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Top Gun: Maverick (Music from the Motion Picture)

Tom Cruise’s return to the cockpit calls for a thunderous score.

May 27, 2022 12 Songs, 38 minutes ℗ 2022 Interscope Records

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Every song on the original 'Top Gun' soundtrack, ranked (including 'Danger Zone,' obviously)

There's so much talk about multiverses these days, consider this: What if Starship had actually agreed to sing "Danger Zone" for "Top Gun" ?

Instead, after Starship – the purveyors of tunes such as "We Built This City" and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" –  turned it down , the iconic tune went at the last minute to Kenny Loggins, who was already working on his own number for the 1986 film, "Playing With the Boys." 

The sequel  "Top Gun: Maverick"  (in theaters May 27) features Lady Gaga's  dramatic new power ballad  "Hold My Hand," as well as Loggins' original version of "Danger Zone," one of four songs by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock on the original "Top Gun" soundtrack. The first film arrived at a time when a blockbuster movie could spawn multiple instant hits, and that record in particular had noteworthy chart-toppers and solid deep cuts. 

In honor of the new "Top Gun," we're feeling that need for speed and to rank every song on the '86 soundtrack:

Review: Tom Cruise's excellent 'Top Gun: Maverick' takes to the skies, sticks to the formula

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10. Marietta, 'Destination Unknown'

Highly melodramatic and aggressively mediocre, it's not hard to understand why it was stuck near the end of the album. The song just kind of meanders without any real high points, which is probably fitting considering the title.

9. Miami Sound Machine, 'Hot Summer Nights'

Seeing Gloria Estefan's group on an '80s soundtrack would usually be an exciting proposition, but "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You" this is not. A really hooky chorus does help lift an otherwise average track.

8. Loverboy, 'Heaven in Your Eyes'

Those who enjoy pure '80s cheese – like that gooey, comes-out-of-a-spray-can stuff – will find it with this very earnest rock ballad. Not terrible, not great either, yet just right for when you want to hold up a lighter.

'Let's light the fires': Tom Cruise arrives by helicopter for world premiere of 'Top Gun: Maverick'

7. Larry Greene, 'Through the Fire'

This is pretty much "Danger Zone Lite": While it has the same hard-charging vibe, and the Fortune lead singer does what he can, the song doesn't quite reach the same heights as Loggins' number. 

6. Cheap Trick, 'Mighty Wings'

This is a very different outing for the band known for "I Want You to Want Me" and "The Flame." Co-written by "Top Gun" composer Harold Faltermeyer, the synth-rocker manages to showcase some of Cheap Trick's signature sound even with lyrics about fighter jets.

5. Teena Marie, 'Lead Me On'

Maybe Marie accidentally got the Miami Sound Machine song? Backed with brassy flair by a funky trumpet section, the R&B and soul singer excels on an up-tempo number that offers a funky counterpart to the album's heavy dose of '80s rock.

4. Kenny Loggins, 'Playing With the Boys'

Simply put, it's the perfect tune to match with a bunch of tanned, ripped dudes playing beach volleyball. Loggins sidelines the rock bombast a bit and just has some retro Reagan-era fun.

3. Harold Faltermeyer and Steve Stevens, 'Top Gun Anthem'

Although some may prefer Faltermeyer's quintessential synth-pop theme "Axel F" (from "Beverly Hills Cop"), we'll take this instrumental gem – starring Stevens' memorable guitar-shredding melody line – every time. 

2. Kenny Loggins, 'Danger Zone'

Who doesn't automatically have this come into their mind when seeing Tom Cruise sitting in a fighter jet? Loggins' passionate vocals partner with an unapologetically '80s sonic tapestry for one of the most earworming movie tunes ever. 

1. Berlin, 'Take My Breath Away'

An Oscar and Golden Globe winner for best original song, it's more than just a great cinematic number. We're talking an all-timer power ballad – not to mention a staple at weddings and school dances ever since – thanks to Terri Nunn's gorgeous yearning amid an ethereal orchestral atmosphere.

Glen Powell:  New 'Top Gun' flyboy talks Netflix's 'Apollo 10½,' that Oscar 'insanity' and Tom Cruise

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Worst To Best: Tom Cruise Movie Singles and Theme Songs

Tom cruise has left a long mark on film history, but also on the history of pop music. we ranked his greatest hits (and then some)..

Tom Cruise has a long history making movies, as Top Gun: Maverick 's arrival 36 years after the original ride into the danger zone has reminded everyone. He’s also had a long history on the pop charts, however indirectly. There’s not a lot that unifies songs that have appeared on Tom Cruise soundtracks, but many have taken on a life of their own after making appearances in Cruise’s films. Below is a ranking of 25 theme songs and/or singles from Cruise movies, from the awful to the sublime (with many that fall somewhere in the semi-memorable middle). 

26. “Kokomo,” The Beach Boys (from Cocktail )

A truly dreadful late-career Beach Boys hit, “Kokomo” was inescapable in the summer of 1988 and has, sadly, remained so ever since. It’s at the bottom of this list because it belongs at the bottom of just about every list for which it qualifies, including “Music Videos With John Stamos Cameos” or “Songs Co-Written by Children of Doris Day Who Made Enemies of Charles Manson.”

25. “Take a Look Around (Theme From Mission: Impossible 2 ),” Limp Bizkit (from Mission: Impossible 2 )

Cocktail ’s soundtrack became a huge hit (we’ll meet a single from it again further up the list), in the process helping to inaugurate an era in which soundtrack albums packed with of-the-moment artists were a mandatory element of any blockbuster movie release, whether the of-the-moment artists really fit the spirit of the film or not. Case in point: the Mission: Impossible II soundtrack, filled with very-2000 hard rock (and Tori Amos), bottoming out with this dire Limp Bizkit song in which singer Fred Durst mostly grouses about critics. But, hey, at least it incorporates the famous riff from the Lalo Schifrin theme. Synergy!

24. “Someday,” Black Eyed Peas (from Knight & Day )

An autotuned disaster that’s not even good by Black Eyed Peas’ standards.

23. “Losin’ It,” Jeff Allan Band (from Losin’ It )

Cruise took on his first starring role in this sleazy (but Curtis Hanson directed) teen comedy in which he plays one of a quartet of ‘60s teens trying to, you guessed it, lose it in Tijuana. Recorded by the never-heard-from-again Jeff Allan Band, this is possibly the most generic ‘80s theme song ever committed to wax.

22. “Paradise City,” Tom Cruise (from Rock of Ages )

Cruise has stuck almost entirely to action films over the last couple of decades. His appearance in Adam Shankman’s 2012 adaptation of the popular jukebox musical Rock of Ages is an exception. This stab at Guns N' Roses glory might be fun in context (and he hits some impressive high notes), but in isolation it’s a real don’t-quit-your-day-job moment.

