitimately fun fighting scenes and the movie is occasionally funny, but not very funny. You won’t laugh out loud, you’ll just smile and feel a little bit sad because you just smiled at a joke that really is only funny if you’re being charitable, and you’ll realize that the movie is a bit awkward and you’re looking for an excuse to laugh or be distracted for a bit. After all, it’s a movie in which Tom Cruise plays a Samurai. I know it claims it’s based on true events but come on.

Early in the movie the narrator says something about the Moderns and the Ancients, a reference to ancient Greece. Nathan also compares the last doomed battle between the Samurai and the Imperials to the Battle of Thermopylae (famously portrayed in the movie 300). I suppose that is enough of an indicator that The Last Samurai is an allegory for the inevitable death of tradition. If so, it doesn’t really teach us anything, it simply feels sorrow.

It is actually, in a lot of ways, an ode to some of the classic Japanese films of cinema and is not too different in tone from Seven Samurai or Yojimbo. In this way it is appropriately lonely, slow, and sad. It is also fitting that most American westerns are ripoffs of Japanese Samurai films, and that The Last Samurai merges those ideas. Perhaps you could argue that The Last Samurai is a bit of a cipher eulogizing the storytelling of a bygone era. Nuance, patience, and tradition have become overwhelmed by explosions. Artisanship has been trumped by mass production, craft made irrelevant by technology.

It might be true, but being true and being engaging aren’t the same thing. In the immortal words of Jeffery Lebowski, “You’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an asshole.”

Next: Collateral

Something I noticed when watching Minority report that I found interesting: This is the fourth movie in a row that predominantly features Tom Cruise wearing a mask.

I am taking a little artistic license here, but let me explain. In Minority Report, Tom Cruise’s character receives some sort of device that massively changes his appearance to the effect that nobody can recognize him. He also gets his retinas replaced so he can’t be recognized by eye-scanners. This is, in essence, a mask.

In Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise’s character is in an automobile accident that drastically changes his facial appearance. His doctor gives him a latex mask to wear in public which hides his disfigurement.

Mission: Impossible II features Tom Cruise’s character impersonating others by wearing the incredibly lifelike masks that are iconic of the franchise. It also features other characters wearing Tom Cruise masks to impersonate Tom Cruise. I suppose I should note that I understand that these scenes do not actually feature actors wearing masks – but the fictional masks are central to the story and the espionage themes of the movie.

And in Eyes Wide Shut, Tom Cruise’s character famously wears a mask to a sex party full of masked high-society types.

I wonder if there was something going on in Tom Cruise’s life during the 1999-2002 time period that drew him to roles in which he disguised his appearance. Was he troubled by a fear that his handsomeness was more central to his success than his acting ability? Did he have any personal difficulties with living in the public eye during this era, the height of his fame? Is there something about his marriage being on the rocks (He and Nicole Kidman divorced in 2001) that influenced this?

I have no idea, but it seems like a trend. Anyway, about the movie…

I’m not particularly intrigued by the idea that “pre-crime” or the ability to arrest someone for something that they are going to do is a “science fiction” concept since we arrest and imprison people in today’s society for intending to distribute drugs. So the so-called fantastical elements (the science is never fully explained outside of the fact that the movie’s “precogs” are people who developed their abilities because of “genetic testing”) doesn’t really ring true to me. However, that’s the whole point of Phillip K. Dick and other science fiction that is meant to provoke thought about how the ideas are relevant in today’s world. Should we legislate against how someone thinks, or should we try and influence change? The movie’s opinion on this is pretty clear.

Stephen Spielberg’s strengths and weaknesses are on display in Minority Report as well. One of the reasons the movie feels so lively and action packed is that the camera is constantly moving, showing us different angles of situations. The set piece that a majority of the plot hinges upon is in its entirety based on the development of different perspectives as we learn more about the scene. This scene, and the entire plot of the film, would not work without Spielberg’s vision.

For some reason though I’ve always found Spielberg fairly tone deaf – the inconsistency in pacing and mood in the Indiana Jones movies is a weakness in that series, for example. In Minority Report Spielberg mixes intense situations where characters confront serious personal challenges and struggle to repair and understand relationships with slapstick comedy. This completely kills the suspense of a few scenes that should be exhilarating.

