Top 10 movies for ‘Cruisers’

Tom Cruise’s longevity is no accident — he’s been a bona fide star all the way from “Risky Business” to his latest, “The Mummy,” in theaters now.

With a career spanning nearly four decades and more than 40 films, these 10 will remind you why the 54-year-old Cruise became such a big deal in the first place.

10. ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ (2014)

Credit Emily Blunt as much as Cruise — perhaps even more so — for this sci-fi film’s underrated awesomeness. She plays the incomparable Sgt. Rita Vrataski, aka the “Angel of Verdun,” who battled back a violent invading alien race known as Mimics. Thrown into the fray is Cage (Cruise), a hapless public relations officer forced into combat and swiftly killed by a Mimic. But he wakes up, and finds himself caught in a time loop, reliving the same horrific day. But in that is hope, and under Rita’s tutelage, he becomes a proper soldier. It’s a smart action film that didn’t get its due at the box office. And the best part is you get to watch Blunt kill Cruise a couple dozen times, for funsies.

9. ‘Interview With the Vampire’ (1994)

Few fans of the book would have predicted that Cruise would make for a good Lestat; even author Anne Rice voiced her misgivings at the casting, telling the Los Angeles Times that Cruise was “no more my vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler.” How good it is to be wrong. Cruise is wicked fun as the hedonistic, rock-and-roll vampire in this sumptuously silly gothic tale narrated by Louis (Brad Pitt, trying out an unwise accent), an 18th century Louisiana plantation owner turned vampire who takes a bloody tour of centuries with his much cooler undead master.

8. ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ (1989)

Oliver Stone’s best movie won him his second Oscar for direction and scored Cruise his first nomination. Cruise plays Ron Kovic, a real-life Vietnam War veteran who returns home paralyzed and traumatized to a country he can’t trust anymore as his horrified family asks, “What did they do to you in that war?” It’s a transformative performance, the most physically and emotionally demanding role of his career. Kovic eventually heals enough to become an anti-war activist, but it’s a long, painful road to salvation.

7. ‘Rain Man’ (1988)

Stanley Kubrick’s swan song paired Cruise and then-wife Nicole Kidman as affluent married couple Bill and Alice Harford, their intimacy electrifying their time. An admission from his wife that she once considered having an affair ignites something in Bill, sending him on a brief, intense, erotic odyssey through New York’s occult sexual underworld that quickly turns nightmarish, the sexual thrills plunging him into the dark parts of the city, and himself. It’s a beguiling experience that defies summary — as with the best of Kubrick’s work.

5. ‘Minority Report’ (2002)