DAYS OF THUNDER

 DAYS OF THUNDER

My Movie Blog

               Once upon a time ago, I used to have a thing for Tom Cruise. I think everyone had a thing for Tom Cruise in the 80s and maybe the early 90s. He became popular after appearing in Risky Business, Cocktail and Top Gun and was considered one of the sexiest actors. I still like some of his movies but I don’t know why I’m not into him anymore, maybe my taste in men has matured or maybe it’s the whole Scientology thing.

               I remember when I was young the film Risky Business was on television and I taped it onto a VHS video and I would watch it often. One day my brother taped over it with something else (I can’t remember what it was). I was so upset and almost crying. Today I don’t own a copy of the movie, so  you could say that I’m over it.

               Years ago I used to go to this same sandwich shop every week at this little shopping centre in town. There was this lady who would see me and would call me Rebecca De Mornay and told me they thought I looked like her. They asked me, “Do you know she is?” I said yes and told them I have seen her in the movie Risky Business. I personally don’t think I look like Rebecca De Mornay at any stage of my life but I didn’t mind them saying that I look like her (it could be worse).

               I still had this thing for Tom Cruise when Days of Thunder came out, I think this was around this time he started dating Australian actress Nicole Kidman. Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise both appeared in this film. My brother was into cars and kept scrapbooks of cars when he was a kid and as an adult he would go to car shows and take photos of cars and make photo albums with lots of car photos in it. When this film was at the movie theatre it was around the same time as my birthday, so my brother and I went to see the film. After the movie as we were leaving all these other people who also saw the movie were driving around like maniacs like they were racing car drivers. They were speeding and behaving irrational on the road. It scared us both.

               I still like Tom Cruise movies, I enjoyed Steven Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds. I also like the Mission: Impossible franchise. The worst film Tom Cruise has been in had to be that Irish movie he made with Nicole Kidman, that movie was just awful.

               A few years later my brother got a tumour and we later found out he had cancer and over time he became frail and sick. He was still able to go out a bit and drive his car. My brother couldn’t eat so he had to drink these milkshake things they were a bit like protein shakes. Before he gave up driving he enjoyed drinking milkshakes from this shop at Penrith Plaza (Penrith Westfield) so we both went down to the shops so he could get his favourite milkshake. My brother was extremely skinny, he had always been skinny but he had lost a lot of weight. His neck was swollen due to the tumour in his throat. He only had a tiny bit of hair because he had lost most of it from the chemotherapy which had left him sick. He would always wear a blue beanie. When we were out in public some people treated him just like a normal person, but there were some people who would walk past him and give him dirty looks and there were others who would snigger at him while looking at him. The way my brother looked was the least of his concerns and shouldn’t have been anyone else’s concern. He couldn’t help the way he looked, he had cancer. Some people were so ignorant and rude. Some people would have known he had cancer just by looking at him; perhaps they had gone through a similar experience with someone they had known. My brother got worse he had to give up driving, sometimes my mum would take him down for his favourite milkshake. He got worse and frailer so he couldn’t really go out much anymore. My brother died about 4 or 5 years after Days of Thunder was released. I can’t remember what happened to my brother’s car I think they sold it.