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Stanley Kubrick was one of the truly great visionaries in all of cinema, reinventing the way we looked at movies. Rather he was delving into horror ("The Shining"), 18th century ("Barry Lyndon"), science-fiction ("2001", "A Clockwork Orange"), the Vietnam War ("Full Metal Jacket") and the Cold War ("Dr. Strangelove"), Kubrick created bold, powerful and uncompromising worlds that felt modern but were nothing that we had ever seen before. His movies were a rarity: they had an enormous impact on the American pop culture while opening themselves to a variety of essays that commented on the movies' themes, taboos, characters and mise-en-scene.
This DVD box set captures the child prodigy from the Bronx at the peak of his creative powers. Kubrick's worlds were an adventure to discover again and again, revealing something new with each successive viewing. Now this DVD set, complete with digitally remastered picture and sound quality, shows us the clarity and immense detail that made Kubrick a breed apart from his contemporaries. The movies he made from 1962 to 1999 are all presented here, along with a great documentary called "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures", which is a two-hour retrospective of the director's life and career.
1.
Lolita
"Lolita" is an undervalued gem in Kubrick's career. Based on Vladimir Nobokov's novel, "Lolita" deals with a middle-aged professor's sexual infatuation with his 12-year old stepdaughter. I never read the book, so I can't tell what has changed but this movie bares the hallmarks of a Stanley Kubrick movie: the main character becomes trapped due to his obsessions and social codes. But rather than played straight, "Lolita" is akin to a Preston Sturges movie written by Samuel Fuller; a screwball comedy with a darker twist. The performances are tremendous, including James Mason as the pathetic professor, Shelly Winters as Lolita's obnoxious mother and Peter Sellers as the writer Clare Quilty. "Lolita" is not one of Kubrick's finest movies but it remains a worthwhile experience.
2.
Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Special Edition)
Kubrick's first masterpiece that kick-started a winning streak from 1964-1980 is an extremely funny and subversive satire on military insanity, government incompetence and Cold War-era politics. Everyone knows the story: a mad general orders a squadron of B-52 bombers to attack mother Russia. The Soviets counter it with a "Doomsday Device", which will set off all the atomic bombs all over the world. It's up to the impotent US President and the diabolical wheelchair-bound Dr. Strangelove (both played by Peter Sellers) to put a stop to it. It's all a lost cause but the comedy is not. From bodily fluids to "The Bomb, Dimitri", from George C. Scott hamming it to a bomber pilot riding the bomb down like a cowboy, this movie is the epitome of what a black comedy should be: provocative, intelligent and downright hilarious.
3.
2001 - A Space Odyssey
You may have heard of this movie.
After "Dr. Strangelove", Kubrick worked with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke to create a visual poem that dealt with themes such as the evolution of man, the dehumanizing effects of technology, the tragedy of artificial intelligence and the possibility of extraterrestrial life out there in Jupiter and beyond. The result was "2001", a landmark in science-fiction cinema that eschew plot in favor of episodes of breathtaking imagery. Featuring one of the greatest jump cuts in all of movies (the bone that cuts into a spaceship); a memorable use of classical music to match with the movie's images; and a villainous computer system who possesses more warmth than its human counterparts, "2001" is one of cinema's major milestones and the remastered audio and picture quality will forever ensure its immortality.
4.
A Clockwork Orange
Kubrick followed "2001" with the extremely controversial "A Clockwork Orange", a brilliant and nightmarish black comedy that combines the theme of dehumanization of "2001" with the satirical bite of "Dr. Strangelove". The movie stars a never-better Malcolm McDowell as Alex DeLarge, a Beethoven-worshiping hooligan who leads his droogs through the bit of old ultra-violence, only to be betrayed and become a guinea pig for an experiment that destroys any act of violence and aggression in favor of mechanical passivity. Is the cure worse than the disease? Is being passive worse than the will to commit violence? Those questions will haunt moviegoers after the movie ends. And after watching this movie, you'll never listen to "Singin' in the Rain" the same way ever again.
5.
