Things aren’t looking so great for Tom Cruise’s big new comeback movie Valkyrie.

Apparently a big action film about a one-eyed Tom Cruise trying to batter Hitler to death with a suitcase isn’t all that. Who knew?

However, Tom Cruise isn’t going down without a fight. It’s been claimed that staff at a radio station were offered a free screening of Valkyrie – at Tom Cruise’s actual house – but only on the proviso that they all said that Valkyrie was a masterpiece, that Tom Cruise was a sexy virtuoso of acting and that Katie Holmes‘ dungeon actually didn’t look that uncomfortable really.

There’s a glut of big, big Oscar-worthy movies coming out at the moment, from Kate Winslet‘s moving portrayal of a Nazi in the upcoming adaptation of the acclaimed novel Holocaust MILF Sluts Go Wild to Meryl Streep‘s incendiary performance in Doubt, the follow-up to Mamma Mia that explores institutionalised paedophilia in the priesthood to the timeless beat of some of Abba‘s most beloved hits.

Our point is that it’s hard to get your movie noticed at the moment. Especially, as it turns out, if your movie is a dreary load of cock about Hitler that stars one of the most profoundly unlikeable actors in movie history. Which hobbles Tom Cruise’s new film Valkyrie from the outset, really.

To put it politely, Valkyrie has had a troubled birth. Germany tried banning Tom Cruise from filming there, then there were all the accidents, then its release got shunted around the calendar like a flaming dogpoo that nobody knew how to put out properly. And that was before the reviews started coming in.

The early word on Valkyrie is that it’s ‘unengaging’ and that Tom Cruise is ‘distractingly bad’ in it. But that doesn’t sit too well with Tom Cruise himself – after the disappointment of Mission: Impossible III and the fetid, unwatched abortion that was Lions For Lambs, Tom needs Valkyrie to be a great big hit. If it isn’t a massive, career-resuscitating blockbuster, then Tom Cruise will have insincerely apologised to Matt Lauer for absolutely nothing at all, and that would just tear him apart.

That’s why Tom Cruise has apparently been offering critics private screenings of Valkyrie at his house so long as they say something – anything – nice about the film. MSNBC reports:

According to a source with radio station K-Earth 101, the Cruise camp was willing to go to great lengths to garner some positive publicity. In fact, they went so far as to offer a screening for anyone at the station and their friends at the Cruise home, according to the source. “They offered to hold it in Tom’s home — they didn’t say if he’d be there or not. We just had to agree to say ‘nice things’ about the movie.”

Now, it goes without saying that this news is the last thing that Tom Cruise wants to get out. It makes him look like a needy, approval-seeking idiot desperately doing anything he can to save a movie that he knows stinks. It’s literally the worst publicity that Valkyrie could get – and since its publicity already includes the pull-quote ‘Tom Cruise is distractingly bad’ that’s really saying something.

But you know what? We’re willing to give Valkyrie a chance. Personally we’ve always found Tom Cruise to be an engagingly charismatic actor, plus he’s surrounded by a cast of exceptionally talented character actors and telling a story of enormous global significance. In fact, we’re going to confidently predict that Valkyrie will be one of the best movies made this decade. We can’t wait to go and see Valkyrie.

And, best of all, we’ll get to go and see it in the brand new sports car that Tom Cruise is going to send us for writing that last paragraph. Remember the contract, Tom. The boot has to be stuffed with jewels and prostitutes. Again, that’s jewels and prostitutes.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Brad Pitt doesn’t have many requirements when choosing security – it’s nice if they’re physically intimidating and it helps if they know who Brad Pitt is.

Because if they don’t, there’s quite a big chance that something weird will happen. Something like the events of Monday night, in fact, when – at a preview of his new film The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button – Brad Pitt was grabbed and shoved around by a security guard who mistook him for a photographer.

Although manhandling the star you’ve been hired to protect at his own movie preview in a venue covered with several giant posters of his face might seem like the mother of all etiquette violations, we can’t really blame the security guard here. After all, Brad Pitt had grown a moustache for the preview, and therefore the guard probably thought he was being bumrushed by Private Walker out of Dad’s Army.

Brad Pitt’s security guards are famous for their hands-on approach of protecting their employer. it doesn’t matter where in the world he is, if anyone tries to get too close to Brad Pitt chances are they’ll end up beaten up or choked by a couple of men who look like King Kong with alopecia.

That’s OK, though, because – with the exception of a couple of unfortunate Indians – most of the people on the receiving end of a beating from Brad Pitt’s guards have been paparazzi or reporters and, as we all know, those people are literally worse than murderers.

But when Brad Pitt’s guards start beating up Brad Pitt? In front of the paparazzi? Yeah, that’s not so clever. So it’s a shame that that’s exactly what happened at a screening of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button in Los Angeles on Monday night.

According to reports, Brad Pitt was grabbed, pushed and spun around by a security guard in plain clothes as he tried to enter his own screening. But it’s sort of OK, because Brad Pitt has managed to blame the paparazzi for it, which is good because they’re all literally made of slime and hate humanity. Brad told People:

“Though they were exceptionally more aggressive than usual,” Pitt describes the paparazzi to PEOPLE, “breaking through a security barrier and into a private holding area, ultimately [it was] just another day in the life…”

It hasn’t been a good week for Brad Pitt all in all. First his ex-wife decides to start ragging on his new girlfriend in public and now this? It’s almost as if there’s a conspiracy out against him at the moment.

Of course, there isn’t. The guard just thought he was doing his job by grabbing Brad Pitt, and that’s all there is to it. Unless the bodyguards of the world have all decided to rise up and revolt against their masters Terminator-style, that is. Which, you know, they should.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!