This week I also watched two Kubrick films for the first time. First I saw Eyes Wide Shut, a movie which Stanley Kubrick finished just a couple of days before his death in 1999. This flick stars Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) and it’s all about sex and fidelity.

At the start of the movie the couple goes to a Christmas party where Bill flirts with two models while his tipsy wife has fun with a charming older man. Nothing happens but the next day when the couple talks about the day before Alice confesses that she nearly left Bill and their little daughter a couple of years ago to pursue a sexual encounter with a handsome officer. Bill is shocked and becomes obsessed with having sex with another woman. After a couple of unfulfilling encounters he meets an old friend which tells him about a secret ritualistic sex club where everyone wears black robes and Venetian masks. Bill is intrigued and against better knowing he decides to go to the secret party..

I didn’t really know what to expect from this movie but Eyes Wide Shut turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. The story is quite interesting and sometimes even bizarre, the actors are very convincing and I also liked the soundtrack a lot. I give Eyes Wide Shut a 9/10.

I also finally checked out 2001: A Space Odyssey. This movie is already 40-years old but it’s a real scifi classic about the adventure of space exploration, technology, evolution and artificial intelligence. 

It quite funny to see how people imagined 2001 would look like 40 years ago. Unfortunately most of the things we see in the movie still don’t exist today. Space exploration hasn’t advanced as much as in the movie and is still only for the lucky few, we have no colonies in space, computers have improved a lot but artificial intelligence isn’t as advanced as in the movie and many other technologies like human hibernation don’t exist (yet).

Today 2001: A Space Odyssey looks and feels a bit outdated but it still remains a quite impressive masterpiece with an overwhelming bombastic soundtrack. The only thing that annoyed me a bit is that some scenes took a bit too long, overall I give the film a 7.5/10.