Movie Reviews
Captains of the Clouds
Made in the summer of ’41, released early the next year, when we were in the Big War alongside Canada, who had been fighting along with the Brits since ’39. I can’t recall another movie about the RCAF, and it looks like this was made with their full cooperation. The chief delight here is for fans of aircraft, as many of the shots include hundreds of yellow-winged trainers and fighters, and ... Read more »
Colour Me Kubrick: ATrue … ish Story
This is not a Kubrick film, and it’s not even about Kubrick, but it seemed like a nice place to end this saga. It is based on a true story—considerably embellished, as is the norm in this sort of story—but it seems to stick to the main facts. It’s the story of Alan Conway who, during the 1990s while the real Kubrick was directing Eyes Wide Shut in England, ... Read more »
Eyes Wide Shut
It’s a shame the Kubrick had to go out with this, in my opinion, the least effective and least interesting of his later work. It has the Kubrick look, in every scene, but story is often his weakest point, and I had a very hard time getting involved in this one. I didn’t like much about these rich people, and Tom Cruise’s sexual odyssey didn’t hold a lot of interest for me. And, sadly, ... Read more »
Full Metal Jacket
The first half is a masterpiece, as good a short film as has ever been made. The second half is merely brilliant. It lost me only at the end, where Kubrick surprised me by indulging in that most-abused filming technique: slomo. What, did Brian de Palma, the awful king of slomo, take over production for a week? I simply did not believe that, when the soldiers discovered that the sniper who ... Read more »
The Shining
Before one even gets to the movie, one has to mention what I’m certain is the finest trailer ever made for any film. Two elevator doors in a hotel lobby. Clunky furniture. Credits roll for one minute. Then … one of the doors opens and an ocean of blood flows out in super-slow-motion. Well, the audience I was with was totally stunned. I think a hit was ... Read more »
Barry Lyndon
(New review) How does one describe Barry Lyndon? How does one describe every painting in a large museum of masterworks? There is no question that this is the most beautiful movie ever made. Not only that, but I can think of no other movie where every frame is perfectly composed. There are outdoor scenes where he must have waited hours ... Read more »
A Clockwork Orange
These days, just about everybody makes “science fiction” movies, if you want to call total crap like Transformers and The Green Lantern science fiction. But there are a few who specialize in it, and some of them are pretty good. Ridley Scott and James Cameron come to mind. But before Scott and Cameron there was Kubrick, and he ... Read more »
2001: A Space Odyssey
Again, my review from my Top 25:
One of only two science fiction films on my list, and the only movie I’ve ever seen that was virtually a religious experience. I’m not talking about the psychedelic ending, though that was marvelous, like every frame of this film. No, the awe for me began with the first chords of Also Sprach Zarathustra, that little bit of ... Read more »
Lolita
As Stephen King discovered to his sorrow when seeing the final cut of The Shining, a Stanley Kubrick film is a Stanley Kubrick film. No real room for anyone else. Valdimir Nabokov, the author of the book was hired to write the screenplay, but it was almost entirely junked. I’ve never read the book but I know that many things were changed. It was re-made in 1997, ... Read more »
Spartacus
This doesn’t have the stunning action scenes of Ben-Hur nor the parting of the Red Sea like The Ten Commandments, but it is certainly the best of the swords-and-sandals epics of the 1950s and ‘60s. What it does have is a good, non-religious story, and a crackerjack battle scene near the end. Kubrick always wanted to make a movie about ... Read more »