Cruise doesn’t have to do much acting here. Colin Farrell is also in the movie and he does his best to give his character some depth, but he isn’t particularly well utilized here. The movie also has a villain and a romantic interest who might as well be statues with signs hung around their necks labeled “villain” and “romantic interest.”

Really, Minority Report’s appeal is entirely based upon the story, which is good enough that even though I remembered most of the plot’s twists and turns, I still found entertaining and compelling. Sci-Fi movies almost never hold up well because advances in technology as well as our understandings of the “future” portrayed by the stories develop so fast that its hard to re-watch them with the curiosity and wonder that captivates attention when they are released. I don’t suppose I would call it a “good” movie. I remember Richard Roeper (Gene Siskel’s temporary replacement on his and Roger Ebert’s “At the Movies” TV show after Siskel passed away) named it the best film of 2002. I think that’s a joke.

But it works for me, and it’s a good example of a clever, semi-original action/sci-fi movie (it’s based on a Phillip K. Dick story, but I don’t think it’s a very well-known one) in the era of big-budget special-effects driven blockbusters that are almost never well made and almost never original.

Next: The Last Samurai

I think it’s possible that Vanilla Sky is the most “Tom Cruise” Tom Cruise movie of all time. Spoiler alert:

Vanilla Sky is largely about the idea that you can have a happy, fulfilled life simply by deciding to. It is also about whether fleeting decisions and feelings you have “in the moment” are more or less real than the hard truths of everyday life.

Does this sound familiar? It should, since you’ve clearly been diligently reading and internalizing every single one of these Tom Cruise reviews. If it doesn’t, this is also the main theme of Jerry Maguire, Cruise and director Cameron Crowe’s last collaboration.

Jerry Maguire applies the idea that happiness comes not from a life of realism or from making logical, reasoned choices, but from following fleeting ambitions to the point of failure. It is a practical exploration of this theme. Depending on whether or not you want to believe in Crowe’s nihilism (I do), it is also melancholy, indicating that following these choices leads to happiness and excitement but also certain failure and pain.

Vanilla Sky takes a metaphysical look at the same worldview: What is more real? I mean, literally, what is more real? A dream that honestly portrays and fulfills your desires, or a waking life built around what is logically possible?

I get why a lot of people don’t like Vanilla Sky. It is hard to follow. It is heavy-handed. Some of the plot points don’t feel like they add up even when you’ve pieced together the twists and secrets that are revealed in the last few moments. The genre and tone change as the movie develops as well – from romantic comedy, to thriller, back to romance, to science fiction. It may be a thought-provoking experience, but I’m not sure if it’s an entertaining one.

The thing I loved about the film was the dialogue, ripe with Cameron Crowe’s signature wordy sentimentality. Like Kevin Smith and Aaron Sorkin, Crowe ignores natural human speech patterns because he wants his characters to make his points for him. Jerry Maguire was full of characters lying to one another while staring, smiling, into each other’s eyes. Vanilla Sky features characters having conversations that are really just parallel monologues, where neither listens to or cares what the other is saying. The patterns may or may not ring true but the concept feels real.

The thing I hated about Vanilla Sky was that even though the plot was rich and intense and the themes were thought-provoking and clear, I never had an understanding of who the characters were or why they did what they do. For a movie pushing two and a half hours, featuring only a few performers, I learned much less about the characters than I did in Magnolia which features way more people. For a movie that attempts to tie real-life decision making to a difficult, sci-fi plot point, this seems like a massive oversight.

So why, then, is this the most Tom Cruise movie of all time? It takes a real, sincere look at the idea of using science to extend one’s life and align one’s fantasies with reality. It implies that committing to what really, substantially, exists is preferable to the bliss of an ignorant, cerebrally-driven existence. It suggests that you have to care to be fulfilled. And even though it isn’t the best movie of all time, it sure is trying.

Next: Minority Report

Generally, spy franchises are built around the personality of the hero. The Jason Bourne series, like its titular protagonist, is stoic, clam and intense with bursts of energy. It’s compelling how little of his personality Matt Damon shows in that role. The James Bond series, on the other hand, has ebbed and flowed around the character its leads have brought to the screen. Sean Connery’s Bond was charming, irreverent and sometimes goofy. Daniel Craig’s has been handsome and a bit sorrowful. Pierce Brosnan’s was suave in the way a sturdy laminate is suave.

