Looks like you were born too soon. (FWIW, I was joking–I didn’t think that there was actually someone named Maverick.)
A Few Good Men
I would definitely recommend catching Collateral.
I’ve enjoyed many of his movies, but I loved Magnolia. I’m still impressed that he chose to play his character.
Mission Impossible IV and Minority Report are his top movies.
His greatest scene, which I had the thrill of watching unspoiled in IMAX, was this.
Loved him in A Few Good Men and Collateral, but Jack Reacher is my favorite.
Great fun, that one.
Definitely Magnolia with Collateral, Tropic Thunder and Risky Business as runners-up.
Of his films A Few Good Men and Rain Man may be the best films he was in and his best work may have been in Magnolia, but I have to say, my favorite film of his, both from his performance and the film itself is Jack Reacher.
Risky Business. I like biographical stories about a person’s breakout role or song.
Not on your list, but my favorite Tom Cruise movie is, without question, Jerry Maguire. I genuinely love everything about this move. Terrific acting, humor, pathos, and heart.
Tropic Thunder. The whole film is pure genius, from start to finish and top to bottom.
Risky Business. Runner up is Collateral but I only saw it once, when it first came out so it may not be as good as I remember.
I haven’t seen everything but Vanilla Sky is the best of those I’ve seen. (And I have seen a healthy chunk of his films, except the ones that seemed clearly to be clones of his other films.) Following that would be Collateral (though, for me, that’s a Michael Mann film not a Tom Cruise film so the casting is incidental). Of actual Cruise movies, it’s a pretty sharp drop from there to Interview with the Vampire and then Legend.
He has a lot of movies that are perfectly good, but they all fall into the territory of “generic Hollywood film”. Most of them are probably better than Legend and equal, from a technical sense, to Interview with the Vampire, but they don’t stand out for me as particularly noteworthy. He’s good at choosing films that have a serviceable script and directors who aren’t going to go off the rails and try to do anything too fancy. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he has some strong language in his contracts that allows him to override Directorial discretion, in favor of producing a money maker.
Never seen Top Gun.
Yeah, why is this not on the list?
With that said, Jerry Maguire comes in second for me, after Edge of Tomorrow.
Crap! I would have included Jerry Maguire on my shortlist. So make it four favorites.
I despise Tom Cruise, but I’ve seen Rain Man many times.
Mostly for Dustin Hoffman’s Oscar winning performance.
Jerry Maguire :smack:
How the hell did that get left off the list?
I’m going with A Few Good Men.
Most of his work is mediocre, strictly acting-wise; Tom Cruise is the kind of guy who succeeds not because he’s particularly talented, but rather because he’s doing pushups on a hotel room floor right this very second, i.e. he’s simply willing to outwork everyone else.
Here are the ones I liked. Most of the others I either haven’t seen or don’t remember what happened so may as well had never seen.
Legend
Rain Man
Minority Report
War of the Worlds
Mission: Impossible III
Knight and Day
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
Jack Reacher
Oblivion
Edge of Tomorrow
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
Probably my favourite is War of the Worlds, though I really like Edge of Tomorrow too.
I’m kind of surprised Collateral didn’t do better in this thread. It’s my favorite TC movie. Followed closely by A Few Good Men and Jerry McGuire.