Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

20 American Carol, An
xx Australia
26 Babylon A.D.
24 Bangkok Dangerous
41 Beverly Hills Chihuahua
45 Blindness
57 Body of Lies
67 Bolt
63 Burn After Reading
58 City of Ember
15 College
82 Dark Knight, The
43 Death Race
15 Disaster Movie
43 Eagle Eye
58 Express, The
49 Family That Preys, The
57 Flash of Genius
36 Fly Me to the Moon
54 Get Smart
72 Ghost Town
28 Haunting of Molly Hartley. The
57 High School Musical 3: Senior Year
55 House Bunny, The
35 How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
65 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
57 Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
73 Kung Fu Panda
46 Lakeview Terrace
52 Longshots, The
53 Lucky Ones, The
61 Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
51 Mamma Mia!
31 Max Payne
43 Meet Dave
37 Miracle at St. Anna
35 Mirrors
34 My Best Friend's Girl
64 Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
39 Nights in Rodanthe
45 Pride and Glory
58 Quantum of Solace
53 Quarantine
36 Righteous Kill
53 Rocker, The
59 Role Models
19 Saw V
57 Secret Life of Bees, The
49 Sex Drive
63 Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
49 Soul Men
36 Space Chimps
35 Star Wars: The Clone Wars
47 Swing Vote
60 Traitor
71 Tropic Thunder
56 Twilight
70 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
56 W.
93 WALL-E
27 Women, The
47 X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
56 Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

xx All of Us
53 Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
57 Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
64 Appaloosa
69 Ashes of Time Redux
68 August Evening
xx B.O.H.I.C.A.
62 Baghead
84 Ballast
54 Battle in Seattle
xx Beer for My Horses
75 Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
xx Billy: The Early Years
66 Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
56 Bottle Shock
55 Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
50 Breakfast with Scot
61 Brick Lane
43 Call and Response
62 Changeling
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
47 Choke
46 Choose Connor
84 Christmas Tale, A
41 Cthulhu
81 Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
xx Dostana
62 Duchess, The
46 Dukes, The
63 Eden
xx Eden Lake
66 Elegy
46 Elephant King, The
80 Encounters at the End of the World
26 Everybody Wants to Be Italian
64 Fall, The
69 Fear(s) of the Dark
26 Filth and Wisdom
28 Fireproof
52 First Basket, The
67 Flow: For Love of Water
37 Forever Strong
69 Frontrunners
82 Frozen River
43 Gardens of the Night
73 Girl Cut in Two, A
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
54 Good Dick
30 Guitar, The
84 Happy-Go-Lucky
44 Henry Poole is Here
31 Hounddog
27 House of the Sleeping Beauties
47 How About You
54 Humboldt County
72 I Served the King of England
70 I.O.U.S. A
40 Igor
64 In Search of a Midnight Kiss
78 I've Loved You So Long
63 JCVD
41 Johnny Got His Gun
xx Just Buried
62 Kabluey
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
25 Lake City
78 Last Mistress, The
81 Let the Right One In
xx Lower Learning
63 Man Named Pearl, A
89 Man on Wire
xx Mary
xx Matador, The
62 Mister Foe
84 Momma's Man
51 Morning Light
79 Moving Midway
33 My Name Is Bruce
59 Nights and Weekends
73 Obscene
40 Other End of the Line, The
34 Otto; or Up with Dead People
40 Passengers
xx Phoebe in Wonderland
55 Ping Pong Playa
75 Pool, The
77 Pray the Devil Back to Hell
82 Rachel Getting Married
56 Religulous
32 Repo! The Genetic Opera
xx Roadside Romeo
53 RocknRolla
56 Save Me
74 Secret, A
45 Shoot on Sight
57 Sixty Six
85 Slumdog Millionaire
56 Special
58 Splinter
79 Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67 Synecdoche, New York
82 Tell No One
64 Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
57 Towelhead
72 Transsiberian
83 Trouble the Water
43 Tru Loved
83 U2 3D
61 Universe of Keith Haring
84 Up the Yangtze
52 Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
79 Visitor, The
61 Wackness, The
59 We Are Wizards
55 What Just Happened?
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Vanilla Sky
Paramount Pictures


7.2

based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 110 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for sexuality and strong language