21. “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” Bobby McFerrin (from Cocktail )

Yes, Cocktail’s soundtrack went quadruple platinum in part because of this a cappella bromide. No, science still does not understand why.

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20. “All the Right Moves,” Jennifer Warnes and Chris Thompson (from All the Right Moves )

‘80s soundtrack regular Jennifer Warnes joins forces with Manfred Mann vocalist Chris Thompson for a bland-but-harmless anthem from this early-career football drama.

19. “Old Time Rock and Roll,” Bob Seger (from Risky Business )

Remember what we said about “Paradise City” probably playing better in context than in isolation? The same goes for one of the most famous songs in the Tom Cruise filmography. Yes, Cruise dancing in his underwear to this Bob Seger hit, originally released in 1979, soundtracks the moment that made Cruise a star. But, yeesh, is it obnoxious when encountered in the wild, a paean to classic rock and roll values that’s more grumpy than celebratory. Seger released a lot of immortal songs in his heyday. This shouldn’t have been one of them.

18. “Danger Zone,” Kenny Loggins (from Top Gun )

Ditto this Kenny Loggins track from Top Gun. It’s the perfect song in Top Gun, but who wants to hear it anywhere else? (Apparently a lot of people. It was a big hit. But should it have been?)

17. “Impossible,” Kanye West feat. Twista, Keyshia Cole and BJ (from Mission: Impossible III )

Kanye West’s contribution to the world Mission: Impossible soundtracks appeared back when the producer/rapper could seemingly do no wrong. Seemingly. This isn’t his finest moment and quietly disappeared after failing to crack both the pop and R&B/hip-hop Top 40.

16. “Endless Love,” Lionel Richie and Diana Ross (from Endless Love )

Cruise has only a small part in Franco Zefferelli’s ill-fated 1981 adaptation of a pretty good Scott Spencer novel, which yielded this sappy theme song from two remarkable talents. It might rank higher if it didn’t immediately summon up the memory of dentists’ waiting rooms.

15. “Sympathy for the Devil,” Guns N Roses (from Interview with the Vampire )

Notable mostly for being recorded at the very tail end of the original(ish) Guns N’ Roses lineup’s existence, this solid, unremarkable cover of the Rolling Stones classic plays over the closing credits of Neil Jordan’s Anne Rice adaptation.

14. “Show Me Heaven,” Maria McKee (from Days of Thunder )

Lone Justice is a pioneering country rock band from the ‘80s waiting for rediscovery, and singer Maria McKee probably deserved more success as a solo artist than she enjoyed. But also: Zzzzzzzz….

13. “Hold My Hand,” Lady Gaga (from Top Gun: Maverick )

Given the pounding standard set by the hits from the original Top Gun soundtrack and Lady Gaga’s own masterful ability to go biiiiiiig, why does this just-OK theme to Top Gun: Maverick sound a little too tastefully restrained?

12. “Iko Iko”, The Belle Stars (from Rain Man )

The British group the Belle Stars was essentially defunct when the song, recorded in 1982, appeared on the Rain Man soundtrack in a remixed form, in 1988. That didn’t stop it from becoming a hit, however. That’s just part of the song’s long history, which dates back to Mardis Gras Indian chants and became a big hit for the Dixie Cups in 1965 (a version that smashes this not-bad cover to pieces).

11. “Is Your Love Strong Enough,” Bryan Ferry (from Legend )

In 1982, Roxy Music released Avalon , a bittersweet, atmospheric light rock masterpiece. Then the group disbanded and lead singer Bryan Ferry mostly spent the rest of his career releasing (mostly pretty good) solo work that sounds like variations on Avalon . This is one of them. It’s not bad.

10. “Vanilla Sky,” Paul McCartney (from Vanilla Sky )

Cameron Crowe’s 2001 Vanilla Sky is a big, twisty, ambitious science fiction film about memory and meaning that makes extremely innovative use of pop music from start to finish, sometimes bleeding one song into another to hallucinatory effect. McCartney’s theme is a restrained, moody little ditty. It’s a counterintuitive choice, but not a bad one. 

9. “Book of Days,” Enya (from Far and Away )

With songs that mixed dreamy, Celtic-inspired melodies, ethereal vocals, and lots and lots of synths, Enya became a kind of genre unto herself. Who better to provide the theme to Ron Howard’s the-story-of-the-Irish-in-America film starring Cruise and Nicole Kidman? Nobody, that’s who.

8. “Oblivion,” M83 with Susanne Sundfør (from Oblivion )

The French synth-pop act M83 branched out into film scores with the theme to this kind-of-overlooked (but worthwhile) sci-fi movie from 2011. For the theme the group brought in Norwegian singer Susanne Sundfør, whose vocals match nicely against the sweeping sounds behind it. Though not a huge hit, it’s a rare Cruise soundtrack song from the digital era, after studios and labels had given up on creating monster albums to go with their huge movies. No one tried to spin a hit off of, say, The Mummy or Edge of Tomorrow (though it’s kind of fun to imagine what those tracks might have sounded like).

7. “It’s in the Way that You Use It,” Eric Clapton (from The Color of Money )

No, it’s not hip. Yes, Clapton has been freely offering a lot of shitty opinions lately. But its smoky, ‘80s beer commercial power is still pretty undeniable.

6. “Theme from Mission: Impossible” by Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. (from Mission: Impossible )

Called upon to update Lalo Schifrin’s classic theme for the mid-‘90s, the other two guys in U2 kind of kill it (in a mid-‘90s kind of way).

5. ”A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” Edie Brickell & New Bohemians (from Born on the Fourth of July )

For a brief moment at the end of the 1980s it looked like folk (and folk-adjacent) music was going to make a comeback, thanks to some surprise hits from Tracey Chapman and Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. This turned out to be a phenomenon isolated to, well, those mostly just those two artists. But it explains how Brickell and her band got the nod to cover this Bob Dylan classic for Oliver Stone’s Ron Kovic biopic. It’s a ‘60s song given a slick-but-effective ’80s sheen, making it kind of perfect for the movie.

4. “Secret Garden,” Bruce Springsteen (from Jerry Maguire )

One of the best songs from Springsteen’s wandering ’90s, this restrained ballad was written a few years before Jerry Maguire but sounds custom-made for Cameron Crowe’s tender romance. It became a hit, but only after a Portland radio station created an unauthorized remix incorporating dialogue from the film.

3. Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing,” Chris Isaak (from Eyes Wide Shut )

Similarly, this sinuous Chris Isaak song sounds like it was recorded just for Stanley Kubrick’s night-long journey of sexual anxiety, even though it was cut years earlier. It sets a tone of sexy menace that the film locks into and never abandons.

2. “Take My Breath Away,” Berlin (from Top Gun )

The synthesizer wasn’t invented only so this Oscar-winning power ballad could exist, but maybe it should have been?

1.“Save Me,” Aimee Mann (from Magnolia )

Just as “Kokomo” provided the inevitable bottom for this list, Aimee Mann’s Magnolia soundtrack serves as the unavoidable top. Take your pick of Mann tracks featured in the film, but we’re going with this one.

