Awake but Weird

It took me ten years, but at last I got to watch Eyes Wide Shut, the last movie directed by Stanley Kubrick. I wanted to see it for obvious reasons (i.e. Nicole Kidman with little to no clothes on), but it turned out to be more of a Tom Cruise movie than a Nicole Kidman one. But since I found the movie quite interesting, that didn't bother me in the slightest.

I know people make fun of Tom Cruise for a variety of reasons, but I think here he proves he is a good actor, and all those Tom Cruise vehicles we've been subject to in the past have done the actor quite the disservice. I loved him in Tropic Thunder, and while his role as Bill Harford is way more restrained than his profanity-prone producer in Stiller's film, I found him completely believable in his struggle with infidelity, his emotions, and the weirdness that surrounds his life for a couple of nights.

The movie is very slow paced, but the pervasive strangeness and the disturbing events that take place one after the other made it very intense at the same time. I wasn't bored for even a minute, and we're talking about a two-and-a-half-hour-long movie here. This is very interesting, because I watched EWS the day after going to see Transformers 2, which was also two and a half hours, and it's amazing how differently time went by. T2 was at least two hours too long, and it bored me out of my mind. EWS, on the other hand, kept me guessing the whole time, and I was invested in the story and the characters, and the movie didn't feel long at all. And I know this is hardly an epiphany, seeing as we're comparing one of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time with one of the most reviled directors ever, but it's nice to stop for a second and realize why one is sung as a hero and the other one is derided as a disgrace to the industry. It's good to find out things by yourself instead of just get your lines fed and accept them as indisputable truth.

As I said, EWS came out in 1999, so you guys have probably seen it already. What did you think? Did you like it? Maybe you thought it was too long? Not one of Kubrick's best efforts? (I haven't seen many of his movies, so I don't really know.) In any case, leave us some thoughts and comments!