Starring Tom Cruise, Penélope Cruz, Kurt Russell, Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, Noah Taylor, Timothy Spall, and Tilda Swinton

Snowboarding through life, David Aames (Cruise) appears to lead a charmed life. In one night David meets a girl of his dreams and loses her by making a small mistake. Thrust unexpectedly onto a roller-coaster ride of romance, comedy, suspicion, love, sex and dreams, David finds himself on a mind-bending search for his soul and discovers the precious, ephemeral nature of true love. (Paramount Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Cameron Crowe Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil (film Abre Los Ojos)
DIRECTED BY:	Cameron Crowe
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 21, 2002 Video: May 21, 2002 Theatrical: December 14, 2001
RUNNING TIME:	115 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Cameron Diaz picked up a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A mostly fascinating, often frustrating, boldly uncommercial Hollywood version of a boldly uncommercial art film. It's very atypical of the previous work of both director and star, and it's as personal a film, I suspect, as Cruise will ever make.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Highly entertaining, erotic science-fiction thriller that takes Mr. Crowe into Steven Spielberg territory.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It's a film that you can take home and chew over later, both abrasive in its loudness and reflective in its fleeting, feminine moments of silence. Well done.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

An involving, sweetly touching love story, buoyed by Crowe's natural, poetic dialogue and his knack for writing characters (especially women) who feel like real people instead of plot devices.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This is the kind of movie you don't want to analyze until you've seen it two times. Now that I've seen it twice, I think I understand it, or maybe not. Certainly it's entertaining as it rolls along.

Variety Todd McCarthy

The picture has vitality, a fine cast and excellent craft

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Crowe's tantalizing film sticks with you.

USA Today Mike Clark

What works in a quirky foreign film can look silly with expansive Hollywood treatment. Crowe is smart enough to know this, so it's baffling he chose Vanilla over richer cinematic tastes.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Visually dazzling but ultimately dizzying ride, a trippy suspenser that gets tripped up on its own deja vu voodoo.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

Crowe's chilliest movie. In part this is by design. Like "Open Your Eyes," to which Crowe is mostly faithful, Vanilla Sky is a head trip that merges thriller, romance and science-fiction elements while playing with our notions of dreams and reality.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Has moments that are eerily beautiful and genuinely moving -- and some that are surprisingly vulgar.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

I admire Cameron Crowe for daring to write and direct a movie as strange as Vanilla Sky. I lament the casting of Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz in the leads.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

It reeks of unearned profundity, but I found it entertaining.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Lost in this beguiling labyrinth, Vanilla Sky is more fascinating as a bit of evidence than as a movie -- and ultimately less pleasing than most audiences will want.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Like an over-packed three-scoop cone -- it melts into a mess while we're still slurping away.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

For better or worse, Vanilla Sky is a genuine, albeit jejune, statement of star consciousness -- blustery with self-awe and feverish with cataclysmic self-doubt.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

The film's aim -- to dazzle and inspire -- is sapped by Cruise's vein-popping, running-the-marathon performance.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Crowe, for his part, is decency itself, but unlike Amenábar he's a pop romantic with no stomach or aptitude for noir.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Though Vanilla Sky is smoothly and professionally done, even audiences who haven't seen the original will sense there is something off in the translation.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Resembles a fast-and-flashy variation on "The Sixth Sense," with touches of "The Matrix" as a bonus.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

For all the filmmakers' efforts, this project is something of an artistic albatross. It's a conundrum that doesn't get answered until a sort of help-the-audience Cliffs Notes final scene, in which we learn Everything. But by then, more than a few of us may be wondering, was it all really worth the trouble?

New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky

Crowe renders David's dream (and its accompanying nightmare) so literal we can't help but leave the theater feeling as though we've been lectured to, told how to feel and what to think. And for an audience, that's a bit of a nightmare.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Crowe preserves the original film's plot twists and turns, but his version lumbers when it should be whipping along, daring you to keep up. The wall-to-wall pop music soundtrack eventually becomes oppressive, and Cruise's oily smile doesn't really constitute a characterization.

