Rating: 
Summary: Kubrick's Konfused Konstipated Kiss-off
Review: I love Stanley Kubrick's work. He is one of the best director's in the history of film. With a ten-year abscence I was one of the first to see this film on its opening night, never have I entered a film with more anticipation. I wanted to like this film and went to work immeidately in watching it. But it fails... The problem is simply the editing and the pace of the movie. It is beautifully shot, the acting is fine, the story itself has much potential but its execution is horrible. Like it or not, editing is the backbone of all film and a failure in this area breaks the spin of a film. At around three hours, I found myself sitting there half-way through wondering to myself, why didn't he tighten that scene up, he could have shaved a minute off of that, he could have cut that scene. I also think that Tom and Nicole worked against him in this movie. Not because their acting was poor but because of thier movie star status, could anyone at any point in the film forget they were watching Tom and Nicole, the then famous Hollywood couple. I could not be drawn into thier characters and a couple of unknown actors may have helped the immersion into the story. I would have liked to give the movie 2 and a half stars but I had to round down. We expect much more from Stanley Kubrick and he is judged more harshly because of his stature. There are several scenes that stick out and make it a worthwhile watch for Kubrick fans. I have since revisted it and it has come to grow on me a bit but still, I can not embrace it or recomend it to anyone but the most loyal Kubrick fans. There is one scence where Nicole is sitting on the toliet as they prepare to leave for a party, classic Kubrick but at the same time, one truly feels he was creatively consitpated with his last work.
Rating: 
Summary: Great actors, great director, sex - so why does it fail.
Review: Tom Cruise has been a favorite of mine since Risky Business, and Nicole Kidman is one of those actresses that comes off classy, intelligent, and still radiates sex. Kubric was a master who created some of my favorite films of all time. And sex - who does not like sex - with a nice touch of kink. But by the end of this movie I just felt sort of let down. It was the celluloid equivalent of the girl that flirts with you for hours at the party, and then suddenly says "Well good night," and she's gone.
Cruise plays an wildly successful New York doctor who is becomes obsessed with his wife's confession of a fantasized affair. The confession comes out during one of the many uncomfortable and awkward conversations had in this film. I am sure Kubric wanted us to feel uncomfortable at these moments, and Cruise and Kidman deliver. Cruise, troubled by his wife's admission goes forth into New York and tries to have his own extramarital exploration. But he fails. He fails with a patient. He fails with one of the super-model like hookers one always finds on the street. He's wealthy. He's smooth. Hell, he is Tom Cruise! And he cannot get any? This leads him to the discovery of a mysterious and elite traveling sex club and to the most erotic and intriguing moments in the film. With an aesthetic of the The Story of O meets the Spanish Inquisition at a mansion in the New York suburbs, my interest had now been peaked. Here are the elite of society indulging in all manor of erotic pleasures behind the anonymity of masks... and then it is gone. Tom is soon back on the sidewalks of New York - still troubled, still [excited], and now afraid for his life. So we have a mystery - or suspense. No. That, too, is quickly diffused and we return to awkward conversation. The fuse just fizzles and goes out and the fireworks never go off. The combination seemed so right, but the talent behind this film just does not make up for a poorly focused storyline and the decision to use the most intriguing element as a simple plot device.
Rating: 
Summary: Utter...
Review: Let me first state that I highly enjoy movies with an intellectual stimulus and that actually make you think beyond the roll of the credits. This is not what this movie is. What it is, is garbage. There's no intellectual quest, emotional investment, or discovery of character. It's an excuse to produce a film of nothing but people walking around naked in highly-unbelievable sadomasochitic bliss. If this version is Kubrick's actual intent, then shame on him. Tom Cruise is at his worst. There's nothing enjoyable or even redeemable about his character. He's just trite and boring. Kidman fares somewhat better, given the material. Ironic that after their divorce, her movies get better (bordering on brilliance) and his get worse. "The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting," said Gloria Leonard. This movie is neither. It's lining for the litter box.
Rating:
Summary: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Review: This review will be easy enough- Too Long. Big Build up leads to a big let down. If you like Foreign Films that move at the pace of molasses and often times seem to try and make a point or have a plot but really don't, then this american [I think its american] movie will be really, really familiar. Even the fact that I like naked women couldn't possibly save this movie. Maybe I am just the dumbest man alive but this movie was pointless. And the only thing worse than a Pointless movie is a long pointless movie that pretends to be full of point. This is that movie. How great to hear and see so much nothing in such a long period of time. What was the length of this movie? something like nine days I think. That is what it felt like anyway. The over dramatized- on the verge of seeing something- style of the movie is laughable. The biggest flop in the careers of any of the stars, and that is saying something too. I like Cruise and Kidman in some roles but this one was just a torture of a movie. Why would anyone want to BUY it? Could you sit through it enough times to make the price worth it even if you liked it? This is awful, and I don't say that about just anything! You can't eat popcorn to this one. I've seen a lot of good movies with substance that you can't eat popcorn to though- this isn't one of those either.
