Image via Warner Bros.
Published Oct 14, 2026, 6:22 PM EDT
Jeremy has more than 2800 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings).
When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account.
He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas.
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There is a lot that can be said about Tom Cruise, largely thanks to the fact that he’s been around for a while, he really throws himself into his roles, and he is, um, let’s say an “interesting” person outside the world of cinema, at least in terms of what’s known about the person Tom Cruise really is. He’s kind of enigmatic, and certainly unlike any other big star of his generation, or really any stars of generations following his. That comes down to how he hasn’t aged all that much in 40+ years, looking like someone in their 60s for perhaps the first time in Digger, which required extensive hair and make-up work to do, which is perhaps one of the funniest things about that rather challenging movie.
Like, Digger and its lack of success financially, but with its already passionate fanbase of sorts, is a reason why Tom Cruise is back in a bunch of headlines, at the time of writing. It wasn’t a perfect movie, but it was an undeniably interesting and risky one. Cruise hasn’t had too many movies like that in recent years, since he’s been in a fair few Mission: Impossible sequels and also Top Gun: Maverick, but there was a time, maybe in the late 1990s, that he seemed particularly willing to push himself. The end of that decade saw the release of both Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut, with his supporting performance in the former being phenomenal, but it’s his lead performance in the latter that’s worth digging into right about now. It’s kind of a thriller, albeit an odd one, and it’s sadly leaving HBO Max, but you should still go out of your way to find and watch (or rewatch) this one, in any event, since it’s definitely one of the best entries in Cruise’s filmography to date.
The Story of 'Eyes Wide Shut'
Image via Warner Bros.The final Stanley Kubrick movie is a strange one, on a narrative front, but of course it is. Could/should you really expect anything different? Tom Cruise plays a doctor named Bill, and he’s pretty well off, all things considered, but not necessarily a member of the elite. He does get to attend a party early on with some particularly wealthy people, along with his wife, Alice, who was played by Nicole Kidman, with Cruise and Kidman famously being an actual couple at the time of Eyes Wide Shut’s release. Alice admits to Bill, not long after the party, that she once fantasized about cheating on him. That’s when things get messy.
Eyes Wide Shut is honestly kind of funny, with how it shows Bill continually messing up in situations where sex looks all but inevitable, but it’s a dark sort of humor, and the comedy dissipates at a point, because Eyes Wide Shut eventually gets very unsettling.
An already strained marriage is pushed into newly uncomfortable territory, with Bill going off on his own for a bit, on an odyssey of sorts, clearly grappling with the idea that he could cheat on his wife to “get back” at her, but he’s either unlucky or never able to fully commit. Maybe a bit of both. Eyes Wide Shut is honestly kind of funny, with how it shows Bill continually messing up in situations where sex looks all but inevitable, but it’s a dark sort of humor, and the comedy dissipates at a point, because Eyes Wide Shut eventually gets very unsettling, and that’s where the psychological drama, thriller, and mystery elements of the film start to properly present themselves.
The Ways Tom Cruise Pushed Himself in 'Eyes Wide Shut'
In Eyes Wide Shut, Tom Cruise is far from cool. It feels like he just went with whatever Stanley Kubrick asked of him, and Kubrick might well have also been interested in making Cruise look as far from a movie star as possible. Perhaps intentionally, there are shots in the film that highlight Tom Cruise’s height, or lack thereof, and his character is also really pathetic, in ways that are a bit (again, darkly) funny at times. Bill stumbles through a New York that seems to hate him, and while it’s not as broadly comedic as something like After Hours, the setting and pacing (at least of the middle act) ensure Eyes Wide Shut scratches a similar itch.
Tom Cruise is far from Ethan Hunt or Maverick here, and that’s part of the reason he’s so good in Eyes Wide Shut. Honestly, Tom Cruise is great in his action and blockbuster movies, sure, but he’s potentially even better when he’s playing unlikely roles (see also Magnolia and Digger, as mentioned before, and then definitely Tropic Thunder, too). Cruise has range, and while he doesn’t push himself dramatically in every movie, he is always committed to what he has to do. When it’s an action movie, he’s obviously perfect in those, but then when something’s a little slower, or more heavy on drama/thriller elements, like with Eyes Wide Shut, he also more than excels, thanks to that sheer commitment he seems unable to not possess.
How 'Eyes Wide Shut' Holds Up as a Thriller
Image via Warner Bros. PicturesMaybe outlining Eyes Wide Shut in all those ways makes it sound kind of removed from the thriller genre, but it’s certainly a tense film, and some of what Bill discovers during his whole odyssey throughout New York City at night makes it qualify as a thriller. There’s an escalation to all the strange things he discovers, and then learns a little (but not a lot) about, and once the most alarming things happen, a sense of dread is heavy throughout the rest of the film. Bill gets paranoid, understandably so, and when you're following it all along with him, it’s hard not to feel at least a little on edge yourself.
Also, what Eyes Wide Shut delivers thematically and atmospherically ensures it lingers in one’s mind long after it’s over. In that sense, it’s aged very well, and that’s to say nothing of what the movie might’ve predicted or foreshadowed when it came to what it said about elites, the ultra-wealthy, and those with so much power/money they can get away with anything. It’s held up well, to say the least, features a great Tom Cruise performance and, like so many other Stanley Kubrick films, has become more revered and respected as time has gone on.
