Just months after having his talents utterly wasted on “The Mummy,” Tom Cruise gets one of the best roles he’s had in years with the true-crime black comedy “American Made.”
Tom Cruise
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Film review: ‘The Mummy’
Universal Pictures may have jumped the gun by announcing long-term plans for its “Dark Universe,” an interconnected series of films built around the studio’s stable of classic monsters, like Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man, and my personal favorite, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. This planned franchise has suffered one failed launch already: […]
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“Edge of Tomorrow”
A collection of uninspired trailers sold “Edge of Tomorrow” as a derivative, effects-driven science-fiction action thriller, and to be fair, it is — calling to mind everything from “Aliens” to “Starship Troopers” melded into a high-concept premise inspired by “Groundhog Day.” But what those trailers drastically undersold is how much fun the film is and […]
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“Oblivion”
Whatever their merits, the devotion of their many fans, and the panegyrics of a whole gaggle of critics, those phenomenally successful semi-literary works known as graphic novels (in my day they were pretty much just comic books) often generate a certain pretension. The writers and illustrators introduce learned allusions, copy established literary patterns, interweave complicated […]
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Another mission, another impossibility
The appearance of Mission: Impossible III, the latest chapter in what looks like yet another franchise series, indicates that global warming even affects the cinema. With the first blockbuster of the season opening the first week in May, summer now begins much earlier than in the past, which means that perhaps eventually Hollywood will create […]
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An odyssey of murder
The major publicity approach to the new Michael Mann film revolves around the fact that in Collateral Tom Cruise, his trim beard and hair dyed gray, undertakes a role very different from most of his previous star turns. In a departure from such previous work as the engaging title character of Jerry Maguire, the […]
