Beautiful, but that's about it

Rating: 4/10 (19 August 2001)

This had to be the worst Kubrick film I've seen to date. While beautiful in every aspect, I found myself thoroughly distracted from the flat acting of Ryan O'Neal by the AWFUL insistence of Kubrick to abuse the zoom lens of the camera. Just when I was getting to take a good look around at the beautiful picture, Kubrick would pan out at an abrupt pace that didn't serve any purpose to show the "bigger" picture.
While the story itself wasn't boring (it did manage to keep my attention for the duration of the film), it certainly isn't ground-breaking in any way. Like some of Kubrick's other work, Barry Lyndon fails to capture the imagination of the audience with writing and characters, but leaves it all up to the prettiness of the film. Give me a break! How can all you people actually believe this is Kubrick's best, or even think that this is one of the best films of all-time. Uggh.