Full of trademark themes and characteristic compositions, Stanley Kubrick's final film is also his most fascinatingly flawed. With its style often resembling 1970s European art house movies, it lacks the morbidity to pass as a Buñuelian satire, and is too stately and serious to succeed as a commercial enterprise. Tom Cruise - as the doctor recklessly seeking a means of avenging his wife's fantasised infidelity - is far too controlled for his character's fraught nocturnal adventures to be plausible. Nicole Kidman, as his wife, is less visible, but simmers with potential erotic danger. Despite expectations, this is a disappointingly conservative conclusion to a career spent pushing back cinematic boundaries. Perhaps, after so long without directing a movie, Kubrick cared too much.

After Dr. Bill Harford's wife, Alice, admits to having sexual fantasies about a man she met, Bill becomes obsessed with having a sexual encounter. He discovers an underground sexual group and attends one of their meetings -- and quickly discovers that he is in over his head.