The eyes don't have it

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman get to grips with the script, the action and each other in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut filmoftheweek Eyes Wide Shut (18) Eyes Wide Shut opens with Nicole Kidman tugging off a black dress and standing butt-naked with her back to the camera. It closes with her inviting Tom Cruise to "f***" her. Inside reclines a film by turns exotic, embarrassing and exasperating; the dying, reflexive kick of one of the century's great directors; a picture that gropes for greatness and comes up short. Eyes Wide Shut is constantly fascinating. Just not always for the right reasons.

Content aside, question marks remain over the film's pedigree. The official line has it that Stanley Kubrick finished the final edit days before his death and in doing so indirectly peddles the romantic notion that the creator of masterworks such as Paths of Glory, Dr Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange delivered this, his last, crowning opus to Warner executives, then settled back to die: his life's work complete, nothing more to say. But Eyes Wide Shut arrives riddled with evidence to the contrary. The way it noses through a fitful two- and-three-quarter-hours is suggestive of a rough-cut, a work in progress. The dialogue is often undigested, the shot breakdown workmanlike, and the style an eccentric salad of jarring tones.

Strangest of all is that one of the film's pivotal roles (the masked hooker who "redeems'' Cruise's trespassing doctor) is actually split between two actresses (Julienne Davis and Abigail Good) and the joins are there for all to see.

As a result, you find yourself watching Kubrick's picture as one might watch a shaky play, with one eye on the action and the other on what you perceive (or think you perceive) to be the chaos in the wings. Cruise and Kidman play a wealthy New York couple whose idyllic marriage fissures when the missus confesses to fancying a sailor. Plagued by nightmares, Cruise loses himself on the mean streets of Manhattan and finally gatecrashes a masonic gathering where the women go topless and the band plays a cheesy-listening version of Strangers in the Night.

In between, we get a classy prostitute who isn't in it for the money and a sleazy shopkeeper who pimps his own daughter. A piano score chimes in to herald the dramatic moments, while vocal flashbacks needlessly jog the memory of what's gone before. The much- hyped orgy scene is humdrum soft-core porn.

Yet all through this turgid melodrama lie traces of Kubrick magic. The mood at times is dark and subversive - hinting at a genuine danger in the characters' subconscious.

In its finer moments, Eyes Wide Shut can be seen as archetypal Kubrick - a rigorous examination of the human condition. But at its worst it is slack, slow, outmoded, and unintentionally camp.

So Eyes Wide Shut comes to rest with one last expletive, one last looming close-up, and no-one knows for sure why it ended up the way it did. Perhaps Kubrick never intended it to be this way; perhaps his death allowed his work to be wrested away half-done by an eager studio. Perhaps this film was never meant to be finished, a project to be repruned and repolished and never even exhibited to the outside world. Or perhaps Eyes Wide Shut really is the best its maker could manage.

Xan Brooks Varsity Blues (15) Varsity Blues offers a dispiriting picture of how the win-at-all-costs mentality can disfigure high school students' lives. The coach of the West Canaan Coyotes (Jon Voight) is a martinet who demands that his team does exactly what he says. He is a racist, a bully and a disciplinarian. He doesn't have an ounce of imagination but he is still able to grind out victory after victory.

Director Brian Robbins shows just how distorted values have become at West Canaan High School. Successful athletes are treated like young gods in their small Texas community, but as soon as they slip up or get injured, they're forgotten about.

Jonathan Moxon (Dawson's Creek star James Van Der Beek) is the second-choice quarterback. When he is drafted into the team, he acts as a sort of Fletcher Christian to Jon Voight's Captain Bligh, stirring up a mutiny against the tyrannical coach.

Admittedly, Varsity Blues ends up endorsing the very values it seems to be attacking. Even if his approach is different, Moxon wants to win as much as his coach and he engineers the usual, ludicrous final quarter comeback in the key game.

Nevertheless, there is an irreverence here which you don't often find in American sports movies. Robbins is prepared to expose the hypocrisy, exploitation and sheer bad faith that go along with the creation of a successful all-American high school football team and for that, if nothing else, he should be applauded.

Geoffrey MacNabb South Park (18) Many wondered whether the South Park concept, never a particularly rich one, would be cruelly exposed over a 90-minute movie. "Bigger, Longer, Uncut", jubilantly allays their fears.

This is an angry, anarchic, hilarious movie: a broadside against the censors, a skilful musical pastiche and a diplomatic disaster for the United States. It describes what happens when the mothers of South Park, Colorado, unite to prevent their foul-mouthed children seeing a Canadian movie called Asses of Fire. "That movie has warped my fragile little mind," says Cartman.

Kyle's mum believes it. "Blame Canada!" sing the clueless mothers, as they persuade America to wage war on its northern neighbour.

The movie fires its loose cannon at some thoroughly deserving subjects and some which are less so. But it's always funny, it shows us a world closer to our own than most Hollywood fare, and it positively fizzes with creative energy.

Brian Logan The Italian Job (PG)

THE sight of those Minis-Coopers whizzing around Turin has been treated with lazy affection by those of us who've seen this film on TV countless times. The Italian Job's 30th anniversary re-release, however, prompts a reassessment.

Three decades on, the comedy-caper has started to fade around the edges. It is wonderfully shot by ace cameraman Douglas Slocombe and boasts some astonishing stunt driving. Forget about the cars, though and the film doesn't seem so appealing after all.

The most dismaying aspect is the xenophobia which underpins it. The criminals - led by Michael Caine - are patriots in the John Bull mould. When they steal bullion in Turin, they're not merely acting out of greed. They are trying to put one over on the Italians. (The crime takes place as England are playing Italy at football.) It seems extraordinary now that a character like Noel Coward's camp super- villain Mr Bridger, an arch-nationalist who controls a criminal empire from behind bars, should be treated with such affection. Coward may have been a venerable and very distinguished figure, but the character he plays is as much a fascist as a folk hero.

Perhaps it's time that Caine and the gang should be allowed to topple into oblivion.

Geoffrey MacNabb

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