I think Dr. Strangelove is hysterical. It’s rather like Airplane; I can recite most of it from memory, and it’s still funny.
One of the things I noticed after multiple viewings is how seamless Peter Sellers’ multiple roles are. The climactic discussion between President Mufley and Dr. Strangelove is Sellers in both roles, but I wasn’t really aware of that the first few times I watched. Compare that to something like The Patty Duke Show, where the split-screen shots were absolutely blatant. Strangelove is filmed in such a way that we see a lot of close-ups and individual shots. Later in the movie, when Kubrick has to use individual shots of Sellers, it doesn’t call attention to itself. To me, that shows a degree of planning and vision that makes me appreciate the movie even more.
More generally speaking, I remember as a kid I would hear people raving about the brilliance and artistry of various creative works, movies, music, books, whatever. I didn’t completely get it at the time. It happens now, but it’s still rare for me. I watch movies for the story. Actors, directors, editors, and cinematographers are sometimes like football referees to me; if I notice them, then they must be doing something wrong. But not always.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a great movie. When I see it on TCM, the host usually talks about how it made Clint Eastwood a star. How can they miss how amazing Eli Wallach is in that movie? The scene near the end where he’s running through a cemetery looking for a particular grave has the best music ever written for a movie. And the final three-way shootout is brilliantly edited; we know where the characters are, who they’re looking at, and sizing each other up. We get closer and closer shots of eyes and hands, always know who’s who. Then a shot rings out and it jumps back to a wide shot. Awesome.
I imagine 2001 is seen as Kubrick’s pinnacle, his masterpiece, but my favourite is Dr Strangelove. As someone else says, it is hysterically (truly) funny and equally horrifying. I don’t think it will ever age, it will always be relevant. It also has one of the very best acting performances I’ve ever seen, from Peter Sellers in 3 roles. Oh and the most hilariously ironic line ever committed to film (you know, the War Room one). I’ve not seen all Kubrick’s films and one or two not for a long time but I would put them in this order of preference: -
Dr S 2001 Full Metal Jacket (would be higher if the second half was at the same standard as the first) Paths of Glory Spartacus The Shining Clockwork Orange The Killing (obviously highly influential but only saw it recently and was very dated)
I’ve always been a fan of Kubrick—he was a master of his craft. “Dr. Strangelove” is my favorite black comedy, and “2001: A Space Odyssey” is perhaps my favorite movie of all time.
While “Barry Lyndon” is sometimes overlooked compared to Kubrick’s more famous films, I loved it. It has a compelling story, solid acting, beautiful, groundbreaking cinematography (each scene is like a fine-art painting), and a mesmerizing soundtrack (Handel’s “Sarabande”, somber and majestic, really draws you in)—what’s not to love?
I appreciate all the previous analysis and that’s what I’m here for, but it has to be said that 2001 had no “source novel”. Clarke and Kubrick developed both the novel and the screenplay in tandem.
Reportedly, it was Clarke who wrote in the aspect of nuclear conflict which would’ve created a very well-defined story that humanity’s history was conflict. The obelisk irradiated the early primates with the intelligence to develop tools, or something like that. The first thing they did was make weapons. In the transition cut where the primate’s bone-weapon cut to the orbiting space platform, Clarke wrote it as a nuclear weapons platform, seemingly a comment on how humanity was given the gift of intelligence, yet wasted it on violence from the very beginning.
There were a lot of notes I didn’t care for in Full Metal Jacket. My take on this one wasn’t that they were oblivious to their mortality, but rather that they looked at it and shrugged, because what else were they going to do. It jolts you out of the Vietnam setting and reminds you that this apocalpyse was just one tiny setting of a bigger world where the people who sent the Marines are sitting home living life as usual, maybe watching television with their kids, the same world the Marines are returning to (if they return). It highlights the absurdity of the whole situation.
What I dislike most about Full Metal Jacket was the excess of barracks scenes where Kubrick just let Ermey run wild doing random stuff that wouldn’t happen in boot camp. I think when Kubrick found a trope he liked, he tended to let it take over to an excessive degree (different example from 2001, “Commercial Space Travel Is Like Air Travel Including Airline Food Except Sometimes Things Float And You’re Upside Down”. Like I feel like there was a full 30 minutes of that.
For Full Metal Jacket obviously Kubrick loved Ermey and let him run wild, but IMO he gave away too much of the film to that aspect, bordering on ridiculousness at times. It departs from Kubricks’ previous attention to detail and realism, but maybe I feel that way because I have military experience and he doesn’t. I think he decided Ermey was like the Marine version of Jack Nicholson, just put the spotlight on him and trust him to shine. Too much of that in FMJ in my opinion.
I love watching David Lynch movies, but I think you need to go in knowing you’ll need to work at it a bit. Like watch the movie and think about it, then read what others say about it, then watch it again. And again.
