Ten Movies

Is there a more iconic Harrison Ford role than Indiana Jones, the bullwhip-snapping, fedora-clad, globe-trotting archeologist who fights Nazis and pillages artifacts from their cultures of origin, which was the style at the time?

It can be difficult to step back from this movie's cultural primacy and just watch it as a movie. When you do, it's an adventuresome thrill ride, impeccably made, as Indy and his pal's zip from one precarious encounter to another. Part of the charm is Harrison Ford's portrayal of Indiana Jones, toeing the line between heroic and roguish, and - unlike modern action stars - often surprised by the peril in which he finds himself and occasionally in danger of getting badly injured or even dead.

But is Indiana Jones, as a character, the hero we are led to believe? Or is he, as Hemal maintains, "like every bad boyfriend you've ever had"?

In this episode, Hemal and Brian also interrogate the ideological valence of the film, from the troubling way in which Marion Ravenwood, the movie's sole woman character (played with delightful grit and humor by the underrated Karen Allen) is portrayed and treated, to the questionable choice of having the film's Egyptian and Nepali characters played by white guys - including John Rhys-Davies, noted Welshman, as Indy's loyal and resourceful sidekick Sallah Mohammed Faisel el-Kahir.

Though it must be admitted, we also thoroughly enjoyed Rhys-Davies in the role. Do we contradict ourselves? Very well then, we contradict ourselves. We are large, we contain multitudes.

Every season on the Ten Movies podcast we pick one iconic actor and watch ten of their most iconic movies. This season: Harrison Ford. He's charming! He's heroic! He's befuddled! Sometimes he's a rogue, sometimes he's a boy scout - but either way, moms want him and dads want to be him! Join us this season to learn the great truths behind these flippant statements.

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We have come to the end of the Tom Cruise season of Ten Movies. The legacy of America's Last Great American Movie Star is strong. He is a strange man, but he makes big, old-fashioned movies and he is 100% committed, whether he's leaping out of an exploding helicopter or swanning around turn-of-the-century New Orleans as a bitchy vampire in an off-putting wig.

In this final episode of the season, Brian and Hemal discuss the ten movies we watched this season and provide the definitive ranking. While we typically enjoy disagreeing, we were pretty much on the same page when it came to Mr. Cruise's oeuvre. Although we did disagree on what should go at number one.

What did we decide? And, more importantly, what did we learn about the dark, quotidian heart of America along the way? These are fine and righteous questions, and we encourage you to find out by listening to the episode.

Hey, remember Top Gun? It was that 80s movie full of strong-jawed, confident men flying cool fighter jets and having intense but controlled confrontations in their underwear. Well, the executives at Paramount Pictures remember it - along with the hundreds of millions of dollars it made them at the box office. They remember it so well that theyve gone and made it again!

Released last year, 'Top Gun: Maverick returns 36 years later (!) to the story of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. Once a cocky young flyboy, Mav is now a weathered test pilot whose career has stalled. Hes been put out to pasture, but hes still in the Navy, hes still a crazy maverick and hes still the best of the best. Now hes got to return to the Top Gun flight school for one last mission and teach these young bucks how to do it right.

America lost its mind for this movie, but Brian and Hemal had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it beautifully captured the whole elite, fighter-jock vibe of the original movie, and set the bar even higher in terms of how the airplane stuff was shot and integrated into the story.

But the fan service - my God, the fan service. Hardly a scene goes by when the filmmakers dont stop the action to wave something in our faces from the original movie. Hey, remember this guy? Remember this awesome scene? Remember when Mav said that cool thing? Here it all is again!

The theory seems to be that we loved it before, so theres no reason to change anything. But also they dont think highly of our intelligence, so they want to make sure we get it. We can accept the first part of the theory, but the second part wears us down. Yes, for the love of Christ, we get it.

You complete me. You had me at hello. Show me the money! If you were around during the 90s, you have almost certainly repeated one of the many memorable lines from ‘Jerry Maguire', the beloved rom-com / sports-comedy hybrid from fabled Gen X director Cameron Crowe.

If you havent watched ‘Jerry Maguire in a while, be warned that this movie has a lot going on. Theres a whole romantic comedy where Tom Cruise plays an ill-starred sports agent who gets together with the somewhat wilted Renee Zellweger, then splits up, and then gets back together again. Then theres a whole buddy comedy where Tom Cruise pals around with Cuba Gooding Jr., his sole remaining client. and tries to score him a multimillion contract to play football.

For the most part, Cameron Crowe fits it all in, but Brian and Hemal felt that the movie showed its age a wee bit. But Tom Cruise is in excellent form here. Usually, his films lean heavily on dramatic tirades or him running around and jumping out of exploding vehicles, but here hes fully inhabiting the stressed-out, striving, emotionally spent character of Gerald Maguire.

So many iconic Tom Cruise movies one could choose from. Why the 2017 flop ‘The Mummy? Wouldnt it have been better to just watch the Brendan Fraser version for the fifth time?