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Juke Box Hero / I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll

Diego Boneta, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand & Julianne Hough

Drew & Sherrie in the record store / Lonny & Dennis at the bourbon room office

I Wanna Rock

Diego Boneta

Drew on stage at the bourbon

Wanted Dead or Alive

Tom Cruise & Julianne Hough

Sherrie meets Stacee Jaxx afer stage performance,

Rock You Like a Hurricane

Julianne Hough & Tom Cruise

Stacee Jaxx & Sherrie private dance in the Venus club

Shadows of the Night / Harden My Heart

Mary J. Blige & Julianne Hough

Sherrie starts work in the Venus club

Don’t Stop Believin’

Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand & Mary J. Blige

Closing song before the end credits

Pour Some Sugar On Me

Stacee Jaxx on stage at the Bourbon Rooms

We Built This City / We’re Not Gonna Take It

Russell Brand & Catherine Zeta-Jones

Outside the Bourbon rooms street scene song battle

Sister Christian / Just Like Paradise / Nothin’ But a Good Time

Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Russell Brand & Alec Baldwin

Sherrie arriving into town on the bus

Paradise City

Film Intro song

Any Way You Want It

Mary J. Blige, Constantine Maroulis & Julianne Hough

Justice & Sherrie in the The Venus Club / Paul introduces his next big thing Drew to the record company

More Than Words / Heaven

Julianne Hough & Diego Boneta

Sherrie sings in the Bourbon as Drew starts to take rehearsals with his band opening for Stacee Jaxx

Harden My Heart

Julianne Hough & Mary J. Blige

A rain soaked Sherrie meets Justice outside the Venus Club

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Tom Cruise & Mary J. Blige

Drew & Sherrie up at the Hollywood sign

I Want to Know What Love Is

Tom Cruise & Malin Akerman

Stacee Jaxx & Constance Sack backstage at the Bourbon

Waiting for a Girl Like You

Diego Boneta & Julianne Hough

Drew & Sherrie love scene

Undercover Love

Drew sings on stage as front man of Z Guyeezz on their first show at the Bourbon

Can’t Fight This Feeling

Russell Brand & Alec Baldwin

Lonny and Dennis show their emotions as the song closes they kiss

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Catherine Zeta-Jones

Patricia Whitmore sings in the Church

Here I Go Again

Diego Boneta, Paul Giamatti, Julianne Hough, Mary J. Blige & Tom Cruise

Drew signs for Paul Gills record label

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What Songs Does Tom Cruise Sing in Rock of Ages ?

In the hair-metal musical Rock of Ages , Tom Cruise plays louche rock icon Stacee Jaxx and sings several songs with the help of a monkey and Auto-tune . But which classics of the genre will Cruise put his voice to? According to the just-released track listing for the soundtrack album , Cruise pulls solo duty on “Paradise City” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” sings duets on “Wanted Dead or Alive,” “I Want to Know What Love Is,” and “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” and contributes additional vocals to “Here I Go Again,” “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” and “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Mary J. Blige is also on the soundtrack, but alas, there are no Whitesnake songs about crispy chicken .

• rock of ages
• soundtracks

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TV & Film

When Tom Cruise sang on live TV and he was amazing

5 August 2022, 15:47

By Tom Eames

Tom Cruise is one of the world's greatest film stars, and it turns out he's a fantastic live performer too.

In 2015, the Top Gun: Maverick actor appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in the States, and shocked the audience with his impressive command of the stage.

• Simon Cowell finally sang on the Got Talent stage and he was incredible
• Tom Cruise fought for 'wingman' Val Kilmer to star in Top Gun sequel after his battle with cancer

OK, he wasn't actually singing, but rather taking part in the Lip Sync Battle segment of the show, miming along with The Weeknd's 'Can't Feel My Face', but he was particularly great at it.

Watch the clip below:

Tom Cruise, Jimmy Fallon do lip sync battle | 'Can’t Feel My Face' & 'That Lovin Feelin'

Tom impressed the audience and Jimmy with his performance, which he followed up by lip-syncing to Meat Loaf 's 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light'.

Even The Weeknd himself was amazed, tweeting about the show afterwards:

can't believe @TomCruise is singing my song. @jimmyfallon *** you're the MAN for this one. #tomcruisetomcruise ||| https://t.co/xVFZSkYCCx — The Weeknd (@theweeknd) July 28, 2015

But it's not like Tom can't sing at all. He's belted out the likes of 'Great Balls of Fire' in Top Gun , 'Free Fallin'' in Jerry Maguire and 'Addicted to Love' in Cocktail .

And of course, in 2012, he starred as stadium rock legend Stacy Jaxx in the musical Rock of Ages , where he convincingly performed various '80s anthems like 'Wanted Dead or Alive' and 'Pour Some Sugar on Me'.

Tom Cruise has just experienced the most successful film of his career, with Top Gun: Maverick grossing over $1.3 billion at the worldwide box office.

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Listen to Lady Gaga's new song, 'Hold My Hand,' from 'Top Gun: Maverick'

Lady Gaga's new song, "Hold My Hand," from the new Tom Cruise movie "Top Gun: Maverick" is finally here.

The "A Star Is Born" actress' vocals shine in this ballad, in which she instills a message of hope, encouragement and support.

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MORE: Lady Gaga unveils 'Hold My Hand,' a new song for 'Top Gun: Maverick'

"So cry tonight/ But don't you let go of my hand," the pop star pleads in the chorus. "You can cry every last tear/ I won't leave 'til I understand/ Promise me, just hold my hand."

Last week, Lady Gaga took to social media to share the artwork for "Hold My Hand" and revealed that she'd been "been working on it for years, perfecting it, trying to make it ours."

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"I wanted to make music into a song where we share our deep need to both be understood and try to understand each other -- a longing to be close when we feel so far away and an ability to celebrate life's heroes," she explained in the caption. "This song is a love letter to the world during and after a very hard time. I've wanted you to hear it for so long."

"Hold My Hand," which was produced by Gaga, Bloodpop and Benjamin Rice, is available to stream now.

The long-awaited "Top Gun" sequel flies into theaters May 27.

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Top songs: a guide to Tom Cruise singing cheesy tunes in movies

Might as well face it, Tom Cruise is addicted to belting out an off-key classic in his films. Here's a quick guide to some of his most memorable – and more forgettable – moments on the mic

Photos: Alamy/Collage: The Big Issue

Ace fighter pilot, champion stock car racer, secret agent extraordinaire, barman at TGI Fridays: Tom Cruise has lived exciting lives which we mere mortals can only dream of through his blockbuster acting roles. And yet, from watching the vertically challenged sexy scientologist’s movies over the years, I can’t help but sense that his greatest ambition in life has never been fully realised.

