Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Maria Richardson

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah. I was probably in my twenties or even younger, and I felt like how I felt about a lot of Kubrick films on first viewing. I just didn’t get it. I would be a little leery of any teenager or person in their twenties why got anything out of this film other than nudity up to and including Kidman.

I was compelled to come back to the film when my festival screener duties* drifted into an inexplicable new adaptation of Schnitzler’s original novel. All it did was want me to re-visit the Kubrick of it all.

Did I Like It: It’s immaculately made—naturally—and that’s all the more mystifying when one thinks that Kubrick couldn’t possible have been in the best of health when the entire production was going through the Sisyphean task of a year-plus shoot. It’s frank and unblinking in the things it depicts, with several moments legitimately feeling like we got a peak into Cruise and Kidman’s marriage. I can only imagine what putting those moments—both banal and intense—on display did to them.

But we can talk about the sex—also both banal and intense—in the film for days, but it is only a surface reading. The sex is incidental. I’m struck in this viewing by the dynamic between Harford (Cruise) and his old medical school chum Nick Nightingale (Todd Field). You might have one read from their scenes together, but Eyes Wide Shut isn’t about those surface readings. I tend to think that if Bill hadn’t met someone at that party who rejected everything he himself had done to have a comfortable, stable life, he probably wouldn’t have gotten in nearly as much trouble as he did.

You might think I’m reading the movie wrong. I’m not, but then again it’s very hard to read a Kubrick film entirely wrong.

*No, I’m not saying which festival. You just keep submitting.

Batman Forever (1995)

Director: Joel Schumacher

Cast: Val Kilmer, Chris O’Donnell, Jim Carrey, Nicole Kidman

Have I Seen It Before?: Ah, 1995. It was a simpler time. Apparently. There I am, ten going on forty-seven, a Riddler (Carrey) action figure in one hand, the novelization of the movie in another. Somewhere in the distance, “Kiss From a Rose” is playing on every radio station in the known universe. I had the above poster hanging in my room well into the twenty-first century.

Yeah, I saw it.

Did I like it?: In a word, no.

A weird and idiosyncratic blockbuster (or as weird and idiosyncratic as a film is like to get when a board of directors is at all involved in the creative process) is unleashed into theaters. Some fans balk. Others think it is a work of genius. Toys don’t sell as well, which is the real problem. Another director is pulled into right the ship. Who cares if the movie is any good, as long as it doesn’t piss off anybody?

Now, am I speaking of the state of play of the Star Wars saga at this very moment, or the circumstances surrounding the Dark Knight twenty-five years ago?

The differences between the two situations are cosmetic, at best, aside from the reality that Star Wars – Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017) is nowhere near the weird, intentionally ugly film* that became Batman Returns (1992). And so we are stuck with both Star Wars – Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) and Batman Forever. Both are less films than they are studio memos with a runtime. Both were mangled mercilessly in the editing room. Both are (probably) going to make a ton of money, and the studio that birthed the film will not learn a damned thing.

The campiness isn’t even the problem. Both the tv series and the feature film Batman (1966) revel in their campiness and are infinitely rewatchable delights. 

No character has any real arc to speak of, aside from maybe Dick Grayson (O’Donnell) who wants to kill Two-Face (Jones, inexplicably pigeon-holed into a c-minus Jack Nicholson impression that would be embarrassing to anything beyond single-celled organisms) but then decides he won’t. One would think that this would please Batman (Kilmer, forever cementing the fact that Michael Keaton is an American treasure), who has spent the entirety of the film’s runtime discouraging his nascent protégé against the evils of vengeance for the sake of vengeance. Instead, Batman immediately kills Two-Face himself. Also, the Riddler and a blonde lady are there. Fade Out. Roll Credits. Cue Seal.

That’s it. That’s the whole movie. 

*A sincere compliment, I assure you.

Aquaman (2018)

Director: James Wan

Cast: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman

Have I Seen it Before: It’s hard to see an action movie these days—with their wall-to-wall CGI, bombastic film scores, and framing of shots like their in a gyroscope—and not feel like you’ve been watching the movie many times. Does that begin to answer the question? Probably not. No, I haven’t seen it. At this writing it is a brand new movie. There. Now I’ve answered it.

Did I Like It: I didn’t hate it, which, as it turns out, still manages to bring up the average of post-Nolan DC movies.

I’m not entirely sure why Jason Momoa has spent most of his acting career up until this point being the strong, silent type. I mean, I guess I get the strong part. The man is built like a Joel Schumacher fever dream, but here he gets to let his leading man flag fly, and acquits himself well. He’s often funny, usually charming, and never seems lost in the course of starring in his own movie. That’s not an easy task, especially for someone who has been largely taciturn for much of his acting career.

The movie surrounding him has an odd tone, though. With it’s synthesizer-heavy score, reverse-engineered pseudo-Indiana Jones plot, and the mere presence of Dolph Lundgren* makes this film so thoroughly entrenched in an aesthetic pulled from the 1980s*. With no further context, there’s very little outside of the CGI to indicate that this film was truly made in the second decade fo the 21st century. It’s kind of a refreshing choice, at times. It actually sends my imagination into overdrive about what the film would be like had it been made thirty-plus years earlier. Lundgren would still be in it, although in either the role of Arthur Curry (Momoa) or Orm/Ocean Master (Patrick Wilson, showing up once again to cash some DC money and hopefully not be noticed in the process), while somebody like Sylvester Stallone would be the other role. The imaginary film might have been directed by Stallone as well. The increase in montages for this film would be negligible, if any.

And that might have made it a better movie. The ultimately slapdash fashion in which the film is put together makes me question whether this retro sensibility was either intentional, accidental, or the ongoing trend of studios insisting that all tentpole films be as much like the Guardians of the Galaxy films as possible. Also, the film is an absolute exposition fest. You know it’s going to be a doozy when the film injects a voice over in the first few minutes, but it only gets worse from there. While someone may have decided that this much world building is necessary for a first film set in a world of which audiences likely have little-to-no knowledge, the proceedings are far too weighted down. While this isn’t the annoyingly self-serious Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) or the muddled Justice League (2017), it doesn’t quite reach the magnificence of Wonder Woman (2017) or any of the largely superior Marvel films. Keep trying DC, you might yet get it down one of these days.

*Who, by the way, between this and Creed II, is having a renaissance the likes of which we haven’t seen since the one two punch of Masters of the Universe (1987) and The Punisher (1989).