Rating:
Summary: Male reveiwers love sexist Kubrick
Review: What's most interesting or frigthening rather about Kubrick's films is how he portrays women. In none of them has he ever created a female autonomous character, yet plenty of room for the excess of male characters to degrade women both verbally and visually. In "Eyes wide shut", jobless/without identity Kidman is kept inside her apartment/preferably kitchen dreaming guiltily of being passively seduced by a male somebody wearing high heels in bed. Another dream where she has sex with several strange men makes her cry like a victim (a woman must be bad to enjoy several lovers) and she is generally crying or acting "vulnerable" throughout the film. Her most explicit identity is being married to the somebody male Cruise. He never refers to his marriage. Kidman the wife is also shown naked, but not the doctor Cruise. Then there is a brothel catering male sexuality and the male customers are fully clothed & masked and claimed to be very "important" (ugly old) men, and naked beautiful young women claimed to be unimportant prostitutes serve these men as dead orifices placed on tables etc or staging homosexality for the important men to watch. No sexy naked man in sight. No male homosexual scenes which women would enjoy. One prostitute dies, already portrayed earlier in the film as a naked junkie and sexpartner to a fully clothed 80-year old git, and even dead she is an object in the morgue although of course dispensable as a subject. There are also two grown women at a party giggling and holding hands acting like silly 10 year olds; a 12-year old girl exploited by her father who sells her to 80-year old pedophiles and made sure to be adressed "whore" several times so we understand the sexually abused child is bad and the old disgusting men - pedophiles/pimp father - are good; and also two less glamourous prostitutes one of which contracts HIV as a punishment. Showing clips of Cruise's patients, a perfect bigbreasted female model is pointlessly included. A relative to a patient declares her love to Cruise, crying & hysterical, and naturally he patronises her. Kubrick is a wonderful director for men intimidated by women. These men need "arty" fantasies to escape to (as a change for the sexism of male porn they love) where they can identify with a total degradation of what they fear the most - women. Male reveiwers love sexist Kubrick. He speaks to the sexist inside them.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible
Review: What a waste of time. They must have offered Tom And Nicole a lot of money to start in this garbage. I continued watching the movie hoping in would get better. boy, was I wrong. Althought i will admit it has a couple of very sensous scenes, but still not worth wasting your time and money.
Rating: 
Summary: Kubrick's last, most subversive masterpiece
Review: EYES WIDE SHUT is, quite simply, about role reversal. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman play the roles that are usually assigned to those of the opposite sex in films. For example, what usually happens in films is that the woman can neither have nor express carnal thoughts, lest karma, or god, or whatever punish her. Not only is she not allowed to have an affair, regardless of how poorly she is treated by her significant other, she cannot even think about having an affair; if she does, she is forced to succumb to the whims of fate, or the vagaries of kismet. If she does find the wherewithal to act on her passions, she is made to feel extremely guilty and, invariably, she is somehow severely punished for allowing herself to feel lustful, much less for actually acting on her feelings. This was the role that Tom played in EYES WIDE SHUT: the beautiful, but untouchable and chaste (against her will) woman who is forced to endure punishment upon punishment for merely daring to feel desire. The male role in films, on the other hand, is usually let off the cosmic hook repeatedly. How many dramas and comedies have you seen in which some guy lusts after some unattainable girl, only to suddenly have her become attainable, which then inspires him to take action on his lusts? Almost all of them, right? Well, just about. On film, men are allowed to be... narcissistic, skirt-chasing, lustful creatures of pure Id, with little or no consequence. This was the role Nicole played in EYES WIDE SHUT: the lustful and guilt-free man who suffers no consequences for feeling lustful, nor for acting on those feelings. I find it hilarious that the majority of "professional" film critics could not see past the enormous red herring Kubrick deliberately placed within EYES WIDE SHUT in the form of the 'over-the-top' orgy imagery. These "professionals" failed to discover both the cleverness and the subversiveness of Kubrick's final film, even though Kubrick's entire oeuvre has always been about 'over-the-top' imagery.
Rating:
Summary: What happened here?
Review: The players slow dance through all the scenes, which themselves leap around with casual alarm...the old 'in & out' seemingly the one thing on our...(Whoops! Of course I mean their..)...mind. Oh My! But aren't we mocked . Is everyone in on it...is the whole world insatiable or is it just me? Oh My! I didn't spot (until like the good Doctor...told) that the girl in the bathroom is the same obliging girl in need of the correct time on the street, is same amazing creature with dire warnings that unheeded lead to the mortuary slab...we are left to guess the how's...what's...when's and where's, only certain that all was gruesome, the more disturbed for not actually knowing. Oh My! But aren't we toyed with.
Rating:
Summary: Slow, Slow, Slow
Review: After finally watching this movie, I thought it so pretentious. Tome Cruise's character gets all bent out of shape when his wife. played by his ex, Nicole Kidman, admits to him about having a sexual fantasy about having sex with a Navy man she saw at a party. It is shame that this was Stanley Kubrick's last movie. I especially enjoyed (have in my video collection) Spartacus and 2001: Space Odyssy...
Rating:
Summary: Urgh.
Review: The only reason people feel obligated to give this rotter 5 stars is for 2 reasons- Kubrick directed it, and he is now dead. Any person with half a brain can see how pathetic this film is at a shallow attempt to be "an erotic thriller". I agree with one reviewer who wrote that it seemed as if Kubrick wanted to make a porn film but lacked the guts. The "intense" scene between Kidman and Cruise- the one that they would only allow Kubrick himself and no one else in the room while filming- was anything but. It was one lawn drawn out yawn. To the characters I say this: don't build me a clock, just tell me the time. (...) You'd expect something better from the guy who gave us "A Clockwork Orange" and "Lolita", but alas, it's a sad reminder that this tragic piece of bin-fodder was his last movie. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I truly don't understand the hype. I don't believe at has anything to do with being intellectually superior- in fact, people raving about this movie reminds me of the time I went to see "Cats!". My Mom and I, normally avid theater buffs, were bored beyond bored. Yet, everyone around us was buzzing, "Wasn't it fabulous?!?" because they felt they had too- it was "Cats!", after all! Moral? Don't believe the hype. Kubrick was a great director, but he wasn't infallible- even he's allowed to deliever a stinker.
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