Where I Watched It: MGM Plus

English Audio Description?: Yes

Starring: Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, Kurt Russell, Timothy Spall, Noah Taylor, Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, Johnny Galecki, Ken Leung, and Alicia Witt.

Written and Directed By: Cameron Crowe

My Oscar shame tour is continuing up until Oscar nominations are announced, with me taking this time to review films I had never seen before that were nominated. MGM Plus had an odd selection, and most didn’t have audio description, or I had seen them. I landed on Vanilla Sky, which I have seen, because I figured time had passed, and a rewatch was in order. I did not like this film at all when it first came out, and I wondered if it was just my age at the time. Well, kinda.

I’ve come to appreciate Tom’s performance in this more, as well as many of the odd choices Crowe makes to unsettle his audience and keep them guessing. of course, most of this comes from Abre Los Ojos, which was directed by Alejandro Amenebar, and is what this is an adaptation of. Penelope Cruz is in both versions. She’s early in her English acting career, and as the Razzies chose to list her in the worst of the year, her beginning was rough. Of course, now, there’s no doubt she’s terrific no matter what language.

Crowe’s script is not great. The line Cameron Diaz is forced to utter is still cringeworthy in 2024, and likely the reason she wasn’t nominated. She hit every precursor, but I think just enough people turned the movie off at her line, that she failed to land an Oscar nomination (which she’s sadly never had).

The music is fine, there are concepts here that work, and I miss seeing Jason lee on a more regular basis. Tom Cruise was the right person to play someone obsessively worried about their looks, and his performance is strong, though not his best. It’s not the best thing Cameron Crowe has directed, and sits oddly between Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous. But, I think time had convinced me this was total garbage, and it is just disappointing.

The audio description sounds a little bit older, which is nice, because it tells me Vanilla Sky has had audio description for a while, instead of recently. Although, I’ve seen a lot of true cinematic classics that seem to lack audio description, so the question I have would be… why Vanilla Sky? Of course, if audio description travelled, we would always know what films did really have audio description, and which films were just on the wrong streaming service.

MGM Plus does have a fraction of audio description if you use it as a Prime channel add on. They do not support audio description through the app or cable channel. FYI.

FINAL GRADE (again): C+