IndieWire names “Eyes Wide Shut” as the Best Movie from the 90s

It was crap

That's a really bizarre choice. Was 'Eyes Wide Shut' even properly finished? And if not, what's that say about the rest of the movies from the 90s?

What a bunch of bullshit. These pretentious tools just want to look like they understand arthouse cinema, even though this stinker was made by an iconic director and starred the two biggest stars of the decade.

Most galling omission: "The Shawshank Redemption." It's a timeless work of art, and regularly tops the critics' rankings of the best movies of that decade. They also left out "Forrest Gump" and "Boyz N The Hood." Who the fuck wrote this list?

They rated "Titanic" above "Safe," and "Clueless" above "Fargo." And I'm pleased they included "Jackie Brown" at all, which many film ranking lists often overlook entirely.

Teeny-bopper bullshit, with pretentious foreign films thrown in to add phony depth.

IndieWire has always been nonsense. I remember when that cunt David Ehrlich thought Call Me By Your Name reinvented cinema.

Critics love Eyes Wide Shut. I think it's interesting as hell and even very good in spots, but wouldn't name it "best of" anything.

Clueless is my favorite. Goodfelllas is the best.

R3. Thanks for letting me know that. List must have been complied by a bunch of soho queens. How the fuck can boys n the hood and shawshank not be on the list. Hell even Forrest Gump is a dam good feel good movie with one of the mist original showstopping lead performances ever. Fuck off indiewire.

I think it's an okay list

Uh...L.A. Confidential?? The Usual Suspects? The Matrix? Fargo? SCHINDLER'S LIST???

The only thing that would have made Eyes Wide Shut interesting would have been Tom Cruise’s character being stripped and thrown on a Lazy Susan to be gangbanged by some male models with monster cocks.

Eyes Wide Shut?!

R9 The Matrix and Fargo are on the list.

Nicole was so hot in Eyes Wide Shut. It should be in the top ten for that reason alone

I saw Eyes Wide Shut in a theater during its first run. I bit the inside of my jaw throughout much of it, and finally burst out laughing at one point. After that I just tuned out.

However, it was beautifully photographed (Kubrick, naturally).

I wish I had my eyes TIGHTLY shut when I saw Eyes Wide Shit.

And keep in mind, I’m a big fan of Kubric, but it was the shittiest film he ever directed & it was tedious AF to watch it to the very end.

Nicole Kidman did look beautiful in the film, however, and the lighting style used for the film was excellent.

IndieWire names “Eyes Wide Shut” as the most Shocking Movie from the 40s

Fixed for OP

Schindler’s List is there.

I fucking hated Magnolia. One of the only movies I’ve ever walked out of.

Magnolia is a great movie

Schindler’s List should be at the top. What year did Red Thin Line and Saving Private Ryan come out? Those two should be near the top on any list.

They don't have Shawshank Redemption, Usual Suspects, Good Will Hunting, The Sixth Sense, The Big Lebowski ,American Beauty in the list. Are you kidding me?

Sixth Sense and Big Lebowski also aren't on here. This list is pure Trump, aka TRASH.

Stupid movie and Tammy Cruise is a terrible actress.

[quote][R9] The Matrix and Fargo are on the list

Yes and so are others that I mentioned.

ALL of them deserve to be Best Movie from the 90s ahead of Eyes Wide Shut.

Didn’t Kubrick only film part of the movie and then he died?

For the phoniest orgy scene ever captured on film look no further than Eyes Wide Shut.

I agree. I fell asleep during the orgy

It’s a film. Not a porn.

I didn't expect it to turn me on. But I would have liked to believe it.

Kubrick planned for the orgy scene to be very graphic with frontal nudity. Tom Cruise was also originally supposed to go full frontal before he chickened out.

Why does no one acknowledge that Cruise is Tom’s middle name and not his real surname? Or did he legally change it?

I think Eyes Wide Shut is a terrific movie, it's one of my favorites of Kubrick's, but calling it the greatest film of the 90s is a huge stretch.

You can see them openly trolling everybody by their placing of Shakespeare in Love one spot above Saving Private Ryan

These things are always spotty and made for clicks more than anything else

Because stage names are so common in Hollywood that they rarely require much remark, R31. People know he was born Thomas Mapother. His cousin, with that same last name, has been a working actor for decades.

Cruise probably has a lot of deep, dark secrets, but his last name isn't really one of them.

