The legendary Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) didn’t direct that many films, but when he did, he really made them. There was a distinct and highly perfectionistic way he told cinematic stories. You loved him and hated him at the same time. But no matter what you think about him, his sterile outlook on life through, and how he sometimes treated his actors (i.e. the late, great Shelley Duvall), he will always be a seminal figure in film history.
Buy Eyes Wide Shut (Criterion Collection)His much maligned 1999 masterpiece and final work, Eyes Wide Shut was a rather fascinating one to go out on, and one of those cinema enigmas that remains a puzzlingly surreal experience.
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (still married at the time and a power couple), play Bill & Alice Harford, a wealthy New York doctor and his beautiful wife, whose marriage is reaching a boiling point due to insecurities, jealousy, and unexplored desires. After Alice exposes her deepest sexual fantasies about a man she met, Bill decides he wants to have some of his own. So, he goes through a Christmastime odyssey where he encounters an underground sexual cult and realizes that he the whole experience is way out of his league.
Based on the 1929 novel Traumnovelle (Dream Story) by Arthur Schnitzler, the film still continues to be controversial and equally quizzical ever since its release 26 years ago. It dares to be incredibly graphic (even for a mainstream film), rather incomplete, and a disturbing portrait of how truly messed up the rich elite are. It also suggests how ballsy Kubrick really was. He was a really unpredictable filmmaker who was telling dangerous cinematic tales like Eyes, ever since his highly alarming 1962 adaptation of the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita. For this (and many other reasons), he was so ahead of his time.
Making its wildly anticipated 4K UHD debut on Criterion, I’m sure the film (available in its unrated International version) will be startling to film collectors old and new. It also contains stacked supplements, such as new interviews with cinematographer Larry Smith, set decorator and second-unit director Lisa Leone, and archivist Georgina Orgill; archival interview with Christiane Kubrick, director Stanley Kubrick’s wife; Lost Kubrick: The Unfinished Films of Stanley Kubrick (2007); Press conference from 1999, featuring Harlan and actors Cruise and Kidman; teasers, trailer, and promos; and much more. There is also a new essay by Megan Abbott and a 1999 interview with late filmmaker and actor Sydney Pollack (who co-starred in the film as Victor Ziegler).
So, if you really want to have an interesting holiday, love this film, or the work of Kubrick in general, then this release of a polarizing masterwork is for you. It’s definitely for adults only.
Other releases:
Berberian Sound Studio (IFC Films): Peter Strickland’s nightmare film about an Englishman (Toby Jones) who is hired to create sounds for a depraved Italian horror flick in 1970s Rome, only to succumb to mental and psychological torture when doing so takes its toll on him.
The Long Walk (Lionsgate): Chilling adaptation of Stephen King’s 1979 dystopian novel about a group of teenage boys who compete in annual contest where they must maintain a specific walking speed or get shot.
At Close Range (Cinematographe): A new limited edition 4K UHD/Blu-ray mediabook edition of the 1986 harrowing family drama starring real-life brothers Sean and Chris Penn as the sons of an organized crime leader (a sinister Christopher Walken) who are drawn into his life of crime.
Behind the Green Door (Vinegar Syndrome): A new limited edition 4K UHD/Blu-ray of the 1972 smash hit X-rated erotic film starring the late Marilyn Chambers as a woman who is kidnapped and forced to perform sex acts on stage in front a live audience.
Anemone 4K UHD/Blu-ray (Universal): Daniel Day-Lewis marks his return to film in his son Ronan’s directorial debut as a hermit reconnecting with his estranged brother (Sean Bean) as hidden secrets and resentments threaten to further complicate their already fractured relationship.
