Eyes Wide Shut
Positive 👍
Alright, you wanna talk Eyes Wide Shut, do ya? Fine. Buckle up.
Let’s get one thing clear right away: this movie is fucking genius. People were too busy whining about its slow pace or Tom Cruise’s weirdly manic intensity to even notice what they were watching! But beneath all the surface-level "what-the-fuckery" of orgies, masks, and suspenseful wandering through New York City, Eyes Wide Shut is an intricate goddamn masterclass on desire, secrecy, and human fucking nature. It’s the kind of film where every scene has layers upon layers, and half the damn audience couldn’t even peel back the first one. Kubrick didn’t make films for the brain-dead, alright? So let’s break this down.
The "Dreamy" Atmosphere:
First off, Eyes Wide Shut feels like a fever dream dipped in fucking paranoia. Stanley Kubrick wasn’t about to spoon-feed you anything with this film. From the minute it starts, everything feels off in the most brilliant, unsettling way possible. The lighting, the colour schemes, the music – they all wrap around you like some creepy hallucination where you’re never quite sure what’s real. Kubrick used this ethereal mood to create a kind of cinematic hypnotism, pulling you deeper and deeper into the narrative until you’re practically as lost as Tom Cruise’s character. That, my friend, is how you do psychological tension.
Tom Cruise’s Descent into WTF-ness:
And speaking of Cruise – yeah, his character, Dr. Bill Harford, is a tightly-wound, rich-ass doctor who clearly thinks he’s the shit. But when his wife, Alice (played by Nicole Kidman in a performance that's all kinds of excellent), casually drops a bomb about fantasizing over some random naval officer, Bill spirals down this fucking rabbit hole of insecurity, jealousy, and horned-up obsession. He’s a walking, talking crisis of fragile male ego.
The dude’s a fucking hotshot doctor, a wealthy New Yorker, and married to a stunning woman – yet one tiny glimpse of her unspoken desires sends him spiralling. THAT is the point, you dimwits. The guy’s got it all, but the moment he realizes he doesn't have control over everything (especially not his wife's sexual fantasies), he goes full meltdown mode. And his unravelling is fucking brilliant. The more he tries to take control of his life, the deeper he digs into this weird, hidden underworld of masked orgies and secret societies.
The Masked Orgy Scene:
Okay, let's fucking talk about it. Everybody remembers Eyes Wide Shut because of the goddamn orgy, right? Sure, it’s an iconic scene – haunting, surreal, sexy in that "Oh, god, should I be watching this?" way. But the brilliance here isn't the nudity (grow the fuck up if you think that’s all it is). It’s the implication.
Kubrick creates this whole damn sequence to show how desire and power intertwine in the most unsettling way possible. The secrecy of the masked participants, the coldness of the ritualistic atmosphere – it’s creepy because it’s all about control, elitism, and power dynamics. These people aren’t just fucking for fun – this is about status, privilege, and anonymity, and Bill stumbling into this world makes him realize just how little he understands about his own desires or the elite circles he thought he was a part of. It’s fucking unsettling for a reason.
Themes of Sexuality and Control:
Kubrick loves messing with your head, and Eyes Wide Shut is one big fucking puzzle about the subconscious. It’s not just about sex or infidelity – it’s about the tension between our deepest desires and the fucking fear that comes with them. It’s about control – the control we think we have over others, over ourselves, over our goddamn impulses – and how fragile all of that is.
Bill spends the entire movie thinking he’s this confident, put-together guy, and yet, we watch him lose grip on reality because he’s faced with the simplest fucking truth: you can’t control other people’s thoughts or desires. You just fucking can’t. And that scares the shit out of him. It’s some deep psychological probing that not everyone can handle because, well, some people like their films to be shallow as puddles.
Kubrick’s Last Hurrah:
Oh, and let’s not forget: this was Kubrick’s final film. The man was a fucking auteur – the kind of director who didn’t just make movies, he constructed fucking worlds with layers of meaning that people would be dissecting for decades. And he didn’t give a shit if you didn’t get it on your first watch.
People who trash Eyes Wide Shut for being “boring” or “confusing” clearly walked in expecting something else – maybe some erotic thriller nonsense. But Kubrick gave us something far richer and more cerebral: a deep dive into the human psyche, full of nuance and subtext, wrapped in a fucking dreamlike atmosphere that feels like a paranoid nightmare.
