Eyes Wide Shut review

I'm just going to get this out of the way right now, this is not the kind of movie you want to watch with your mother. Stanley Kubrick is a universally renowned cinematic genius. Practically everyone acknowledges that the guy is seriously good at making movies. Whether it's Barry Lyndon or Full Metal Jacket, his movies are always expertly crafted and very interesting. I count him as one of the best directors ever. He's made some of my all-time favorite films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining. The one film of his that really seems to polarize people is his last, Eyes Wide Shut. Whenever I'd talk to people who had seen this movie, they'd scoff and exclaim how it's a "bad" film and that Kubrick was off his rocker when he made it. I just recently watched Eyes Wide Shut and I can honestly say it is in no way his worst film. Nor is it a "bad" film. I can see why people wouldn't like it though. It's about a New York doctor named Bill Harford (Tom Cruise). He lives a comfortable and happy existence with his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) and young daughter (Madison Eginton). One night, Alice reveals to Bill that she once almost had an affair. She tells him that she was willing to give away everything, her family and job included, just to sleep with this man. Understandably shaken by all this, Bill goes off into the streets of NYC on a surreal journey of sex, exploring the deepest depths of the human soul. Sorry about the long synopsis, but I feel it's necessary to really understand what I'm talking about with this movie. So, as I was saying, I can understand why people didn't like Eyes Wide Shut. It's filled with some very uncomfortable scenes involving very uncomfortable, uh, physical acts of love. This can be a bit unnerving. Believe me, I was quite unnerved. At times it almost seemed like Stanley Kubrick was trying to make the audience as uncomfortable and scared as possible. There's one scene involving a very strange masquerade party that will probably be forever engraved in my mind. Although that's not entirely a bad thing. Kubrick is trying to make us really look at this movie and ask, "What exactly is right?". Is Cruise's protagonist a good person? Does he have morals? I'm not entirely sure. This film is really delving into the human mind and ultimately asking "What makes us tick?". People who have an immediate negative knee-jerk reaction to this movie obviously need to think about it more before making a final opinion. Right after I watched this movie, I didn't have an opinion. I still needed to digest it all. After some time, I've decided Eyes Wide Shut is a few hairs short of a great movie. It's incredibly well directed and well made. Kubrick's direction is as sharp as ever. He seems to be especially attracted to tracking shots of characters here, and it works very well. The guy always is doing interesting things with the camera. Few directors are as technically creative as Stanley Kubrick. He never really focuses on his actors in most of his films. He directs his actors spectacularly here. He lingers on the hurt confusion that envelops Tom Cruise's face. The look of jealousy and lust on Nicole Kidman. Eyes Wide Shut is a delicate machine. Kept well oiled and with all parts correctly working, it does it'd job wonderfully. If one little piece fell out of place, the movie would fall to shambles. Luckily, that is not the case. Many people give Tom Cruise a lot of crap for his personal life. Because of this, his acting is often overlooked. He's given some terrific performances in films like Born on the Fourth of July and Tropic Thunder. His performance here is no exception. His character, Dr. Bill Harford, is confused and scared. Things are going incredibly badly for him, and he's not even sure what's real anymore. Cruise's performance is subtle, and that's why it works so well. Nicole Kidman does a good job as well, playing equal parts jealous wife and loving and caring partner. This movie reminded me a lot of Martin Scorsese's 1985 film After Hours. It's a night-long odyssey into the dirty trenches of a hellish New York City. The difference being the protagonist in After Hours, played by Griffin Dunne, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cruise's character is deliberately plunging himself into this nightmare. That makes it almost all the more interesting, and all the more surreal. Eyes Wide Shut is the kind of film that will certainly get better with repeat viewings. I haven't even completely figured it out yet, but I know there's more to it that I didn't even pick up on yet. This isn't Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, but I can tell it's exactly the movie he wanted to make. This is the vision as Kubrick imagined it. And that itself is enough to admire. Happy Viewing. If you haven't done so already, please follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies and like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies. Thanks!

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore review

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is the worst Martin Scorsese film I've ever seen.

This isn't saying much, considering half of the guy's films are absolute masterpieces. I'm sure it's hard for him to measure up to his past successes like Raging Bull and Goodfellas every time he makes a movie, but he usually makes something great, if not better. He's bound to make a dud every once in a while, and even though I didn't like Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, it's in no way a dud. I consider Scorsese to be my favorite director, and I've seen most of his work. If you asked me my favorite movie, although this is a frustratingly hard and unfair question to ask, I'd probably reply with Goodfellas. I recently saw Scorsese's 1974 effort, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed. The film's about a housewife named Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn) who's fed up with her rough and insensitive husband and mundane suburban life. She wanted to be a singer, but instead she's confined to cleaning dishes and dealing with her smart mouthed son Tommy (Alfred Lutter). That is until her husband is killed in a freak car accident. Leaving her without a man and independent for the first time in her life. So, Alice sets off to do the one thing she knows how to: sing. Thus begins the journey. First off, this movie isn't terrible. I wouldn't even call it bad. Yet, it's not especially good. I had a lot of problems with it. Alice and her kid talk a lot of smack to each other during the film. At times it's cutesy and even witty, but after a while I was starting to think Alice was just a really crappy parent. The kind of parent that, while maybe not a bad person, is terrible with children. The kind that yells at their kid in the park in front of everyone when he drops his ice cream or complains one too many times. That made it really hard to feel sympathy or connect with the character of Alice at all. Her character was supposed to have flaws and be a bit of a damaged person, but she wasn't supposed to be as bad as the film accidentally makes her out to be. Their were times when I was obviously supposed to be feeling sad for Alice, but I wasn't. She was a mediocre person whose parenting skills were cringe worthy. How could I sympathize with that? In fact, there were very few people in the film at all who I could connect with on any level. The only person who I liked at all was Jodie Foster's character, Audrey. But she's only in the film for about twenty minutes. That wasn't the only problem. The film uses sappiness and crying scenes as a crutch to make up for it's lack of substance in other areas. It gets tiring after a while. When this movie came out it was portrayed for it's strong female character. While I applaud the writer on making a movie only about a girl, I don't think she was as strong as people thought. Alice has her willful moments, and for a while you think she really can live independently without a man. But in the end she succumbs and ends up falling in with another dude. It's supposed to be a happy ending, but maybe it should be looked at as a tragedy? I did have a lot of issues with the movie, but it really wasn't all bad. Although her character annoyed the hell out of me at times, Ellen Burstyn gives a terrific performance here as the titular character. She won an Oscar for the role, and I can see why. She portrays her character with a realism often absent from many performances. She's sad and angry, but she doesn't overdo it. If you're going to watch this for anything, do it for Burstyn's wonderful performance. Martin Scorsese has done better things, but his direction here is sharp and great. His fast and constantly moving camerawork is ever present here, and it really gives the film a boost. The film has a lot of issues, but Martin Scorsese really has nothing to do with them. The guy is a master director. This was nominated for Best Screenplay at the Oscars back in the 70's. I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure why. It does have the occasional bit of smart dialogue and I guess it portrays it's characters somewhat honestly but it resorts to cliches and the dialogue is too unrealistic and stilted too often. I really didn't feel that it was that impressive of a screenplay. If I can say one thing for the movie, is that it's not boring. Although I obviously had a dearth of problems with it, I was entertained throughout the whole film. Alice is a lesser installment to Scorsese's canon but it's not bad by any means. Just very, very flawed. I suppose it's worth a watch, although I'd just skip it and watch Taxi Driver again. Happy Viewing. Remember to follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies and like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies. Thanks!