The interesting thing about the Mission: Impossible film series is that the films have changed to suit the personalities of their directors instead of their actors. Likewise, Ethan Hunt is a bit different in every film. In the first movie, Cruise plays foil to the franchises serial/noir roots represented by Jon Voight. Brian DePalma plays with the themes and tropes familiar to the TV series and uses Cruise’s Hunt to burst them open, attending to detail with meticulousness and craft.

It’s clear from the opening scenes of Mission: Impossible II that John Woo doesn’t care about any of that. He wants action and explosions, motorcycles and sex scenes. Brian DePalma wants you to wonder. John Woo wants you experience something.

The plot is simple and outside of a few mask-reveal tricks there aren’t any twists. Woo is a fantastic action director, combining close-ups and clever framing with wide and medium range movement to make you feel like you are part of the action without losing the sense of what’s going on. It’s a tricky balance that some of the most acclaimed action movie directors haven’t mastered and some of the most derided have (Michael Bay, explosions and all, is the king of this kind of filmmaking). If only someone could teach Mike and John how to write.

Interestingly, Ronald D. Moore of Battlestar Galactica fame gets a “story by” credit in this one: A terrifying genetically-modified flu virus was created in a lab in the interest of creating a super-vaccine that could fight it, as well as every other strain of influenza. I have no idea if this makes scientific sense but it sounds compelling. The scientist decides to transport the virus and the vaccine to Los Angeles because if he didn’t there would be no way of the virus getting stolen and sold on the black market as a chemical weapon. The IMF sends a hotheaded secretly-evil possible rogue agent to pose as Ethan Hunt and escort the scientist to L.A. because they can’t find Ethan Hunt and Ethan Hunt is of course the only person the scientist trusts. Then the hotheaded secretly-evil possible rogue agent does what no one would have expected and goes rogue – crashing the plane and murdering everyone on board, then stealing the virus and vaccine so he sell them to a biomedical conglomerate looking to corner the market and make a boatload of cash. Ethan Hunt has to recruit a team of agents to help him get the virus back and the team includes the rogue agent’s ex-girlfriend who promptly falls in love with Hunt, Ving Rhames because of fan service, and Billy Bragg because the movie takes place in Australia and also because someone on the home team has to die.

The movie progresses pretty much how you’d expect, with a wonderful clone of the M:I I heist in the atrium of a biomedical research lab in Sydney, and a terrific motorcycle chase / fight scene at the end between Hunt and the villain, played by Dougray Scott.

It’s been discussed before, by me, and by other people whose reviews actually matter, that Tom Cruise basically IS Ethan Hunt, and that his effort to provide realism in his films by doing his own stunts is what provides the intensity that makes them engaging. In this one, he hangs by one hand from a cliff, does some cool motorcycle tricks, and dropkicks Dougray Scott in the chest. It’s totally plausible that Cruise actually learned how to do all of these things for the movie, though there are enough cutaways and careful cropping to indicate that some of the work was done by a double. Whatever, it works, and if the music is occasionally cheesy or if you roll your eyes when Tom Cruise emerges from a flaming hallway behind two majestic soaring doves just do your best to ignore the symbolism and unintentional comedy and remember what kind of movie you’re watching.

But here’s the thing: Cruise is not good as a romantic lead. When Tom Cruise, romantic lead in a feature film, is accompanied by some character note about how he is a) psychotic (Jerry Maguire) b) a huge dork (Cocktail) or c) completely out of his league (Eyes Wide Shut), it works. But he is not nor has he ever been classically cool in the James Dean sense. And that’s what John Woo tries to do with him, hoping that the audience won’t notice that he has no chemistry whatsoever with Thandie Newton or that when he lies on top of her, stares into her eyes and says “Damn, you’re beautiful,” it sounds like he’s reading from a fortune cookie.

If you can get past this, you’ll have fun watching Mission: Impossible II. I love that it exists as this unique little snowflake in a film franchise that has gotten increasingly bombastic and serious. While it’s not a particularly good movie, it’s reminiscent of a time when even Hollywood valued the style and personality of a particularly interesting director rather than just giving the next Marvel movie to whoever made a well-reviewed indie film last year and trusting that they won’t take any big risks.

