Stanley Kubrick is undoubtedly one of the greatest filmmakers in history. Kubrick's sharp social satire, unconventional framing techniques and complex storylines have made him a maverick director, whose style has been copied and repeated all the time.
Kubrick's films deserve in-depth discussion and debate, and their significance remains a topic of debate among fans long after the film's release.
Kubrick was a notorious perfectionist who poured a great deal of detail into his work, and his meticulous personality earned him a reputation for being difficult to work with.
Kubrick has many works that have never been made public, but many of the 13 films he left behind are considered to be among the greatest films of all time. Ranking them is certainly not an easy task, because you will find that ranking lower is the classic you love.
13 / Fear and Desire
It's hard to compare Kubrick's directorial debut, Fear and Desire, to his other film productions, because the hour-long anti-war film was more or less a long student short film, and its charm was largely that it set the stage for his later achievements.
Like any great filmmaker, Kubrick didn't take shape entirely from the start, and his experimental techniques took time to mature.
For Kubrick fans, Fear and Desire is a compelling film, but for the average audience, it's mostly a honing.
Although the film is not based on any one conflict, it was released during the Korean War and bears fairly clear resemblance to the rise of militarism in the United States.
The film tells the heroic story of four soldiers who venture on a dangerous mission between two ambiguous countries. In his later films, Kubrick's vivid and shocking images have subtle background meaning, while there is no subtlety in Fear and Desire.
12 / Killer's Kiss
Kubrick's second film is undoubtedly a step further than Fear and Desire, but it is still the work of a developing filmmaker who is more trying to perfect the current trend than innovating his own.
Compared to his other films, Killer's Kiss is perhaps the biggest outlier. It shows genuine empathy for the sympathetic characters and creates a tragic scene from the familiar black genre story rhythm.
What Kubrick did on a limited budget was impressive, but in the end it was just an impression of the work of Billy Wilder or John Houston.
Killer's Kiss is about middleweight boxer David Gordon who tries to rescue his seductive neighbor Gloria Price from her violent boyfriend, Vincent Rapallo, only to fall into a web of crime and betrayal.
Kubrick incorporates a lot of reasoning and twists into the tight 67 minutes, but apart from its relationship to the larger genre context, Killer's Kiss has little substance.
11 / "Lolita"
Lolita is a great example of Kubrick's greed. Theoretically, matching the fiction filmmakers with Vladimir Nabokov's controversial 1955 novel seems like a perfect choice, as Kubrick has shown that he can adapt great literary works and have his own interpretations.
Unfortunately, the brilliance of Nabokov's novel lies in its rhetorical phrases and expressive language, which is much more difficult to translate into a narrative feature film.
Despite its rich thematic material, Lolita isn't as shocking or outrageous as Kubrick would expect. In fact, Kubrick used this low-key predatory relationship to create a black comedic effect.
James Mason brilliantly plays The British professor Humbert, whom he married in order to seduce Charlotte Hazel's daughter Lolita. Of all Kubrick's films, Lolita is the one with the least reason to be played epicly, but in terms of its value, it's a personal favorite of the great David Lynch.
10 / Spartacus
An iconic film like Spartacus is Kubrick's most compromised work, and it's fascinating. Although the film has been hailed as a classic, it was the only film in Kubrick's film career that did not have full artistic control.
Spartacus's importance transcends Kubrick himself. Written by Dalton Trumbo during the Hollywood Blacklist Crisis, it is an open metaphor for political radicalism and civil rights.
Trumbo skillfully weaved his faith into a genre that tended to promote more overtly nationalist items, such as the Ben Hun and the Ten Commandments.
Despite its inherent subversiveness, Spartacus tends more to be a popular piece than something Kubrick himself might have done.
He certainly crafted exciting action scenes and brilliantly brought to life the last days of the Roman Empire, but Kubrick's inherently ambiguous style clashed with the more inflammatory rhetoric that Trumbo sought.
Kirk Douglas's performance is one of the most iconic "movie stars" of all time, and Spartacus is undoubtedly a classic, but as a "Kubrick movie", it belongs to the second half of its achievements.
09 /The Killer
In just a few similar films, it's not hard to see that Killer is one of the most influential films of all time. Kubrick's 1956 new black heist thriller, which tells the heist plot from multiple angles, was one of the main influences of Quentin Tarantino's Falling Dogs.
If you think about how The Falling Dog laid the groundwork for Pulp Fiction (and as a result, how many Parodies of Pulp Fiction there are), there is a complete sub-genre thanks to Kubrick's classics. It remains one of his most dynamic and entertaining works.
Unlike Killer's Kiss, "Killer's Kiss" feels like a parody of film noir clichés, while "Killer" subverts audience expectations through female killers, diversion of topics, and climactic gunfights.
While not as philosophical as some of his later works, The Killer is an example of Kubrick's sublimation of typical Hollywood films.
08 / The Glorious Road
Anti-war themes were popular in Kubrick's work, and in many ways, The Glorious Road is a more mature version of his early views expressed in Fear and Desire.
Kubrick delves into a less obscure area by engaging in grounded narratives in a real historical context. Set against the backdrop of World War I, the film tells the story of French Colonel Dax's subordinates who are brought to court for refusing to carry out suicide missions.