In conclusion, if you watch Eyes Wide Shut and only come away talking about the naked chicks, you missed the fucking point by a mile. This movie is a dense, intoxicating meditation on sex, jealousy, and the deep fucking fear that we can’t ever fully know another person. It’s Kubrick making you look at the human condition in all its messy, paranoid, terrified, horny glory. And if that doesn’t count as brilliance, I don’t know what the hell does.
Negative 👎
Alright, buckle up, because Eyes Wide Shut is one of those movies where pretentious film critics jerk off in a circle and convince themselves they’re watching some kind of mind-blowing masterpiece, when really, it’s just two-and-a-half hours of watching Tom Cruise wander around like a lost fucking puppy trying to get laid. Let's get this straight: Stanley Kubrick was a legendary filmmaker—no doubt about it—but sometimes geniuses screw up too, and Eyes Wide Shut is his bloated, self-indulgent shitshow.
First off, this film was sold to audiences like it was going to be a sexual odyssey—Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, in the peak of their Hollywood power-couple days, starring in a dark, erotic thriller? Fuck yeah! Right? WRONG. What we get instead is two hours of Cruise wandering around New York looking like someone told him to “act confused” the entire time, with a bit of mild nudity sprinkled in like Kubrick was afraid of scaring the audience with real sex. Seriously, most of the sexual tension in this film is weaker than a half-chub.
Let’s talk about the pace of this film—oh, wait, sorry—what fucking pace? It’s like watching paint dry, except it’s just Tom Cruise trying to look deep while he gets repeatedly cockblocked. You want to talk to me about slow burn? This isn’t a slow burn; this is a damp fucking match that never lights. Every scene drags on and on, with long shots that add absolutely nothing to the film except to show off Kubrick’s technical skills. Yes, he can make a movie look visually stunning—no shit, Sherlock—but when that’s all your film has to offer, that’s like wrapping a turd in gold foil and calling it art.
Next, we’ve got to address this supposed “psychological complexity” that people won’t stop raving about. Look, just because a movie throws a bunch of cryptic nonsense and dream sequences at you doesn’t automatically make it smart. I don’t care how many masks, cloaks, and secret societies you pack into a film; that shit still needs to lead somewhere interesting. But Kubrick’s just dangling all these surreal moments in front of the audience like a carrot, leading you on with the illusion that something profound is going to happen. Spoiler alert: NOTHING DOES. Oh, Cruise gets freaked out because of a sex cult orgy (where, might I add, everyone keeps their distance like it's a goddamn middle school dance) and suddenly realizes… what? That marriage is complicated? No fucking way, Captain Obvious!
The film wants you to think it’s about the fragility of marriage, sexual jealousy, and the dark corners of human desire, but honestly, it’s just about Cruise’s character running from scene to scene being useless. Nicole Kidman, who’s supposed to represent this enigmatic, sensual force that haunts him, is barely in the movie. She has, like, one monologue where she reveals she fantasized about banging some naval officer, and that’s it! That’s what fucks Cruise up for the rest of the movie. Really, dude? That’s your emotional breakdown catalyst? It’s not even about her doing anything, just her thinking about it. The whole emotional arc is flimsier than wet cardboard.
And let’s not forget that fucking ending. After all the bizarre dreamlike nonsense, the secret sex cult, and the endless wandering, what’s the grand resolution? Nicole Kidman just tells Tom Cruise they should probably fuck. THAT’S IT. All that wasted time and it boils down to, “Well, maybe we should just bone and forget about it.” Wow, thanks for that world-shattering insight, Stanley.
Here’s the thing: the reason people call this movie “brilliant” is because they don’t want to admit that Kubrick, the genius behind 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining, could ever make a film that’s dull as shit. But the truth is, this movie is a slow, meandering journey into a whole lot of nothing. People interpret it to death because they have to—it’s Kubrick, after all—but if some no-name director had made the exact same movie, they’d laugh it off the screen.
So yeah, Eyes Wide Shut is a film that’s been canonized because of Kubrick’s name, but in reality, it’s overrated as hell. It’s got a pretty exterior, some ambitious ideas, and a cast that looks great on paper, but it’s hollow as fuck when it comes to delivering anything meaningful or entertaining. Watching Cruise's "erotic" journey was like expecting a rollercoaster and getting stuck on the kiddie train. End of story.