Next: Vanilla Sky

Magnolia is a long, ponderous, sentimental movie about the ways people are connected. We are introduced to several characters, all lonely and connected in different ways. We see how these characters’ experiences and relationships have created the situations in their lives. Some of them are nearing the end of their lives and others are at the beginning, but all of them are lonely.

We see them judging people and being judged by others. We see what they do when they interact with people and how they react to their internal ideas about how others perceive them. They feel unique, like their own problems are more terrible and insurmountable than anyone else’s. We see how they respond to those problems – some of them get drunk or do drugs or turn up the music so loud they can’t experience the reality around them. Some of them create different identities that better meet their own expectations for who they should be.

Some of them die, or are reprimanded, or continue living their lives unchanged. And some of them realize that they can only be happy when they realize that others exist, by listening, caring, and by trying to get what they want.

Magnolia is one of my favorite movies. I have spent a great deal of time watching it and thinking about what it means. But for today I’m going to focus on Tom Cruise.

Cruise gives a terrific and uncharacteristic performance. I think he’s at his best when he’s able to take his strengths – his huge, crooked smile, his energy and physicality – with a unique character that doesn’t merely feel like Tom Cruise (he of unending charisma and charm). In Magnolia he does this by playing a monster, a real-life villain who uses his intellect and skills in a way that harms our society and people. When we first see Frank T.J. Mackey it’s in an infomercial, but when we see him in the flesh his first words are “Respect the cock” followed by “Tame the cunt.”

But Mackey is also a charming and brilliant man who understands the way people react to what he does. The scenes in which he is interviewed by April Grace are incredibly captivating. We learn almost nothing about Frank’s past and why he became the person he is, but we learn everything about how he behaves around women, how he lives his life, and why he is successful.

Then we see how Frank reacts to adversity, and it is not in the typical Tom Cruise fashion of punching and kicking. He sometimes screams, sometimes seems short of breath, but more often than not Frank stares off into space, shielding his vulnerability with silence. We can see that he is in pain and also that he is angry, so full of rage that he can’t even move, and also that he is terrified that he could say something or do something that could come back to hurt him.

Last, we learn his history. The incredible thing about encountering a character in this way, the opposite sequence in which an audience typically engages with a fictional character in film, television, or literature is that when we finally do learn Frank’s past it all makes sense. We see why he would lie about who he is, and why he is so angry at his father. He sits at the bedside of a dying father and screams at him with the rage of an abandoned son and then breaks down and begs him not to go away again.

And in this last moment we finally know where all of that anger and fear from the previous scenes came from. Cruise, like he always does, takes the script and pacing and plot of the movie and makes it feel real, and here he does it with the incredibly rich and poignant source material of Paul Thomas Anderson’s screenplay.

I didn’t time it, but it looks like Cruise gets around 20-25 minutes of screen time in a 3 hour movie, which is less than some of the other main characters of Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and John C. Reilly. All of the performances are great – Hoffman’s, for example, is much more subtle but equally emotionally affecting. Some of the storylines don’t work as well – to this day I don’t really care that much about Quiz Kid Donnie Smith or know what we’re supposed to understand about the young black street tough who raps at Officer Jim Kurring at the beginning of the movie, then appears again near the end. And the best thing I can figure out about the title is that it’s something ancient, primal, and inexplicable, multi-faceted and fleeting but beautiful.

This is also the first movie in which Tom Cruise looks like the Tom Cruise I identify with from the 2000s. He’s put on a little face weight from the mid 90s (even though Magnolia was released in the same year, 1999, as Eyes Wide Shut, I believe it was shot years after) and his hair is long, befitting an odd, kind of plasticky-surfer-chic era in American aesthetics. It is also apropos to the new cultural understanding of Tom Cruise that was built over the course of the aughts – that he was, and is, a psychopath.

Next: Mission: Impossible II

Stanley Kubrick’s movies are focused, pointed masterpieces. They have a message. The writing is careful and direct. Kubrick had famously specific expectations when directing scenes and was known to require 50 or 60 takes to get it exactly how he wanted. Everything in the frame is there for a reason, including a sign in the background or a headline on a newspaper, or car, or an article of clothing, or the time of day.

All of Eyes Wide Shut is well made and the story is engaging but there is a scene in the middle of the movie that took my breath away.

