Poll Position: "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999)

The movie poster doesn’t give much away when talking about “Eyes Wide Shut”. And I rather go into a movie without any prior knowledge of what the movie is all about. So I was extremely shocked when I saw that Kubrick directed this film near the end of the movie. Doesn’t seem like a movie he would do, but after really thinking about it. It makes sense, a lot of his style is apparent in here some of them good and some of them bad. But let me dive straight into the details after the jump.

The puzzling story really got me into the whole movie. It springs from Dr. William Hartford’s (Tom Cruise) sexual frustration when he recently discovers that his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), has sexual fantasies with a man she saw on a recent family trip. Bill is a fairly calm and tame individual with a family. When he meets up with his friend, Nick (Todd Field), at a local party, he joins him on an escapade to a grand party. Here's the catch, Nick has to play blindfolded and Bill has to be in a cape and mask. What Bill discovers is a sexual cult like group that organizes large orgies. Is this fun? Sure. Is this interesting? Hell yeah.

Organize cults scare me.

Now I was expecting the slow pace of the movie, it is a Kubrick movie after all. So this did not irritate me all that much as it did for me with his other movies. With that said, my complaint isn’t about the pacing of the movie, but the pacing of my interest. I was terrible bored with the beginning of the movie. It didn’t seem like it was going anywhere, there was no direction. It just seemed that Bill was overwhelmed and only had sex on his mind, like every other man out there. But his time with random girls or even hookers was just pointless and felt never ending. My interest only got caught when the movie presented to me the sexy orgy cult. Besides the boobies, the mystery element was intriguing. They were simplified freemasons, in my opinion. But just as the movie got interesting, I didn’t mind the slow pace of the movie as much.

On the flip side, what totally caught me off guard was all the nudity. Now I am a fan of the beauty that is the female body. So watching the scenes and scenes of numerous girls naked or almost naked isn’t a complaint at all. And even more so when one of those girls is Nicole Kidman, who has a stunning body, just an absolute beautiful woman she is.

Everyone wants a piece of Bill.

And it was great to see Tom Cruise act so well when it came to this serious role. This is by far my second favourite role for him. Only second to Maverick from Top Gun, but that is another story. I especially liked it when his persona changed from a mild mannered man to a paranoid, tin foil hat wearing man. And I thought he pulled that off perfectly. This aside, Kidman acted out as the jealous and very aggressive wife just phenomenally, she didn’t move me as much as Cruise, but still stellar.

Overall, I just loved the mystery element to it, and I really wished the movie got more involved with the whole society of the cult. But it wasn’t that type of movie, so I can’t hammer it on for that. Instead I’ll hammer on the annoying pacing of my interest. The movie wasn’t bad, but wasn’t all that good either. I got me thinking, which was nice. But after watching it, it all felt too forgettable.

Sex can get boring when you are with a Scientologist.