did i actually enjoy risky business?

holy shit. i think i actually really enjoyed RISKY BUSINESS. i was going to slap it into a recent watching blog entry but i realized that it was way too interesting to NOT write about.

risky business is of course, tom cruise's breakout role. he stars as a straight laced teen caught up in a frenzy of sex and hijinks when he gets a call girl (with heart of gold) and ends running a brothel in his house to pay for repairs to his father's porsche he incurred whilst trying to get a crystal egg back from said call girl with heart of gold. (its an 80s comedy, of course its plot is ridiculously convoluted). sunglasses, bob seger, booger from the nerds movies, rebecca demornay's breastsm, and balki from perfect strangers all costar.

this wasnt a good movie. not by any means. it was a seminal 80s film though. the term seminal 80s film means that good taste does not apply. these films are supposed to be cheesy and have generally awful acting but should be at least enjoyable to watch (kelly lebrock in weird science was robotic even for a robot!). its like the rest of the world in the 1980s said to the US, 'dont worry about acting well, we will take it from here.' (comedy at least).

why did i enjoy risky business? i think it comes down to two things:

- curtis 'booger' armstrong
- the 'hey! turning my house into a brothel is totally making money' montage sequence
- rebecca demornay sex scenes, which i will sub-break down into the two

sex scene 1 - she enters the house
awesome things:
- the wind machine blown curtains (seriously, was that a tornado going on?)
- the fact that if not for tom cruise, it could very well be the red shoe diaries

sex scene 2 - the subway fuck scene
awesome things
- was that in the air tonight by phil collins that set the mood?
- seriously, is that a song about a child drowning another child to get hot young people fucking?

in each scene, there is ever present moaning saxophone which was perhaps the #1 most aphrodisiac between the years of 1978 and 1991. when i was being conceived i can only hope that there was a live saxophone player playing passionate whole notes in the background.

i am continually amazing by which films end up leaving an impact. perhaps im not the elitist i thought i am.

i guess sometimes you just need to say, 'what the fuck.'

kubrick: fuck yeah

in the last couple years when i went from casual film lover to obsessed cinephile, i decided to rewatch all of stanley kubrick's films. while he is not my personal favorite, i think he was probably the most technically proficient director of all time. not only was every one of his films a masterpiece but they were different from each other! its hard to believe that the same director who did spartacus did clockwork orange and dr. strangelove or barry lyndon. with each of his works, he explored different themes and shot his films to look entirely different. when he died, he had one last film up his sleeve, EYES WIDE SHUT.

i remember it got a really mixed reception when it was released and was generally seen as a disappointment critical and financially. eyes was not his best film but it was by no means a bad film. in fact, its an excellent film and very ahead of its time. while the themes of sexual frustration and unhappiness in marriage are by no means novel, kubrick put a new spin on it.

the orgy scene is definetely the stand out focal point of the film. it was shot almost in first person using long tracking shots. the music was the creepiest of creepy simple sparse piano accents and made the eroticism seem almost sterile! we are watching sex with naked hot beautiful models and somehow it wasnt sexy. it was ethereal, atmospheric and somehow off putting and scary.

so why was the film ignored at the time and why has its legacy sustained? perhaps its the kubrick name but i also think the film was an early sign of the age of want. today humanity wants everything right this second...all of the time. cruise and kidman want a wild sexual crazy life but they have the opportunity to do so they cant go through with it or get stopped. so their eyes were bigger than their libidos. much like the me generation, they want everything and when they get it, they are still somehow unimpressed.

maybe im grasping at straws but this how i read the film and whether im right or wrong, kubrick did have one masterpiece to give before he died. now if only speilberg didnt destroy AI or minority report.