Bill Harford walks into a room in a stranger’s home. The home is quite literally a cathedral, with high vaulted ceilings and clerestory windows. As he enters he hears a deep chanting voice singing in a different language. The room is filled with cloaked, hooded and masked people on the ground floor and in a balcony, encircling a large, red carpeted floor where a dozen others kneel, also cloaked. They circle a man in a red cloak who paces with a staff and a lamp out of which smoke slowly leaks. He chants ominously and harmoniously with a moody synthesizer holding deep brooding chords in a minor key. The kneeling figures stand and remove their cloaks. They are all statuesque, beautiful women, and they are naked. The women kneel again, and in turn lean toward each other, simulating a kiss, their faces still covered by masks. As the red man approaches each of them and taps his cane on the floor they rise.

The scene is so haunting, the music so intense, the ritual so striking. The camera lingers on the audience’s masks and they look sorrowful, staring unmoving at the proceedings. It feels worshipful and dangerous and strange.

Some of you may know that I spent a few years of my life as a member of a church in Seattle that some people would consider cult-like in its beliefs and ways of practicing religion. This scene was the only thing I’ve ever seen on film that successfully captures the intensity of a religious experience.

You know the punchline if you’ve ever heard anything about this movie: we’re at a sex party. The movie explores ideas of fidelity, sex and desire, and the differences between imagination and reality. This is the hardest to write review that I’ve done so far, because I have no idea what the message of this movie is. I just know that it is beautiful, creepy, and powerful.

If there is a metaphor I do understand about Eyes Wide Shut, it isn’t about Stanley Kubrick’s story or the imagery of the film but about its symbolic place in Tom Cruise’s career. This is Cruise’s third movie with Nicole Kidman and their last together – they divorced in 2001. I’ve heard people say that Stanley Kubrick cast them in this movie together because he wanted to fuck with them, and knowing what I do about him and how well their on-screen marriage fits my imagined perception of their real life marriage, I can’t disbelieve it.

Kidman is on fire. That’s all I will say about her performance on social media. Holy shit.

Cruise plays the first half of the movie doing a pretty nuanced Jack Nicholson impersonation – I feel like he must have studied Nicholson’s speech patterns and Kubrick’s dialogue in The Shining when preparing for this role. The great thing about his performance here is you see the classic Cruise confidence and charm early in the film and you get to watch it drip methodically out of him as his character gets more confused and frightened by the events of the plot. It’s interesting that the next 10 roles he took after this one are the most varied uneven of his career, spanning from Frank T.J. Mackey (whom I’m excited to talk about in my next review) to Les Grossman.

I feel that it would be hard to show the vulnerability that Cruise displays in this movie and not be forever changed by it. I think you could argue that the ritual in the scene above and its effect on Bill and Alice Harford’s marriage is mirrored by how Cruise’s relationship with Scientology impacted him and Kidman, or simply that getting naked and making love to your wife in a film about infidelity could make you question what you are doing with your life.

Let me also point out that during the 1990s Tom Cruise made 9 movies. Only one (Far and Away) was bad. Unlike the 1980s where he essentially played the same character in every movie, in the 90s Cruise leveraged his signature charm and realism but applied it to a ton of different genres and characters, including horror, romance, suspense, and action. These are the golden Cruise years.

Next: Magnolia

Everyone has had a moment of clarity. Probably several.

You wake up in the middle of the night and suddenly you know what you should be doing with your life. You should get back into that relationship. You should start that business. You should write that novel. You should take that trip. You should get a dog.

We know, as rational human beings, that the decisions we make in those moments are not to be trusted. We know how silly we look in hindsight. We cringe, thinking about it.

So what should we do? Common logic tells us that we should train ourselves to recognize those moments and guard against the stupid commitments we might make when we’re just a little bit out of our minds.

Jerry Maguire, Cameron Crowe’s meandering, post-modern romantic comedy, begs otherwise. It suggests that those moments are the only moments where we can truly be happy.

What’s funny about this thesis is that Cameron Crowe’s movies are known for their sentimental charm, yet Jerry Maguire is about a world where everyone is dishonest and malicious and lacking integrity. The script has an incredibly high density of characters smiling and staring into each others eyes and telling malicious lies. It is the happiest, funniest movie about dishonesty that I have ever seen. It’s this obscure tone which makes the movie feel fresh underneath the cliche’s of some fairly standard romcom moments.