One deep, dark secret mainly.

I'd put Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father (1993) on the list and certainly Daniel Day Lewis deserved the Oscar over Tom Hanks for Philadelphia

Kubrick worship has gotten out of hand.

I’ve always been fascinated by all the conspiracy theories surrounding Eyes Wide Shut, the filming of it and Kubrick’s sudden death

It sucked.

R37, please elaborate!

R37 If you want to talk Kubrick and overrated movies, let's explore "A.I.," made after his death.

Kubrick has nothing to do with AI. That’s a Spielberg film.

I agree. It is a movie you will either love or hate. I loved it, it's my favorite Kubrick movie. I also love Paths of Glory, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Full Metal Jacket, etc.

R41 But he spent twenty years developing the story into a solid script, and even Senor Spelbergo himself attributes the bones of the film to Stanley Kubrick.

The film is also dedicated to Kubrick.

R39 There were many cut-scenes.

The cut-scenes were never available for the public. These scenes which were crucial to understanding the subliminal message hidden in the movie, and were cut out prior to the public release, after Kubrick suddenly died. Only a few people watched these scenes, and they were the studio heads. They cut those scenes and to this day those scenes have never seen the light of day.

Supposedly some of the footage cut showed the elite and rich in a dark, satanic light, and how they blood ritual sacrifice humans and animals. This represents the Illuminati.

There were conspiracy theorists who believed the studio heads had Kubrick murdered before the film was released because he refused to cut out the scenes they didn’t like because the minute he did die they took it upon themselves to delete those scenes.

Eyes Wide Shut was touted as being something that was going to be daring and provocative for a mainstream film, but in the end it wasn’t sexy or graphic. Showgirls got this buildup too, but it turned out to be a laugh riot. Fifty Shades of Gray would be a later example.

R45 Would you put Striptease on that list? Maybe Magic Mike?

R46 no. Those are silly movies that were never seen as pushing boundaries

R44 now I wish I had seen the original Kubrick version. I have to admit the ending was a big let down in its current state.

I have only seen it once, when it first came out. I hated it SO MUCH (flames, FLAMES,…on the side of my face).. My friends and I were so delirious by the end that we were laughing at it, as were most people in the theater.

I have often thought about trying it now that I’m older to see if I’d at least appreciate it, like I do other Kubrick films.

There were a few scenes cut, but there was a specific moment in the film cut, and it was only 22 seconds long. This really set off the conspiracy theorists when a few years later “someone” leaked what the 22 seconds of footage were that caused the studio heads to be furious, demanding Kubrick to cut it but he wouldn’t.

He died 5 days later.

Tom Cruise's character's predicament would have made a lot more sense if the action had taken place in the New York of the Guilded Age, not the late 20th Century.

It's kind of shocking that American Beauty is not on that list at all. I realize that it's polarizing and has been critically revised downward in some estimation since its initial '99 acclaim, but it's still an intriguing, 90s zeitgeist-y film with excellent performances. I realize that Kevin Spacey is uber problematic, but the film itself (and his and Annette's performances) still has merit and is better than a few of the choices that made it on the list.

I think the infamous scenes that were "cut out" were actually digitally blocked by human figures in the foreground because the studio worried they'd get an NC17 rating. The current video versions of the film have removed those figures and you can see the entire scenes as shot, and they're actually quite mild even by 1999 standards.

As with every Kubrick film, there's a lot of speculation and mythology about what he filmed and what we're not seeing. I think that's mostly BS, encouraged by the studios, Kubrick and his estate to continue to sell different versions of his films for decades. Example, for years his estate claimed that Kubrick intended for his films to be shown on video at 1.33:1 to fit into the old TV shape. They even claimed the films would never be shown in any other format per his beloved assistant and guardian dog of the Kubrick legacy Mr. Leo Vitale. Fast forward to widescreen TV's and the films are now offered in widescreen format, first on DVD, then Blu-ray, and finally in 4K. More format options to come, I'm sure.

100 Best films of the ‘90s and they exclude Mike Figgis’ Leaving Las Vegas? How?

R53 that isn’t a deleted scene. They toned down the nudity but didnt delete the scene.

Different versions of his movies don’t exist. The same movie in different formats isn’t a different version.

American Beauty was never a good film. It doesn’t deserve a place on this list.

Stanley Kubrick’s death:

Stanley Kubrick died on March 7th 1999, the ‘final cut’ was pre-screened for the first time on March 2nd 1999, 5 days before Kubrick’s death.

