If you can keep your eyes open, you might learn something.

Rating: 7/10 (6 August 1999)

This isn't an easy film to sit through...slow-moving, laborious, and downright frustrating at over 2 1/2 hours...but strangely enough, it's a film you can't help thinking about days afterward.
The plot and underlying theme of this movie are simple...nothing is what it appears to be. Tom and Nicole play a seemingly happily married couple with an extravagant life and a beautiful child; it all looks good on the surface. But a late-night argument with Nicole leads Tom to doubt the security of his marriage, sending him on an all-night mission to break his vow of monogamy.
As you watch the film, nothing much appears to happen. At times, things move excruciatingly slow. When it's all over, though, you realize what you've been watching is an illusion and that you the viewer have been through a tremendous emotional experience.
Nicole Kidman, one of today's most underrated actresses, is terrific as Alice Harford, a woman hiding her feelings behind a facade of matrimonial and matriarchal bliss. Tom Cruise, on the other hand, can't quite pull off the darkness of Bill Harford.
Stanley Kubrick uses the camera like a paintbrush, creating a beautiful visual and emotional landscape. Now if he had only realized that it's 1999 and the vast majority of the movie-going audience tires quickly of naked Playboy bunny bodies on display, this film would have more appeal. Instead, it seems as if Kubrick was obsessed with women's breasts and rear ends...to the point that he looked for any excuse to get them into frame.