And it’s the nihilism intrinsic to this tone that makes the suggestion that people should trust their illogical impulses acceptable. If you believe that people are good and generally well-intentioned, I don’t think you can agree with the message of Jerry Maguire. You could enjoy the movie and be entertained by it, but you would have to look at the final act, where Jerry decides to commit to Dorothea even though they aren’t particularly happy together, where Rod gets a big contract to continue playing football despite suffering multiple concussions, and where Laurel continues her morose, man-hating shrill women’s support group, as a melancholy end to a story about people not quite living up to their potentials. The characters smile and laugh and hug each other, but it doesn’t mean those decisions are good. They’re just moments when everything seems to make sense.

What else is there?

Tom Cruise is perfect for this role. He is basically playing the character that we have all accepted as his modern personality. A guy who could realistically jump up on Oprah’s couch in a moment of passion and glee and creepiness. He is only barely sane. He cackles. He kicks a wall. He steals a fish.

One of the things that I’ve realized while watching all of these movies is how important “good chemistry” is between actors. Cuba Gooding, Jr. stole the show and won the academy award for his part in Jerry Maguire, but I can’t imagine his performance would have worked, monologues and bellowing in all, without Cruise screaming right alongside him. It must take humility to be as willing as Cruise is in this film to portray a hero who is morally inferior to another protagonist.

But seriously, you’re telling me that Rod Tidwell is catching 110 balls for 1500 yards a year and he can’t get a contract? Someone get Cameron Crowe a sports consultant.

Next: Eye’s Wide Shut

I have seen Mission: Impossible a bunch of times, and I like it, but I’ve always felt like I couldn’t really decode it. When I watched it a couple of days ago I sat down with a notepad and tried to chart out everything that is going on. It’s difficult. For an action blockbuster, this is a complex movie.

The beginning is especially confusing. We see an agent watching an interrogation on a monitor. It starts at the end of a story unrelated to the rest of the movie – we don’t know who is being interrogated or why, or which side we’re supposed to be “rooting for.” The set feels stark and plastic. I’m reminded that Mission: Impossible was a TV show in the 1960s and 70s.

Cut to Jon Voight. An old-school action star. He smokes. He’s suave. He has an uncharacteristically young and beautiful wife. It’s almost a noir when we see Cruise and Voight skulking around in the dark and mist near the beginning of the film. Voight is a symbol of this older world where decisions are made by men in suits and with gray hair smoking on airplanes. The IMF leadership are all older, white men.

Cruise is a symbol of modernity. His hair is unkempt. He runs everywhere. He frequently masks himself as powerful members of the hegemony but his character is creative, maverick and focused. He cracks jokes. He does magic tricks.

The characters who are successful in Mission: Impossible are those who buck traditional trends and represent a society that appreciates diverse worldviews. The motherly, middle-aged female arms dealer. The luxurious, giddy braggadocio black hacker. And a young, infatigable secret agent who refuses to believe the rules apply to him.

This movie is about change. Cruise sprints away from a restaurant that is literally flooded with the trappings of spy movies and cracks the case because he embraces new technology (i.e. the internet). But the old world isn’t dead. Jon Voight reappears and his existence puts everyone in danger.

For an action movie, it is bizarrely serene. Save for the action scene on the train at the end there is very little action. Most of the violence occurs off-screen. The heist scene is silent, still and slow-moving, purely intense. The score is slow and dissonant. It is designed by Brian DePalma to make you feel like something is amiss. Because like a secret agent wearing a mask, something is, even if you don’t notice it.

DePalma loves the grotesque baroqueness of those masks. Whenever Cruise rips one off the camera lingers on the rubber and sinew shredding like a reptilian skin and revealing a fresh new face underneath. Modernity. Change. Rebirth.

It’s crazy how different this movie is tonally from the recent entries into the M:I franchise. But we’ll get to that.

The only thing this movie gets wrong is the internet. Somehow Ethan Hunt successfully contacts a mysterious arms dealer by inventing an email address with no domain based on a usenet discussion group he found. Screenwriters could get away with that in 1996, but it feels false and off-putting to watch today.

This comes 10 years after Cruise’s other career-defining role in Top Gun. While Top Gun is remembered fondly mostly for nostalgic reasons, this one is a clear illustration of why Tom became the biggest movie star on the planet.

Not a lot of popcorn movies go this deep. You’ve probably seen it multiple times like I have. Watch it again.

Next: Jerry Maguire