Originally Posted by Deberg_1990 (Post 11327799)

What's amazing about Cruise is how long he's been on top.


He was only early 20s when he made Risky Business, All the Right Moves and Top Gun.

Originally Posted by Bufkin (Post 11326024)

Hadn't watched it since the 90's, and it was on TV tonight. I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed watching a movie so much, let alone one that I had already seen.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...arty_McFly.jpg

For me, I'm going Goodfellas, Borat, Back to the Future, The Warriors, and National Lampoon's Vacation, in no particular order. No way could I rank them.

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990 (Post 11327799)

What's amazing about Cruise is how long he's been on top.


He was only early 20s when he made Risky Business, All the Right Moves and Top Gun.

Originally Posted by Easy 6 (Post 11327780)

For me, Jerry Maguire will always be Cruises best movie... its the only time I really thought he displayed the full range of human emotion and did it very well.

He was never so relatable as he was in that movie... "tell me you didnt let that snake! Bob Sugar in the door".

Originally Posted by TimBone (Post 11327811)

I'm just in a different boat. Even with that movie, I see the sane guy.

With Tom Cruise movies, I don't feel like I'm watching different characters. I feel like all of his movies are the same character and they're all just sequels of each other. I feel like I'm following the same character around in all of the movies; and in one he's a high schooler in a steel city, hoping that football will get him out of town, then he joins the service as a Navy Lawyer trying to save two Marines that were just following orders, then he gives up that career to become a sports agent that suddenly finds his morals, after that he's on a cross country journey with his savant brother. Not different characters, just the same guy doing all these things.

Originally Posted by Easy 6 (Post 11327813)

Haha, fair enough... to you he's just a smarter Forrest Gump careening through life from one adventure to another.

Originally Posted by TimBone (Post 11327816)

****, I still can't wrap my head around Travolta as Forrest Gump. What a terrible decision that would have been. Tom Hanks was just so perfect for that role.

Spinoff question: If there is somebody out there aside from Tom Hanks that had to play that role of Forrest Gump, who would you choose? I'm going to do some IMDB cruising before I answer.

Originally Posted by TimBone (Post 11327816)

****, I still can't wrap my head around Travolta as Forrest Gump. What a terrible decision that would have been. Tom Hanks was just so perfect for that role.

Spinoff question: If there is somebody out there aside from Tom Hanks that had to play that role of Forrest Gump, who would you choose? I'm going to do some IMDB cruising before I answer.

Originally Posted by TimBone (Post 11327816)

****, I still can't wrap my head around Travolta as Forrest Gump. What a terrible decision that would have been. Tom Hanks was just so perfect for that role.

Spinoff question: If there is somebody out there aside from Tom Hanks that had to play that role of Forrest Gump, who would you choose? I'm going to do some IMDB cruising before I answer.

Originally Posted by listopencil (Post 11327760)

FORT BENNING, Ga. (AP) 06/29/2006— Actor Tom Hanks was inducted Thursday as an honorary member of the U.S. Army's Ranger Hall of Fame for his accurate portrayal of a World War II Army Ranger company commander in the movie Saving Private Ryan and for his continued commitment to honoring those who served in the war.

Besides his role in Saving Private Ryan, Hanks was cited for serving as the national spokesman for the World War II Memorial Campaign, for being the honorary chairman of the D-Day Museum Capital Campaign, and for his role in writing and helping to produce the Emmy Award-winning miniseries, Band of Brothers.

Hanks, who was unable to attend the induction ceremony, becomes the first actor to receive such an honor.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/...s-ranger_x.htm

Originally Posted by srvy (Post 11327836)

I think I would have made time to attend. Wonder why he couldn't.

Originally Posted by srvy (Post 11327836)

I think I would have made time to attend. Wonder why he couldn't.

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins (Post 11327576)

Tom Hanks made you care about the fate of a ****ing volleyball and had legitimate on-screen chemistry with a dog. He was able to turn a career as a successful comedic actor into maybe the most well-rounded American actor of his generation, and he did so without ever becoming a parody of himself, like Pacino and DeNiro did.

He lost thirty pounds playing a lawyer dying of AIDS in one of the first major Hollywood treatments of the disease, followed that up by playing a mentally impaired Southerner, then played an astronaut, and then a high-school English teacher turned Army Ranger, and did all believably. The only roles he had in between were voice work and a bit part in a film that he was mostly behind the camera for.

He's taken mostly safe roles since then and he's largely transitioned into more of a producer than actor, but he's an example of an artist that can have major public appeal and legitimate acting chops simultaneously.