Stuck for ideas of what to watch next? Browse our selection of genres and decades to find hidden movie gems or rediscover old time classics.
From thrilling page turners to beautiful novels, we present you books and authors similar to the ones you love. Enjoy our recommendations – from bookworms for bookworms.
If you share our passion for music, have a browse through our list of genres and discover unmissable artists and songs from the past 50 years. You’ll find a bit of old, a bit of new and a bit of something you probably have never heard of before.
Whatever type of game you’re looking for, you’ll surely find one that tickles your fancy here. Choose your next favourite from one of our wonderful articles and get playing!
Find recommended movies tailored to your personal taste at itcher.
Masked sex orgies and secret societies exist just below the surface in Kubrick’s depiction of New York life. It’s a strange world but it’s at its most unsettling when it’s firmly grounded in a reality that we can relate to.
Starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a married couple, Kubrick explores the idea of sex in a marriage (or lack therof) and the secret places that people go to fulfil their illicit desires. Although it is a film about sex, Kubrick manages to develop a narrative that is decidedly unsexy and more frightening than anything else.Here are some films similar to Eyes Wide Shut that delve into the complexities of marriage and relationships.
A film about a couple in the 1950s, Revolutionary Road deals with the idea of marriage and the reality of spending a life together. Starring Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet, a pairing that has done well in the past, Sam Mendes’ film is a hard-hitting drama with a dark heart.
Adapted from a novel written by Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road is a beautifully filmed snapshot of suburban life in the 1950s.
A thriller in much the same vein as Eyes Wide Shut, Gone Girl considers a darker side to the modern marriage.
Starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, and adapted from a novel written by Gillian Flynn, it’s a film that raises some questions with uncomfortable answers.
Societally speaking, marriage has often been seen as a necessary rite of passage, but in Fincher’s Gone Girl, that assumption is turned on its head. Instead, the film focuses on the idea that you can never truly know another person.
One of the films that helped cement Ryan Gosling as an A-list celebrity, Derek Cianfrance’s film is in equal parts a romantic and damning depiction of the modern relationship. The film is structured with a series of vignettes, contrasting the early days when the couple first met with their strife-filled future married life.
Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling give two powerful performances set in a marriage on the brink of dissolution. It’s not an easy film to watch but there are moments of real poignancy mixed into the heart-breaking narrative.
A classic novel adapted for the screen by Baz Luhrmann, The Great Gatsby is a sensual movie about unrequited love. Touching, overwhelming, and cinematically-driven, The Great Gatsby’s central concern is the difficulty in finding love when it requires the shunning of social conventions.
It’s a stylistic film and unfortunately for Luhrmann, that often trumps the substance of the source material. Even so, The Great Gatsby is still compelling cinema.
Eyes Wide Shut is a perfect swan song for the end of Kubrick’s career. It dissects the notion of marriage and it does so in sumptuous and extravagant settings.
There are plenty of other movies like Eyes Wide Shut that consider relationships in a more realist manner than the traditional romantic comedy. Here are a couple more for you to enjoy.
A notable homosexual love story, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain challenges the usual male-female dichotomy found in film representations of love. Beautiful, epic, and heart-breaking, this star-studded film is well worth watching.
Starring Kevin Spacey as a suburban dad who decides to reinvent himself as a pot-smoking slacker, American Beauty looks at the legacy of family life on the patriarch himself.
The beautiful façade of contemporary life on the outskirts of the city is dissected, laid bare and much unhappiness is found.
Another cinematic exploration of suburbia, Little Children finds some horrible secrets in its narrative about parents and children. With an unflinching gaze, Little Children reminds us that not everything is what it purports to be.
An affair is a harmful and devastating thing for all involved and that couldn’t be more true than in films similar to ‘Little Children’.
Eyes Wide Shut is a very particular film with its own unique narrative but it deals with concerns that we all have. The nature of contemporary relationships, the problem of lust, and the idea that we all want something new and reject the idea of complacency is explored in Eyes Wide Shut and all of the films listed above.
If I was to give you only one recommendation, I would suggest watching Blue Valentine. Ryan Gosling is quickly becoming a consummate actor and this indie shows exactly why. The film itself finds beauty in its depiction of the flawed nature and frailties of the human condition.
Let me know your thoughts with a comment below.