I still haven’t seen Top Gun: Maverick – and I understand he judiciously leaves the theme song to Lady Gaga – but if it doesn’t feature a scene in which Cruise wonkily if gamely sings his little heart out to some sort of vintage rock’n’roll tune then he is selling us all and indeed himself short. The man clearly just wants to sing!

Not content merely packing the soundtracks of his movies with hit songs that can have taken anywhere between three and seven minutes to write – be it Take a Look Around , Limp Bizkit’s butthurt riff on a Lalo Schifrin TV theme classic from 2000’s Mission: Impossible 2 , or Paul McCartney’s fantastically lazy Vanilla Sky from 2001’s film of the same name (sample lyric: “Tonight you fly so high up/In the vanilla sky” ) – Cruise has on many a memorable occasion grabbed the mic himself, only rarely crashing and burning in the process. Shake your nerves and rattle your brain, with a short history of Tom Cruise singing in films. 

Great Balls of Fire  – Top Gun (1986)

Whether it’s spectacular aerial dogfights or a very homoerotic beach volleyball match, Cruise’s breakout action classic is full of memorable scenes, including not just one but two where he sings. The best is of course when Mav and Goose and their respective better halves are drunk in a bar, and Goose is banging away at an upright piano with his young son perched on top, and the two BFFs are going ballistic howling Jerry Lee Lewis’s horndog anthem like a right pair of flaming testes. Unbearably wholesome content.

Addicted to Love  – Cocktail (1988)

It’s hard to believe it happened not long after Top Gun , but Cruise’s arguably worst-ever film saw him play a flair bartender at a MOR American chain restaurant, serving up extravagantly made boozes with often sexy results. His credentials as the money-maker shakin’ lothario who can also do you a decent margarita are burnished by a scene in which the erotic mixologist starts ad-libbing to Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love behind the bar while a woman stares at him longingly, whether smitten or perhaps just wondering when the hell she’s getting her drink. 

Free Fallin’  – Jerry Maguire (1996)

He’s a cocky American sports agent just been binned from his job, she’s a naive and let’s face it desperate secretary and single mum (played by the future multiple Oscar-winning Renée Zellweger). Their relationship makes no sense whatsoever and is actually quite tragic. But watch this much-overrated romcom anyway for the always enjoyable scene where Jerry’s driving off from doing what he thinks is a career-saving deal, searching the radio for a song to match his ecstatic mood, before finally settling on Tom Petty’s 1989 classic Free Fallin’ . Cue Cruise frantically car singing along at the top of his voice with no-one’s-listening aplomb. 

Little Deuce Coupe  – War of the Worlds (2005)

“The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, but still they come!” OK, so sadly Cruise didn’t have a go at singing Jeff Wayne’s 1978 funky prog-rock opera based on HG Wells’ Victorian era proto-sci-fi frightener. But in playing the unlikely part of the deadbeat dad in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 blockbuster movie adaptation, he does have a pretty sweet moment when, searching his mind in vain for a lullaby to sing his terrified daughter, from somewhere he comes up with The Beach Boys’ 1963 hot-rod rock ode, sung in a fragile reedy voice with tears in his eyes. 

Various songs  – Rock of Ages (2012) 

Perhaps we should be more careful what we wish for. Back in 2012, Cruise really did get to fulfil many of his obvious rock star fantasies by joining the ensemble cast of a film based on a popular glam-rock Broadway jukebox musical. The actor took lessons with Axl Rose’s vocal coach to get up to scratch for his role as brooding superstar Stacey Jaxx, and ended up singing surprisingly passable lead vocals on various songs including Guns N’ Roses’ Paradise City , Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive and Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar on Me . Luckily the film tanked at the box office, and music’s loss remains acting’s gain.

Malcolm Jack is a freelance journalist

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Listen to Lady Gaga's new song, 'Hold My Hand,' from 'Top Gun: Maverick'

The long-awaited "Top Gun" sequel flies into theaters May 27.

Lady Gaga's new song, "Hold My Hand," from the new Tom Cruise movie "Top Gun: Maverick" is finally here.

The "A Star Is Born" actress' vocals shine in this ballad, in which she instills a message of hope, encouragement and support.

MORE: Lady Gaga unveils 'Hold My Hand,' a new song for 'Top Gun: Maverick'

"So cry tonight/ But don't you let go of my hand," the pop star pleads in the chorus. "You can cry every last tear/ I won't leave 'til I understand/ Promise me, just hold my hand."

Last week, Lady Gaga took to social media to share the artwork for "Hold My Hand" and revealed that she'd been "been working on it for years, perfecting it, trying to make it ours."

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"I wanted to make music into a song where we share our deep need to both be understood and try to understand each other -- a longing to be close when we feel so far away and an ability to celebrate life's heroes," she explained in the caption. "This song is a love letter to the world during and after a very hard time. I've wanted you to hear it for so long."

"Hold My Hand," which was produced by Gaga, Bloodpop and Benjamin Rice, is available to stream now.

The long-awaited "Top Gun" sequel flies into theaters May 27.

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Class of 1999

The Year Tom Cruise Gave Not One but Two Dangerously Vulnerable Performances

Twenty-five years ago, the superstar starred in “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Magnolia,” and opened himself up for the camera in ways he rarely has since.

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By Amy Nicholson

Amy Nicholson is the author of “Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor,” examining 10 signature performances.

“Eyes Wide Shut” had a blunt sales pitch: Cruise. Kidman. Kubrick.

The poster didn’t need much more. Audiences already knew plenty. At the peak of his clout, having just earned his second Oscar nomination, for “Jerry Maguire,” and publicly launched his production company with “Mission: Impossible,” Tom Cruise and his wife at the time, Nicole Kidman, ditched Hollywood to quietly make a dirty movie in England with the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. The shoot was supposed to last six to eight months. It took 15.

‘’People say: ‘You’ve lost 40, 60, 80 million dollars. You’ve lost all this money. You’ve lost all this time,” Cruise told The New York Times a year before its anticipated release. “To have a chance to work with Stanley Kubrick,” he added, “that’s worth it for me.”

Talk about risky business. The second half of 1999 would prove to be the diciest period of Cruise’s career with the release of two back-to-back films that dared him to expose his private vulnerabilities. The first, “Eyes Wide Shut,” released 25 years ago this summer, was a cerebral and slippery tale about a husband named Dr. Bill Harford who wanders Manhattan for two nights as vague vengeance upon his wife for fantasizing about another man. It was hawked as Cruise after dark — the movie star and his spouse, the ascendant Kidman, inviting people into their bedroom to see how they slept, smooched and argued .

Cruise sacrificed a year and a half of his life for what he hoped would be his major contender, the film that might finally earn him an Academy Award. But ironically, it was the other role that got him an invite to the ceremony: an outrageous supporting bit as the seduction guru Frank T.J. Mackey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ensemble drama “Magnolia” that Cruise had shot in just three weeks. Of the two performances, it’s by far the most personally revealing.

