FIRST TIME Watching Eyes Wide Shut Was WILD | Nostalgia Check

This week on BJ in the Morning Presents: Nostalgia Check, we finally watched and reviewed Eyes Wide Shut for the very first time… and honestly, we’re still trying to process what we saw.

From secret societies and uncomfortable tension to one of the strangest dreamlike movie experiences ever made, we break down the story, themes, performances, and the absolute chaos of trying to understand what Stanley Kubrick was cooking in his final film.

Was it a masterpiece? Was it confusing? Was Tom Cruise just wandering around New York for 3 hours? We debate all of it.

If you love movie reviews, first-time watches, nostalgic film discussions, and chaotic podcast energy, welcome to Nostalgia Check from BJ in the Morning.

Topics Include:

• First reactions to Eyes Wide Shut
• Stanley Kubrick’s directing style
• Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman performances
• Creepy masked party discussion
• The ending explained (or at least attempted)
• Funniest and weirdest moments
• Does the movie still hold up today?

 Like, comment, and subscribe for more movie breakdowns, first-time watches, nostalgia reviews, and podcast episodes from BJ in the Morning.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

And testing what holds um, my name's Brendan. And I'm hold on. We're talking about eyes wide shut. We are talking about eyes wide shut. Um, I have my lists and all the goodies pulled up, ready to go.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

With my shut. I'd like to cheat on my wine.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

He doesn't cheat on her.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

She wants I almost cheated on my wine. There you go. That worked. I almost got a Javi.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I think you changed the song. I think you keep going to a different song.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

It's still a banger, though. That could still be a banger. Much like this movie. It was a banger. If we knew how to produce music, which we could probably figure it out, we could make that song.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

There's AI for everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Take this clip of my voice and do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

And make uh Eyes Wide Shut song to the melody of with Arms Wild Open. Under Okay, anyways. Um, yeah, so we're talking about Eyes Wide Shut today. A movie shut. A movie we had never seen before.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

From 1999.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

I mean, I will admit if we're making confessions today. Um, I've seen bits of it. Oh, I saw bits of it in the past, and I was like, ooh.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

It was like on cable and like 85% of it was cut out.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

Yeah, I was like, what's going on in this party is weird. Ooh.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

I think there's a lot of this movie that's just kind of been in other media. Yeah. Um, it's referenced often in all in a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Um, and I think it's it's weird that we committed to it here on uh, you know, in in 2026. Is it? Um, yeah, just because of uh things going on how topical it is um and all the conspiracies around this movie, which we might touch on here or there. Yeah. So buckle up buttercup. Buckle up buttercup. Uh, because this movie is a wild ride. Yeah. To say the least. Um still shocking that it's supposedly takes place in one night. I definitely thought there was a cut in there somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 2:58

I mean, he doesn't even go to the doesn't even go to the party till like 2 a.m. I guess all the other stuff happens the next day though.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

It's it's like, but it's one night, and then the next day after that night. Yeah. It's I don't know. The pay the pacing is non-stop in your face, it just goes, goes, goes for a little bit. Um, with like two long periods throughout where it just slows way down. Yeah. Um, but it's like really integral. Um, but why don't we talk about the movie?

SPEAKER_03 3:28

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Uh Eyes Wide Shut.

unknown 3:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

In 1999.

SPEAKER_03 3:32

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Two-hour, 39-minute runtime.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Pretty long.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Pretty long for especially 99.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

That's like four weeks in a row that we watched a movie that's two and a half hours or longer.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Except for.

SPEAKER_03 3:48

Or the mummy, I guess, was two. Two. Even.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

But even after we bitched and moaned about wanting a 90-long, 90-minute long movies, uh, and we haven't picked a single 90-minute movie in a while.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

Yeah. I mean, I think I think the issue is, is uh movies for a very long time were 90 minutes. So we might have gotten used to that. So when we are like in a time crunch and we're like, oh, we're just gonna watch this movie really quick. Really quick, real fast. Really quick. Uh I have about two hours to watch this movie. It should be plenty of time. And it's not. Yeah, it's not. And then you've got to be cooking dinner while finishing the movie on your phone.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Leaning up against one of the jars that holds like sugar or something.

SPEAKER_03 4:43

Gotta do some dishes while you prop up your phone so you can finish this movie.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

And then it always falls when your hands are dirty or wet from like doing a dish or something. Yeah, with your shit. Ugh. How did I get how did I get mirror narrow all over this? Not even cooking spaghetti today. Yeah. Um, so the tagline for this movie: a Manhattan doctor embarks on a bizarre night-long Odyssey after his wife's admission of unfulfilled longing. Kind of sums up the movie, I guess, but not really.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Mm-hmm. I have a comment about him being a doctor, but I'll wait. I feel like there's a better place for me to do this.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Okay, okay, for sure, for sure. Um, on IMDb, it's got 7.5 out of 10. Damn. Uh, the metascore is a 69. Excuse me? 69 metascore. Nice. Ironic? Very. Um, I think not. Top cast. You have Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Todd Field, uh Sidney Pollack, uh, Leslie Lowe, Peter Benson, Michael Dovin, uh Stuart Thorndike, Randall Paul, Julianne Davis. The list goes on.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

I mean, all we really care about is Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, right? Technically, I guess. And the guy from CSI.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Which guy?

SPEAKER_03 6:15

The boyfriend. The boyfriend of the girl who tried to make out with Tom Cruise. The boyfriend. Let me see picture. I don't know his name.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

That guy. That guy, Carl? Oh shit, I liked it. Carl Thomas? Carl Thomas Gibson. Oh shoot. He plays Carl. Oh, yeah, he is from CSI. Criminal Minds.

SPEAKER_03 6:47

Criminal Minds, that's the one. Jeez, get it right, my guy. I watched all like 15 seasons of that.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

I've never seen it. Really? Yeah, no. Great show. That's why when you said CSI, I was like, who? Because I've seen CSI. Um, directed by Stanley Kubrick. Legend. Written by Stanley Kubrick, legend, Frederick Raphael, um, and inspi inspired by uh a novel by Arthur Schnitzler. Um yeah, the Stanley Kubrick, like one of the largest, most well-known autors. He always wanted to write, direct, edit his movies. He didn't really like other people touching his stuff. Um, so he's very well known for being very um hands-on, very hands-on, difficult to work with in some aspects, uh, because he was a perfectionist. Um, so let's see what people said about this movie. You ready for some uh some reviews? Are we on IMDB first? We are on IMDb because that's where we start. Alright, alright. Because we like to start out with the classy snooty tootie reviews, sure, and then we get into the unhinged bullshit that is Letterboxd.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

Every time we talk, every time we say that, though, it's the opposite. You think so? Lately. You think so? Lately, the last couple movies has been the opposite.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Um, nine out of ten. This is a review from 1999, the day after this movie came out. Uh, Ice White Shut is ill-suited for the summit summer movie corridor. It has no explosions, no running, no shouting, not even a single gunshot. What it has are long scenes in which characters talk to one another slowly and carefully. The problem is that this film is marketed as a white hot as having white hot sex scenes and plenty of gratuitous nudity while it has neither. I think there's a lot of nudity in this.