Those who attended the pre-screening:

Bob Daly (Warner Bro. Co-Chairman)

Terry Semel (Warner Bro. Co-Chairman)

Tom Cruise

Nichole Kidman

Additional pre-release viewers:

Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick’s personal editing assistant

Potential additional pre-release viewers:

Christiane Kubrick

The projection operator

The contract:

Everyone on set signed a lengthy contract securing the privacy and strict secrecy of the project, even to this day Warner Brothers could take action against anyone who broke this contract. Bob Daly, Terry Semel, Tom Cruise and Nichole Kidman are not likely to reveal the filming or viewing of the missing scene cut from Eyes Wide Shut, it could cost them their career or more. At the world premiere for Eyes Wide Shut both Bob Daly & Terry Semel announced their simultaneous retirement as the co-head of Warner Bros. During this announcement they also announced their donation of $100,000 to The Film Foundation (urging awareness of the urgent need to preserve motion picture history). At the same time they knowingly mutilated motion picture history by not giving Stanley Kubrick the final cut on Eyes Wide Shut.

The cut scene:

The original cut of Eyes Wide shut contained a scene which was cut out prior to public release. The existence of this scene is only known among a select few people who signed strict secrecy contracts with Kubrick/Warner Bros. The length of this scene was approximately 22 seconds.

Dr. Harford is Tom Cruise’s character.

At 1:19:27 Dr. Harford finds himself separated from the masked woman. He walks down a hallway distantly following a couple. He turns to see an empty room with a pentagram-like circle in the center. The reaction in his eyes can be seen in a close up. Acting as if he did not see the ceremonial room he continues to walk down the hallway which can be seen at 1:19:30.

I’m sure they were paid to name it best.

I hated that movie and all I remember is the two of them staring at each other in a mirror. Seems to sum up Hollyweird brilliantly. Just crap.

r25 is right like many of you. Kubrick died and the film was altered (butchered) after he was gone.

What I saw in the theater looked like cobbled together pieces. Very pretty but the fished film made no sense.

I think Kubrick had a very different film in mind.

i wasn't allowed to pick movies for a while after this stink bomb.

R55 Film formatting is a huge aspect of how a film is presented and experienced but what I was trying t say is that the Kubrick oeuvre is not as sacrosanct as the Kubrick estate, the fans and the studios would have you believe. I don't believe there are some mythical scenes that nobody has seen out there, and none that he would have wanted you to see. So the version that's out now is his final version.

I recall it felt long and was a pain to sit through.

Only it isn’t r61

R60 Kubrick held complete control over his films as long as they stayed within a certain rating. If EWS feels messy to you, it's on you.

He cut my scene and recast my role!

No Barton Fink? Or did I missed it? That's one of the best movies ever

Which movies would you remove to add those you think deserved to be added? I'm a big David Lynch fan but Lost Highway wasn't that great of a movie. Glad Fire walk with me made it though. And at a high place. Very underated movie.

Yes, Fire Walk with Me is a great film. Also happy to see Beau Travail placing high. Eyes Wide Shut has some problems for me but I liked it for the most part. Yes, Kidman and the lighting are great. Cruise, not so great. I would want to see it again to judge how it has aged. I rarely agree with lists made by consensus. They are interesting to read but I prefer reading individual lists like Scorcese's faves or Jane Campion's. Speaking of Campion, The Piano might have been higher here.

I was surprised by how low The Piano was to be honest

I absolutely love Kubrick but Eyes Wide Shut is a misfire.

Silence of the Lambs is way too low.

R71 I just rewatched it last night. It was airing on Encore. I haven’t watched it in years. I forgot how good it was.

American Beauty is an awful film, I wouldn't have placed it on any list. Forrest Gump is middling gruel, same with Titanic and Groundhog Day. I like Clueless, but I find it terribly overrated. Fast Times at Ridgemont High was the better Amy Heckerling high school movie. Too many overrated or revisionist "classics" on that list I would have swapped out for any other movie by the same director that decade - I would have swapped Lost Highway for Wild at Heart, The Piano for Holy Smoke, Malcolm X for Clockers, etc. Eyes Wide Shut is a revisionist classic. Too many foreign films on the list no one saw or cares about to give the writers smart points, and too many quirky women's indie films no one saw or cares about for woke points. The Blair Witch Project and Shakespeare in Love are pieces of shit.

