Something 4 The Weekend by
Welcome ladies, gentlemen and film
fans everywhere to entertainment manchester's weekly
feature 'Something for the Weekend'. If, as
Forrest Gump once might have said were he a film fan,
cinema really is like a box of chocolates, then think
of us as your mini-menu, steering you away from the
coffee creams and towards the Turkish delights of the
movie world.
After the Scientology, whirlwind romance, fast-tracked pregnancy and (alleged) placenta eating, Tom Cruise finally gets back to what he's 'good' at with this week's release of Mission Impossible 3, or M:I:III for those of you who suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder.
Now, I put the word good in inverted commas, because The Cruiser is one of the most frustrating A-list actors currently working. He’s not a particularly bad actor and has proven himself in the likes of Born of the Fourth Of July, Collateral and, most notably, Magnolia. But compare him to, say, George Clooney or Brad Pitt and he’s found wanting.
Both actors can blend the crowd-pleasers (Ocean’s Eleven) with the more challenging fare (Good Night and Good Luck and Fight Club) and they both bring something unique to their performances; Clooney, a dependable sophistication and Pitt a deliciously playful sense of anarchy. What’s Tombo got though? There’s something quite dull about his screen presence. Something quite ‘this space for hire’ about the way he goes about it. Too smug to be entirely likeable, too amiable to attract hatred, he exists somewhere in the middle, a blank slate of a dependable A-list star who, when not avoiding being blown up, is begging for an Oscar (see the abysmal The Last Samurai).
He’s an actor, unlike Pitt or Clooney, who really needs a good director behind him - a Paul Thomas Anderson, a Michael Mann, an Oliver Stone to cut back the movie star excess and strip him down to the bare bones, the emotion, the real acting. Born on the Fourth of July boasts just such a performance, while he played Collateral’s Vincent with an admirable amount of restraint and deserved an Oscar for his turn as Magnolia’s resident misogynist Frank TJ Mackey, arguably the most important and delicately written role in the entire film.
This, however, is less a criticism of him as an actor, more a criticism of the prominence of his personal life. The Razzies recently gave both he and Katie Holmes (or TomKat as the American media have now dubbed them) the Tiresome Tabloid Target Award in a move which, far from deriding the pair, actually went to put them further in the spotlight and, hypocritically, allowed the Razzies to earn a bit of free publicity off the back of the very people they were mocking.
But it’s not hard to see why they gave them the award. The media’s persistence in poking fun at Scientology but remaining stringently politically correct when discussing other religions may be hypocritical, but it’s undeniable that Cruise’s desire to shout his firm belief in the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard from the highest mountain has made him more well known as a celebrity than as an actor, making actually accepting him as the character he plays very hard indeed.
Mission Impossible III, therefore, should be interesting as it’s the first movie to be released after the Holmes/Scientology/silent birth/placenta eating hubub and certainly has a littered history as Scarlett Johannsson, Kenneth Branagh, David Fincher and even Ricky Gervais were all forced to pull out of the production at one point or the other.
After Brian DePalma made a thoroughly incomprehensible first entry and John Woo added little more than a few not-at-all-symbolic doves for Part 2, the third instalment finds Ethan Hunt engaged to Michelle Monaghan’s Julia and taking on evil in the shape of Phillip Seymour Hoffman. An Oscar winner as the villain and a hero who genuinely has something to lose? Sounds interesting. But it is directed by Lost writer J.J Abrahams, so it’ll probably just have hollow characterisation, interminable flash-backs and a mystery which probably won’t be solved for another five or six years.
But ask yourself this when you see trundle along to see the film: are you really watching Ethan Hunt saving the world, or are you seeing Tom Cruise, signing autographs, complaining about Brook Shields’ post-natal depression pills and jumping on Oprah’s sofa like some deranged loon? Sidney Poitier once said, “If they see you all week for free, they won’t pay to see you at the weekend”. It’s wise advice, and some Cruise could do well to take on board if he wants to be remembered as Tom Cruise: Actor, rather than just Tom Cruise: Movie Star.
If you’re not in the mood for Tombo saving the world this week, how about Confetti? It features Martin Freeman and Jessica Stevenson (along with a host of other British TV stars) as Matt and Samantha, an engaged couple who are competing with two other wannabes in a Most Original Wedding Competition in this odd looking reality TV satire/mockumentary/heartwarming comedy.
Finally, there's two, more low key films released this week; the first, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, focusing on manic depressive musical genius Daniel Johnston; the second, The Magician, another mockumentary about a Melbourne-based hitman.
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