SPEAKER_03 8:46

I don't even know what that means.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

What gratuitous nudity?

SPEAKER_03 8:49

No, just that whole sentence.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Uh, there's plenty plenty of naked flesh, don't get me wrong, but in the exact opposite way that the ads make it appear. This is not a movie about being sexy or being naked. It's a movie about how flesh is just another part of being human. So, what is all the fuss about? The marketing campaign is misleading and led to disappointment in the audience when I saw the movie with who were disappointment in the audience that I saw the movie with, comma, who were just looking for some skin.

unknown 9:24

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 9:25

And peens and weens, which weren't in the movie.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

No, not very much, but there's a lot of nudity in this movie. Um, nine out of ten, also, uh, this one's from the day the movie came out in 1999. Remarkable finale to a long and glorious career. The thing, uh, the thing a lot of folks haven't liked about Stanley Kubrick's films is the fact that he always seemed to think the audience needed some points driven home a little harder than others. Very little is left for debate, and most everything is spelled out, pressed hard, and dwelled upon. His critics have compared the long waits between his films to long periods of waiting that occur while watching his films. Personally, I like the long slow scenes in his films. When they're filled with something music, movement, thought, memory of a previous scene, dread, or any other emotion, they can never really be said to be empty. I like them because with Kubrick, I can be sure that they're absolutely essential to his ultimate vision. He could have put on a six-hour documentary on tissue manufacturing. At least I'll know that not one minute of screen time is wasted. Do you agree with that c with that comment?

SPEAKER_03 10:36

I mean, I don't think he really drove it home in this movie, though.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Um, no, I mean, his movies do have a lot of long, slow, meticulous shots, right? The I think the slow zooms that that are in some of his older movies, and he dwells in in the shot to to make it feel lived in, you know, like you feel like you're part of it. Um but I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 11:02

I I just feel like a lot of this movie's in particular was left up to the perception of of how you view the movie.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Yeah, and that's what this comment's saying. I thought they were saying there's very little is left for debate. Right? Like, because you're supposed to live with it. Supposed to breathe. Like, I don't know. Maybe I'm interpreting it wrong. I'm interpreting it as oh yeah, most everything is spelled out, yeah, and dwelled upon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get you. Um, yeah, I mean, there's this movie doesn't we're gonna spoil it no matter what, but it's movies from 1999. But like I feel like the ending doesn't answer anything. No. Like, nothing. When we get to the ending, we can discuss it more, but I feel like a lot of this movie is uh Did that actually happen?

SPEAKER_03 11:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

So I don't know, maybe some people don't I mean you have like someone understand it?

SPEAKER_03 11:59

Your conspiracies and stuff, and people like like when you read into it further, there are uh ideas you can develop on this movie on what's going on exactly, but things aren't explained, and the only explanation we get, we don't even know if it's true. Which I feel like was the point was for us to not believe the explanation at the end.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

From the friend.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Like Pool. Yeah. I don't yeah, that there's no explanations in this movie, nothing's really spoon-fed. It's all how you think.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

Yeah, so like maybe Kubrick movies are spoon-fed to you most of the way, but this movie definitely was not. Unless we missed something. They took out a lot of shit.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Which conspiracy theory? Get your tin foil hats out. I forgot mine. I was gonna ask you if you had any house or anything. I was gonna ask you if you had foil before we started recording.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

Oh, I got tons of foil, dude.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Well, if we don't have the meat master. Um, okay, let's do one more from from IMDB, okay? Uh-huh. Um, I don't want to touch on this one. Yeah, I think we'll avoid that one. Um, you guys can put that together if you want. Uh, but this one's from August 19th, 2020. Uh, what did Kubrick want us to open our eyes to? 10 out of 10. Um, Eyes Wide Shut is a movie like Casablanca or The Wizard of Oz, which is subtly referenced in the film, in that the more times you view it, the more you get out of it. I imagine at some point you would wring out all the meaning, but that would take scores of viewings. One infamous scene is so over the top, it is easy to miss all the subtle references in the film, which necessitates multiple viewings. Fair warning: the more times you watch it, the more you go down the rabbit hole Kubrick digs. A reference to Alice in Wonderland also evoked in Eyes Wide Shut. Um, I'm not gonna read this whole thing because it gets into all the conspiracy theories, which I like I said, we might get into. We'll see if it comes up as we go along. Uh, but let's head on over, let's change the the pace a little bit and get into um to our letterbox reviews. Um, we're not sponsored by Arizona T. As much as we tried in the past. If you know, you know. If you know, you know. Uh that video still up. If you want to head on over to YouTube, you can find it at uh BJ in the morning podcast over on YouTube. Um and just look up the Arizona Ice T hard video. Still one of my.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

I would like to say I've been sick for like two weeks, and my voice is like in and out hanging on by a thread.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Much like Tom Cruise in this movie. What? What? Um, okay, so this movie has a four out of five on Letterboxd. Um I did review this film. I don't know if I wrote anything about it, but I also will save that for the end instead of spoiling. Uh-huh. Uh, so let's read some reviews. Um, four and a half stars. Uh, this isn't even a thriller. Rich people just be like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh, five stars. I don't know about you guys, uh, but I could see Tom Cruise attending something like this in real life.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Mm-hmm. Four stars. This is exactly what I think Scientology is. Uh, five stars, a film about a film about a guy who fucks around and finds out. True. Yeah. Um, four and a half stars. His dick led him to places I wouldn't even go with a gun. Um, what uh this one just liked. Uh, Tom Cruise flashing his medical license around like it's a cop's badge is the most unhinged thing in the movie. Dude, that was a combo I was gonna make earlier.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Oh, yeah, yes, it's someone made it, dude. What the frick? But he's seriously like, I'm a doctor. Yeah, I'm a doctor, I'm his doctor. Let me in. I'm her doctor, I'm her doctor. Let me see her dead body.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Uh, three and a half stars, 1999, a sex odyssey. Like 2001, a space odyssey.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

Yeah, I get it, I get it, and then uh five stars.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Kubrick ending the last movie of his career with the word fuck is the reason why he's one of the greatest directors of all time. And that's the letterbox reviews. So this is the this is the time where we start breaking down the plot of this movie. There's a lot to talk about, so we should just jump in. Let's do it. Alright. We're gonna start at the beginning, because that's the best place to start. Um, but the movie opens on Dr. Bill Harford, who played by Tom Cruise, and his wife Alice, who played by Nicole Kidman, who are married at this time in real life.

