Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Eyes Wide Shut: adapted by Stanley Kubrick and Frederic Raphael from the novel Dream Story (1926) by Arthur Schnitzler; directed by Stanley Kubrick; starring Tom Cruise (Dr. William Harford), Nicole Kidman (Alice Harford), Sydney Pollack (Victor Ziegler), and Todd Field (Nick Nightingale) (1999): Stanley Kubrick's last film had an infamously long shooting schedule, one which some people view as being the deciding factor in the break-up of stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Kubrick handed in the final cut and then died less than a week later. Yikes!

Some critics at the time seemed to become more confused by the events of a movie based on a Freudian dream-journey of a novella than could really be explained. So I'll explain it. Kubrick was generally viewed as being a cool, emotionless film-maker constantly striving for some form of cinematic objectivity. He wasn't, but he was viewed this way by the critical hive-mind. Had the dreamily subterranean sub-conscious David Lynch released the exact same film, reviews would have been much different: we expect a mind-fuck from David Lynch. We expect the inexplicable and the subjective.

In the case of Eyes Wide Shut, the viewer's detective story could be summed up as a quest to understand what events in the film objectively 'happen' and what events are components of the Tom Cruise character's internal, dream-like, occasionally nightmarish voyage of self-discovery. And the answers to that quest I'll leave to you, the viewer. If answers are even needed. You could just strap in and feel the G's.

In many ways, this is Kubrick's most enjoyably absurd movie since Dr. Strangelove, if you let it be. Cruise's quest may take him into the bipolar dream realms of Eros and Thanatos, but Kubrick et al. offer mounting absurdities at every turn. An opener of the gateway named Nightingale. A comically sinister Eastern European provider of masquerade costumes and his nymphomaniac daughter. The much-maligned, endlessly loopy Secret Order of Rich Sex Perverts and their comically portentous sex games.

The comic parts curdle to nightmare, of course, with the various threads of Cruise's journey ending in rejection, illness, humiliation, death, and the contemplation of the abject, naked, dead body of what was earlier a sexualized object . The voyager into the dream world must be shocked back to the land of the real. And with the events set at Christmas, one can note, among other things, the importance of A Christmas Carol to understanding the proceedings. Though Dickens never gave us this much full-frontal nudity.

Kubrick's choice of then-reigning Hollywood Power Couple Cruise and Kidman makes perfect sense, as he wanted a pair who could play superficially pretty, seemingly bland people who would soon be revealed to contain hidden depths. I think they're both very good, especially Cruise, who gets to play a character who is both exactly his cinematic type on the surface, and a regret-plagued mess under the surface.

The supporting players are also fine, with the occasional wooden performances tending to be linked to characters who are there as adjuncts to Cruise's journey and not essential, emotional encounters. I wouldn't recommend watching it in one sitting. It's long, and there's a lot to think about. Highly recommended.

Imitations of Life

Tootsie: written by Larry Gelbart, Murray Schisgal, Don McGuire, Robert Garland, Barry Levinson, and Elaine May; directed by Sydney Pollack; starring Dustin Hoffman (Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels), Jessica Lange (Julie), Teri Garr (Sandy), Dabney Coleman (Ron), Bill Murray (Jeff), Charles Durning (Les), George Gaynes (John Van Horn), Geena Davis (April) and Sidney Pollack (George Fields) (1982): Ah, what a great comedy. The cast is terrific and in fine form in this fable of an actor (Hoffman) who learns to be a better man by pretending to be a woman in order to get a job on a soap opera.

It's really remarkable how zingy the dialogue is throughout, and how uniformly excellent is the cast (including director Pollack as Hoffman's long-suffering agent). The difficulty of working with Hoffman forms a subtext to the entire picture -- Pollack refused to direct him again despite Tootsie's massive critical and commercial success. Bill Murray drifts in and out to provide a loose, improvisational Greek Chorus as Hoffman's playwright-room-mate, Jessica Lange won an Oscar for her sweet, funny performance, and everyone else is also awesome. Highly recommended.

The Mummy: written by Jimmy Sangster; directed by Terence Fisher; starring Peter Cushing (John Banning), Christopher Lee (Kharis the Mummy), and Yvonne Furneaux (Isobel/Ananka) (1959): Enjoyable, atmospheric remake by British Hammer Studios of the original 1930's Universal horror movie The Mummy. This movie completed Christopher Lee's Hammer trifecta of playing three of the four classic horror-movie monsters originally made famous by those Universal movies of the 1930's -- Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, and the Mummy, but alas, no Wolf Man.

Lee hated the heavy make-up and costuming for the Mummy, and would avoid heavy make-up ever afterwards. Like Karloff before him, he towers over the rest of the cast (there's a funny moment in which a drunk English poacher claims that the Mummy is 10-feet tall, and it doesn't seem like that much of an exaggeration). Lee is again teamed with his Dracula and Frankenstein co-star Peter Cushing, here playing the son of the archaeologist who released the vengeful mummy into the world.

The Egyptian sets and costumes are really quite impressive, as are the moody scenes set on the moor and in the swamp nearby, with some nice staging for scenes in which the Mummy emerges from, and later descends into, the swamp. Cushing makes for an interesting hero here as he did in the Dracula films as Van Helsing, and Yvonne Furneaux is lovely in the dual role of Cushing's wife and the long-dead Egyptian priestess Ananka, whom Lee's high priest loved and was ultimately mummified alive for loving.

Lee does what he can with his eyes, the only expressive part his made-up face shows, and by the end achieves a sort of lurching, Frankensteinian pathos as the Mummy. That pathos is also partially obtained by having a cultist give the Mummy his murderous orders. The Mummy really looks like he'd rather not stir from his 4000-years' sleep. Recommended.