Tom Cruise is so determined to entertain big-screen audiences that now every single film release of his is billed as an “event.” The release of a retrospective trailer for the next Tom Cruise film, Digger, a black comedy in which cruise plays a pot-bellied oil man, seems like it’s a deliberate attempt to start the Oscar buzz six months ahead of time. The first three minutes of the trailer are a very cleverly cut-together tour through nearly four decades of Tom Cruise films. The message of this commercial stunt is not Here is a boundary-pushing, Oscar-winning film director, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, teaming up with the biggest movie star on earth. It’s more TOM CRUISE is deigning us with another character actor in a quirky film — remember how good he was in Rain Man, how funny he was in Tropic Thunder, and how disturbing in Magnolia. He’s throwing us a curveball again,

Frankly, I think they should have given him the Oscar for best supporting actor in Magnolia. Although Paul Thomas Anderson’s LA Valley epic had far too many characters exactly like one another who cursed and hated themselves, Tom Cruise brought to it an energy and almost prophetic eye toward the coming manosphere. The winner that year was Michael Caine, for The Cider House Rules. I think the academy was rewarding the former Alfie star for being in a movie that was lauding abortion, rather then being devastated by it.