SPEAKER_03 17:04

Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

I'm I'm I'm 95% sure. But they're a wealthy Manhattan couple who seem to have it all until they talk to each other and then it all falls apart. Um, so they're we open this movie and they're getting ready separately together in the same room. There's they got a kid, which uh Tom Cruise looks way too young to have a kid this old already.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Especially like he's just I don't know, Tom Cruise got a baby face in the 90s. Like he's also five foot tall, so he looks like a child, you know. Um, don't come after me, Tom Cruise. You would kill me. Um, but like it it was shocking. I thought it was gonna be a baby, yeah, but it's like a a first-grade. Seven-year-old, yeah. Um but so they're they're getting ready to go to this this lavish Christmas party thrown by uh uh one of Bill's super, super rich, popular, famous, uh, for some reason patient because he is a doctor, yeah, traveling doctor makes house calls, makes house calls, yeah. Um but also has an office. Yeah um and uses his uh doctor's license as a badge as a badge to get into secure locations like hospitals and morgues and morgues and getting information from a a waitress at a diner, and getting a costume at 2 a.m.

SPEAKER_03 18:37

and waking the person up.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

I'm a doctor, let me he stole that from Doctor Who.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

What?

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Just flashing his papers around and hoping that people will just let him into places, maybe it's not the psychic paper, but that's what it is in Doctor Who, right? Yeah, it's like the psychic paper. The psychic paper. That's what he thinks he has. Yeah, he's actually just going crazy because Scientology. Um, so they're at this party, it's bumping, it's crazy. It's like a Gatsby-esque party. There's tons of lights, tons of people. I do want to point out the staircase with the Christmas lights going up, the like twirling staircase. Beautiful, insane. I don't ever want to be that rich, but damn it, I want to be that rich. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I want a twirling staircase with a shit ton of lights behind it.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

I'm sure there's a lot of responsibility to being that rich.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

No, they're rich. They pass it on to everyone else.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

Yeah, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Um, but this movie definitely shows that there's not a lot of consequences to being that rich.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Yeah, and they even bring up that um like Nicole Kidman's character asks, How do we even get invited to a party like this? And he's like, So happens when you make house calls. Yeah. So he's definitely traveling around the city, seeing rich patients who don't want to leave their house and go to the doctor's office.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

I don't want to go to the doctor's, but I'm poor, so there's a difference. Right. Um, Amer America's different now.

SPEAKER_03 20:09

I don't want to go to the doctor because my doctor makes me feel like a F P O S. Uh-huh, yeah. Know what I mean? Yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Um, but they're at this party, um, Victor Ziegler, um, and uh it's thrown by Victor Ziegler, his patient, and there's temptation everywhere. There's drinking, there's drugs, there's supermodels, supermodels, there's extremely rich horny men, rich Hungarian hor horny men. Um, so Bill gets pulled aside by two models. Um, the that's where the the DEF CON goes up to like one, you know. You're like, this is a problem. We're gonna calm down. I mean, settle down.

SPEAKER_03 20:49

We don't really I mean it's pretty quick in the movie, but in the first scene, we don't have a realization that they're having issues, but then right, because they haven't talked you see them kind of split off at this party for who knows how long. Seems like a long time. Yeah. And they're both doing things they shouldn't be doing.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Yeah, because Bill's with the models, and then Alice gets pulled by a Hungarian, like I don't know what he does. It just is very heavily like mentioned that he was Hungarian, like a lot. Um, and he's trying to like smooth talk her. Um, and you can tell by looking at him, he owns a silk robe that is like pristine. Yeah, you know. Um, but Bill's getting getting talked to by these models, and they make it super clear that what they want is him alone somewhere, which is weird that they chose him. There's a lot of people already here. Yeah. He's not he's not the richest guy in this room. No, and he's five foot tall.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

He's also probably. The youngest person there, though, other than them.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

It's probably got something to do with it, but I think with all that money being thrown around, it's got nothing to do with it.

SPEAKER_03 22:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

So it seems to me conspiracy theory number one setup. It's a setup. It's a setup. Especially with the Hungarian dude. Um, so during this party, though, he's talking to these models, and then he gets called up for an emergency in the bathroom upstairs. Because his patient, what was his name? Victor? Victor. Victor Ziegler. Um he is in a bathroom with a lady, a young lady, younger than him, who is an escort. Maybe. She's escorting his P and her V. Um, so he's rich, so he's he's fooling around. They are doing drugs, she has an overdose. Bill's called upstairs to help, uh-huh. Or at the very least, help him hide it. Right. Um, but Bill goes, I'm a doctor, I got this. He flashes his badge real fast um to the guard at the door. Uh those guards come back later in the movie. Um, I don't know if you noticed it. We'll talk about it because it's the end of the movie. Um, and then uh Oh, I noticed. You notice? Yeah, okay. Conspiracies. Tinfoil hats.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Uh if you're listening, we're looking strangely at the camera.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Go get some tinfoil right now. Um, so he saves her, puts his doctor moves on, saves her, finds out that she's overdosed on what did they call it? I thought it was heroin. Something like that. I don't know. They they were What do they call it? They were they were f messing around with the with everything, right? So he he saves her, finds out her name, all that kind of stuff, tells his his uh patient, like she should go get checked out. He talks to her and goes, You should get looked at, you should get your drug problem handled, and she agrees.

SPEAKER_03 24:09

Also, this doctor is shirtless.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

No, not the doctor, the patient. He wasn't shirtless, the patient, but he wasn't? He was. But you said doctor. Oh yeah, the patient.

SPEAKER_03 24:23

The patient was shirtless, they were they were buckling up his belt while the doctor's walking in, and then this girl is overdosed in a couch in this giant bathroom. They have a cuck chair in the bathroom with everything out, yeah. Everything, lots of nudity.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Um what's going on here? We all know. We all know. Stop winking. It's weird when it's the when it's the bad shit. You can wink when it's the funny shit.

unknown 24:56

Stop.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

I've been practicing my winks.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

Don't practice during this particular stop. This particular episode. Remind me later to add a like every time you wink so the audience knows when they're listening that that's what's going on. Yeah. Um, so they leave the party. We have no idea what time it is. It was dark when they left their apartment, it was dark at the party, it is dark when they get home from the party. And they decide, let's smoke some weed.

SPEAKER_03 25:23

And they're drunk. But we didn't get into Nicole Kidman's part of this thing, though. Where she was fooling around with wanting to get with this guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then she was like, I'm married. No, my husband's here. And she makes the right call.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

They almost kissed.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

They almost kissed, and he almost convinced her. He was like, Well, he doesn't know. What he doesn't know.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Um, but yeah, back at the their apartment, they get home, um, and they're smoking some weed. Back in 99, that's a big no-no. Yeah. And they make it. I love that you can tell it's the 90s because of how like he he look at us.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

She goes to the bathroom, she looks around.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

She gets it out of like a little box, pulls it out of the band-aid, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:11

The band-aid box. I'm in my own house, but who's watching?

