Do acting, direction and pacing count for anything?

Rating: Null/10 (22 April 2000)

This movie belongs to the genre whereby the director was incapable of making a profound statement and settled instead on obscurity in the hope that people would assign profundity in the absence of clarity. Kubrick is a master at this sort of thing and has his devotees slobbering over obscure nuances such as visual hints and clues that most of us are not the slightest bit interested in. They rave about his handling of lighting and slow, deliberate pacing. Who knows from lighting? If I want lighting I'll go to a fireworks show. The "deliberate" pacing was so slow even the actors seemed to lose interest in what they were saying. Kubrick may be a master and I may be an idiot, but if I'm going to spend 2 3/4 hours with a movie I at least want some acting, pacing and directing. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are perfectly capable of excellent acting, but in this charade the acting is dreadful and the lack of proper direction is inexcusable for a man of Kubrick's reputation. I wish the "professional" reviewers would stop trying to explain the obscure, cease raving about directorial signatures, and take a closer look at the acting and story line. For the hapless viewers out there who, like me, were sucked into this loser: never follow the recommendations of a reviewer who sees more than 2 movies a week. After that threshold and in their boredom, they start to look for things that simply aren't there.