Film Threat Gareth Von Kallenbach

My suggestion is to avoid this film and instead rent Open Your Eyes (Abre Los Ojos) the film upon which Vanilla Sky was based.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The title doesn't hint at the unsavory mess the film actually is.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

May not emerge as the biggest disaster of the holiday movie season, if only because we haven't yet seen all the other year-end films. But it is a huge high-energy misfire, bringing Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, and Cameron Crowe to earth with a thud.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

If Crowe's eyes are open, he seems to have directed most of Vanilla Sky with his mind wide shut.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Probably the most garishly masochistic star turn since Mel Gibson's "The Man Without a Face." It could also be the most baroque chick flick ever made, the freakazoid spawn of "An Affair to Remember" and "The Matrix."

Slate David Edelstein

It's no wonder that Crowe can't generate any real feeling. The narrative is alien to him on every level. The ear-grating dialogue is a good indication that he didn't know what he was doing; he's usually pitch-perfect.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Its tone is unquenchably pretentious, and its scale is overblown.

Time Richard Corliss

Every ambitious picturemaker should be allowed one wild misfire at no lasting cost to his reputation. Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) can now put this aside and go back to making good films.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Who would have thought that Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Overblown and idiotic, this new "erotic thriller" is neither erotic nor thrilling; it's long, boring and self-indulgent.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 110 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Steven. gave it an8:
Cameron Crowe really has outdone himself in some of the movies he's made. This movie is no exception. Let me just make a personal note before I make this review. I'm one of those people that saw this movie for the first time and understood everything, and something I have to note about is that this movie is a true Cameron Crowe masterpiece if you actually understand it. I really went through a lot of emotions when I watched this movie, this is one of the more cinematic movies I've seen. From the music to the very clever lines, and to the story pulling all together on one very well made elevator scene. This movie has a really cool vibe to it from the moment it starts. Plus the ending is mind blowing. I really love Paul Mccartney's song played in the credits, it really brings you down to earth after seeing such a breathtaking ending. If you want to watch this movie go ahead, I think that some of the critics were a little rough on this movie. Heres a hint to watching this though, when you reach a scene that shows Tom in an Elevator with a man in a suit, pay attention to this scene, because it explains everything about this movie. Happy Watching.

Andrew O gave it a10:
Superb, highly moving and deep when understood. Vanilla Sky is not a movie to watch just once and requires your full attention. Not everyone will get it; few will appreciate it on the first viewing. This is not a "Tom Cruise" movie, but definately one to watch several times if you enjoy complex movies.

Donna S. gave it an8:
I'm still confused by whatever went on in that movie, but I loved it, and I was blown away by the ending which was made even spectacular by Sigur Ros' '"Njosnavelin". This movie toyed a lot with my emotions, and I don't think I can spite Tom Cruise for his role as David Aames, even if I loathe him (Tom) with a passion as of now.

steve p gave it a6:
This is one of those movies that had a great concept but didn’t follow thought on it. Ok, lets put it this way; the movie is to long really to long. My dad and me ended up fast forwarding thought half of it. The first half is all romance and mellow drama, and that kind of stuff, in other words you wait for two hours for something to happen. These first 2 hours are painful, like a lobotomy, but if you can suffer thought it the last hour is intriguing. Much like my life, the deeper you go in it the stranger it becomes, really weird things start happening. I can not deny, the last 20 to 15 minutes of this film are amazing, in fact the ending I think is defiantly in the top 25 for best movie ending ever. But everything else is really bad. I would just say skip everything and go to the ending, but you wouldn’t be able to understand it that way, and besides it doesn’t have the same felling that way. This is one of those movies you should rent, see once, then never again. Despite the fact it has Tom Cruse in it (free Katie and stop assaulting opera’s couch) and that it’s to long, and full of crappie drama, the ending, and the ending alone makes this film.

Jonathan R. gave it a10:
One of the most interesting unique plots ive ever seen in a movie with an unpredictable ending.

Travis M. gave it a10:
Wonderful movie, one of my favorites. Starts off slow, but the ending blows you away. I loved it.

Anima gave it a3:
Well, before giving it a good rating, you gotta see the original ("Abre Los Ojos" by Alejandro Amenabar). Hate to disappoint you guys, but this one is total crap.. Unless you are one of those people without imagination, and you like all the answers being given to you, lefting no place for you to think, you should stay away from this remake. (Sorry for my English, I've only learned it at school :) ).

Vanilla Sky Paramount Pictures

Vanilla Sky
Paramount Pictures