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Oh my gosh. They're both in their undies, just chilling. Um, and they decide to mix the weed with honesty, which is a whoopsie. Whoops. They're already drunk, I'm guessing.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

We don't know if they partied at the party, you know? Right. But I'm gonna guess. Um, but during this scene, Alice drops the bomb that one time, well, before we get to that, there's a there's a lot of talk about how Bill doesn't think that women think about sex the way that men do. So he's not worried about her being like a cheater or like being like having infidelities against him or anything like that, because women don't think about sex the way that men.

SPEAKER_03 27:00

She gets almost offended that he trusts her.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Yeah, because she thinks about it just as much as he does, it maybe even more than he does, uh-huh, or at least what we're told. Because she goes into detail of the story about once when they were on vacation, she saw a naval officer in the courtyard of the hotel, and she thought in that moment, she would give up him, Bill, their daughter, Helena, everything that they built together for one night with that guy, which is crazy. That's for one night with one random stranger that you saw, you didn't even talk to them. Nope. You just saw them, yeah. But she debated, she was gonna leave, she was gonna go out there. And how does Bill react to this? He's chill, he seems pretty chill, he seems chill, he seems chill, but also you can kind of see his soul leave his body, um, but he's kind of just accepts it.

SPEAKER_03 28:01

Um up until this point, we have to assume that he has not been unfaithful, right? We have to assume that rather, like, yeah, sure, he was flirting with some models right now. Oh, Bill, you're talking about Bill. Bill, yeah. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Um, he doesn't seem the type during at this point of the story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Until that moment with that bomb drop. Um, because you can kind of just see the look on his face, like, oh, my marriage is ruined because my wife thinks about other dudes a lot. A lot. Um, because nothing ruins a marriage more than smoking weed and a guy in a sailor outfit.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

That's a worse combo. Right. You better stay away. No smoking doobies with Donald Duck, okay? Did you just make the Donald Duck noise? Um, he'll get it wasn't that good, Juan. Was it just that it was unexpected? Yeah. Okay, well, let's get in the next part where Bill starts spiraling. So he gets a call right after this bomb's dropped. It is still the same night. He gets a call that one of his patients that he's been spending a lot of time with passwords. Yep. Right. Um, so he goes out to go to go meet this patient, and he's walking around, and there's a lot of like really long, slow shots of him walking through the city from this point on. Um, so I don't have to bring it up every single time. Right. Um, but I do like that they have these shots where it looks like um like there's like the green screen going on in the background, like how they used to shoot cars driving uh with the screen in the background. There's a lot of there's a couple of those that really stand out, but I'm like, it didn't take me out.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

But it also is like really ominous and just like eerie to see him walking through New York City, which wasn't actually in New York City, yeah. It was probably Universal.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

No, it wasn't in America. Oh, right. Stanley Kubrick didn't shoot in America because he felt safer in the UK.

SPEAKER_03 30:09

Oh, right, right. I knew that. Yeah. Conspiracies. So either way, um it's very ominous, is it's very eerie, and is like, okay, what's gonna happen right now?

SPEAKER_00 30:20

So what happens is he gets to the patient's house, um, Bill comforts the daughter of the patient, and then she confesses her love to him. Yeah, which was weird, and terrible timing.

SPEAKER_03 30:34

Horrible timing, and her fiance is on the way. Yeah, he could walk in at any moment, and then he and then first of all, I I felt a little off about this scene because I'm like, who is this lady? Who is this lady?

SPEAKER_00 30:53

And she loves him and fucking kisses him, and he's like, No thanks, hold it right there, but he doesn't stop it because she's got a fiance or anything, he doesn't stop it because he's married, he stops it because they don't know each other.

SPEAKER_03 31:12

Yeah. That's the only reason he stops that one. And how is she in love with him so much?

SPEAKER_00 31:16

I think it's just the um um evacuation from seeing him and time and time again. It's like when the like never mind, I'm not gonna say what I was gonna say. I wanna know now. Um, it's like when when you have a job and you work with someone that you wouldn't necessarily think is like your type or attractive or anything, uh-huh. You work with them so much that you just kind of become flirty with each other. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, like uh stop waking, it's bad timing, dude. Um what's that called though? Um, it's like when you're near someone so much, it just like happens. Uh you know what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_03 31:55

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Like how they say it's really impossible to work in restaurants when you're like a teenager or a young, like mid-20s, because everyone's fucking. Even the people you're like, how's that dude getting with that chick? And you're like, because they are here all the time. They both do overtime together.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

I get it. Yeah, it's he was there, yeah. That's why she's feeling this way. Um, so he leaves though. We're gonna we're gonna we're gonna speed up a little bit here. Let's do it. Um, and he runs into a prostitute on the street because he doesn't go home yet.

SPEAKER_03 32:27

And she's the girl from hocus pocus. I was gonna say that, dude.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

I was like, I was like, wait a second.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

Am I gonna see her tits right now? No, I got so excited. The girl from hocus pocus, dude.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Yeah, no, like I get it. I was like, she's a hooker, they're going to her it doesn't matter if she lights the black flame candle or not.

SPEAKER_03 32:46

Are we going to see them or not?

SPEAKER_00 32:48

No, and we didn't, no, but um, so her name's Domino, she invites him in. They are like on the verge of getting it on. And his wife, Alice, calls because he got a cell phone in the 90s. He had a doctor, he's witched.

SPEAKER_03 33:04

He's a doctor, he's rich, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Um, and he's like, No, sorry, there we're still waiting for more people to come back for the patient that died. And she just is like, cool. She's still awake, by the way. Yeah, what time is it? What fucking time is it?

SPEAKER_03 33:16

Even after the conversation they just had, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

She is just like She's high, uh huh, probably drunk, uh-huh, and pissed off her husband. And smoking a sig. And now she's smoking a cig in the kitchen with a TV on, yeah, and doing like a crossword or some shit. Like, and she's like, I'm wide awake, I'm wide awake. I'm gonna go to bed, so and it's not even just because he gets home later at like 5 a.m.

SPEAKER_03 33:43

At the beginning of the movie, they said, uh, we don't know when we'll be back, but no later than one. So I'm assuming it was one.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

One midnight, one-ish. Yeah. Maybe earlier because he was like, uh, I just saved this chick's life, and now we should probably go home.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

Yeah, the timing of this movie is a little off.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

I don't because that could have been hours, it could have been minutes.