But it has become so rare for Tom Cruise to star in a commercial failure. The man is a certified box office draw - he makes the great big movies America loves. Sadly, though, America did not love ‘The Mummy. Not only did it lose a pile of money and receive - quite justifiably - critical derision, it single-handedly tanked Universal Pictures planned shared universe series rebooting classic movie monsters and teaming them up, Avengers-style. Though upon reflection, that seems like a bad idea, so perhaps we cant lay all the blame at the mummys feet.

But indeed, at least, the film is a fun romp. Or, perhaps, a terrifying thrill ride? Or the sort of high-octane action movie for which Tom Cruise is so well known? Unfortunately, its a bit of a mish-mash of all those things, switching from one to another without rhyme or reason.

It does, however, feature a lot of Tom Cruise doing that thing where he runs with his knees up high - and a couple of times Russell Crowe comes on screen to explain the plot, so thats all right.

Whether he's running from aliens, infiltrating enemy lairs, or breaking the sound barrier, Tom Cruise's characters are always the best of the best. Here he's a hotshot young attorney, fresh out of law school, the best of the best. And the boutique Memphis law firm that hires him away from Wall Street? It turns out THEY WORK FOR THE MOB! Dang, it.

Luckily he sorts it all out, via a highly convoluted plot that requires him to run all over Memphis in his suit, being pursued by an albino assassin and a menacing, gun-toting Wilford Brimley. At the same time, Holly Hunter flies to the Cayman Islands and photocopies files at a furious clip. You'd think that part would be dull, but Holly Hunter somehow makes it exciting.

If you like a tense thriller, ‘The Firm' will be right up your alley. It's a white knuckler. Brian and Hemal both enjoyed it - and felt that Tom Cruise was going beyond his usual skill set (running! grinning! running!) to give us an honest-to-goodness character.

Even better, this movie is chock-a-block full of terrific character actors, from Holly Hunter's sassy working-class broad with a heart of gold to David Strathairn's crookedly wise ex-con to Wilford Brimley with his gun and a scowl. And, of course, the inimitable Gene Hackman as Tom Cruise's charmingly corrupt mentor wreathed in doom.

On the one hand, one regrets the recent, Twilight-era trend towards making cinematic vampires moody and emo, instead of soulless monsters of the terrifying dark. On the other hand, it's possible to lean a little too hard into the horrible - ‘Interview with the Vampire' is a seriously dark movie. Way darker than you'd expect a mid-90s Hollywood blockbuster starring the likes of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt to be.

In the previous Tom Cruise movies we've watched this season the Last Great American Movie Star has been in his usual mode: the confident, handsome leading man righting wrongs and battling evildoers. Here, though, he plays a melodramatic, campy vampire in a bad wig who has a thing for Brad Pitt. And he's not even the lead!

Hemal and Brian agreed that this wasn't necessarily a movie we enjoyed watching, but has a certain weight to it. It's weird, genuinely horrifying in many (many) places and campy in others, but it has a sort of integrity - these fellas set out to make a for-real old-school vampire movie, that's for sure.

Two titans of popular American cinema, together for the first time! We are referring, of course, to Max von Sydow and Tim Blake Nelson. Ha! We joke. 'Minority Report', released in 2002, marks the first time that famed director Steven Spielberg worked with Tom Cruise. (Though Max von Sydow and Tim Blake Nelson do appear in the movie, the latter as a delightfully weird future prison warden who plays the pipe organ and spouts aphorisms.)

'Minority Report' concerns itself with the lofty concept of free will. In the not-so-distant future, police can detect murders before they happen, thanks to the telepathic abilities of the “pre-cognitives”, a trio of bald people floating in goo. Is this arrangement moral? Is it fallible? We'll find out when Tom Cruise, the lead detective in charge of the “pre-crime” unit, is himself marked as a would-be murderer.

The movie was well received upon release and seems to have gone on to achieve a degree of even more positive retrospective appraisal. It's certainly a plotful film - you really have to pay attention to this one. Brian and Hemal did not entirely agree on whether that was a good thing, but they did both appreciate Tom Cruise zipping around the future being chased by proto-fascist police and feeling sad about his dead son.

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth! No truth-handler, you. Bah! I deride your truth-handling abilities!

It's all here in 'A Few Good Men', the iconic military legal thriller courtroom drama. Tom Cruise as a cocky young hotshot lawyer! Demi Moore as an idealistic, impassioned career military attorney (who, as the only woman in a world of competent men, is herself strangely incompetent)! Jack Nicholson as the menacing, authoritarian Marine colonel who ordered the Code Red! You're goddamn right he did!

Hemal and Brian went long on this one. There's a lot to unpack! At its heart, 'A Few Good Men' is less a mystery or a legal thriller than an extended philosophical exercise, putting the classical liberalism of virtue ethics against cold-eyed utilitarianism if you like that sort of thing. Mostly, though, we had a lot to say about Kevin Bacon's haircut.