At that time, Cruise was a promiscuous director-gatherer, rarely working with the same filmmaker twice. He aimed for heavyweights: Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Ron Howard, Brian De Palma, breaking his ronin inclinations only to make “Top Gun” and “Days of Thunder” with Tony Scott. On “Thunder,” he had fallen in love with Kidman and made another film with her, too — “Far and Away” — and neither had been critically acclaimed.

Cruise hoped Kubrick would change their ho-hum streak, disregarding the hard-won wisdom he’d learned more than a decade earlier when he dinged his post-“Risky Business” momentum to play a forest imp in Ridley Scott’s “Legend.” That flop also suffered from a metastasizing shooting schedule (four months turned into 12) and an auteur more focused on style than emotional substance. After returning from Britain, he told Rolling Stone that he felt like merely “another color in a Ridley Scott painting.”

“I’ll never want to do another picture like that again,” he vowed. Well, he had. He’d even gone back to Pinewood Studios in London.

KUBRICK WAS NEVER an actor’s director. His staggering filmography included only two performances nominated for an Academy Award: Peter Ustinov in “Spartacus,” and Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove” (only Ustinov won). Kubrick’s genius was the star. On “Eyes Wide Shut,” a passion project since the 1960s, his casting priority wasn’t talent — it was convincing a married couple to enlist. (His first choice was Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.) Tabloid scrutiny was what Cruise and Kidman believed they’d gone to the great master to escape, only to have Star magazine allege that Kubrick had to hire on-set erotic experts to teach them how to make love. (Cruise not only denied the accusation, but sued over it.)

Fans expecting nudity should have known better. Despite earning the title People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1990, Cruise disliked pitching himself as an object of desire, refusing to let marketers promote his first blockbuster, “Top Gun,” with shirtless photos of him playing volleyball. In four decades, he has filmed only one genuinely erotic scene — his first-date clinch with Renée Zellweger in “Jerry Maguire” — and a couple of giddy tone-benders that combine sex with death ( torturing a victim in “Interview With the Vampire”) or sex with musical comedy ( duetting with Malin Akerman in “Rock of Ages”).

But Cruise bore the blame when the peek into his life fans had been promised turned out to be a pent-up study of male insecurity. (At an early screening of “Eyes Wide Shut,” LA Weekly reported walkouts and one viewer huffing an expletive.) Critics expecting a charismatic performance at least were also disappointed, with many dismissing Cruise as flat and out of his depth.

“Stanley was not that specific about what he wanted,” Kidman told Time Out London. Yet, Cruise, who developed an ulcer during the film, never said a word against Kubrick, even after filming 95 takes of walking through a door. To this, let me add that it seems difficult for any actor to build a character when they’ve got no idea which one of a hundred versions their director wants — and there’s reason to question whether Kubrick was even using Cruise’s best takes. As the editor Gordon Stainforth said of splicing together “The Shining,” good performances were often rejected in favor of “the most eccentric and rather over-the-top.”

WHILE IN LONDON, CRUISE watched “Boogie Nights” and learned that its director, Anderson, also happened to be in town. Cruise invited him to the set and afterward, Anderson pledged to write him something “un-turn-downable,” as he explained to The New York Times. Six months later, Anderson sent him a script with another sexually frustrated character: a self-proclaimed “master of the muffin” who never even touches a woman onscreen (and the women he knows find him obnoxious). Humping the air for his rowdy male acolytes, Frank might just be a locker-room faker, a try-hard hysteric, an immature blusterer who tries (and fails) to impress a female TV journalist by vaulting into a mostly naked backward somersault with his pants bunched around his ankles.

Cruise was 36 and, for the first time in his career, he would be older than his director — a new-school ’90s Sundance darling. Still, he was determined to impress Anderson, too.

“He’s like, ‘Do you want me to stand on my head, do you want me to do back flips? I’ll do it, I’ll do anything you want,’” Anderson recalled to Rolling Stone .

Cruise’s Frank Mackey is an electric performance — a huckster Elvis roiling with hostility — and in my opinion it should have won him an Oscar. (I say this with zero offense to Michael Caine, who took home the supporting actor prize for “The Cider House Rules” and joked affectionately that the prestige would have lowered the mega movie star’s price tag.) Statuette aside, Cruise deemed it “the perfect character to play after Bill Harford.” Kubrick bottled him up; Anderson cut him loose.

Yet, Bill and Frank share key points of connection. Bill learns that sex is danger, with missed connections involving one sex worker with H.I.V. and another who ends up possibly murdered. Frank’s mission statement is “Seduce and destroy” — and he seems most passionate about inflicting pain. Neither character enjoys the raunchy thrills people imagine he’s enjoying, and both of them hide their real selves under masks (the wealthy doctor literally) as they set out to convince the world of their success and power.

Bill stalks the East Village believing he wants to even the score with his wife, but he’s just piqued there’s an even richer and more powerful crowd that hasn’t yet invited him to their secret orgies. And Frank has buried his entire past — the years caretaking for his late mother, the rage and hurt he feels toward his estranged father, his own last name — to resurrect himself as a carnal superhero whose mind-control powers appear to work only on other men.

The films even share two identical scenes. The first is a long, mute stare as Cruise’s characters discover themselves completely emasculated by women they’ve underestimated — a crucial pivot point in both movies. The second comes in a climactic collapse before the family member who cut them so deeply that they’ve dreaded coming home. Both men stumble toward the unconscious body of their bittersweet beloved — Bill’s sleeping wife, Frank’s dying father — struggling to keep their emotions in check. Then they burst into sobs.

Cruise’s own father, Thomas Cruise Mapother III, was “a bully and a coward,” he told Parade magazine in 2006. Like Frank, Cruise lopped off his dad’s surname to build his reputation on his own. The elder Mapother died of cancer just before his son flew to London for “Legend.” Cruise visited him on his deathbed. It was the first time they’d seen each other in years, but they didn’t talk about the past. Cruise just held his hand.

Not long after, he opened up about that last goodbye. “It cleared up a lot of kind of fog that I had about the man,” Cruise told Rolling Stone in that 1986 interview. “It’s all sort of complex. There wasn’t one thing I felt.”

“I don’t know what I would have done without my work,” he continued. “It gave me a place to deal with all those emotions.”

And “Magnolia” gave him a place to honor them. That two-minute take in which Mackey breaks down at his father’s bedside is the most naked Cruise has ever been onscreen — an authentically heart-rending moment of release.

I believe that the first two decades-plus of Cruise’s career, from that famous sunglasses-and-socks skid in 1983 to that infamous ( and overblown ) couch jump in 2005, is one brilliant, underestimated performance after another, a superstar dominion so dazzling that audiences missed the subtle acting underneath. Yet, even amid this rarefied winning streak, the films he released in 1999 stand tall as testimonies to his courage. Today, Cruise is more acclaimed for braving risky stunts, not risky roles. I hope he dares himself to bare it all for the camera again.

