EYES WIDE SHUT (Warner Bros. 1999) Warner Home Video
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-03-12 23:07:45
Stanley Kubrick’s final movie before his death was Eyes Wide Shut (1999). He should have depart while he was ahead. For in this last 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 film veers wildly between subliminal perversion and kooky black comedy; both peppered in sickly truncated bits of clichéd melodrama. It stars. 'then' married bring together. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as Dr. William Harford and his wife Alice. The thin veneer of William’s respectability appears - at least on the ascend - to hold true to very conservative values especially within his cloistered go 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 drink 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. Bill decides to ‘get even’ 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 lead to more sexual frustration than liberation. An awkward dalliance with a sell results in the discovery that she is dying of AIDS. A group of college kids inexplicably anticipate that Bill is a homosexual and decide to rough him up outside a jazz bar. Inside the bar. Bill learns from his old college buddy Nick Nightingale (Todd Fields) about a frisky assort sex party at a flashy country estate. But the deal turns sour when the ‘cult leader’ of this private affair realizes account is a celebrate crasher and almost makes him the object of a group rape. Kubrick's call 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 undergo 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 love 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 loose ends together (perhaps not in end resolution but at least tightening up) and for the most part are bitterly disappointed when he leaves us hanging on Alice’s final communicate – for she and Bill to just go domiciliate and “fuck.”Warner domiciliate Video’s anamorphic widescreen DVD is disappointing – not the least for the fact that it does NOT include both the theatrical and unrated versions of the movie as promised on the slip adjoin 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 cloud 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 enter’s underscoring. Extras consider vintage ‘making of’ featurettes a meandering audio commentary and the film’s original theatrical trailer. FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the beat)1.5VIDEO/AUDIO3EXTRAS3
cut 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 represent 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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