SPEAKER_03 34:06

I mean, maybe they left pretty qu maybe they left a party early and it's like 10 o'clock. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Yeah, and that's why they decided to smoke weed. Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

Because they didn't party, they didn't get to party.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Anyways, um, so they're so he leaves, Domino. They don't kiss, they don't touch, they don't do anything really.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

Yeah, she's like, Do you have to go? And he's like, Yeah, I think.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

But nice guy Bill pays her. Pays her anyways, and leaves, and she's touched, not by him, uh, but by the by the gesture, by the gesture. Um, so every situation though is like teasing infidelity, right? Um, but Bill never fully commits, right? So he just kind of hovers around the bad decisions, um, like when you put a penny in the thing back in the 90s and it just keeps going and going and going, and then you snatch it out because you're like, uh-uh. I'm gonna lose it. I'm gonna save it. Um, but that's like his hobby is making almost bad decisions. Um so like the themes here are like jealousy versus action. Since Alice imagined something, Bill's now considering everything because she imagined it. Gonna say what she imagined and what she confessed to pretty bad.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

But he's made already worse decisions than she did.

SPEAKER_03 35:18

I mean, so like as he's dwelling on her being with that guy, he's thinking about him thinking about the sailor sleeping with his wife and like having those images in his head of his wife. Yeah. And the sailor.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Uh what?

SPEAKER_03 35:38

The sailor doing it.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Um, but Bill keeps going after almost cheating several times. Um, he keeps going down. He's not ready to go home yet because he's obviously spiraling. And he remembers that he ran into his old friend Nick Nightingale earlier in the day at the party and found out that he's playing at this club. Yeah, jazz bar. Um, so he goes and orders a beer 30 seconds before they stop playing for the night. Yeah. So then Nick and him hang out, they start chatting, and Nick starts telling him about these super secret parties that he gets to play where he's blindfolded and doesn't know what's going on. But one time, they didn't tie the blindfold on very well. Seems fake. Um, so he could see everything that was going on. There's like all these beautiful women women you've never seen doing things you've never done. Um, but Bill being super emotionally stable um decides to pry out more information. Um, and he learns that he needs to be dressed in a suit, a tux, a cloak with a cloak, with a hood, and a mask to cover his face. And he needs a password. What was the password? Fidelio. What does that mean? Fidelity, which is the opposite of what he's fucking doing in this movie. Infidelity. Infidelity. Um, so in his super emotionally stable state, he decides to go to this party. So he gets a costume shop or gets to a costume shop, flashes his badge again. I'm a doctor, I need a costume. And the guy's like, Oh yeah, you need a costume. Um, this guy, also a creep.

SPEAKER_03 37:24

Yeah, he finds his daughter in the room sleeping with two clients of his, I guess. And he's like mad, gonna call cops, and then he finishes the transaction with Bill.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Bill.

SPEAKER_03 37:36

And he's like, We'll deal with it, we'll deal with it later.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Yeah, so then Bill takes a taxi to this house in the middle of nowhere. Just want to point out, just want to point out, he does, in fact, pay for his taxi. He gives him money. Every every time he gives the taxi driver money. That doesn't happen in a lot of movies. That's a cliche breaker right there. Ooh. Cliche breaker, Tom Cruise, Stanley Kubrick, they pay for their taxis in this movie. Good on you, Stanley Kubrick. Good on you. Um, so he gets to this massive mansion, he gives the password, he gets inside, um, everyone's masked, and there's like a ritual going on where everyone's in these cloaks and they're all standing in this big circle, and there's these naked women in the circle surrounding like a priest-like feature.

SPEAKER_03 38:22

While they're like chanting and like doing this ritual style.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Yeah, and then he they send the women off with the random people, and that's when the orgy starts. Everyone's got masks on, right? And like most of them have nothing else on except the mask. Right. But during this point, um, it's clear that Bill doesn't belong. Everyone's kind of they're clocked in immediately. Yeah, which is strange because you're masked and cloaked. But the I think there was there's that one guy at the top who like makes eye contact with him. I think that's his patient.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

I saw another conspiracy theory. Uh-huh. That, or not not necessarily a conspiracy theory, but a theory that everyone had like handmade artistic style masks that would cost thousands of dollars. And his was a costume mask. And his was clearly a costume mask, which is how he could have been clocked in the first place. True. They also tell him how he was clocked as soon as he got there, yeah, which was he came in a taxi, he showed up in a taxi, and the receipt for his shit was in a shit was in his pocket.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:31

In his jacket pocket.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 39:34

Dummy.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Dummy head. Are you dumb or stupid? Um an idiot sandwich. Um, so yeah, it's clear he doesn't belong, and he's basically a tourist who's wandering into like the wrong, the wrong rooms at this point, and he's walking through all these rooms seeing all this inter-gratuitous sex scene here. Um, stop. Um but it's clear at this point this man really said, My wife had a dirty fantasy, and he responded to this fantasy by joining an Illuminati after party. Right. Because it's I mean he didn't join, he joined the party. He joined the party, the Illuminati after party, yeah. Okay. Um, so Bill gets exposed during this uh because he didn't listen to the one naked lady that walked up to him and said, You don't belong, you should leave. He decided, nah, fuck that, I'm not leaving. He's like, I don't want to leave. Let me see your face, and she's like, No. Oh, yeah. Who the fuck are you?

SPEAKER_03 40:32

Yeah, by the way. Uh he's like grabbing her mask, she's like, Stop it, stop it, stop it right now.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

Um, so he gets brought back into the chambers where the the ritual was going on.

SPEAKER_03 40:45

Everyone's waiting for him. Almost like they weren't just banging in like 40 different they brought just the people that weren't banging.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

They're like, Oh, you're waiting. Come come. Come on, come on. Oh, are you next? Look, okay, you can't save your spot in line. You can stay, you're next. Um, when you're done here, get in this room. Yeah, um, so they tell him to take his mask off, and everyone's like, Oh, Tom Cruise. Oh, my God, Tom Cruise. Oh my god, I loved you in risky business. It's a different kind of risky business. Um, so they tell him that he's gonna get punished for breaking into this party until that one masked lady, naked lady, don't really try to help him, standing up top on the like second or third floor. I object. She wants, she's offering to redeem him by offering herself as like a sacrifice. Um, and he's kicked out with one warning: don't ask questions. Mm-hmm. Then he goes home.

SPEAKER_03 41:46

And oh, and also don't talk about what you saw here.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

Don't ask questions, don't bring it up. None of this happened. So he goes home. Um, he gets home, crawls into bed, but that's when Alice wakes up and starts telling him about this dream she was having, that he was in a position that everyone was making fun of him and all this stuff, and then then she was just banging a bunch of dudes and masks all around him, and you're like, was she at this fucking party, dude? I know.

SPEAKER_03 42:21

You would think that, like, like she was home the whole time, though. And she definitely wasn't at the party. It it has to be a coincidence to lean into the guilt factor of what um Bill just went through, I think. But a little too coincidental, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

But then he wakes up the next day. Right. Um, and he he's trying to get it out of his head. He's got to return his costume, though. Um, but he decides he's wants to check in on his good friend Nick Nightingale, who was the guy from the piano bar. He's missing.

