The Flick Filosopher responds:
I kinda liked it, actually. "Over hipped"?

posted 08.09.99
Rob Lund writes:
Flick Babe!
Yes, I couldn't agree with you more!!!!! The Blair Witch Project is the only movie that I've ever truly been terrified by, and I've seen every American horror film (those 1970s Italian's were sick bastards). I was literally nauseous in two places in this movie, not so much from the camera work. I mean Saving Private Ryan didn't make me want to puke. It was the shaky-cam added to the whole thick feeling of dread that made me sick.
This is one of the only movies that I love and yet hate because it made me such a wreck afterwards. That's weird and yet incredibly refreshing. Hollywood Luddites. The Haunting is Blair Witch's complete antithesis. Makes me sick, really. And poor dumb Liam Neeson. He had such a good thing going until now.
Oh, and btw, according to the plot, the seven kids weren't killed in the 70s, it was the 40s.
The Blair Witch has possessed my brain and I can't get her out. Heeeeeelp!
Robster

The Flick Filosopher responds:
I had some definite moments of curling up into my seat -- especially the bit when Heather and Mike hear Josh's screams in the distance. Creepy! I can't say that I was every actually terrified by Blair Witch -- creepy more closely covers the feeling.
I took notes during the movie, and unless I'm delusional (which is possible), they said the kids were killed in the 70s. Here it is, right in my scribbles. Could be I wrote it down wrong.
That last image of Mike standing in the corner is haunting me. Argh!

posted 08.09.99
CRowe77273@aol.com writes:
Re: your review is a joke
perhaps you are just an egotistical feminist. perhaps you're inexperienced at your job. perhaps you're just an out and out idiot. to call Eyes Wide Shut "a colossal disappointment" is asine and insane. while the film leaves you with even more puzzles and questions at the end than the much-hyped media created before hand (not an easy task, mind you), that is the beauty of the film. why does everything in the entertainment industry have to be cut and dry and not provoke thought? you would have been better off just admitting that you didn't get it and left it at that. even some of the top-shelf critics have done that (see NPR). kubrick was a master at his work, and he must be laughing his psychotic haed off in his grave. pick this film apart, come up with your own phillosphical interpretations, and in this case, few would disagree with you. there is so much to be had from this film, that for you to rip it in classic feminist fashion does your readers a disservice. the film centers around a male character, so it would make sense that the female characters for who he pines would be the ones "uncloaked", so to speak. and to imply, as you did, that this is little more than big-screen pornography is way off base. the last thing i needed after this film was a cold shower, indeed, i wanted someone to take my pulse to make sure i wasn't the dead junkie in the morgue. get with it. if you don't understand kubrick, fine. but the man's works are classic, from strangelove to 2001 to clockwork to full metal jacket. indeed, this seems like the perfect coda for a man who left us with a million puzzles in our head, and wondering what is real and what is surreal.
christopher rowe

The Flick Filosopher responds:
If my point of view as a woman automatically makes my review "feminist," then is your point of view as a man automatically misogynist? Perhaps you're just an egotistical male to believe that there is only one correct interpretation of Eyes Wide Shut, and that that correct interpretation just happens to coincide with yours. Perhaps you're the out-and-out idiot.
Everything in the movie industry does not need to be cut-and-dried, and I challenge you to find anything in the hundreds of reviews I've written where I suggest such a thing.
What makes you think -- beyond your own opinion, which is as self-centered as mine -- that I didn't "get it"? Why are you so sure that you "get it"?
How have I done my readers a disservice? The whole point of my Web site is to offer my opinion, and my opinion alone. I'd be doing a disservice if I watered down my reactions so as not to offend all the men like you who can't seem to deal with a female point of view. Disagree with me if you like, but is it really necessary to resort to name calling? I'm "insane"? Merely for disagreeing with you about a movie? Why on Earth are you so threatened by me? Afraid I might actually have a point?
My review is one point of view, and that's all. If the movie is the classic for the ages you say it is, then nothing I say will have any effect whatsoever on its status as such.

posted 08.09.99
CRowe77273@aol.com replies:
For starters, at least I got a reply from you -- which is more than I expected. However, as I feared, you obviously have misconstrued my remarks. Here's a point-by-point rebuttal of your reply:
I suggested you are a feminist because of your complaints about the nudity. I must state, for the record, that I am largely sympathetic and a supporter of women's issues, so please don't assume that I am some male chauvinist pig w/ an ax to grind against women. Quite the contray. But to rebuff someone of the stature of Kubrick for displaying solely female nude scenes is a cheap shot at Kubrick. Personally, I don't know if that was his intention, but considering the subject matter and that the main protagonist was male, I doubt this was the case. Would the movie have been more fair to offer some gratuitous male nudity? If so, in what scene. While your point may be well-taken in many instances, I found this movie to be an exceptionally bad personification of your point. There are many other films that you would have been better served to bring this point up in.
I did not mean to suggest YOU advocated [that everything in the movie industry be cut-and-dried], however, your review seemed to complain of the mystical, puzzling nature of the film. If you don't necessarily like things spelled out for you, then why did you complain about such. Why does everything have to be so neatly wrapped up at the end?
I never meant to imply that I "got it." Indeed, my comments to coworkers the next day were very cautious and hesitant. I distinctly described it as "kubrick" which seemed to imply all of the traits already described -- and most seemed to understand my point. Further, a friend saw it this weekend and came away with the same head shaking, dizzying reaction, asking me "have you figured it out yet?," to which I replied "No." However, the difference was that I did not COMPLAIN about such.
Everyone's entitled to an opinion, and you do have a point to your review. However, my reaction of course is that your point is WAY out of line, especially by downgrading Kubrick's legacy. Like his ways or not, I find it hard to believe that a so-called critic could actually watch his films and not at least appreciate his style, which again cuts way against the grain of typical Hollywood.
[[My review is one point of view, and that's all. If the movie is the classic for the ages you say it is, then nothing I say will have any effect whatsoever on its status as such.]] Do not take such a belittling view of yourself. It's very unbecoming. That is not the point.

