Forget Die Hard. This is a Christmas movie. Change my mind.

This is quite the strange ending to my Kubrick watch through. A lot of people really forget about this one, or hate it. I have to say, it is a good movie but not even close to Kubrick's previous 11 films. I really wish he had started on A.I. before this one, and ended on that kind of note instead. The first 45 or so minutes I really like. We open with seeing their marriage status, and how it can be influenced easily by their actions. I think this is the main goal of the film; to show us the complexity of marriage. What will they do to please each other? Anger each other? We find out, but certainly in a crazier way than you'd anticipate. The story is not the problem. The main problem is pacing. After that first act, the film slows down tremendously. Not just in plot movement, but in dialogue. The people I watched with and I started making the joke early about how people always repeat each other in this film. "I think they talk too slow." "You think they talk too slow?" "I think they do." Oh, but I didn't put enough spacing between those quotes to really get you to understand the time. This is all summed up strongly in climax scene. The dialogue is sooo slow with major spaces of silence. The actions of the characters is sooo boring and repetitive. People move just to move. It feels like a high school play. It makes no sense to me that this was shot by Kubrick. Most of the film feels like him, but this one scene really bothers me. Hell, maybe I'm supposed to feel what Tom Cruise is feeling. I mean, I do feel like joining Scientology now.

This movie didn't quite work for me, which is disappointing because I really like most of Kubrick's movies. It's too long and way too slow. The acting is good and the cinematography is good but the plot is lacking. I get that it's not about the plot so much as the meaning of marriage and faith but I wanted to know more about that masked sex cult. As it is right now this is one of my least favorite Stanley Kubrick's films. Maybe I will give it a rewatch in a couple of years and like it better. Edit: I rewatched it a couple of years later and liked it a lot better.

Simply one of the best movies ever made...the only flaws are the narrative sequences. They need to be cut for an absolutely perfect movie.

Indeed an interesting alternative to your usual Christmas movie. Just think of the fact that the colorful lights of the Christmas trees might be actually hinting at sexual tension? Although I hated “Eyes Wide Shut” on my first viewing ages ago, I think I am understanding it a little more as a grown-up man. In particular, I liked that it all felt like a fever dream triggered by Bill’s newly found awareness that his wife is a sentient being with animal instincts. Everyone only remembers the orgies in the second act, but I thought the first act’s focus on the impulses we are forced to repress while in a monogamous relationship deserved to be expanded a little more. I don’t mind the plot imploding in a purposely anticlimactic manner, yet it felt like it was all resolved as a one-night odd experience without connecting to the premise made in the first act.