Badmovies.org Forum

Time to bring this one up if no one has already.  I'm sure I'll get flamed for it being in this folder but it happens to be one of my favorite all time movies in spite of Tom Cruise as the main character.

I don't think the story is all that exciting and it is certainly not your typical movie but I do feel it's a great piece of art...and a very heavy film.  All the conspiracy stuff aside, there's plenty to focus on without even mentioning the illuminiti stuff.  Much of the story is told in visuals, having heavy symbolism via the colors, themes, interruptions, and parallels.

I've been working on a review on this movie for the last couple years but always stop myself because there's always something else I've noticed ...so I never feel it's complete or ready for completion.  Add to that, I'm trying to watch all the Kubrick films again to demonstrate the impact on his final work.  For example, after watching just a clip of a scene from Killer's Kiss, I noticed a couple references right away.  I have yet to watch Paths of Glory and would really like to rewatch A Clockwork Orange before I continue writing.

I've watched this movie many many times and feel that Alice Harford is my favorite character.  Maybe it's because she totally dominates and humiliates Dr. Bill lol.  One of my favorite Christmas movies as well.  Alice is the Nutcracker!

I've always thought that Eyes Wide Shut was  an underrated and misunderstood film.  Would Kubrick had tightened up the movie more if he hadn't of died on my birthday in 1999 (March 7th BTW), yes, he would have as he was notorious from sometimes editing films further AFTER their actual premier (The Shining and 2001 for instance).

But what we were left with was a great movie while having some issues at times from a narrative sense, still shows Kubrick at his most playful as filmmaker since probably Dr. Strangelove.  At lot of people miss the humor in this movie mainly in terms of how almost every single character comes onto Cruise's character during his "adventure".  It's really not nearly as pretentious and vague as people make it out to be.

I thought that Cruise's performance was quite good in EWS but as with Magnolia, he has a ceiling in terms of his acting ability that is unfortunately far below other actors in those movies like William H. Macy, Sydney Pollack, Nicole Kidman, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and others.    But with what he can offer as an actor, he still rose to a level that I didn't think he was capable of prior to EWS.  I think that at times he's trying too hard in Magnolia to make up for his somewhat limited talent, but he still does quite good in that. I think that EWS though fooled him into thinking he was a talented actor.  I think it had more to do with Kubrick being able to pull performances out of people that they didn't know that they maybe had.     

I would rate EWS a ***1/2 out of ****.

Eyes Wide Shut while not my favorite Kubrick movie is still a fitting swan song for one of the greatest directors of all time.

My favorite part of the movie is trying to "decode" the lights.  When you watch, notice the color(s) of the lights behind each character.  Red is if the person is lying or evil.  Green is for horny.  Blue = fantasy or dreams.  White and yellow are harder to define but I see them as the truth or "real world" colors.  The costume shop is Rainbow Rentals...all colors mixed together.

I also like the haunting, dream-like feel of the film.

***1/2 out of ****

I've never seen this movie.  Nicole and Tom going at it in all their gloriousness makes me uncomfortable, but I'm not sure why.

I'm not a huge Tom or Nicole fan, but that wouldn't put me off seeing a movie of theirs if the story looks interesting.  I did like War of the Worlds, after all. 

From what little I've seen in trailers and such, EWS looks heavy and pretentious and quite boring.  Plus Kubrick looks like my ex-husband, so that's another incentive not to watch   :teddyr:

But in all seriousness, it just never struck me as a movie I would enjoy.

Nicole Kidman would be my ONLY reason for watching this film.

I remember the first time I saw Eyes Wide Shut being blown away at how much better it was than I'd expected it to be. In short, I loved it.

Today I own it in several formats but I've found that every time I watch the film, I move a little farther away from my original feeling that it was a masterpiece. I still love the music Jocelyn Pook composed, especially her chillingly great "Masked Ball" but I think all in all this was (an arrogant statement for me to make but) a mislabeled, incorrectly advertised, and ultimately misunderstood movie. I don't think it would have been marketed as it was had Stanley Kubrick been alive at its release. There's little justice in the common perception today that Eyes Wide Shut is some sort of artsy porn flick, because it's definitely not. In fact I don't even consider it particularly erotic, it just deals in several parts with sexual subject matter.

I like Eyes Wide Shut very much but it's one of those films that probably shouldn't be viewed too often because it loses a lot of its mystique when one becomes too familiar with it. At least in my experience that's true.

This is very true. Sex is a part of it, but its really about power, and how those who have it use and abuse it. Most of the characters are wealthy, upperclass people whose main goal is some sort of instant gratification, whether through sex, drugs, money or whatever (for example, Cruise's character blows through an ungodly amount of money on the night of the orgy, just to feel he has somehow gotten even with his wife). The following link is to a review by a sociologist, which helped me to understand it more:

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0096.html

I have mixed feelings about the film. I watched it when it opened on theatres and probably another time, maybe more, on DVD.

My problem is not Tom Cruise, I think he's OK here. My problem is a combination of the episodic structure and the running time. I think most of the movie is great. The party scenes, the bits with Kidman and Cruise arguing in their room, all that is amazing. Then a few more scenes follow, all pretty good. The "big orgy" scene is mesmerizing.

And then, so close to the ending, the film completely loses its way. We have Cruise being "chased" for long, booooring long minutes, some cul-de-sacs, some minimal thriller moments, then a flat conversation with Sydney Pollack that manages to turn all the previous excitement into a silly game, and some closing scenes between Cruise and Kidman that still make me scratch my head.

Had it been 2 hours long, had they changed the ending, I'll be defending Kubrick's vision in this world and the next one.

As it is, it looks like a WIP more than a complete film, no matter what everybody involved says. 

I liked shocking and excessive films as a teenager, but this was one of the first R rated movies I went to by myself. I've been open and eager for 'artsy' movies ever since. I can't believe I haven't purchased it yet.

Very true.

It's one of those films that a person should watch only once or twice a year.
The first time I saw it I was totally engrossed in it.  I couldn't look away.

Clockworkcanary, who used to be a regular here started a two part review complete with pics and everything here on the board.  It was a pretty cool review.  But if you search for it here, you'll find it but the pics are all gone.
http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,112104.0.html

He never finished it and hasn't been seen here in months.  I seem to remember him saying that his internet was down.
Anybody know what happened to him?

 We have this movie recored on one of our old VHS (we have 115, with about three to four movies on each. Talk about paradise!), and I've never watched it. Maybe I'll give it a chance this weekend...