Tom Cruise

Team Rosie

~ MaryG ~ 8 Comments

Like Sex and the City, Rosie O’Donnell is very aligned to me culturally.

In case you don’t remember the 1990s, Rosie O’Donnell was HUGE—one of America’s biggest cultural figures. Her daytime talkshow The Rosie O’Donnell Show won multiple Emmys and the media nicknamed her “The Queen of Nice.” She was truly a household name. I watched her a lot. She adopted her first child Parker in 1995, the same year I became a mom. She kept me company during the day when I was home with my kids. She was funny, kind, warm and loved Broadway musicals like I did.

In the 2000s, her image shifted as she came out publicly and became a strong advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, which made me like her even more. Later, when she was on The View, I didn’t watch her as often because I was back working, but I know that’s when her public fights with Donald Trump really ramped up. My recollection is that it was primarily a beef between two New Yorkers that had history and absolutely hated each other in a way that only two New Yorkers can.

Well, lo and behold, thirty years later, Trump is the most authoritarian President the United States has ever seen and Rosie has escaped to Ireland.

I’m obviously TEAM ROSIE in this feud.

In fact, since I discovered her TikTok and Substack shortly before my trip to Ireland, I’ve been following her time abroad closely. She seems to really love living in Dublin, although she misses her family. I even went to the Dublin comedy club where she had been practicing her act for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. By all accounts, she was a smashing success there. She plays Australia next.

I’m happy for Rosie that things are going well for her abroad, but I’m very aware of the absolutely dystopian reasons she left the country.

We are in uncharted waters now.

We live in a time when an American President publicly threatens to revoke a natural-born American’s citizenship for no reason other than that he just really fucking hates her.

Tom Cruise on The Rosie O’Donnell Show (and BTW, good on Tom for declining to accept a lifetime achievement award from Orange Mussolini at The Kennedy Center)

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments

In these troubled times, with the entire post World War II order seemingly upended, it’s nice that some things don’t change.

Tom Cruise is still a good movie star. The man is 63 years old and he still delivers a great action film, with a low body count. I have a feeling the critics will find fault in the length, plot holes, and slightly overwrought nature of the last Mission Impossible film, but I liked it and I’m glad I went opening weekend.

After about a million previews, dear old Tom comes on the screen and sincerely thanks you for coming to see his film on the big screen “the way it was meant to be seen.” He tells you that they made the film for YOU and you believe him. He might be a wacky Scientologist and whatever else they say about him, but he’s a good movie star. An American movie star.

I’m not going to attempt to review the film for real, but I will say that the submarine scene is my favorite. (The part when he retrieves the Entity’s source code from the sunken Russian submarine.) I liked that even better than the airplane sequence at the end. Both are quintessential Tom. They say he does his own stunts. And if so, WOW.

I’m not real clear on exactly why all-knowing AI (aka the Entity) feels the need to start nuclear Armageddon, but I’m clear on what stopped it. It was Tom (aka Ethan Hunt) and his team—many of whom you will recognize from past films in the series. It was also a black woman American President (played by Angela Bassett) who chooses to not launch the nukes at the very last minute.

Teamwork, friendship, self-sacrifice, diversity, trying to save the world for future generations. Those were the messages I got.

With cruelty, greed and corruption on an unprecedented rise in America, I guess I saw what I wanted to see in the film.

Katy O’Brian brings non-binary vibes as Kodiak, a US naval soldier in the film.