A tour de force of unimaginable power and subtlety

Rating: 10/10 (16 July 1999)

The expectations placed on Eyes Wide Shut are huge. There wasn't as much fanfare on this one as on Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, but ask any dedicated movie fan, and they'll tell you this is the one we've been waiting for a whole decade. Was it worth the wait?
The answer is an astounding yes. To reveal any of the film's circumstance would be criminal. To say the least, the trailers and television commercials give away nothing. Everything you've read in the press beforehand - about Cruise in a dress, Kidman fully nude, the two of them having explicit sex and using exotic drugs - that's all nonsense. The film doesn't stray anywhere near pornographic, and the digital masking used to hide some of the sexual activity is the biggest joke I've ever heard from the MPAA. I thought South Park nearly getting an NC-17 would take the cake. But I was wrong. Fortunately, the digital masking was prepared by Kubrick, so you're not seeing something unfaithful to his vision, and the message still remains intact. Nothing is lost in it, but I'm sure a few right wing people who believe that sex and language will destroy mankind, but think that guns are harmless, will probably sleep better tonight. But I'll be up thinking about every little subtle thing in this film, and what a genius Kubrick was. I'm sure he died and became the Starchild, from his masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Kubrick said before his death that this was, in his opinion, his best film ever. While die-hard fans will probably disagree, citing 2001 or Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick may have been right.