The misleading nature of the hype.

Rating: 8/10 (10 September 1999)

It is Kubrick. As simple as that.
What an amazing movie. A solemn memorandum for one of the greatest directors of all time. Farewell Stan, and thanx for leaving us this masterpiece.
Of course this movie is not the type of work that will be accepted and worshipped generally. I remember sitting in the cinema, breath taken away by the astonishing camera work and the sound, when a young couple left the cinema, probably murmuring something like: `Let´s get out of here as quick as possible, I´m afraid this movie demands thinking.' And they were right, of course. Anyone who responds to the big "Cruise/Kidman-1000%-Sex'-Hype with curiosity, will be disappointed. Some people even feel offended when a movie expects from the viewer the ability to think for himself in order to get what might be happening in it. Go, see Independence Day. This is not your movie.
The hype around the sex scenes is a typical American thing, I guess. We´ve had it before with movies like Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Striptease or Disclosure. Americans talk about `scandalous scenes', Christians feel offended, NC-17s are given out like free buttons, and there is banning and censoring done like there is nothing else to do, while Europeans merely yawn when they see the `graphic scenes' that bombed a nation.
All the hype lets some people forget, what they are dealing with. This is not a Cruise/Kidman movie. It is an ode to film making, an ode to film viewing, it is art, or again, as simple as that: It is Kubrick.