Eyes Wide Shut: Critic Reviews

Kubrick, exactly in character, has left us as the unchallengeable champion of the enigma.

It's a powerful movie without always, or often, being a very good one; watching it is a bit like being inside the twistings and conniptions of a control freak who longs to lose control, only to pull back tighter than ever.

I kept my eyes wide open all through Eyes Wide Shut and saw more control-freak unreality than visual genius around the edges of the cluttered compositions.

A riveting, thematically probing, richly atmospheric and just occasionally troublesome work, a deeply inquisitive consideration of the extent of trust and mutual knowledge possible between a man and a woman.

Quite good in parts and always dazzling to the eye but a letdown all the same.

[Kubrick's] final, hypnotic, meticulously crafted film... hangs on something as commonplace as a husband's confession of his strange desires.

I don't know how a director whose central theme is the loss of humanity can be so uninterested in the minutiae of human speech and behavior.

Disturbing and completely inappropriate for kids.

Slow, repetitious and conventional, Kubrick's last film has some good moments but does not live up to the hype and occupies a mid-level position in an otherwise brilliant career.

Kubrick's final film is a virtuoso study of looking and imagining, one that implicates the audience in the act of coveting.

Misunderstood as a psychosexual thriller, Stanley Kubrick's final film is actually more of an acidic comedy about how Tom Cruise fails to get laid.

As you'd expect from Kubrick, this is a cerebral film that works on several levels--the illusory, the real, the ethereal and everything that falls in between.

An unqualified masterpiece from a master whose death marked the end of an era.

Like all Kubrick's films, this one will take time, and multiple viewings, to yield up its full meaning and resonance.

In the end, it is unclear what Mr. Kubrick was attempting to convey with Eyes Wide Shut.

Finally, however, it's just a cautionary tale about some very mild, old-fashioned erotic fantasies.

What's the biggest surprise of Eyes Wide Shut? It would be that Kubrick has nearly made a David Lynch movie.

Moviegoers expecting typically crowd-pleasing Tom Cruise fare may come away disappointed, but fans of Kubrick's unique style will, over time, find plenty to admire.

It's the last work we'll ever see by a filmmaker who gave us so much in the dozen films he created over nearly five decades of filmmaking.

I found it brilliantly executed and haunting, like most of Kubrick's work.

As it rambles on, it makes less and less of the material, rather than more.

No one familiar with the cold precision of Kubrick's work will be surprised that this isn't the steamy erotic thriller a synopsis (or the ads) might suggest.

There is a lot of frustrating, rough going in this supremely controlled and visually enticing enterprise. Still, it is Kubrick, and confused intensity from this director is a better bet than nearly anyone else's best work.

While it is not without faults, it is definitely a compelling piece of art that will be held up as an example of what filmmaking is supposed to be.

The #1 Movie of 1999: 'A coherent summary of Kubrick's longtime themes and a worthy capstone to his long, distinguished career.'