Tom cruise

“And now, the end is here, and so I face the final curtain”... If Tom Cruise isn’t quite Sinatra performing “My Way,” then the long-anticipated, much-hyped apparent finale to the Mission: Impossible series has a similarly valedictory feel to it. Ever since a youthful Cruise first took to movie screens in 1996 in the first, Brian de Palma-directed film – which those with long memories might recall was unfairly criticized on release for being virtually incomprehensible – the movies have been a welcome part of the contemporary movie-going experience.

The late Val Kilmer was difficult. That word is a kiss of death in Hollywood, because as soon as it’s murmured that you are hard to work with, your career declines inexorably. Kilmer had directors lining up to say how impossible he was. Joel Schumacher, who made Batman Forever with him, barely stopped kvetching about the actor, calling him “overpaid, overprivileged and psychotic.” Shortly after the film’s release, Schumacher said “He was badly behaved, he was rude and inappropriate. I was forced to tell him that this would not be tolerated for one more second. Then we had two weeks where he did not speak to me, but it was bliss.

Last weekend’s opening of Twisters saw the windy picture receive both critical acclaim — although not in this magazine — and commercial success, blowing to a wildly impressive $81 million opening at the US box office. This was by no means a given for the tornado thriller, as the original film, although a smash hit when it opened in 1996, is largely unknown to the millennial audience who make up the majority of moviegoers who will flock to see a film as soon as it comes out; many of them were not even born when it was released. Instead, its appeal lies another way, in the casting of newly minted megastar Glen Powell in one of the lead roles.

Tom Cruise runs as he does all things — nothing held back, nothing in reserve, nothing but the motion of arms and legs in the action of an automaton bent toward a single direction: forward, all systems go.  He has run across Red Square and the Charles Bridge. He has run across Abu Dhabi and Shanghai. He has run all over London, enough to be your tour guide for the particularly cardio-focused tourist, though his ankle bit it on a jump in Blackfriars. No matter: his recovery left his gait unchanged, that karate chopping, chest down, head forward momentum that turns the edge of the screen into the tape of a finish line. For Hollywood, it is the most iconic depiction of movement on film since The Horse in Motion. What would happen to Hollywood if he stopped?

The British comedian, actor and author Charlie Higson is famous internationally for being one of the writers that has carried on the mantle of Ian Fleming by writing novels and stories that continue James Bond’s adventures, most recently On His Majesty’s Secret Service, published to coincide with King Charles III’s coronation. Yet in a recent interview with the Sunday Times of London, Higson was openly dismissive of the recent Daniel Craig-starring 007 films. He said “I went to see No Time to Die with my oldest boy, Frank, who is thirty, and he said, ‘That felt like a Bond film made by people who are embarrassed to make a Bond film.’ You had to watch two films in advance to know who such-and-such is and you think, ‘Oh, fuck off with that.

At the beginning of the forgettable comedy Austin Powers in Goldmember, there is a selection of starry cameos, including Tom Cruise as an idealized version of Powers and Kevin Spacey hamming it up to high heaven as an alternate Dr. Evil. The film was made two decades ago, when Cruise was probably the biggest star in Hollywood, and when Spacey, a double Oscar winner for his roles in The Usual Suspects and American Beauty, was the leading character actor of his generation, both onscreen and onstage. Today, Cruise is as successful as he has ever been, with his latest film, Top Gun: Maverick, attracting rave reviews and stellar box office earnings. It has been a far different story for Spacey.

Quick Top Gun II: Maverick movie synopsis (and spoiler alert) by the Bad Guys: let's build a secret base using the Star Wars Death Star plans. We'll leave an air vent that looks like a giant bullseye where one bomb will take down the whole place. Good Guys movie synopsis: to make it a fair fight, instead of one Navy Seal throwing a grenade down that ventilation shaft, we'll come up with a near impossible plan involving multiple airplanes flown by irascible characters. Should kill the whole two hours. It seems like some sort of anti-union move to credit people with the screenwriting for this movie.

The Cannes Film Festival remains the most glamorous and famous gathering of the movie industry in the world. High-profile, black-tie premieres attended by some of the best-known actors jostle alongside the more disreputable commercial market. Films on sale this year include My Neighbor Adolf, about the unlikely friendship that is struck up between a Holocaust survivor and a mysterious man who may or may not be Adolf Hitler. But back in the main festival, everything is going entirely to plan. Apparently. There has not been a “normal” Cannes Film Festival since 2019. The 2020 edition was canceled, and the 2021 event took place in reduced and rather glum circumstances in July. But now Cannes is back, back, back, bébé!

Let it never be said that Hollywood is cowardly. When there is a cause to go to the wall for, when there are monstrous dragons to be slain, when the ethical balance of our times tiptoes along the edge of calamity, is it not Hollywood – that steadfast, sensible battery of dream-makers – that rises to the challenge, earning the sighing respect and tearful admiration of us all? Weren’t we all thrilled, shocked and relieved in January when Robert De Niro – riskily breaking with precedent and the hidebound convention that A-listers should never opine about current events – said: ‘Trump is a real racist.’ Finally someone had the courage to say it!