Douglas is the quintessential movie star, and there's a reason for that, because his authority needs attention when he makes powerful statements.
Compared to Spartacus, Douglas was given a more complex character because Dax was ostracized in the highest military circles and accused of cowardice simply because he used his men as pawns. Kubrick mimics footage from newsreels to give a dark, crude description of the real-life trench battles.
07 / "Dr. Strange Love"
Kubrick was able to be such an attractive filmmaker because, despite his frequent handling of black subjects, he never lacked a sense of humor.
All of his films incorporate elements of satire, and without a doubt, his only full-blown comedy, Dr. Strangelove, is one of the funniest and most destructive films of all time. Overwhelmed by cold war fanaticism, Kubrick could only mock the incompetence of world leaders as the decisions they made affected the global population.
Similar to current events at the time, Dr. Strange loves the story of fictional leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union after a rogue member of the U.S. military launched a nuclear missile.
Kubrick's script is already brilliant, but with the addition of great comedians it's even more interesting. Kubrick's appreciation for music is a classic in his use of Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again".
06 / 《Full Metal Shell》
There is a widespread misconception in film lovers circles that Full Metal Shell is a poor Kubrick work that only works in the first half of it.
Needless to say, the first hour of Kubrick's 1987 war film includes some of the most powerful images of his career as it tells the brutal training process of U.S. Marines as they train as recruits.
However, when the narrative focus shifts to the actual war itself and follows the characters and their squads through, Full Metal Shell is equally fascinating and fascinating.
It's unfocused, confusing, and ultimately unresolved, like the conflict in Vietnam itself. In Kubrick's orchestrated violence, there is a black, funny, meaningless feeling.
05 / "Clockwork Orange"
The only thing more shocking than the highly disturbing material in Clockwork Orange is how Kubrick is completely ahead of his time and how his hysterical classics of 1971 are equally influential and relevant 50 years later (and, unfortunately, it is equally subject to debate about whether to "promote" the behavior of his characters).
Clockwork Orange highlights Kubrick's greatest abilities; it is mesmerizing, perfectly constructs the entire mythology, and deals with complex philosophical undertones with novel insight.
Kubrick's film, based on an Anthony Burgess' novel, deals with behaviorism, youth culture, and perpetual violence in a way that criticizes adolescent ignorance and social influence.
It is impossible to define Clockwork Orange as a genre. Kubrick went beyond perfecting other categories to create a shockingly original, bizarre work.
04 / Barry Linden
It goes without saying that Barry Lyndon is one of the best-looking films of all time. It's rare to find a three-hour movie that's so entertaining, because Barry Lyndon saw Kubrick mock the self-righteousness of the film's epic with a selfish, repulsive, and generally disliked title character.
It's a different type of anti-war film that documents the Seven Years' War of the 18th century from an unusual angle, with kub creek's natural light and John Olcott's beauty contrasting with horrific material. Kubrick used the chapter-by-chapter approach to set the climax for the duel between Barry and his son.
03 / "Eye Opener"
Kubrick's last film preys on marital anxiety, a festival in which the festive decorations of modern New York are subverted into a nightmarish prison.
Eye Opener is a paranoid masterpiece. Even when he gushes out sexist terms, the characters' points of view are shared by the audience as they are all drawn into the secrets of a secret sexual society that spares no effort to silence outsiders.
Kubrick's attention to detail is known, which has led many to label him "obsessive-compulsive disorder," but the movie "Eye Opener" is about the nature of obsessive-compulsive disorder itself.
Perhaps Kubrick's final gift to the audience is both a puzzle that will never be solved and a self-reflective commentary, which is all too fitting.
02 / The Shining
Kubrick is a filmmaker with an extreme work, and aptly, The Shining is a film about falling into madness that forces the audience to experience the same numbness to reason.
It's clear that The Shining is at least one of them, if not the greatest horror film of all time, and a film with such a rich subtext still maintains impressive horror on a pristine level.
Maverick visual choices are so effective in blunting the senses that startling is even more effective, and Kubrick rarely gets from actors the most engaging performances of Jack Nicholson's brilliant work. The infamous set difficulties and subsequent conspiracy theories made The Shining equally fascinating 40 years later.
01 / 2001: A Space Odyssey
As one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, 2001: A Space Odyssey changed the rules of the game, and its impact is difficult to summarize.
It is both a vision of the future and a window into the past, a critique of technical arbitrariness and an insight into the search for a creator, a rich metaphorical text that remains fascinating as an outer space adventure.
Some classic films require respect for their achievements at specific times and times, but 2001: A Space Odyssey still serves awe of how Kubrick did it all.
Technological innovations in 2001: A Space Odyssey laid the groundwork for almost all descriptions of modern space travel. Even more impressive, the film was released the year before the Apollo 11 moon landings, and much of 2001 was spent predicting future scientific achievements.
Kubrick played the biggest thematic range of his career, drawing analogies between evolution, artificial intelligence, and exploration. There is a central argument in his innuendo, but like his best work, Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey continues to spark discussion and analysis.