10 "Controversial" Movies That Didn't Deserve All The Hype

3. Eyes Wide Shut

The controversy: In Stanley Kubrick's final film, a wandering husband (Tom Cruise) embarks on an odyssey into New York's seedy underworld. On his journey, he stumbles upon an orgy attended by prostitutes and elites in masks, members of a mysterious cult gathering in secret at the edge of the city. The reality: Stanley Kubrick's films were never just greeted with indifference; they either incited loud boos or louder cheers, and with Eyes Wide Shut it appeared Kubrick had made something to bait the media that so often didn't know how to react to him. The film's centrepiece orgy scene was censored, making Eyes Wide Shut another example of a valuable film finding itself overshadowed by a single scene. Running almost three hours, Eyes Wide Shut features less nudity in that time than your run-of-the-mill raunchy comedy, and the explicit scenes are at least used here in a way that has some meaning beyond trying to titillate the viewer. Today, Eyes Wide Shut is still known as that movie featuring the orgy - it should be known as that final minor masterpiece from one of the great filmmakers that happens to include a rather mild sequence where Tom Cruise walks around a mansion while people screw in the background.