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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Eyes Wide Shut
Warner Bros.


8.7

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

based on 30 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for strong sexual content, nudity, language and some drug-related material

Starring Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Madison Eginton, Jackie Sawris, and Sydney Pollack

A doctor (Cruise) becomes obsessed with having a sexual experience after his wife, Alice (Kidman), confesses to having fantasies about a random servicemen she briefly encountered over a year ago.

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Arthur Schnitzler (novel Traumnovelle) Stanley Kubrick Frederic Raphael
DIRECTED BY:	Stanley Kubrick
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: March 7, 2000 Video: March 7, 2000 Theatrical: July 16, 1999
RUNNING TIME:	159 minutes, BW / Color
ORIGIN:	USA / UK

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...

100

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Eyes Wide Shut still towers above most of the movies out there, immersing the viewer in a web of emotional complexity, at once raw and personal and, at times, theatrically overcooked.

100

USA Today Mike Clark

A precisely modulated and mostly mesmerizing 2¾-hour suspense movie, in part because it's one of the most bravely disturbing screen works ever attempted about thoughts withheld by even the most devoted marriage partners and the ramifications of voicing them.

100

Film.com Peter Brunette

As the late Stanley Kubrick's swansong, it fills the bill magnificently.

100

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Above all a masterpiece of sustained tone, a tightrope act that pays off in rich and unexpected ways.

100

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A spellbinder: provocatively conceived, gorgeously shot and masterfully executed.

Film.com Sean Means

A movie with the power and quality of dreams, where reality merges into symbolism and oddly juxtaposed elements crystallize into a single, electrifying whole.

Variety Todd McCarthy

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.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

Kubrick left one more brilliantly provocative tour de force as his epitaph.

Film.com Robert Horton

It's Kubrick, for sure, and in often mesmerizing form.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

In terms of power and effect, Eyes Wide Shut approaches (but does not surpass) Kubrick's vintage work - it is thought-provoking and unsettling.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The reconciliation at the end of the film is the one scene that doesn't work; a film that intrigues us because of its loose ends shouldn't try to tidy up.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

While both the novel and the film are weighted in favor of Bill's (Cruise) character, it's Kidman who gives the film's standout performance.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Makes its strongest impression not with dialogue but with virtuoso visual work…. when you work with Kubrick, it's always the director, never the actors, who is the real star. That can lead a film up or down or, as it does here, in both directions at the same time. [16 July 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

This is a remarkably gripping, suggestive, and inventive piece of storytelling that, like Kubrick's other work, is likely to grow in mystery and intensity over time.

Newsweek Jack Kroll

If some nagging sense of anachronism, a bit too much Freudian Vienna in his postmodern New York, prevents Eyes Wide Shut from being at the top of his list, Kubrick's 13th and last film is his most humane.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's painstakingly paced, but it's also entrancing.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

These scenes of debauchery and lust that make up the film's centerpiece are among some of the most powerful and disturbing ever put to film.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Whatever it is, it's totally Kubrickian: Its scenes have both an edge and an extraordinary visual perfection that could come from no other filmmaker.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

Totally absorbing even when it, too, strays.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Brilliantly filmed in his usual transfixing style, Kubrick's last movie pleads for alertness to the temptations that assail human nature from within and without.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Ultimately, Eyes Wide Shut doesn't rank among Kubrick's best work.

TNT RoughCut Christopher Brandon

It's a mind-blowing game, and all that nonsense about this being an erotic thriller was merely part of Kubrick's game.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

Works more as an object of pop curiosity than as a work of popular entertainment.

New York Post Rod Dreher

It's shocking only in its banality, impotence and utter lack of heat.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

It's good -- when it's not adrift in an absence of meaning.

Dallas Observer Hal Hinson

It is, as his films usually are, dense, complex, and challenging. It is also, sad to say, ponderous, often inscrutable, and ultimately not much fun.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Eyes Wide Shut is Stanley Kubrick's Hindenberg.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The director's famously over-deliberate, pause-laden style verges, for the first time, on amateurville, and that gives us too much time to linger on the movie's more bizarre details.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Feels like a rough draft at best.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

A laughable disaster: an agonizingly long, perversely dull, childishly conceived fantasia on marital sexual angst that could only have been made by someone (like Kubrick).

Slate David Edelstein

A somnolent load of wank.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's empty of ideas, which is fine, but it's also empty of heat.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Kubrick's much-anticipated final film boils down to the most elaborate monogamy lecture ever.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.7 (out of 10) based on 30 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

David H. gave it an8:
Yes, it has its faults, yes Cruise and Kidman aren't very good, yes it's implausible that Bill could simply have been allowed into the morgue with no ID check. But I'll be damned if the film doesn't work as an intriguing mystery. Provocative, symbolically valid and altogether unique. Is it maybe a tacit indictment of the real-life personae of the leading couple? Whatever Kubrick's intentions, this is possibly one of his best films.

Alan M. gave it a10:
A genuinely superb film, that goes over the heads of most of those who do not like it.

Manolis S. gave it a10:
One of the best films ever! The most addictive film, the closing of a genius watch it again and again.

Seamus S. gave it a3:
I am not one to insist that films be entertaining or uplifiting or profound or complex or subtle or passionate or... I am one however to insist that films be interesting. Eyes Wide Shut was a bore. Kubrik Shmubrik!

Josh W. gave it a10:
It took several viewings for this one to grow on me. But with each viewing it presents itself in a new and exciting way. Very few, even in Kubrick's stuff, can so subtly play out and reveal new levels of depth like this film. At the very least, I would ask those who hated it, or even found it to be nothing more than a moderate success to trust in Kubrick's skill. Keep watching it and you'll see that even at the end, he was at the top of his game, if not even a little better.

Jared SS gave it a9:
Hey look at me! I'm comparing Stanley to Stanley! I'm not gonna let any of his films stand on his own! Who am i? I'm every user reviewer on this board! Great movie though. How can you compare this film to his previous efforts? He never made the same film, so they should be taken that way.

Gabor A. gave it an8:
Kubrick makes something he has never made before, dumb fun. Dumb only to his standards but fun by any standards.

Eyes Wide Shut Warner Bros.

Eyes Wide Shut
Warner Bros.