Did Tom Cruise give an honest-to-goodness performance — one that involved disappearing into a character versus reveling in his own ageless and sinewy glory — in “Top Gun: Maverick”? I missed it. Maybe I was blinded by his toothy gleam.
I write that as someone who enjoyed the movie, appreciates a cocky fighter pilot as much as the next guy and believes fully in Cruise’s talent, which is among the reasons I’ve seen “Jerry Maguire” a half-dozen times. In that movie, he shows range. In “Maverick,” he shows off.
And yet there’s apparently an outside chance that he’ll land a best actor nod when Academy Award nominations are announced on Tuesday. Whether that happens is one of the more intriguing bits of Oscar suspense. Another is whether an unusual and impassioned grass-roots campaign to get Andrea Riseborough a best actress mention for the independent movie “To Leslie,” which you’ve probably never heard of, will pay off.
Together, those story lines illustrate how nonsensical the Oscars are — and why it’s nutty that I and many other people get so worked up about them.
Tom Cruise and the Insanity of the Oscars
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