Revisited to celebrate Tom & Todd’s big night last night, and as predicted, fared better on rewatch for me now that I know the Whole Deal - I was gonna say “now that I understand the wicked games it plays,” but then I remembered that Chris Isaak actually has other songs and the one in this movie is one of them! A few lapses in the tone hold this back from being an all-timer for me - the stuff with the costume seller and the cut-to-black ending are a bit too outwardly wacky to comfortably fit with the rest of the movie as I see it - but the series of elaborate jokes at the expense of Cruise’s performed masculinity that Eyes Wide Shut is single-mindedly constructed around are not only some of the best conceptual roots a movie’s ever been built on, but have also aged like a fine wine in the nearly 25 years since release that Cruise has spent very publicly performing masculinity; it’s hardly a stretch to imagine him whipping out his SAG/AFTRA card in the same way Bill Hartford flaunts his medical credentials!