Barry Lyndon
By 1975, Stanley Kubrick was a giant to rival Fellini and Kurosawa. With three movies that caused a huge uproar in both the film community and the general public, a Kubrick movie was not so much a movie as an event. But like many great mavericks, Kubrick defied expectations and followed three movies set in the future with a movie set in a past: a deliberately-paced costume drama about an Irish lad who climbs into high society, only to be destroyed by his obsessions and rigid societal codes. Unsurprisingly, "Barry Lyndon" received mixed critical and commercial success and became an anomaly in Kubrick's work, so much that it was not even released on the new
Stanley Kubrick: Warner Home Video Directors Series
a couple of years ago.
Or has it? In recent years, "Lyndon" has been rediscovered and widely regarded as one of Kubrick's most visually sumptuous and rewarding movies ever made. Out of all the DVDs of this set, "Lyndon" is the one most deserving of a remastered quality, which this DVD delivers. The beautiful cinematography by John Alcott, with some scenes shot in candlelit, and the exquisite production design reveal an aristocratic society to be every bit as cold and inhuman as future England in "A Clockwork Orange" and the cold space of "2001": hallmarks of a Stanley Kubrick movie. Ryan O'Neal's excellent performance as the eponymous title character reveals that, like Alex DeLarge, he is a trapped figure in a dehumanized world. Despite its three-hour length, "Lyndon" is hardly boring and the extraordinary imagery is guaranteed to cause viewers to come back and rewatch the movie again to learn something new.
6.
The Shining
After the artistic brilliance of the underrated "Lyndon", Kubrick tackled a more commercial project: an adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel, 'The Shining'. Kubrick altered much of the book's material and created a transcendent horror movie that dealt with the failures of patriarchy and the nuclear family. As father Jack Torrence and the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, who becomes possessed by the hotel's spirits and descends into madness, Jack Nicholson is riveting. Shelley Duvall, a Robert Altman stock actor who plays the hysterical wife, is equally good. But the real stars are those looming tracking shots, the eerie editing and the Overlook Hotel itself: a hotel of the labyrinth hallways, corridors and rooms where there is no place to hide. 142 minutes and rarely a boring moment, "The Shining" gets under your skin and creeps you out.
7.
Full Metal Jacket
Probably my least favorite of all Kubrick movies, which is still better than some of the director's finest movies. "FMJ" is divided into two parts: the first part takes place at a Parris Island boot camp run by the the maniacal Marine drill instructor Ray Emery, who transforms a group of undistinguished men into an army of cold, killing machines. The second part is set in Vietnam, where Ermey's men wind up being pinned down by a female Vietnamese sniper. The first part is considerably more successful in Kubrick's depiction of men losing their souls and becoming machines that regard violence as an act of normalcy. The second act is an effective action piece but loses its luster after the hugely successful first act. It also didn't help that "FMJ" was released at a time when many Vietnam movies like "Apocalypse Now", "Platoon" and "The Deer Hunter" were already made, so the movie can't help but look pretty dated compared to those three movies.
8.
Eyes Wide Shut (R-Rated Edition)
The final movie of the collection and the final movie made by Stanley Kubrick. "Eyes Wide Shut" was one of 1999's most anticipated movies and how couldn't it be when it stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, was directed by Kubrick and features sex? No one was prepared for a movie that felt like a cross between Antonioni, Ophuls and Bergman: a slow, mesmerizing, dream-like odyssey about a doctor's adventures in a sexual underworld. Like many of his movies, it polarized critics and audiences, who were put off by the slow pacing and ambiguous nature. But like those movies, "EWS" has stood the test of time as one of Kubrick's most interesting films and is a fitting coda to an illustrious career.
It is true that this box set is still missing some earlier Kubrick gems like "The Killing" and "Paths of Glory" (both which are available by Criterion) or directional debut "Fear and Desire". It also lacks "Spartacus", which Kubrick disowned since it did not have his personal sensibilities. What is here are his big movies: "Dr. Strangelove", "2001", "A Clockwork Orange", "The Shining" and the rest are all presented in a digitally remastered format and with improved audio. And quite frankly, that's good enough to make this both a great introduction for newbies and a perfect summation of the director's career.
Strongest recommendation.
NOTE:
It's also true that there are two new Kubrick box sets:
Stanley Kubrick: Limited Edition Collection
and the Stanley Kubrick: Warner Home Video Directors Series but this box set trumps them both due to a combination of by great packaging, cheap pricing (by Amazon third-party sellers) and for including underrated movies like "Barry Lyndon", his best movie to never find box-office success.
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Karine
C'est parfait
Reviewed in Canada on September 5, 2014Verified Purchase