Don’t forget that before they used the weapons against other hominids they used them to get food from the tapirs - and saved themselves from starvation. Notice that the scenes where they were eating bits of vegetation were quiet - when they were eating meat you can hear flies.
Just about everyone notices the analog between the bone and the nuclear weapons satellite. But did you notice that, just like Moonwatcher confronts the other tribe, Floyd confronts the Russians. Not across a waterhole, but across a round table with drinks on it.
I first saw 2001 over 56 years ago, have seen it countless times, and this is the first time I noticed that. That’s why I love the movie.
I’ll add a third vote for David Lynch. He has a very unique and somewhat impenetrable style, but very memorable and worthy of analysis. I only saw his student film Eraserhead once, but there are some scenes I’ll never forget. Very disturbing. Mulholland Drive is amazing. No one else can fill a simple tracking shot down an interior corridor with such a sense of hidden menace. If you’re up for a longer experience, his TV show Twin Peaks is a great too. Weird and unsettling with a bizarre set of characters and a quirky sense of humor. The much later third season, since it was not restricted by what could be shown on network TV in the 1990s, takes things to a whole new level. It won awards as the best TV show of 2017 (from Rolling Stone, Esquire and the Washington Post).
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) is my favorite film. Critics hated it at the time, because they were incapable of getting it. Now it’s like Tales from Topographic Oceans: after decades have gone by, it’s reassessed as a work of genius.
I thought both Kubrick and Clarke denied this, especially Clarke, though Kubrick did consider and reject the idea. No?
I recall this because after finally watching 2001, I was confounded by the ending and went down an Internet rabbit hole to find out what I was supposed to be seeing. Kubrick is a brilliant “scene composer” but I find his ignoring normal narrative development annoying. Perhaps I’m just too lowbrow, but I don’t know how I was supposed to discern what I later learned was supposedly represented, not without a friggin’ guideline.
IOW, the end was self-consciously artsy. I don’t mind ambiguity. I can actually enjoy it. What I’m frustrated by is “what the fuck was that supposed to be?” No one has yet explained to me how I could have understood what was unfolding based on what was on the screen.
I also found him in particular thrall to his propensity to feel any 30-second scene can benefit by getting stretched out to a full ten minutes.
His films are undeniably interesting spectacles, and I’ve enjoyed many of them. But he sometimes ignores basic storytelling (and character development) in the service of his artistic vision a bit too much for my taste.
Another interesting Wilder film is “Ace in the Hole,” with Kirk Douglas as a disgraced, down on his luck newspaper reporter who exploits another man’s tragedy for his own unscrupulous ends. Deeply cynical is how I might describe how this forgotten 1951 gem plays out.
Ace in the Hole was also known as The Big Carnival, the name in use when it played on TV back in the day. I have relatives who “appeared” in it. They were taken around by the son of a producer to ride the carnival rides in the background. They got SS cards in order to be paid. Back then the original employer was listed on the back: “Paramount Pictures”.
For foreign films, I’d start with François Truffaut. My favorite is Day for Night. The 400 Blows had a major impact on cinema and had a great reference in the Simpsons film festival episode.
Yes, that was the title when I first saw it on “NBC Saturday Night at the Movies” sometime around 1965. Your relatives must have had some interesting stories to tell!
Any examples of this that you found particularly egregious?
The only thing that stood out to me as superfluous was the “This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting, this is for fun” thing. In boot camp, every activity and movement has some purpose, and that particular scene seemed to lack purpose. It was too over the top for teaching the proper term for rifle, and too lukewarm for any punishment for having used the wrong term. It was just silly looking.
I went with my brother to see that movie when it was released; by then I had been in the service for a year or two. Him: “Wow, was it really like that?” Me: “Pretty much.” Him: “That SUCKS!”
I did go on to explain that they didn’t smack us around like that anymore.
There’s also a Simpsons episode based on Ace in the Hole: “Radio Bart,” where Bart tricks the people of Springfield into thinking a boy fell down a well.
This post could possibly be the best I’ve ever read and could be interspersed in nearly every thread on this board, with very little change, and be positively Spot-On.
Trivium:
Peter Sellers was slated to play Major Kong but wanted to back out since he couldn’t get the accent right but the producers wouldn’t let him and he mysteriously twists his ankle on set and so cannot do all 4 roles.
That’s not the trivium, this is: In getting a last-second replacement Slim Pickens shows up dressed like a working cowboy. Since he clearly “gets” the character of Major Kong to dress up like he would, Slim Pickens gets the part. Except it wasn’t dressing up to get the role. Pickens was wearing his normal clothes.
And Kubrick never told Pickens the film was a comedy, because he knew Major Kong would be even funnier if he delivered all his lines as if he was in a serious war drama.