EYES WIDE SHUT (Warner Bros. 1999) Warner Home Video
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-03-12 23:07:44
Stanley Kubrick’s final movie before his death was Eyes Wide Shut (1999). He should have quit while he was ahead. For in this measure experimental go through the dark and depraved world of the sexually promiscuous and suicidal. Kubrick offers nothing but rare glimpses and brief flashes of his usual high standards. Based on the brooding and ambiguous novel from Arnold Schnitzler the enter veers wildly between subliminal perversion and kooky black comedy; both peppered in sickly truncated bits of clichéd melodrama. It stars. 'then' married couple. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as Dr. William Harford and his wife Alice. The change state veneer of William’s respectability appears - at least on the surface - to hold adjust to very conservative values especially within his cloistered circle of upper crust friends including fellow physician Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack). However alone and behind closed doors ‘Bill’ and Alice indulge in hot sex and recreational drug use after their young daughter Helena (Madison Eglinton) has tottered off to bed. Now for the wrinkle: Bill’s world is inexplicably turned upside down after Alice confides that she once had naughty thoughts about a naval officer she glimpsed in the beg of the hotel she and Bill were staying at during their honeymoon. Though Alice never acted on her impulse. account decides to ‘get change surface’ with his wife for her mental infidelity by frequenting the seedy move of their home town and getting into a lot of mischief. But his efforts to obtain a wild past for himself bring about to more sexual frustration than liberation. An awkward dalliance with a prostitute results in the discovery that she is dying of AIDS. A group of college kids inexplicably assume that Bill is a homosexual and decide to prepare him up outside a jazz bar. Inside the bar. account learns from his old college buddy cut Nightingale (Todd Fields) about a frisky assort sex party at a flashy country estate. But the broach turns sour when the ‘cult leader’ of this private affair realizes account is a party crasher and almost makes him the object of a assort assail. Kubrick's style is what stands out the most. But style without substance is a poor precursor for solid entertainment – a commodity the film miserably fails to deliver. Then rumors of Cruise’s own marital problems with Kidman are glaringly obvious on the screen. Their tawdry ‘sex’ scenes have zero chemistry. It’s as though they’re brother and sister rather than husband and wife. Opinion on Kubrick's final bow remains split. You either like this film or hate it. This critic falls into the latter catagory. The script by Kubrick and Frederic Raphael is an utterly pointless mishmash of moments best left on someone else’s cutting room floor. As the audience we keep waiting for Kubrick to bring at least some of the let go ends together (perhaps not in complete resolution but at least tightening up) and for the most move are bitterly disappointed when he leaves us hanging on Alice’s final request – for she and Bill to just go home and “fuck.”Warner Home Video’s anamorphic widescreen DVD is disappointing – not the least for the fact that it does NOT contain both the theatrical and unrated versions of the movie as promised on the slip cover packaging. What is even more disappointing is how overly saturated and softly focused the overall visualise seems to be. Flesh tones are never natural but rather a garish stylized orange that is distracting and not in keeping with the original theatrical presentation. Though the visualise can occasionally be shave sharp it more often contains a patina of haze and some rather obvious grain (the latter was a move of the theatrical presentation) that plays more like digital coat. The audio is 5.1 and delivers a fairly powerful kick in the film’s underscoring. Extras include vintage ‘making of’ featurettes a meandering audio commentary and the enter’s original theatrical trailer. enter RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the beat)1.5VIDEO/AUDIO3EXTRAS3
Nick Zegarac is a freelance writer/editor and graphics artist. He holds a Masters in Communications and an Honors B. A in Creative Lit from the University of Windsor. He’s been a contributing editor for Black Moss Press and has had two screenplays under consideration in Hollywood. He’s also a regular contributing writer for various online publications including Mediascreen com. Subtletea and Banks of the Little Miami. At present he's searching for an agent to be him. Contact him via email at movieman@sympatico ca[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://nixpixdvdmoviereviewsandmore.blogspot.com/2007/11/eyes-wide-shut-warner-bros-1999-warner.html
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