There are few auteurs as instantly recognizable and divisive as Stanley Kubrick, few filmmakers as idiosyncratic or groundbreaking. His work spans the entirety of life itself–sometimes in the same film–and has inspired almost as much derision as hosannas. There is no easy consensus on Kubrick’s films–though you may not be terribly surprised by our writers’ …
As we spend a month looking at the great Stanley Kubrick, we can also look at the filmmakers who were clearly influenced by Kubrick. “Kubrickian” films tend to exercise incredible control of the camera, are extremely ambitious, tend to deal with much weightier themes, and always maintain a sense of mystery, like a there’s an …
There are few unrealized projects in the history of cinema more tantalizingly fascinating than Stanley Kubrick’s planned feature about Napoleon
The Sixth Sense has come and gone as has its (alleged) twist ending. It’s hard to categorize The Sixth Sense but like The Shining or Inception I shall dub it as part of the puzzle picture genre that keeps appearing then disappearing only to come back. At first sight, the very existence of puzzle pictures …
For moviegoers growing up in the last 20-30 years, big is the new normal. I’m talking about those big-budget, over-produced, effects/action-packed extravaganzas that are as expected and routine an arrival as a commuter bus, and never more so than during the summer months. Come a rise in temperatures, there’s an almost ceaseless parade of …
Speaking to Michael Ciment about his 1975 masterpiece Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick revealed that he had once been interested in adapting another of Thackeray’s novels, Vanity Fair, for the screen. This idea was ultimately abandoned by Kubrick who felt that the story could not have been “successfully compressed into the relatively short time-span of a …
We’ve recently posted letters from directors Michael Bay and Terrence Malick to projectionists on how to properly project The Tree of Life and Transformers 3. Recently we recorded our very first and much overdue Stanley Kubrick special. In that episode we reviewed what I think is the director’s best film, Barry Lyndon, which is nothing …