No more like this

Agreed. He used to work with the very best directors. DePalma, Scorsese, Stone, Coppola, Kubrick. Now he gets hacks to direct him in dreck.

Yeah, but I don’t even really count those. I just meant in terms of actual films with stories. Plus the documentaries he’s made are more like personal vanity projects than anything.

His biggest blunder recently was The Mummy where he may have gotten a little power hungry but over the past 10 years he’s made 3 fun-as-shit Mission: Impossible movies, 2 awesome Sci-fi movies in Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow, and his new Top Gun movie looks awesome!

Honestly, he’s only got a couple misses in The Mummy and Rock of Ages in the last decade. Jack Reacher 2 and Day and Knight are more forgettable than outright terrible.

I do agree that he’s sort of locked himself into a niche where he always plays the same charming, charismatic character and I’d like to see him continue to broaden his acting talents like we saw in Born on the Fourth of July and Magnolia, I can’t blame him for sticking with what works. I can also see him eventually changing things up when he’s no longer able to physically do his big action movies anymore.

Nothing personal against him, but won't be surprise to read that he accidentally kills himself while attempting an elaborate stunt.

Burton is a good call. I definitely would say he’s a mixed bag, and Big Fish was probably his last truly great film.

I do think he had a minor resurgence when he made Frankenweenie, which technically is an expansion on a short film he made earlier but whatever, and then also Big Eyes was kind of decent.

+1

I heard a critic on a podcast recently claim that Smith only had one movie in him (and it wasn't Tusk). I've never been that harsh towards KS, but now that I think back to the films of his I've seen, I don't recall coming close to liking anything as much as I did Clerks. I'll definitely need to revisit his movies to see if I feel that he falls into the declining returns category.

What did you think of his turn as the killer in Collateral?

I thought his performance was a nice change of pace for him.

I’ll add that while I didn’t really care for the movie, I also enjoyed his performance in War of the Worlds. He played a fuck up who didn’t have all the answers and was just stumbling through the situation - similar to the reason I enjoy his performance in Edge of Tomorrow.

While I won't call Kevin Smith a one-hit wonder, he ran out of original material very early in his career and wasn't a good enough filmmaker to work within the studio system. He never really had any directing talent, but his comedy writing was good enough to churn out a few indie comedies that more or less work. Smith got lucky that Hollywood thought he had tapped into some undefinable Generation X zeitgeist.

Would Cruise's ego allow him to be a supporting actor if he can't do the big tentpole movies anymore?

Magnolia was the exception.

Not wishing it on him, but I’ve thought the same. Either that or that he’ll seriously injure himself because he keeps trying to do this crazy stuff. I mean he’s done cool stunts, but at a point he should stop. Especially as he’s not really a young guy anymore (although obviously he’s in good shape).

Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino for the worst.

He played a supporting role in Rock of Ages in 2012. He also got a lot of praise for his small role in Tropic Thunder. Although that might be more of a glorified cameo than a supporting role.

Chasing Amy and Dogma are solid though they are both widely controversial for different reasons. Indeed I would argue Dogma is his best movie and deserves to be rediscovered. Unfortunately, Harvey Weinstein owns the rights to it.

You left out Lions for Lambs, Valkyrie, and a bunch of other crap. And both Jack Reacher films stink.

^ I stuck with the last 10 years. Lions for Lambs and Valkyrie are both older than that. The first Jack Reacher was fun.

And I thought one of the main reasons he did that was because his reputation had taken a bit of a hit for the whole "jumping on the couch raving about Katie Holmes" thing on Oprah...He was getting criticized for that and kind of laid low for a while. I just remember tons of reviews for Tropic Thunder kept making it a point to mention that when they commented on his performance ("Hey, he can be really funny, too"). Personally, I hated him in Tropic Thunder. I thought it was a desperate but ultimately lame attempt to rehabilitate his image, and because it was sooooo on the nose it made it not funny at all.

They still made entertaining movies in the 90's but after the early 2000's it went downhill though Danny Collins was good and the two movies Pacino did for HBO and the Irishman which probably redeemed both of their careers

De Niro had Silver Linings Playbook, The Intern, and Wizard of Lies so it was not all bad

DeNiro was good in Wizard of Lies, but I don't think anything will rehabilitate him for me after seeing him in that movie where he plays a comedian that ends with him in an old folk's singing, "Making Poopie!" to the tune of "Making Whoopee".

That and Dirty Grandpa were bad film choices

I just did a quick scan of this thread and am kind of surprised no one has mentioned Jackie Chan. I totally get that JC is several decades into his career and can't do the insane stuff he did in his youth, .By the same token, he seems to feel obligated to continue being an action star instead of trying to reinvent himself, and I think his movies have suffered as a result.

His films have varied pretty wildly in quality throughout his career, but I think there is a pattern when you group his movies by decade. If I were to rank his movies, the top ten would be made up movies mostly form the '80s (Project A, Wheels On Meals, Police Story, etc.) with the '90s taking several spots as well (Crime Story, Drunken Master II, Rumble in the Bronx) while the original Drunken Master from '78 would probably sneak in. The 2000s get pretty rough...New Police Story is probably a top 15 contender and maybe The Shinjuku Incident if I'm feeling generous. For me, the jury is still out on the 2010s because I've only watched a handful of his starring vehicles, like Little Big Soldier, Police Story 2013, Dragon Blade, Skiptrace, and Knight of Shadows...none of which grabbed me the way his early films did. So I'd feel comfortable putting JC into the declining returns category.

With the exception of that Dolemite movie Eddie Murphy is not somebody I have gotten excited for since the early 90's.