Simon's Movie Reviews

  If there is a university course that explores the possible correlation between movies and real-life crimes, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) is probably on the curriculum. Despite the fact the movie never endorses the horrible crimes perpetrated by the protagonist, it inspired copycat crimes to the point Kubrick supported the decision to pull the movie from theaters. The question of if this should be done every time a criminal is inspired by a movie could be debated for hours. As for the movie itself, I think it has a lot of artistic merit, great performances, and poses very thought-provoking questions. I just wish those questions had been better explored by the time the movie ends. I first became aware of A Clockwork Orange in the early 2000s when Stanley Kubrick movies were airing on a movie channel. Given the explicit content of most of Kubrick’s movies, they were airing slightly after most bedtime hours. However, some kids at my school clearly did not care becau...

  One of the most fascinating things about human beings is that, as George Carlin once explained, they were smart enough to invent both napalm and silly putty. Stanley Kubrick’s satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) perfectly illustrates the ingenuity, insanity, and stupidity of the human race as nuclear Armageddon rears its ugly head. The pilots flying the airplanes that carry the atom bombs are all smart enough to fly their aircrafts, but the people giving them orders are either insane or incompetent. It’s scary stuff, and yet you can’t help but find the humour in the madness. I think I first saw Dr. Strangelove over 15 years ago when it was playing on TV for some Stanley Kubrick retrospective. Despite the fact nowadays the news is constantly saying the world is one bad day away from imploding, I felt like revisiting it and sharing my thoughts. Maybe it’s because I needed some dark humour, maybe it’s available for free on CTV, or ...

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shinning (1980) is a fascinating movie because it is a Stanley Kubrick film but in certain aspects it is disappointing because it is not entirely Stephen King’s The Shining. This is a perfect example of two great artists clashing because they are both very good at what they do and are also determined to do their own thing. Consequently the movie is in ways very different from the book on which it is based, and yet it is still a horror classic. One might even say a classic film, period, if only for Jack Nicholson’s manic performance. Kubrick’s adaptation came out 39 years ago and yet after close to four decades it remains an engrossing and frightening experience. I started hearing about it when I was in middle school because a teacher in my school was playing it for a class and word got around quick. Every now and then I would see clips of it on TV, or even in other movies because it has so many scenes that stand out. Eventually I bought a copy of King’s nov...

Spartacus (1960) is an interesting movie in Stanley Kubrick's filmography because it doesn’t really feel like a Stanley Kubrick movie. I don’t exactly know why, but his signature style doesn’t seem to be present unlike in classics such as The Shining , A Clockwork Orange , or Dr. Strangelove. It does however feel like one of those big sword-and-sandals epics in which you have British thespians acting as Roman politicians with the occasional big battle sequence. In that respect it is spectacular and features Kirk Douglas at his best as the titular hero. The story of the rebel slave Spartacus has inspired a bloody and sexy TV series (so far unseen by me, but I hear it’s great) and the story behind how it was made is one of those cases of life imitating art. The Bryan Cranston film Trumbo tells how screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted in Hollywood during the 1950s for his communist beliefs and had to rebel against the system by writing screenplays for cheap movies under ...

Paths of Glory (1957), one of the many great films by the iconic Stanley Kubrick, is somewhat of a lesser-known entry in his filmmography, but in a way it is as violent as Full Metal Jacket (1987). Due to its portrayal of the French military it was not shown in France until 1975, which is unfair since the actions depicted could have been those of any army that fought in World War I. Wars are generally insane, but that particular war holds a special place in the pantheon of madness for employing trench warfare, which effectively turned battlefields into killing fields for all soldiers. As it is one of the few movies to portray historical events in a boldly accurate way, despite having American actors play French characters, I got to see Paths of Glory in a high school history class during my last year in Chile in 2002. I had a pretty good teacher who held an interesting debate after the end credits to see which officer was most at fault. It is a conversation that could yield a ...

A unique marriage between the styles of Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick, A.I Artificial Intelligence (2001) is Pinocchio set in a dystopian future. Originally developed by Kubrick in the 1970s, it languished until 1995 when he handed it out to Spielberg who ended up directing the project after Kubrick’s death in 1999. The result is the engrossing story of a robotic child wandering a crumbling America as he tries to become a real boy. The movie came out in 2001, the year of one of Kubrick’s most famous movie. That year was also one of the last I spent in Peru, as my family and I were living in South America because of my dad’s job. This was one of many movies I saw in English playing with Spanish subtitles and like many Steven Spielberg movies I saw it with one of my parents. Between E.T and Tintin , Spielberg has given families plenty of films to watch together. My mom loved it and of course rooted for the robot to have a happy ending, even if at the end of the day he is an...