Electric Motorcycles

There’s something special about that motorcycle tom cruise rode at the olympics.

Eagle-eyed viewers of yesterday’s Olympics closing ceremony might have noticed something different about the motorcycle Tom Cruise rode out of the stadium, through the streets of Paris, and up into a waiting cargo plane.

Of course, none of those feats sound out of place for the actor that many consider to be the last great action film star.

Tom Cruise has long been at home riding two-wheelers on the big screen, whether it’s drag racing an F-14 down the runway or any number of high-adrenaline chase scenes.

But after rappelling down from the roof of Paris’ Stade de France in front of over 70,000 spectators and taking possession of the Olympic flag, the motorcycle he affixed it to and rode through the stadium and out onto the streets wasn’t one of the classics we’ve long seen him ride. Instead, it was a LiveWire Del Mar , an American-made electric motorcycle produced by Harley-Davidson’s electric spin-off company LiveWire.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by LA 2028 (@la28games)

The action-packed cruise through nighttime Paris culminated in Cruise riding up the rear ramp of a waiting cargo plane before jetting off to Los Angeles, electric motorcycle and all, setting the stage for the City of Angels to host the 2028 Summer Olympics. But unlike all of Cruise’s former legendary motorcycle scenes, this one was completely devoid of loud exhaust and revving engine sound effects.

Sure, like any good Hollywood production, the sound effects were there. But this time, they were the high-revving sound of an actual electric motor, giving a true-to-form representation of how such electric motorcycles actually sound.

How do I know? Because I happen to own that very model , picking up a LiveWire Del Mar last year. And while I haven’t had the chance to ride it with a giant flag flapping off the tail (something I’ve done more than once , just not on that bike), I can attest that they did the bike justice with the proper motor sounds – something Hollywood often screws up when it comes to EVs.

Electric motorcycles have occasionally graced the silver screen, such as when Scarlet Johansson’s character Black Widow rode an original Project LiveWire electric motorcycle in the film Avengers: Age of Ultron. But live performances seem to be adopting electric motorcycles more quickly than major Hollywood productions.

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris was only the most recent example, but e-motos have become a growing trend finding favor at live performances due to their lower noise and lack of emissions.

The singer Lana Del Rey recently made an impressive entrance at Coachella, as she and her background dancers rolled in riding pillion on a fleet of Ryvid electric motorcycles. In addition to not sending clouds of exhaust into the awaiting crowd on either side of the bikes, or overpowering the performance with exhaust noise, the clutch-less electric motorcycles could be operated extra slowly, making it easier to focus on the tricky task of balancing a standing passenger on back at slow speeds. And the last thing any rider wants to do is drop a world-famous singer in front of all of Coachella.

Hollywood motorcycle scenes are still dominated by traditional gassers, but live performances are quickly adopting more electric motorcycles. And as Tom Cruise has shown us, Hollywood may be taking notice.

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Micah Toll is a personal electric vehicle enthusiast, battery nerd, and author of the Amazon #1 bestselling books DIY Lithium Batteries , DIY Solar Power,   The Ultimate DIY Ebike Guide  and The Electric Bike Manifesto .

The e-bikes that make up Micah’s current daily drivers are the $999 Lectric XP 2.0 , the $1,095 Ride1Up Roadster V2 , the $1,199 Rad Power Bikes RadMission , and the $3,299 Priority Current . But it’s a pretty evolving list these days.

You can send Micah tips at [email protected], or find him on Twitter , Instagram , or TikTok .

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Bruce Spingsteen Shuts Down Retirement, Farewell Tour Rumors: 'I Ain't Going Anywhere'

"Farewell to what? Thousands of people screaming your name," Springsteen told a crowd in Philadelphia last week

Mike Coppola/Getty

The Boss doesn't plan to say farewell anytime soon.

On Friday, Aug. 23, Bruce Springsteen shut down retirement and farewell tour rumors during a gig at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, when he reminded his crowd that the E Street Band has "been around for 50 f---ing years."

“We ain’t doing no farewell tour bulls---," Springsteen, 74, said in a clip shared to X (formerly Twitter) . "Jesus Christ. No farewell tour for the E Street Band!”

While speaking to the enthusiastic crowd, Springsteen smiled as he reiterated that his current world tour — next set to stop in Washington, D.C. at the top of September — isn't the last one fans will be seeing him on.

“Hell no… Farewell to what? Thousands of people screaming your name? Yeah, I wanna quit that,” Springsteen added. “That’s it. That’s all it takes. I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

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HANS KLAUS TECHT/APA/AFP/Getty

Guitarist Steven Van Zandt also shut down retirement talk during a conversation with The Telegraph last month, explaining that stepping back is not on the horizon for the E Street Band.

“I don’t see the end anywhere in sight, to be honest, especially in Europe, where we’re bigger than we’ve ever been," he said at the time. "I think we can play every summer for evermore, man.”

Springsteen's latest comments come amid tour date postponements earlier this year, when The Boss pushed back four European shows as part of his E Street Band 2024 World Tour due to “vocal issues.” That included performances in Marseille, Airport Letnany in Prague, Czech Republic, and San Siro Stadium in Milan.

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The 20-time Grammy winner previously postponed several tour dates in September 2023  due to peptic ulcer disease .

Springsteen now has a string of dates set for the remainder of the year, and has even played a few surprise gigs here and there this summer — like when he showed up at a Zach Bryan this month to sing a duet of his 1982 song "Atlantic City" as well as their collaboration "Sandpaper" at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.

After his Sept. 7 stop at the nation's capital, Springsteen will make his way to Baltimore, Asbury Park, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary and beyond in the fall . He'll also be taking his talents to Milan, Prague and Marseille next summer to make up for lost time earlier this year.

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Tom Cruise's Warner Bros. Return Film Adds Star-Studded Cast

Tom Cruise 's first project since inking a new deal with Warner Bros. assembles a star-studded cast as development ramps up. The upcoming movie, directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñàrritu, counts stars from Anatomy of a Fall and Killers of the Flower Moon among its growing ensemble.

Per Deadline , the untitled movie by Iñàrritu cast Sandra Hüller , who starred in the Academy Award-winning legal drama, Anatomy of a Fall , which landed her a Best Actress Oscar nod. The film will also feature Breaking Bad 's Jesse Plemons , known for his Oscar-nominated performance in The Power of the Dog , plus his roles in Killers of the Flower Moon and Kinds of Kindness , which won him the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Tom Cruise's Space Movie Gets Positive Update From Director Doug Liman

Director Doug Liman offers an update on the forthcoming action movie starring Tom Cruise that will be filmed in outer space.

The upcoming film, produced by Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment, also signed Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor John Goodman , renowned for portraying Dan Conner in the classic '90s sitcom, Roseanne. Also in the cast are Talk to Me and Everything Now star Sophie Wilde , plus Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness actor Michael Stuhlbarg . Meanwhile, actor and musician Riz Ahmed , who won the Best Live-Action Short Film Academy Award for his "The Long Goodbye" album, is in talks to join.

