Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Rated R / NC-17, depends where you are looking.  I think we saw the NC-17 version, but there's not a ton of difference between versions.  There are digital people blocking sexual acts, but you know what's going on behind them in the R-rated version.  Eyes Wide Shut is infamously an erotic thriller, but it isn't as insane as history portrays it.  It has about a ten minute scene that is wildly shocking, but the rest of the movie doesn't actually show a lot.  There's a prostitute who is having a bad drug trip who is naked.  Also, the protagonist continually visits a prostitute, but nothing sexual actually happens.  The really upsetting thing is the threat of death looming over the movie.  Hard R / NC-17, depending on the print.

DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick

I'm not even supposed to be writing about this.  Occasionally, my wife will tell me that I'm not supposed to write about a movie because someone will see.  I get the logic.  I tend to bury these and not advertise them.  It's a weird thing because I view the movie as artistic, but she views it as smutty.  I suppose it can be both.  She's probably in the right, but I have things that I want to talk about when it comes to this movie.  It's part of the discussion.  Let's say one thing:  I don't find Eyes Wide Shut sexy.  That's not a high horse.  That's more the idea that I'm watching it because I am interested in the mystery of the whole story.  I also think of it as a Kubrick film first.  There's something remarkably unsexy about the whole thing.  That doesn't mean that I'm not going to bury this article somewhere in the archives.