Eyes Wide Closed

Rating: 2/10 (18 March 2000)

This is a vile waste of celluloid, and if you think it's an "art house film," then you've never been to an art house.
I concur with Michael Kenmore's review here: this is no way to remember Kubrick.
Once again, Cruise fails to create the effect that he can act, even in a truly awful film. Kidman, in a surprisingly small role, is the best thing here except for the cinematographer.
Even Cruise's hair is bad. And that's saying something.
The preposterous [and lengthy] script is worse, however, with absurdist dialogue in abundance. It literally mocks itself in its self-importance, and ~ in case you don't get it ~ telegraphs the film's every move [example: the password for the "private party" is "Infidelio" ~ GET IT???].
If there's even the slightest moment of suspense here for any of you, please rent virtually any Hitchcock film.
And the "it's ok, I'm a doctor" wasn't working the first time, nor the fourth.
The excellence of the camerawork is utterly overwhelmed by the most irritating film score in years: within the first hour I was trying to reach through the screen to crush the fingers of Jocelyn Pook and her grating "two notes on a piano in every octave imaginable" music.
The so-called "extremely graphic" content? Mild, at the very best.
Sure Kidman is topless a few times, and there are a few glimpses of her [rather extraordinary] derriere. But we've seen these goods before. Nary a bum from Cruise for the ladies. And the so-called orgy scene, complete with the famed digital shadowy cloaked men to hide the allegedly explicit parts, is a limp disaster.
And you thought that Verhoeven's lamentable "Showgirls" was the most unerotic movie ever made which tried to shock you with its nudity? Or was that "Romance"...
The only scene which I'll remember is the one in which Kidman confesses her almost~infidelity to Cruise, which sets this on its course.
Here's how bad this film is: all three interviews on the DVD version are tributes to Kubrick, not to this film. Steven Spielberg even weighs in with a "best actors" list ~ Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, etc. Ahhh... nary an actor among them. Movie stars, yes.
Just like Tom Cruise.
See "Paths of Glory" for Kubrick's brilliance. Or "2001." Or "A Clockwork Orange." Or "Full Metal Jacket." Or even "The Shining."
Avoid this.
Um, and "Barry Lyndon."
And most of all, "Spartacus."