Tom Cruise Will Lead the Untitled Film

Cruise will star in and produce the untitled film from Iñàrritu, confirmed in February shortly after the legendary actor signed a strategic partnership with Warner Bros. to develop various feature-length projects with the studio. The film's logline centers on the most powerful man in the world embarking on a major mission to prove he is humanity's savior before the disaster he unleashes destroys everything. Iñàrritu, a four-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker, co-wrote the screenplay last year. The Mexican director notably helmed the Michael Keaton-led Birdman , with the dark comedy-drama winning Best Director, Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscars. Iñàrritu also made The Revenant , which won him another Best Director Oscar and earned star Leonardo DiCaprio his long-awaited maiden Academy Award.

Tom Cruise Awarded With Prestigious Honor by France's Culture Minister

Tom Cruise is awarded by France's culture minister as a Knight of the Legion of Honor.

Since Cruise re-entered a working relationship with Warner Bros., fans have been speculating on the possible projects he'll develop. One project both Warner Bros. executives and movie lovers have been pushing for is a potential Edge of Tomorrow sequel . While there's no word on whether Warner Bros. plans to develop a sequel, Cruise hinted at the possibility while celebrating Edge of Tomorrow 's 10th anniversary . Meanwhile, Cruise's co-star from the original movie, Emily Blunt , is also open to a follow-up.

Though Cruise is back on board with Warner Bros., starring in Risky Business , Jack Reacher and The Last Samurai for the studio, he is still working with Paramount Studios. Cruise has been in the U.K. filming the upcoming spy thriller, Mission: Impossible 8 , and is set to reprise his role as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun 3 , which is in early development at Paramount.

There is no production or release window yet for the untitled film.

Source: Deadline

Tom Cruise's Space Movie Gets Positive Update From Director Doug Liman

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Tom Cruise still plans to make a movie in outer space with Doug Liman. The filmmaker, who previously collaborated with Cruise on the films Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and American Made (2020), recently shared a brief update on their untitled action movie that is currently in development at Universal Pictures.

Speaking with Collider about his new movie The Instigators , starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, Liman confirmed that he and Cruise are both still attached to the untitled action movie set in space. "It's still a dream and a plan," he said. The project was first announced in 2020, with Universal reportedly set to give the film a $200 million budget. Cruise is set to earn upwards of $60 million for his role as both producer and star.

'Nobody Got Compensated': Road House Director Details Frustrations With Amazon's Switch to Streaming

Doug Liman further explains the controversy about Road House's release on Prime Video.

While plot details remain mostly under wraps, Universal Pictures Chairwoman Donna Langley shared in October 2022 that Cruise will play "a down-on-his-luck guy who finds himself in the position of being the only person who could save Earth." The movie is expected to take place mostly on Earth, but will send Cruise's character to space "to save the day." Both NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX company are reportedly involved with the film's scenes that will be shot in space, with Liman and Cruise expected to fly to the International Space Station as part of a future Axiom Space mission in a SpaceX Dragon 2 spacecraft.

Tom Cruise Is Currently Busy Finishing Mission: Impossible 8

After performing an epic stunt for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games closing ceremony , Cruise is back filming the untitled Mission: Impossible 8 , which is set to conclude the storyline that started in the previous film, 2023's Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One . In the seventh M:I movie, Cruise's Ethan Hunt and the rest of his IMF team went on their most dangerous mission yet, searching for a two-piece cruciform key that can control an advanced AI known as The Entity. Dead Reckoning Part One ended with Ethan obtaining both halves of the key, with M:I:8 expected to focus on the IMF agents' attempts to stop the Entity before it's too late.

Mission: Impossible 8 Adds Twisters Actor

Shortly after Tom Cruise praised Twisters, one of the stars of the 2023 disaster movie has joined the cast of the next Mission: Impossible movie.

McQuarrie returns to direct Mission: Impossible 8 , having helmed the previous three installments in the franchise — Rogue Nation (2015), Fallout (2018), and Dead Reckoning (2023). While Universal and Liman's space movie is believed to be Cruise's next project after Mission: Impossible 8 , the actor is also developing three future films with McQuarrie — an original song and dance-style musical, an original action film with franchise potential, and a potential solo project featuring Cruise's Tropic Thunder character Les Grossman. A third Top Gun movie is also in early development at Paramount that would reunite Cruise with his Maverick co-star Glen Powell .

The untitled eighth Mission: Impossible film is scheduled to hit theaters on May 23, 2025.

Source: Collider

Mission: Impossible 8

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A celebration of 'transplendent' actress Shelley Duvall at The Brattle

Shelley Duvall was 21 years old and selling her artist boyfriend’s paintings out of a van in Houston, Texas when Robert Altman asked her if she wanted to be in a movie. Members of the filmmaker’s entourage, including longtime assistant director Tommy Thompson, had met her at a party a few nights before and told the filmmaker he needed to “get a load of this girl.” Duvall had never acted before; never even considered it, really. Nonetheless, Altman ended up offering her the female lead in “Brewster McCloud,” the follow-up to his wildly successful “M*A*S*H” that was set to start shooting in Houston in three days. They’d wind up making seven pictures together.

Three of those collaborations will be screening at the Brattle Theatre as part of “ Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall ,” a nine-film retrospective running from Friday, Aug. 30 through Wednesday, Sept. 4, celebrating the career of this thrillingly unique American actress, who died in July at the age of 75 . Additionally, on Saturday, Sept. 7, the newly reopened Harvard Film Archive will screen a pristine 35mm print of " 3 Women ," Altman’s haunting 1977 head trip for which Duvall won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival.

With her gangly, akimbo limbs and wide, anime-character eyes, Duvall didn’t look like other leading ladies of the era. Or really any era, for that matter. Yet there was something mesmerizing about her. Even in the dizziest comedies she had an ethereal, melancholy quality that drew the viewer in. Critic Pauline Kael famously wrote that “Shelley Duvall melts indifference. You're unable to repress your response; you go right to her, in delight, saying ‘I’m yours.’” Kael also claimed that “she seems able to be herself on the screen in a way that nobody ever has before,” but I always felt that was giving Duvall short shrift as an actress. She played a wide range of characters for a number of different, distinctive directors. What was often interpreted as “being herself” was more a matter of not allowing a lot of showy technique to muddy up that connection with the audience.

Duvall’s debut in 1970’s “ Brewster McCloud ” (Aug. 31 and Sep. 4) is certainly a striking one, though it doesn’t suggest the depth of which she proved capable in later films. Altman’s hellzapoppin’ sendup of cornpone Americana is a manic, largely improvised affair starring Bud Cort as an eccentric young virgin trying to teach himself how to fly in the basement of the Astrodome, advised by a frequently nude, possibly imaginary friend (Sally Kellerman) who might be a bird or an angel or some combination of the two. The film’s madcap, avian-obsessed antics include a narrator (Rene Auberjonois) coughing up feathers, and Duvall at her most birdlike, wearing eye-makeup that resembles wings, deflowering our hero and causing him to come crashing back down to Earth.

