Here’s our epic list of the best war movies of all time. Aspects to remember: first, these have to take place during wars or battles that actually happened. So, that means a great war movie like Starship Troopers won’t make the cut. Second, the more warfare it has, the higher it ranks. So, while many …
Throughout the 1960s-early 1970s, a combination of financial desperation, creative daring, and an adventurous movie-going public had produced a creative detonation in mainstream American movies not seen before or since. Each year of the period seemed to bring at least one mightily ambitious visual experiment by a new contributor to the commercial movie scene, the …
If one is able to look beyond the noise of its tumultuous production, Spartacus remains one of the finest epics to ever emerge from the Hollywood studio system.
As reported by Deadline, Stanley Kubrick’s written script for The Downslope will now be made into a film series by World War Z and Finding Neverland director Marc Forster, who will serve as producer for all three films and director for the first. Kubrick wrote the script in 1956 after his film Fear and Desire hit theaters, and before he started working on …
The Conversation is a new feature at Sound on Sight bringing together Drew Morton and Landon Palmer in a passionate debate about cinema new and old. For their second piece, they will discuss Stanley Kubrick’s film The Killing (1956). Drew’s Take Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) is not my favorite work by the visionary director. In …
Before The Killing, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or even The Shining, Stanley Kubrick was a young artist with a passion for images. While he hadn’t made some of the greatest films of all-time yet, it seems like the director had a keen eye for people and places around him. Dangerous Minds posted a …
40. Beauty and the Beast (1991) Lost to: Silence of the Lambs 1991 was the first time an animated film ever grabbed a nomination for Best Picture with Disney’s version of “Beauty and the Beast.” The film also picked up nominations for sound, Original Score (for which it won) and three – count ’em THREE – …
Crime dramas and noirs predominantly made up the early part of Anthony Mann’s career, and epics and action/adventure films concluded it. But the Westerns he directed solidify his standing as one of the great, underrated figures of American cinema. Many films are evidence of his talent. Man of the West is just one, a very good one.
What do film directors Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Agnès Varda, Robert Wise, Fred Zinnemann, Luis Buñuel, Alain Resnais, Roman Polanski, Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, Louis Malle, Richard Linklater, Tom Tykwer, Alexander Sokurov, Paul Greengrass, Song Il-Gon, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro Iñárritu have in common? More specifically, what type of film have they directed, setting them …
Below is a collection of faux-trading cards based on The Shining and created by Portland-based blogger Rian Callahan who says he created the cards simply because they didn’t exist and he thought that they should. Via Dangerous Minds
The Spoke Art Gallery recently organized a gorgeous art show tribute to Stanley Kubrick with such artists as Tim Doyle, Tracie Ching and Rhys Cooper participating. Below are just a few of the great posters designed for the occasion; however the entire collection is available on their website for all to see. Enjoy!
10. Altered States (1980) Directed by: Ken Russell Is it a horror film? Many of Ken Russell’s films could be argued as such, but there’s enough in Altered States that makes it less horror and more science fiction/psychological thriller. Based on the novel by Paddy Chayefsky, Altered States introduced the world to William Hurt (and …
As you can probably tell, this list feels more arbitrary than others. That’s not by design, but the unfortunate premise of the list leaves some room for interpretation. As we move forward, we will start seeing the films that, if you asked a lay person to give an example, would probably be a response. In …
For a while, Lady Gaga was one of the most fascinating music stars that had come in a while, primarily because of her unapologetic bombast. Too often, though, she may have been written off as “weird”, from her odd fashion decisions, her performance art appearances on TV, and, of course, her music videos. Gaga, née Stefani …
Bresson directed a number of films that could be considered his greatest, and while Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) puts up the strongest fight, a good case could be made for Pickpocket, from 1959, as the inimitable filmmaker’s finest achievement.
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’ …
What’s difficult about making this list is finding a balance between a successful Kubrickian film that either predates or pays homage to Kubrick and, for lack of a better term, is a ripoff. Now that we’ve hit the apex, it’s clear that these are, regardless of influence, quality films. What sets them apart is their …
Over the course of his career, legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick made movies in various genres tackling a number of ideas. Entirely separate films have been made simply to document the various interpretations of just one of his films, and his attention to detail has been well-documented. Thus, a look at the themes Kubrick presents in …
Having finished Lolita, a subversive Hollywood piece even by noirish standards, Kubrick returned to war. Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’s scope was more encompassing than the private torture of Paths of Glory, looking forward to the threat of apocalyptic destruction instead of a reflective portrait of immediate world wars. Instead of matching and multiplying the grave tone inherent in both his previous work and the source material, Red Alert by Peter George, Kubrick opted for a brand of blacker-than-pitch humor claiming “The only way to tell the story was as a black comedy or, better, a nightmare comedy, where the things you laugh at most are really the heart of the paradoxical postures that make a nuclear war possible…”. This does not deter from the omnipresent horror surrounding both the film and the historical environment that determined its existence. Beneath the antics and the (wonderfully) strained acting of Sellers and Scott lies the taut strains of nuclear holocaust with only these chummy actors in control. It’s dread at its purest, comfortably resting amongst the instantly quotable dialogue and perfectly composed images: an atmosphere of unspeakable horror-that-is-to-come.
“Good-bye, my sweetheart. Hello, Vietnam.” — Johnny Wright “Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me?” – Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket Full Metal Jacket was Stanley Kubrick’s eleventh film (twelfth, if you count Spartacus) and his last to depict war and the military. Kubrick dealt with the military in Fear and Desire, Paths of …
My first real attempt at understanding the brilliance that was Stanley Kubrick came in my freshman year of college, when I wrote a research paper on 2001: A Space Odyssey for an English class. After all that work, I only received a B and found myself more confused than ever. But there it was – …
“It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.” I had heard about A Clockwork Orange long before I ever saw it. I was maybe 13 or 14 the first time my mother mentioned it to me. She told me about seeing it in …
“Has it ever occurred to you what would happen to my future, if I were to fail to live up to my responsibilities?” – Jack Torrance, before telling his wife that he’s going to bash her brains in. Jack Torrance has responsibilities that were given given to him in good faith by the manager …