SPEAKER_03 43:03

Gone.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

No one knows where he is. Gone like Alan Cummings, who plays the receptionist at the hotel.

SPEAKER_03 43:10

I was so taken aback by that.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

I was like so young, but he is also trying to fuck Tom Cruise in that scene. Definitely. Like he's in it, he's hitting on him hard. And then since he got denied, he became floop. Right. So that's the path you take. The arc is get turned down by Tom Cruise, don't join Scientology, become floop. Become floop. Can you do the F thing that I can't do it? Floop's fooglies, dude. Um, so then he um he finds out that Domino's missing as well. He goes back to Domino's house.

SPEAKER_01 43:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

Um, she's missing, um, and her roommate and Tom Cruise are about to hook up.

SPEAKER_03 43:57

Yeah, she's like, ooh, yeah, you are. Hot.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Um, but she stops it because Domino had a health scare. She got a positive test back for HIV.

SPEAKER_03 44:13

So it's clearly Domino didn't tell her roommate exactly what happened because she thinks that they slept with Domino.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

Yeah, which is why they don't sleep together. So again, almost cheating on your wife, Tom Cruise. He was ready. He was ready. He was ready.

SPEAKER_03 44:31

He was about ready to pull it out.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

Yeah. Um, and then he starts asking questions, not with her, with someone just in general, to himself, I guess, about the masked woman from the night before. And he ends up back at the the mansion, and some guys come rolling down the driveway and just hand him a note that says, quit it. Uh knock it off.

SPEAKER_03 44:50

He took a screenshot of that note, actually. Please tell us. Give up your inquiries, which are completely useless, and consider these words a second warning. We hope for your own good that this will be sufficient.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

It's not. He's still asking questions. So now he's getting followed. Because it's been an entire day of doing all this. Right. He returns the costume. The guy that owns the costume shop and his daughter is now pimping out his daughter. He's pimping out his daughter now. Yeah, they work something out, is what he said. But he also finds out that the mask is not in his bag. It's missing. Bump, bump, bum.

SPEAKER_03 45:35

He's like, all right, put it on my tab.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

Put it on my doctor. I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor. Put it on my tab. Um, so he's walking back around the city, get more ominous shots of the city, and he's being followed. Um, and he ducks into this diner and he's reading the newspaper, and that's when he finds out that a young ex like beauty queen died from an overdose. And who is it?

SPEAKER_03 46:02

Amanda.

SPEAKER_00 46:03

Mandy.

SPEAKER_03 46:04

Oh, we never said her name at the beginning. No, it's okay. The girl from the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

The girl at the beginning who had the overdose with her boobies out. Yeah. She died.

SPEAKER_03 46:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

And then he goes to see her at the morgue. We're gonna speed through this because it's not, it's like important for a sentence. Yeah. And the flashing of the badge. He flashes his badge at the morgue. Um, so yeah, he goes to the hospital, flashes his badge, goes down to the morgue, sees her body, and starts putting together that she might have been the masked woman from the night before. And now she's dead. And he starts freaking out. So, what does he do? He goes to see Victor, his patient from earlier in the movie. And basically, Victor goes, I know you were at that fucking party yesterday. I was there too. Nice. We didn't plan that. Oh yeah. Knuckles. Um, stop. Um, he's winking again. If I didn't put the sound effects in, I have to go through and find every time that you winked now.

SPEAKER_03 47:03

That would be amazing.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

It's gonna suck. We have to release this in two days. It'll be amazing, though.

SPEAKER_03 47:11

Either way.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

So, anyways, there Ziegler's basically like, I know you were there, I know you were asking questions. Your friend Nick, he's fine. Yeah, consider this your third warning. Um, he says, just forget everything. Everything that happened to you was staged, it was all fake. It was just to scare you because you weren't supposed to be there. Uh-huh. You don't belong, you're not rich enough or tall enough, and you just gotta get over it, man. Your friend Nick's back home in Seattle. Yeah, go home and keep on keeping on. And then he goes home. He's kind of freaked out because his friend, his friend Victor, um didn't sound too happy about it.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

He wasn't like, it's all good, pal. Yeah, just forget about it. He was like, forget about it.

SPEAKER_03 48:00

But he's like doing everything to like say that it was all fake and don't worry about it, but then he also has that demeanor that he is not being truthful. And he's also being very vague about Mandy when he asks about Mandy ignorance.

SPEAKER_00 48:19

She had a drug problem, dude. Um, so now the tension in the scene is basically like, was the danger real or was it just a really elaborate, rich person like scare tactic? Um, because you know, nothing says, don't worry about it, like a billionaire explaining a secret cult. Don't worry about it. That you like he is describing this cult to you while playing pool in his room, you know. Um, so Bill goes home. He goes to he goes straight to his room, and what does he see on the on the pillow? The mask. The mask and Alice sleeping next to you.

SPEAKER_03 48:56

And he somebody somebody put it there.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Was it his house? Was it Alice? I don't know. But he grabs the mask, Alice turns over and he starts bawling. He's I'll tell you everything. So they tell every that he tells everything. Um, and instead of exploding, she just listens. Um and then laughs slash cries in a way that makes you think like they're not okay. Like the two of them together are not okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:24

Uh, and then the next morning they decide to take their daughter Christmas shopping, like nothing happened. Um and then Alice delivers the most intense final line of a movie, and it's like there's one thing that we need to do as soon as possible. And he says, What is it? And she says, and then it cuts to black. Um, but during the scene, we brought it up, there's two guys in trench coats. When Helena runs off to go look at toys, and they're having this exchange about fucking um, those two guys come together and like separate her completely from from Bill.

SPEAKER_03 50:05

Yeah, so like they Helena runs in between the parents, looks at them, they give her a little wave, which looks clearly to me like a wave goodbye, but almost like for a loss of words type of goodbye. Like, I can't believe I'm doing this type of thing. Uh-huh. But it's not explained what's going on here. But the girl, the little girl walks away with those two guys who were the security guards at the party at the party. At the party. So what the fuck is that? We will never know because we never got a cubic cut. There is no explanation to this part. It's all hearsay. It's all maybe they just have conspiracy.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

They just use the same extras.