I wish any Abel Ferrara or Robert Altman film was on the list, it seems like a glaring omission to not include Bad Lieutenant or Short Cuts/The Player. Same with The Big Lebowski, Audition, Batman Returns, Husbands and Wives/Deconstructing Harry/Bullets Over Broadway (The WA omission felt political), Muriel's Wedding, Light Sleeper, Happiness, True Romance, JFK, Night on Earth, Velvet Goldmine, La Haine....are way better movies than many of the dreck on that list.

I agree with Boogie Nights (should have been ranked higher, I'd have switched it and Magnolia), Strange Days, The Silence of the Lambs (should have been ranked higher), My Own Private Idaho, The Last Days of Disco, Cure, Rushmore, Dazed and Confused, Miller's Crossing, Being John Malkovich (should have been ranked higher), Terminator 2, Fight Club, The Age of Innocence, Jackie Brown, All About My Mother, Crash, La Ceremonie, Naked, Heat, Thelma and Louise, Fargo, Irma Vep, Fire Walk With Me, Chunking Express, The Thin Red Line, Safe, The Long Day Closes, Goodfellas, and Beau Travail.

Fast Times was the 80s. Not 90s.

R73 Batman Returns? How high are you? Also, there aren't too many "foreign" films, there isn't enough of them. Too much Hollywood stuff.

R75 If they wanted a mainstream blockbuster to even out the list, it's much better than Forrest Gump or Titanic.

I imagine I could comment about this development if I had been able to stay awake through the film.

Am I the only person here who loved Eyes Wide Shut? Not the best movie of the 90s, of course. But still, a great film.

I'm surprised that there aren't more animated movies on the list.

The Thin Red Line is so much better than Saving Private Ryan. Just wish there weren't so many A list big shot celebrities in it.

R79 Beauty and the Beast and Toy Story, at least.

Didn't tom cruise grow up Jewish. Great nose job, it's also why he doesn't use the last name r31.

Pixar's Up, also.

R81 No, I meant more japanese animated movies.

I don't think Titanic needed to be in the Top 10. Good gawd - have you WATCHED the movie recently? The script still stinks! It's cringeworthy.

Good question, R67. Let's start right at the top:

Ghost Dog @ #100 - who cares? It's probably not even available on a streamer Until The End of The World @ #99 - nobody EVER thought that was a good movie! It disappeared upon release! I mean, their review starts with "It's difficult to describe..." then goes on to say there are 5 different edits and additional "fan" cuts. Total nonsense. I would've preferred Wild At Heart over Lost Highway, to be fair. I can't believe Boogie Nights barely scraps the Top 100. That's just funny. I called Strange Days at the time; it actually could've placed higher. Nobody really got it at the time and it was box office failure. I saw at the cinema twice in 24 hours, I was so shook by it. Scrolling through. I don't mean to be churlish but like 40% of this list is just pretentious bullshit.

The book is fantastic, Die Traumnovellle. The movie doesn't do it justice. Kubrick is overrated.

[quote] "Kubrick has nothing to do with AI. That’s a Spielberg film."

It's deeply tied to Kubrick, R41. It originally started with Kubrick, who bought the rights to the story in the early 1970s, and hired writers to work on and develop it. It languished in development hell for decades for multiple reasons, one of which was that Kubrick didn't believe the available technology of the time was up to the challenge. Kubrick gave Spielberg the script in 1995.

I already knew this, but you can read one article on the subject at the link.

This list does include some of my favorite 90s movies. (Yes, that #1 is ridiculous)

BOOGIE NIGHTS

BUT IM A CHEERLEADER

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO

VIRGIN SUICIDES

RUSHMORE

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

JACKIE BROWN

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER

THELMA & LOUISE

FARGO

MAGNOLIA

PULP FICTION

SAFE

Titanic in the top 10 makes the whole list worthless

R85 Titanic is tedious. I couldn't wait for the iceberg.

Far better and prescient and not on the list

Titanic makes it worthless specifically because it’s an IndieWire list. I don’t love Titanic, but if the AFI put it in their top ten for ‘90s movies I would totally understand why it was there.

IndieWire is just trying to be contrarian to their own contrarianism; putting Clueless so high on the list makes sense for that, but going for Titanic just feels like bad trolling.

IndieWire also chose the 25 Best Movie Performances of the 1990s, and confirmed that they're just trolling their readers.