It's the kind of movie someone makes after a massive success when they can do whatever they want. Altman was a gambler who always bet big on his gut instincts, and often admitted “Brewster” wasn’t his best movie but it was his favorite “because I took more chances then.” One of my fondest Brattle memories is a screening that took place in 2009, attended by co-stars Kellerman, Michael Murphy and the filmmaker’s widow, Kathryn Reed Altman. The movie had long been out of circulation, so the special guests were seeing it for the first time in decades. The trio sat onstage afterward laughing, saying they were sure it must have made sense to them at the time.

It was visually inspired to pair the lanky, elongated Duvall with stubby, pint-sized misfit Cort. They reunited for Joan Micklin Silver’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “ Bernice Bobs Her Hair ” (Sept. 1) The Brattle has a rare 16mm print of this little-seen gem, which was produced for the PBS series “The American Short Story” in 1976. Duvall stars as an awkward wallflower coerced by her shallow, debutante cousin (Veronica Cartwright) into a disastrous haircut as a mean-spirited prank. Though the Jazz Age set decoration is hampered by the public television budget, this is still the strongest Fitzgerald adaptation in terms of nailing the social strata and unwritten rules of the idle rich. The only catch is that the effortlessly stylish Duvall makes her allegedly bad hairdo look kind of great.

Duvall doesn’t have a huge role in Altman’s “ Nashville ” (Aug. 31 and Sept. 1), but the loopy groupie she plays is emblematic of the misplaced priorities chronicled in the director’s 1975 masterpiece, abandoning her beloved aunt’s sickbed to hover on the fringes of ephemeral stardom. One of the great American films, and maybe the greatest film about America, “Nashville” follows 24 characters moving through Music City on the eve of the bicentennial. It’s a movie about the intertwining of politics and entertainment, and how it’s probably been that way since the founding fathers; the whole country aspiring to an authenticity that more often than not comes off as kitsch. Altman is compassionate but clear-eyed, building to an ending of both shocking violence and unexpected grace. His bustling canvas seems to spill out over the sides of the movie theater screen. Every time I watch it I discover something new.

For this critic’s money, Duvall’s finest work can be found in “ 3 Women ,” starring as a flighty, man-hungry supervisor at a purgatorial Palm Springs eldercare spa who falls into a disturbingly co-dependent relationship with a teenage co-worker played by Sissy Spacek. Altman’s riff on Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” came to the director fully formed in a dream, and the picture unfolds with the unsettling, erratic logic of somebody else’s nightmare. (Altman told the studio that the script was based on an acclaimed short story, waiting until Cannes to admit that he’d literally dreamed it all up.) Duvall’s uncanny ability to remain emotionally grounded in the film’s increasingly surreal scenarios is what convinced Stanley Kubrick to cast her in the role of Wendy Torrance. It’s also the movie that inspired Julianne Moore to become a film actress. She often tells  interviewers that as a Boston University theater student she went to a Brattle screening of “3 Women” and decided that day she’d rather be in movies.

Altman and Duvall’s final collaboration was the doomed 1980 “ Popeye ” (Sept. 2 and Sept. 3) a critically despised, big budget boondoggle that some contrarians — especially yours truly — consider something of a classic. Altman’s defiantly idiosyncratic adaptation of E.C. Segar’s comic strip was a stealth remake of his own “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” all about the struggles of the individual in a world of systemic corruption, except as a children’s movie with songs by Harry Nilsson. Duvall’s casting as Olive Oyl was as perfect as it was inevitable. Who else could possibly have played the part? Her plaintive performance of the woozy love song “He Needs Me” is so gorgeous that Altman acolyte Paul Thomas Anderson used it to score the swooniest sequence in his 2002 “Punch-Drunk Love.”

Duvall’s last major film was the divisive 1996 adaptation of Henry James’ “ The Portrait of a Lady ” (Sept. 4). Writer-director Jane Campion’s controversial follow-up to “The Piano” proved to be the pivot from when Nicole Kidman went from being best known as Tom Cruise’s wife and Batman’s girlfriend to a favorite of international auteurs. Duvall plays the Countess Gemini, sister to John Malkovich’s devious Gilbert Osmond. (Duvall and Malkovich look nothing alike, but casting them as siblings makes perfect sense.) Like a lot of important ‘90s indies, “The Portrait of a Lady” has fallen through the cracks due to complicated rights issues and is not currently available to stream, nor could I locate a DVD copy in the NOBLE library system. This 35mm screening might be your last chance to see it for some time.

It’s not included in the Brattle series, but Duvall’s funniest moments onscreen can be found during her quick cameo in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” playing a free-spirited Rolling Stone reporter who epitomizes all the counterculture good times our stick-in-the-mud protagonist can’t comprehend. (The film was originally titled “Anhedonia,” due to the main character’s inability to enjoy anything.) Gushing to an annoyed Allen about Bob Dylan lyrics and “Mick’s birthday,” Duvall coins the made-up word “transplendent” to describe her groovy vibes, repeating it ecstatically. Later that night she tells him, “Sex with you is a really Kafkaesque experience,” waiting a perfectly timed beat before adding, “I mean that as a compliment.”

Duvall’s legacy has been tainted somewhat by asinine urban legends surrounding “ The Shining ” (Aug. 30) in which her brilliant performance has been falsely attributed to psychological abuse on the set by director Stanley Kubrick. It’s also become fashionable in ill-informed online circles to assert that the mental health issues Duvall suffered later in life were caused by her traumatic experiences on “The Shining,” a view that denigrates her excellent work while remaining willfully ignorant of not just her subsequent output — including creating and overseeing every aspect of the beloved 1980s television series “Faerie Tale Theatre” — but also the actress’ own words .

Her work in “The Shining” is so emotionally naked and devoid of vanity, one can understand why people might want to believe that there’s something more going on here than just craft. It goes back to Kael’s quote about Duvall seeming to be herself onscreen. There’s no protective, actorly barrier between ourselves and Wendy’s terror; it’s ugly and unflattering. Hers is one of the rawest performances ever captured in a horror film, especially when placed in such deliberate contrast to Jack Nicholson’s showboating theatricality. But watching the film again ( and again ), one can see how carefully Duvall has layered in Wendy’s whole history with Jack, their early scenes colored by the sad knowledge of a woman who has seen the man she loves at his worst, infused with her irrational hope that things are going to be different this time.

Shelley Duvall wasn’t just a great actress. She was transplendent.

“ Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall ” runs at the Brattle Theatre from Friday, Aug. 30 through Wednesday, Sept. 4. “ 3 Women ” screens at the Harvard Film Archive on Saturday, Sept. 7

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Sean Burns Film Critic Sean Burns is a film critic for WBUR.

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