SPEAKER_03 50:54

I don't know. But the little girl walks away with these two men whom they don't know. Whom wink and as far as we know, they never saw her again.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

Yeah. And what's this movie about? Uh, it's about what people do. Like it's not about what people do, I should say. Uh it's about what they think, what they fear, and what they keep inside. Because after all the psychological warfare of this entire movie, uh the moral of the story might be that communication is good as long as you're not oversharing your deep dark fantasies. Right. Um I do have some quick hits like I did for the last one, little little things. Sure. Um so do you think like there's a there's a difference between fantasy and reality that are kind of pushed onto Alice and Bill? Where Alice is fantasy and Bill is reality. Um, do you think there's like a a divide between them where they are portraying these two themes of the movie? Um is sexual jealousy um used as psychological horror in this movie? Because his problem is that he's obviously jealous of a fantasy she's having. Um, and then does this movie play like an anxiety dream? Or do you think everything in this movie happened the way that we saw it happen?

SPEAKER_03 52:31

Um, I think it happened. I think it was more like a well, she's gonna think about other men. I'm gonna do what I want. I'm gonna do whatever I want. Yeah. But he can't do it. Or something happens and he physically can't do it. Yeah. You know? Um yeah, I mean I thought this movie was pretty good. I just wish that they du d dived deeper into like the cult aspect or like what what did happen in that final scene. Sure, it's fucked up uh you know, like the conspiracies about what happened. But I think that it would have made things a little more interesting to get explanation. Is he being is he being recruited to this cult now that he knows what's going on in there? Is that why he gave up his daughter? Is was he actually in danger? Because this whole movie you feel like he is, and then the doc the the patient, uh Victor, is like no, it's all fake. You're good. You're good. Yeah, shut up, you're good. And so it's like, what like I just wanted more explanation on that. But I get it. This movie's more about the infidelity message with his wife and and them uh faking it, yeah, and that rich people are scary, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:21

Which is again, we're not really touching on the conspiracies. If you want us to talk about the conspiracies of this movie, we can do a bonus episode, let us know in the comments. Maybe we will, yeah. But there's a lot of the things about this movie that like are weird and kind of creepy, and like it all stems back to did Kubrick make this movie to expose something? Did he die as a result of that, or just because he had a heart attack in his sleep four days before the movie released? Right, or was it four days after they showed the cut to everyone? They showed the final cut to Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, um, Stanley Kubrick's family, basically, and then all the execs. Right. Um, and then four days later he died. Yeah. But the day before he called Nicole Kidman and was like, hey, there's some shit. Yeah. And then he died the next day. Um so there's a lot of things about it. So was he exposing something? Was he start trying to say something? Was there a message? I don't know. People also say that he faked the moon landing. You know what I mean? And that there's secret words and codes and phrases and like imagery throughout all his movies that say that he did fake the moon landing.

SPEAKER_03 55:34

There's a lot of conspiracy behind Kubrick himself.

SPEAKER_00 55:37

Yeah, but we didn't have the technology to fake the moon landing. We had the technology to go to the moon. Why haven't we been back to the moon? Money. Uh, there's no capitalist reason for us to go back to the moon. Um, that's why. Um, but yeah, dude, I don't know. This movie, I don't know. You know what I mean? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:56

I'm gonna just say but I wasn't like bored watching it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 56:00

Like, no, I I I'm ready to give my review and my rating right now, right?

SPEAKER_03 56:05

I'll do it too.

SPEAKER_00 56:05

Yeah, at the same time. I'll do it too. Same time.

SPEAKER_03 56:08

I wonder if we did at the same time what we would get, because sometimes I feel like we sway each other one way or the other.

SPEAKER_00 56:13

So why don't we say what our out of out of 10 score is at the same time?

SPEAKER_03 56:18

Three, two, one, two.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

Yeah, I give it an eight point five. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:28

Yeah. Um, but now we can give our thoughts and reviews, and maybe we sway each other and we can prove it in real time. And maybe we do this that way from now on. We don't know. Yeah. Um, but let me tell you what I wrote for for this review. Okay. Okay. So on um Letterboxd, I gave it four stars out of five. 8.5 seems pretty reasonable. Um, a film with the only thing thicker than the atmospheric fog are the men's eyebrows. Everyone's eyebrows in this movie are so fucking bushy, it was hard to not see. Um, four-inch shoelifts and girls can be horny too, getting them steps in. Uh, and Scientology initiation rituals. Um, so yes, I tried to make it funny on Letterboxd, but this is what I'm gonna say. Um, the movie's beautiful, it's really nice to look at. The pacing is pretty, pretty great. It slows down when it needs to slow down, it picks up when it needs to pick up. There are a lot of questions I have after watching this movie, but putting that aside, I think it was a really great movie. Um, really diving into it and talking about it, um, and even thinking about it ever since I said 8.5 right now, I might drop it to an eight. Um, just because the more that I think about the amount of times that we had a little side quest that had nothing to do with the eyes wide shut aspect of the movie, like the rituals and the masks and everything. Um the eyes were just wide. Yeah. Um, but like I didn't want the whole costume shop scene. Like, it's creepy, it's gross, it's weird, I don't like it. Um, was it a good comedic moment at first? Yes, but then when you realize that girl's 16, not funny anymore.

SPEAKER_03 58:12

Yeah. And also the fact where you when he goes back and he's like, we made a deal, we worked things out, and now he's pimping out his daughter. No, that's it, it it would have made more sense, like if we found out that the shop owner was a part of the same cult that's running the whole city, but it doesn't seem like he is.

SPEAKER_00 58:36

Um, but then also the the scenes, the second scene with uh with the domino's roommate, unnecessary. Um, like completely. I get that he's trying to trace the steps and everything to make make that point work.

SPEAKER_03 58:52

Um the only thing that makes it necessary is the fact that we find out that she has HIV and he almost control inside his head.

SPEAKER_00 59:03

Um, but the last thing I want to say, and then we'll let you go, is you're gonna let me go? Like tell your I'm gonna let you go. Um what do you mean? Don't wink right now. Don't wink right now. Um watching this movie in 2026 probably hits a little less than it did in 1999. It was probably really shocking when it came out. I've only heard that it was really shocking. I've heard that it opened a lot of people's eyes, made people ask a lot of questions. But with the amount of shit going on in our world today, this cultist party thing that was going on doesn't shock anybody anymore. We've been desensitized. We're so desensitized to it. So, that being said, I'm dropping mine to an eight and I'm gonna leave it there. Okay, because my initial thoughts 8.5, really great movie. Some things, though, after going through the whole thing, just don't hit. They probably would hit a lot harder in the 90s, early 2000s. Sure. I am happy that I did not watch this movie until now. Right. Because I'm desensitized. Thanks, world. Thanks, world. I thought you were gonna wink right then.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:15

So I I really did like this movie a lot as well. But like I said before, I wish they dived deeper into the actual plot of this movie rather than tiptoeing around this sex cult elite thing, and then having like the initial story of the movie is don't cheat on your spouse. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it's like there are things don't even think about there are things that have been changed for this movie, in this movie, things that we don't really know what was originally in that movie, and I've just found out too recently that things have been changed for this movie to be played in the US. Yeah. To avoid that NC17 rating. So I don't know if that's just with the sex or if that's other things too that would have made it too graphic for people at that time in the 90s. Um, my rating is a 7.5. I'm gonna stay there. Um, I also wish Nicole Kidman had a better role role in this movie. Because her role right now is to send him on this journey to to be unfaithful, and then at the end, almost seems like she's a part of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:48

