Rating: Summary: Eyes Wide Shut...Yes, Shut Your Eyes to this Film!! Review: Perhaps this movie was the cause of Tom Cruise's and Nicole Kidman's marriage to break up? Perhaps Kubrick saw a screening of this film during editing, couldn't take it and keeled over and died? Painful to watch, hard to understand, and very slow and boring. Tom Cruise's character embarks on a stroll through New York City's underground and finds a secret society of sexual misconduct. However, even before that, his wife (Kidman) goes psycho on him after smoking some grass, and a dying patient he visits (Cruise is a Physician of sorts),the patient's wife gets weird on him too. So it goes to the next level where he ends up at this country club and the whole guest list are a bunch of sexual degenerates. Was this a Freemason's monthly meeting? Anyway, skip trying to rent or buying this film. If you have HBO or Cinemax already, the sister cable companies have been playing EYES WIDE SHUT constantly and you will catch the film sooner or later. Watch it over and over and get confused even more. A sad finale from the director who gave the world DR STRANGELOVE, 2001: A SPACE ODYESSY, SPARTACUS, FULL METAL JACKET etc. etc...!!
Rating: Summary: Avoid like the plague Review: This movie should be avoided at all costs. I started watching it and I turned to stone. It was as enjoyable as watching Medusa. Please, stay away! Tom and Nicole are still in therapy over this thing. All you artsy types are quick to jump on the bandwagon of anything that is strange and unusual. Well this movie is not strange and unusual. It is strange and ....!
Rating: Summary: Don't Waste Your Time . . . . Review: It's a good thing Kubrick isn't around anymore to waste celluloid like this. What's up with this guy? Does he have to be so artsy-fartsy as to think you don't have to have a plot, you can get away with obvious or misleading red-herrings and you can introduce characters willy-nilly without using them later or have a reason in the first place for having them there? Tom and Nicole did a fabulous job acting to a sub-standard script. Both quality actors, I felt embarrased for them that they fell for this dog. It seemed as if Kubrick wanted to make a porn movie but didn't have the guts.
Rating: Summary: A Compelling Dream-Journey Review: On its release, Eyes Wide Shut was horrendously mis-marketed by virtually evberyone involved, especially Kubrick. It found, and then lost, an early mass audience. Despite this marketing failure, the film remains a powerful, haunting and deeply conservative vision of marriage, love and the implicit threat of human sexuality.There are some who claim this film is strictly for Kubrick enthusiasts, that it is too weird, too unusual for them. Well, there's no pleasing everyone, but one judge of the quality of a film is to try and discern how easy it is to look away, turn it off, walk out. Kubrick's triumph is that his film is absolutely compelling. You may hate it, but that gives you all the more reason to see where he'll go next.
Rating: Summary: Brilliant! Review: A wealthy doctor (Tom Cruise) lives in a luxurious house with his wife (Nicole Kidman) They both are happy, but one night, she confesses him her sexual desires and, from now to then, the story turns into a psychological obsession. That night he contracts a prostitute and after, he meets an old friend from the college, Nick Nightingale, who's now a pianist. Nick tells him about a place where he has to play blindfolded. This attracts the doctor's interest and, in addition, it results that everyone there is costumed. Soon after, he discovers that the highly secret gathering is in fact an erotic orgy. He begins to worry, and he finishes up by being the eyewitness of a murder. Tom Cruise's portrayal of this doctor is excellent. He's a very careful man who always speaks correctly, but actually, he doesn't trust his own wife because of her words. He finds that even Nick and the prostitute are missing after the incident, and that scares him more, but he tries to find out the truth. On the other hand, Nicole Kidman is outstanding being a sensual woman who seems to be involved in the plot. Like all Kubrick's creations, this is superb. Here we have a thriller that deals about erotic obsession and jealousy, going by comfortable places. In it, we can see some frightening scenes, like the feeling that someone follows you, and not knowing what's up. I liked very much all the alarming situation, which goes so slowly, and at the end, you don't know what to think.
Rating: Summary: Eyes Wide Open Review: To the extent one looks at this film as a surreal "dreamscape," it works. Tom Cruise at first seems miscast in the role of Dr. Harford. Cruise doesn't strike me as a Manhattan physician-type, and he is noticeably shorter than Nicole Kidman, who plays the doctor's wife. But Cruise pulls off the most mature performance of his career, and, after a short while, he seems to fit the role. Disturbed by his wife's confession of her sexual fantasies about another man, Dr. Harford ends up with a prostitute in the West Village. (Given the neighborhood, I guess that I should specify the prostitute as female.) Later, at the invitation of an old college buddy (who wasn't authorized to make the invite), robed and masked, he unwittingly ends up at a Satanic ceremony in a suburban mansion. Unmasked and exposed as an interloper, Dr. Harford seems to face great danger, possibly death. What happens next, is up to the viewer to decide. Is a woman murdered in Dr. Harford's place? Is he really in danger? You decide. Don't expect to be titillated by the "orgy" scene. The scene is censored enough in this North American version for the film's "R" rating to be inexplicable.
Rating: Summary: Horrendously horrible movie! Review: I'm sad this was Kubrick's last movie. He was one of the greatest directors of all time. It's sad that his last movie was worse than both Ishtar and Battlefield Earth! I would give it negative five stars if I could! The piano keys alone repeating over and over again make this stinker one of the worst movie experiences any human has ever had! No wonder Tom and Nicole got divorced after appearing in this travesty!
Rating: Summary: "TOTAL PERFECTION" Review: "Provocative, Smart, Haunting, Beautifull, Erotic..." "...Journey." STANLEY KUBRICK's last work, total perfection, from the the haunting sets to the beautiful soundtrack, this is more than just a movie...it's a peice of art.
Rating: Summary: A challenging film Review: An inscrutable and misunderstood film about titillation and disappointment, sex and death. Kubrick briliantly cast actors in the title roles about whom audiences would have certain expecations, expectations which Kubrick intentionally did not meet. Thus the protagonist's constant confusion and disappointment is extended beyond the film itself and into the audience. Not an 'easy' film.
Rating: Summary: Pure Kubrick Review: Watching the cinematography and the pacing, I am taking back to other Kubrick films like "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange." The overall feel of uneasiness reminded me a lot of the latter. This is a very sexual movie, and the conflict lies in sexual impropriety. Oddly enough, the two protagonists, Cruise and Kidman, never have sex with anyone besides each other (and they are married). The conflict is more in the mental act of being unfaithful, real or imagined. The whole idea of the "unreality" of the whole situation is what Kubrick shows so well here. It is unsettling. Since there are drug and dream elements of the film, conversations seem to take a longer time than necessary. It helps the ambience of the film, but I found myself waiting for Nicole to finish her sentence. No one seems to believe what he or she hears (or sees) as evidenced by a constant questioning. I would recommend this to Stanley Kubrick fans and any one wanting to watch a master director at work. I would not recommend this for casual viewing.
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