Cruise Month - Mini Review: The Last Samurai

Well, we’ve had books, short stories and TV series for Cruise movies to be based upon. But what about real life events? This is the Last Samurai (also, the last Cruise Month review)

Based (once again, loosely) on the Satsuma rebellion of 1877, The Last Samurai was released in 2003 grossing $456m on a $140m budget.

Not really much else to say on this one, let’s take a look

Guilty Pleasures #17 - Cruise Month - Oblivion

Time for another entry in Cruise Month

So, what have we got this time. Another adaptation of a book, what a shock! This book however was incomplete and never made publication, so the movie’s all we’ve got this time. I am of course talking about Oblivion

A Universal Studios project (Cruise and Paramount separated in 2006 owing to comments Cruise made in the media and/or financial concerns about their arrangement) Cruise once again serves as an actor but not as a producer (his production company did Jack Reacher in 2012 and its next project was Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, that’s a significant gap for the company)

Anyway, the movie opened pretty well, earning $37.1 in its opening weekend in the states, however time was not kind to it and it only made $89m in the States in total. International takings bring the box office figures to $281m on a $120m budget. When you take into account marketing costs, that’s likely to be a disappointment.

Reviews were mixed holding a 53% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 54/100 on Metacritic. So, is this movie worth the price of admission, let’s take a look.

Cruise Month - Mini Review: Minority Report

So, we’ve looked at one Cruise/Spielberg collaboration, so let’s took a look at another with Minority Report

Based (and I know this will shock you) loosely on a book of the same name written by Phillip K Dick, this was originally conceived to be a sequel of the sort to another adaptation of his works, total recall, and I mean the original one with Shwarznegger, not the reboot. They looked at the story again in 1997 with Novelist John Cohen chosen to help screenwrite it. However for whatever reasons the original director, Jan de Bont dropped out of directing, instead serving as a producer to the series (neither Cruise nor Spielberg are credited as producers on this one) Cruise passed the script onto Spielberg who agreed to direct after several rewrites. He’d been hoping to work with Cuise for some time.

The movie had a $102m budget, and grossed $358.4m, a moderate success for 2002, but it gained massive critical acclaim for its ideas and themes. So, we’re 13 years on now, does the movie still hold up under modern grounds? Let’s take a look.  

#24 - Cruise Month - War of the Worlds

It’s time for another entry for Cruise Month

You know, there have been some pretty big producers/directors on this show, George Lucas/Christopher Nolan spring to mind, but there a few bigger than the one who directed this movie. Steven Spielberg. Spielberg has directed films from the Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, and has been involved in Back to the Future, Men in Black, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Freakazoid and even Transformers.

This and next week’s Minority Report were both collaborations with Spielberg with Dreamworks and Tom Cruise with Paramount. The results are mixed as we look at War of the Worlds. Based (once again very loosely) on the HG Wells novel of the same name (I haven’t read it, I’m judging the movie as a standalone product) it was commercially successful grossing nearly $600m on a $132m budget. Critically also successful, nominated for 6 different academy awards (all of which it lost to King Kong) but winning awards in other areas.

So why do I dislike this film? Well, let’s dig in.

Cruise Month - Mini Review: Jack Reacher

In this movie, Cruise obsesses over a woman whilst trying to get a job done. “What, again?” you might ask and yes, this is a well to common trait of Tom Cruise movies. Let’s have a look where plays a cop that’s supposed to be considerably taller than him.

Based on the 2005 novel ‘One Shot’ written as a part of a series by Lee Child, Jack Reacher enjoyed moderate success earning $218m on a $60m budget. Not exactly the usual flare of a Cruise movie. But then it says it all that there was a promotional competition for the movie on the channel Dave.

Paramount and Cruise/Wagner productions acquired the rights to Child’s novels in 2005 (and it only took them 2013 to release the product) after the failure of several other attempts at an adaptation. Cruise’s casting in the role was met with some criticism given the stature of Jack Reacher in the book.

So, let’s dig in

Guilty Pleasures #16 - Cruise Month - Live. Die. Repeat./Edge of Tomorrow

It's Cruise Month

Well, with our look at Mission: Impossible out of the way, time to look of some of Tom Cruise’s more recent work. It’s time to look at Live. Die. Repeat. Or is that Edge of Tomorrow?

 Loosely based on the novel “all you need is kill” – the title was dropped from the movie after concerns about having the word ‘kill’ in the title. This movie was hit with critics but it met with a lukewarm reception from a wider audience, earning only $370m on its $180m budget (I’m rounding here) once you factor in marketing costs, that doesn’t leave a large profit.

The film did suffer from some botched marketing. The title of the movie was Edge of Tomorrow and some marketing pieces came with the Tagline ‘Live. Die. Repeat.’ In fact it was so large people confused it for the actual title of the movie (seriously, bad idea to have the tagline larger than the title!) When it came to releasing it for home video “Live. Die. Repeat” became the prominent title, with Edge of Tomorrow being only on the side of the DVD.

Seriously, having a / on the side of your DVD is a terrible idea! It doesn’t look neat, and once your product’s off the new product line, it might well be the first thing a customer would see. Might not encourage them to buy it.

But I’m arguing semantics here, let’s dig into the movie and see what we’ve got here

Cruise Month - Mini Review: Mission: Impossible: III

Once again, it’s Cruise Month

And we have the third Mission: Impossible Movie. The movie with the most production problems of the 4. David Flincher was originally slated to direct the movie, but he ultimately abandoned the project in favour of another film, later citing some creative differences. Joe Carnahan was the second director they appointed, and he worked on the film for 15 months before quitting the film also citing creative differences. The director that ended up on the film was J J Abrams, in his first role as a film director. While he hasn’t directed any of the movies since, he has stayed on as a producer alongside Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner. The film was delayed a year in order to allow Abrams to finish his TV work with Lost and Alias.

Cruise Month - Mini Review: Misssion: Impossible - 2

It’s Cruise month

Mission: Impossible may not have been the most critically acclaimed or successful movie, but it made enough money that a sequel was commissioned, Mission: Impossible II. 

Cruise Month - Mini Review: Mission: Impossible

Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s Cruise Month

Yes, welcome to Cruise Month, where we check 10 films from actor/producer Tom Cruise that are not Knight and Day (Because I’ve already done that one, check it out here)

First off a few notes. I’m not making any scientology jokes, I couldn’t give a sh*t about scientology, at all. With that said, let’s have a look at Tom Cruise’s most famous films first. Mission Impossible

Guilty Pleasures #8 - Knight and Day

Can you go wrong with a movie starring Cameron Dias and Tom Cruise? This is another guilty pleasure that’s received mixed reviews from critics, with some calling it scattered and uneven, while others call it fun. But it was successful enough at the box office, gaining about double its budget back. I like this movie a lot, or at least I did when I last watched it, as I'm writing this review, it'll be the first time I've watched it in a long while. So let's dig into Knight and Day and see if it still holds up to me after 4 years.