lauded as a genius by many , stanley kubrick commands a superlative filmography that includes such critically-acclaimed films as " 2001 : a space odyssey , " " a clockwork orange , " " lolita , " and " dr . strangelove , or : how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb . " now , sadly , he's added " eyes wide shut " to that impeccable body of work and his final film is the first and only blot on his near-flawless copybook . this much-publicized psycho-sexual tease-a-thon , with its star billing of real-life marrieds tom cruise and nicole kidman , is nothing more than one long ( two-and-a-half hours long ) boring exercise that features kubrick operating with talent wide shut . kubrick , faithless to arthur schnitzler's 1926 novella " dream story , " has confused eroticism with nudity . he has confused intellectualism with talking slowly . he has confused profundity with pretentiousness . in addition , the director has made some strange casting choices , leaving sydney pollack in and leaving accomplished performers harvey keitel and jennifer jason leigh out . pollack , the director of such box-office hits as " tootsie " and " out of africa , " is normally solid in his occasional acting stints but here he's miserably out of his depth . . . and there isn't much depth to begin with ! unhappily , there's not likely to be a director's cut of this film to determine whether the decision to exorcise keitel and leigh was the right one . in fact , with the exception of the stark black-and-white credits , snatches of baroque music on the soundtrack , and many , many grainy tracking shots down lavishly-decorated corridors , there's none of kubrick's trademark brilliance in this film . 
