This week on MovieJawn, we are celebrating our favorite movies that turned 25 this year. All week long we are going to Party Like It’s 1999!

by Kate Beach, Staff Writer

There was a lot going on in 1999. Beyond the fear of the Y2K problem, it was an absolute banger year for the movies. Modern classics across just about every genre were released at the tail end of the 20th century. Throughout this year, my colleagues and I have been revisiting some of these films to celebrate their 25th anniversaries. Now, as we close out 2024, I’m looking back on two films that contributed heavily to one of my favorite subgenres: wild nights in New York City. Buckle up, let’s talk about Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

If you haven’t seen Bringing Out the Dead, you might remember the red tinted close up of Nicolas Cage’s haunted face from the poster. Cage stars as Frank Pierce, a New York City EMT who’s been running on empty for months. He also narrates the film, his voice trembling from exhaustion and disappointment. The film follows Frank through his overnight shifts, at a point in his career when he hasn’t saved a life in months, and is haunted by the ones he didn’t, particularly a young girl named Rose. Paul Schrader adapted Joe Connelly’s 1998 semi-autobiographical novel, and Scorsese manages to both bring the film to life and also keep everything right on the edge of death throughout its runtime. The colors on screen swerve between ghoulish greens, blinding fluorescent whites, and bright, bloody red.  

No one would accuse Nicolas Cage of being precious about how he looks in a film, but he really looks awful in this one. Frank Pierce is gaunt and sallow, barely surviving on booze and coffee. He refers to himself as a “grief mop” - unable to save lives or truly help, but just there to absorb the sorrow of those left behind. It’s fascinating to watch that famous Cage energy so subdued, but still simmering under a surface of depression and desperation as the chaos of New York roils around him. Of course, Frank isn’t undertaking the crises of the city alone. Each shift pairs him with a different partner: John Goodman, then Ving Rhames, and finally, Tom Sizemore. Frank dives into hell each night, trying to save anyone he can from overdoses, suicide attempts, disease. He befriends a young woman (Patricia Arquette) when he resuscitates her father, finding comfort in her openness and her desire to save anyone she can.   

Bringing Out the Dead was well received by critics but underperformed at the box office, bringing in only about half of its $32 million budget. In a career like Scorsese’s, it’s been considered by some one of his lesser works. But over the years, it’s been reevaluated as an important piece of the themes he’s been exploring across his filmography, as well as a crackling, violent, pitch-black comedy. In 2012, Scorsese talked to Roger Ebert about his pursuit of a spiritual life, saying "When I made The Last Temptation of Christ, when I made Kundun, I was looking for that. Bringing Out the Dead was the next step. Time is moving by." Following the decline and deaths of his parents and years of navigating the healthcare system, he said, “Those city paramedics are heroes–and saints, they're saints. I grew up next to the Bowery, watching the people who worked there, the Salvation Army, Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement, all helping the lost souls. They're the same sort of people." He sees Frank Pierce as one of those saints, and Scorsese has always loved a flawed, troubled saint. 

In a calmer, quieter neighborhood, a wealthy couple’s problems are a little more polished. But Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut still descends into its own brand of chaos. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (nearing the end of their eleven year marriage) play Bill and Alice Harford, respectively. He’s a doctor and she’s a gallerist in between jobs. After attending a horny Christmas party at the home of wealthy patient Victor Ziegler (Sidney Pollack) and being called upon to save the life of his overdosing paramour, a fight with Alice about fantasy and fidelity sends Bill on a strange, erotic journey through the streets of New York. First he tracks down his former medical school classmate, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field), who dropped out to become a piano player. Nick provided the music for Ziegler’s party, and sets Bill off in pursuit of the secret society sex party that most people associate with Eyes Wide Shut. One of my favorite things about Eyes Wide Shut (and there are many favorite things) is that Nick is played by Todd Field: actor, Big League Chew inventor, and director of three near-perfect films, including my favorite movie of 2022, Tár. After his meeting with Nick, Bill finds a lot of opportunities to cheat on his wife, but in this Venetian-masked, frequently topless comedy of errors, he can’t quite make it happen. 

“This pot is making you aggressive,” Bill says to Alice during their argument. It’s not exactly on the same level as the “Red Death” heroin that plagues several patients in Bringing Out the Dead. And in contrast to Bringing Out the Dead, which dealt in sickly greens and washed out yellows, the colors of Eyes Wide Shut are vibrant and warm. Apartments are furnished in rich, beautiful reds and blues, and Christmas lights glow and twinkle at parties, clubs, and on the street. Both films use color and light to stunning effect in entirely different directions, making their respective New York Cities feel totally singular. Both films, too, are funnier than anyone gave them credit for at the time of their respective releases, especially Eyes Wide Shut.    

Eyes Wide Shut is, famously, Kubrick’s last film. He died mere days after screening a cut of the movie for Kidman and Cruise. We can’t know what he would have thought about its eventual release (although he’d surely be livid about studio edits made to prevent an NC-17 rating), or its legacy after twenty-five years. It was neither a bomb nor a blockbuster, and its place in the pop culture landscape was more about the masks and the orgy than what actually goes on in this funny, melodramatic film. 

1999 saw the release of films from two of our greatest American directors, both of which were underappreciated and ultimately reevaluated over the following twenty-five years. If you’ve seen Bringing Out the Dead and Eyes Wide Shut before, they’re always worth revisiting. And if you haven’t, seek them out and get lost in New York for a night or two.