The Flick Filosopher responds:
I can't believe how many men -- never women -- who've sent me a rant against one of my reviews say they never expected a response. Did you think I would let you get away with calling me insane? :->
I have no problems with nudity in films per se, particularly when it is actually relevant to telling a story, as it clearly was in Eyes Wide Shut. My objection to EWS was that the nudity is one-sided, ie, women only. The orgy scene in particular is totally off the mark in this respect: Even if Kubrick is intending EWS to be a male fantasy, from Cruise's point of view, are you telling me that when a man fantasizes about having sex, he imagines himself fully clothed? All those men screwing all those women at the orgy -- wouldn't it have made sense and not been gratuitous for them to be as casually nude as the women are? All the men nude onscreen in EWS are quite modestly "protected," while the women wander around totally buck naked. Again, it's not the nudity, it's the double standard here, that for some reason the male ego needs more protection than the female ego, that female nudity is perfectly acceptable and male nudity is taboo. In that respect, Kubrick was no different from other mainstream filmmakers.
I think my review makes it plain that I had numerous problems with the movie that have little to do with a "mystical, puzzling nature," which I don't myself see. I found nothing mystical or puzzling about EWS. Instead, the things that bothered me were the reduction of sex to a mechanical act devoid of intimacy, particularly as exemplified by Cruise's wanderings, during which I got no sense that he was in the least bit interested in anything he was seeing around him. The dialogue was needlessly repetitious, the script is full of all sorts of weird inconsistencies (like the costume shop owner who at night is furious at his daughter's fooling around with the two Japanese guys and the next day is trying to pimp her to Cruise). If this very same movie was made by another, less revered director, no one would be trying to find deep meanings in any of this: It would be rightly derided as the mess that it is.
What's wrong with complaining about a movie? I'm not stupid, not by a long shot. I did think about this movie and talk it over with the also-very-smart friends that I saw it with, and I've continued to do so with numerous other people since I posted my review. I haven't really heard anything that has convinced me that I'm off the mark, that I was too hasty in putting the film down. I'm not merely dismissing the movie out of hand because it's full of strange puzzles that I can't figure out, though I can see how the final line in my review, about trying to wrap my brain around the movie, might lead you to think that way. No, what that refers to is all the games I played with myself, trying to convince myself that I must be missing something because Kubrick is supposedly a genius and I must be just a poor dumb prole for not understanding Kubrick's supposed deep message here. Finally I had to admit to myself that no, I wasn't missing anything, and genius is as genius does, to paraphrase Forrest Gump. No matter how fabulous a film A Clockwork Orange is -- and that film is genius -- EWS has to stand on its own. And it doesn't. At least not for me.
Is Kubrick is excused from criticism because of his "legacy"? I am required to appreciate what others have termed genius if I am to call myself a critic? What's the point of reviewing a movie if the verdict has to be a foregone conclusion? Anyway, this is a review of one movie, not Kubrick's body of work -- as I said, EWS stands or falls on its own, no matter how fabulous or lousy his other films are. That goes for every director.
And I'm not belittling myself at all by pointing out the limits of my influence. I'm merely being realistic.

posted 08.09.99
erickles@mindspring.com writes:
thanks for your review [of Eyes Wide Shut], had exactly the same reaction, can't believe all this fawning over this film by most critics. even Summer of Sam, as bad as it is, is proabably a better film. i'll take mira sorvino over kidman any day. i think her best work was left on that boat (Dead Calm). do you think the rumors of sexual coaching were true?

The Flick Filosopher responds:
Dead Calm was a great film, though I've liked Kidman in other stuff too, especially The Peacemaker.
I wouldn't be surprised if the rumors about the coaching were true -- sexual chemistry (which presumably Cruise and Kidman have in real life, considering the fact that they're married, unless of course the rumors about him being gay are true... ah, which rumors to believe?) is not the same as screen chemistry, so there's no reason to expect that they would sizzle on the screen. But if the point of the coaching was to make them sizzle... if I was Kubrick, I'd have gotten my money back. They were blah together. But Kubrick wanted them to be blah, he succeeded.

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