Among performances like Denzel Washington in Malcolm X and Holly Hunter in The Piano, they chose one performance from Titanic. Not Kate Winslet or Leonardo DiCaprio or even Gloria Stuart or Kathy Bates or Victor Garber.

They chose Billy Zane.

R83 why would a 2009 film be included on a 90s movie list????

Eyes Wide Shut deserves it just for the Kath & Kim episode that worked it into a b-story.

EWS is such a monumental disappointment from one of my favorite directors. This quote from Washington Post film critic sums it up pretty well: "'Eyes Wide Shut' turns out to be the dirtiest movie of 1958." Tom Cruise is woefully miscast and just makes things worse. Anyone remember giggling when two thugs pass by him and call him a faggot?

This film probably sparked my distaste for films about privileged white people who have problems. "American Beauty" is another.

I thought Tom was pefectly cast.

I will never understand some of you always bitching about Titanic. It’s a very well-made film, beautifully shot, beautiful cinematography with great acting. It was an event film.

Boogie Nights should've been MUCH higher, Malcolm X should've been top ten, Pulp Fiction should've been lower (hasn't aged well AT ALL), Matrix should've been higher. Was Se7en even on the list? It's a greater work of serial killer suspense art than Silence of the Lambs and should've been top 20 at least. Being John Malkovich should've been higher by virtue of the fact of that incredibly inventive script. Clueless should've been MUCH MUCH lower if included at all. I mean, come on, I know it meant a lot to a certain generation's childhood years but great cinema it definitely is not and certainly shouldn't be on the list above Miller's Crossing or instead of greater, more electrifying films like The Usual Suspects or Audition. Oh, nevermind. I always tell myself not to take these lists seriously but they always manage to do something to piss me off. I'm realizing now that it is intentional. A list we all agreed with wouldn't get talked about.

[quote] I like Clueless, but I find it terribly overrated

𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅?

Save the special effects, Titanic is completely pedestrian.

R99 And yet Jackie Brown hasn't aged at all, but will still never get the regard that every other Tarantino movie seems to get.

I get why Clueless was included, even though I disagree with its placement on the list. Comedies are undervalued, and Clueless is a pretty inventive reworking of Emma that captures that period of time while still feeling somewhat timeless. The more I think about movies from that era, the higher I'd place The Birdcage, so I can't begrudge IndieWire for doing something similar.

And to be honest, I'd rather have them value movies like Clueless than just worship at the altar of cinema's auteurs. That's the only reason why Eyes Wide Shut topped the list, and it's why mediocre to terrible David Lynch work shows up there.

R99, I hate to say this, but I watched Jackie Brown recently and I didn't love it. It felt like a letdown after Pulp Fiction when I saw it twenty-five years ago, even though I did appreciate a lot about it and still do. Because it has become the highbrow choice for the best Tarantino movie, I thought I'd feel a greater appreciation when I revisited it with the benefit of age. But I didn't, and I wish I could love it the way other people do.

Stanley Kubrick cast 'movie stars' like Tom Cruise because that's what he was doing: making movies. Ryan O'Neal in Barry Lyndon is another example.

I didn't get this right away, but the title of the film is saying 'This is really going on right in front of you, and no one is doing anything about it." There are parallels between the movie and Jeffrey Epstain, Guislane Maxwell etc.

Eyes Wide Shut reminds me of Citizen Kane. There are a lot of rabbit holes (MK Ultra, visual and color clues) to go down, but if you pull back focus, the story line makes you laugh. That being said, I love both movies and have seen them both several times.

R103 terrible David Lynch work? Fire Walk With Me is brilliant.

Clueless ahead of Romy and Michelle is blasphemy.

As someone who saw it on opening night (which was Valentine's Day 1990, if I'm not mistaken), Silence of the Lambs has NOT aged well.

It's really campy.

The moment Silence of the Lambs completely discredits itself is when we are asked to believe that pudgy, short, 50 year old Hannibal Lecter somehow managed to not just lift that dead cop but actually hang him ten feet of the ground and drape flag decorations from the walls and arrange dramatic backlighting. Absolutely stupid and ridiculous!!! The movie went from a slightly exaggerated thriller exercise to a cartoon parody at that point and Lecter went from colorful, eccentric writer's creation to comic book villain. It's why Se7en is the superior film regardless of what the unthinking SOTL fans say.