Everybody still hates Tom

I've been psyched for Bryan Singer's "Valkyrie" since I first heard about the project about two years ago. The "Usual Suspects" director returns to his thriller roots after taking a detour to superhero land with the first two "X-Men" flicks and "Superman Returns," and his leading man is the All-American Boy playing a Nazi with an eyepatch who leads a group of his fellow Germans in a plot to kill Hitler.

That sounds like a great movie, even if we all know (or at least, should know) that Hitler wasn't assassinated by his own subordinates. And normally you would assume such a movie would be an Oscar contender and have a shot at box office success.

But then you'd be forgetting that everybody hates Tom Cruise.

MSNBC's Courtney Hazlett must be among those haters, considering the story she uploaded Tuesday quoting an unnamed source who describes Cruise's performance as laughable. I especially like the paragraph where this "source" gets sick over Cruise's character removing his false eye. Now there's a detail relevant to whether or not A) Cruise is any good in the movie or B) the movie is any good.

Then there's the criticism -- which has been stated elsewhere ever since the first trailer came out -- that Cruise does not affect a German accent in the film. Neither, in fact, do any of his British co-stars, which include real hacks like Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp and Eddie Izzard. Let's see if I can remember another movie where English-speaking actors played Europeans ... and they didn't affect accents ... hmmm ... lemme think ... Oh yes. I remember. "Amadeus." Yeah, that could never work. (Sheesh.)

Hazlett also mentions the worries that "Valkyrie" might be a "chatfest" like Cruise's last film, the woefully underrated "Lions for Lambs." Sorry, folks, if some movies use too many fancy words.

OK, so maybe I'm being a little harsh on Ms. Hazlett, but I'm not the one publishing someone else's anonymous opinion of a movie I haven't even seen yet. And I'm certainly not rooting for the failure of "Valkyrie," which employed plenty of artists and technicians and producers that the public doesn't hate, aside from Tom Cruise.

"Valkyrie" opens Dec. 26, and I'll be there bright and early. Why? "Magnolia," "Eyes Wide Shut," "War of the Worlds," "Mission: Impossible III," "Minority Report," "Interview With the Vampire," "Rain Man," "Born on the Fourth of July," "Tropic Thunder," "The Last Samurai," "Jerry Maguire" and "Risky Business." That's why.