Yeah, no, I see that. And I thought that too, which is why I'm sticking with an eight. Yeah. Is because she seems in on it somehow, uh-huh. But also, is that his anxiety or is it real life?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:58

Yeah, right. So it's confusing, right? Good movie overall. I also just want to leave some room for future movies, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:08

Well, we're not making like a slot list, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:10

I get it. We are there's tons of movies. I know, but you still have to like average it, you know, like yeah. I use other movies to place a movie that I'm not sure what to rate it. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:21

I get that. I get that for sure, for sure. And maybe in a month or so we go back and re revisit our list and adjust some things here or there and see where we're sitting. Yeah. But you know what we gotta do now?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:32

Spin the wheel.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:33

We gotta spin the wheel.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:34

Let's spin that wheel, baby. Where are we landing? Where are you thinking? Where are you thinking?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:38

Uh 1994. Almost 898. 2003.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:42

2003.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:46

What movies came out in 2003?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:48

Um movies came out in 2003, I'm not even sure. I think maybe The Lord of the Rings, Return of the King came out.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:58

Return of the King came out. Yep. That's number one on the list on IE. Is it really? Yeah. Um, I'm gonna say right now, we love Lord of the Rings, by the way. If you're new to this show, if you're new, if you're new, um, but maybe we shouldn't do Lord of the Rings, Return of the King, because we haven't done the other two. Right. Pirates of the Caribbean, the Black Pearl, Curse of the Black Pearl. Solid. I haven't seen that one in a minute. Um Kill Bill Volume 1. Ooh. Seen it? Seen it? Uh Mystic River. Have no idea. I've never seen it. Nope. Uh How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. Have I seen it? Maybe. I I feel like a lot of those types of movies you watch with your mom or sister. Yeah. So maybe, I don't know. Finding Nemo. Oh, definitely seen it. Definitely seen it. Love Actually, never seen it.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:49

Never seen it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:50

I have no intention on watching it, so I really hope we find something else. Um, holes, great movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:59

Dig it. Dig it up.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:02

Um, School of Rock. Ooh, classic. But the legend of the rent. Classic way fans do. Uh, The Italian job. Classic as well. Uh, The Last Samurai. Classic as well. I think I I think I saw that movie a lot as a kid.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:23

I'm pretty sure. I know I did actually. Right on DVD. Old school. Classic? I feel like it's how we developed a lot of our humor.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

It would be funny if we didn't see School of Rock or Old School, so we could pick two school movies.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:38

But we've seen both of them. Like stay on a theme? Yeah, stay on a theme. Yeah. Uh Big Fish. Have you seen that? Tim Burton, uh, Elwyn McGregor. I have not. Man, we gotta start doing like a I've seen it, you haven't, or you've seen it, I haven't kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:52

Put it down in the comments if you want us to do a little side special series of.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:57

We've seen a lot of these fucking movies in 2003. Matrix Reloaded. Yes. Daredevil. Yes. Underworld. Yes. Hulk. Yes. Too fast, too Furious. Yes. X2, X-Men United. Yes. Bruce Almighty. Yes. Terminator 3, Rise of the Machine. Yes. Scary Movie 3. Yes. Secondhand Lions. No. Freaky Friday. Yes. Sea Biscuit. Yes. Lore Croft, Tomb Raider. Yes. Final Destination 2. Yes. Uh Cheaper by the Dozen. Yes. Anger Management. Yes. So we've seen a lot of these movies. Um I did skip over one that I know I haven't seen, so I want to see if you've seen it. Uh, Master and Commander, the Far Side of the World. No. I've not seen it either. Okay, what's it about? Um Napoleonic Wars. Uh, British captain pushes his ship and crew to their limits in pursuit of a formidable French war vessel around South America. Looks like pirates with Russell Crows in it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:57

Pirate theme?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:58

I mean

SPEAKER_03 1:06:00

Pirate theme. Should we do pirates? So put it down in the comments if you want us to do pirate themes.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:06

That sounds fun. Um Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl. Yeah. Yeah, tune in next week. That's what we're gonna fucking watch. Mainly because it's easy to get. I think I have it on DVD. I have it probably everywhere. It's on Disney Plus, it's on Netflix. Um got you know, it's everywhere, dude. It's Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah, I haven't seen that movie in a while.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:33

Um I think I rewatched all of them last year. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:36

Um I think I watched the second one because I I don't know why I would have skipped the first one.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:44

I don't know why you would either.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:46

Maybe because I was getting confused with the second one and the third ones. There's five of them, isn't there? Yeah. I don't think I've seen the fifth one. The fifth one is What's His Face isn't in it? Orlando Bloom? That's Ding. Is that he's not in this one. In the fifth one.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:03

I don't think so. It's his son. Stupid.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:07

Okay. Uh so yeah, we're gonna watch Pires of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl, next week on the podcast. Yeah. So tune in. Wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it be Apple or Spotify, um, shout out, we were on the homepage of Apple. Uh, because we have video on Apple Podcasts now, which is we sure do, which is really cool, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:27

If you're on Apple Podcasts, that's a really cool feature.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:30

Um, it's seamless whether you watch the video or don't watch the video, which is really cool. So if you missed out, you could have seen any of the winks that Juan did in the entire episode. Don't fuck. Um, you could have done it. Uh, you could have seen any of the winks uh when you were on the stop. Did you do it? Shit. I did. I'm making my job a lot harder. Um, and then if you um, you know, are feeling up to it, you can go over to YouTube at BJ in the morning podcast. Where you can watch all the videos. We have the video there too. We're doing a little bit more clips, a little more reels. We have cool little short form content coming your way. Um, and then over on Instagram, you can find us at BJ in the morning underscore. Underscore. Because some random account has BJ in the morning podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:17

Zero posts, zero posts, zero followers, zero followers, zero follows. What a waste.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:22

Um, so we're in a fight. We should message Instagram and say give me that. Give us this domain. Um, and then you can find us. We are posting on TikTok again. I don't really love TikTok, but hey, um, we're there. Yeah. At BJ in the morning podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:40

Or underscore. I don't remember. I think you said you changed it. Maybe. BJ in the Morning Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:45

But thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of BJ in the Morning. We'll be back next week for Pirates of the Caribbean. Yep. Let me take that back. Let me do it more time. We'll be back next week with Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl for 2003 for nostalgia check coming at you from BJ in the morning. That didn't sound good. I'm one. Made sense. I'm Brendan. And we'll talk to you next time. You fucking winked again, man.