Each Stanley Kubrick Movie Ranked from Worst to Finest

For those who needed to choose a sin­gle fig­ure to rep­re­despatched the con­cept of the movie auteur, you could possibly do a lot worse than Stan­ley Kubrick. That’s to not name him the good­est direc­tor who ever lived, nor even to name his physique of labor the good­est in cin­e­ma. However no fil­mog­ra­phy extra clear­ly bears the stamp of a sin­gle pre­sid­ing intel­li­gence throughout var­i­ous eras, gen­res, and types. On one lev­el, Kubrick nev­er made the identical film twice. On anoth­er, every is however a side of the larg­er undertaking of ren­der­ing on movie his ever extra aes­thet­i­cal­ly immac­u­late, ever much less com­fort­ing world­view, one which encom­go­es each Dr. Strangelove and The Shin­ing, each Loli­ta and 2001: A Area Odyssey.

For that and oth­er rea­sons, Kubrick­’s fil­mog­ra­phy has lengthy occu­pied a pecu­liar posi­tion in cin­e­ma cul­ture. Regardless of hav­ing professional­vid­ed gen­er­a­tions of film­go­ers their intro­duc­tion to the “artwork home,” it additionally repays essentially the most seri­ous levels of interact­ment and scruti­ny. Some­how, as Lewis Bond places it in the record­ed Twitch stream above, Kubrick has remained each cin­e­ma’s gate­means drug and its “remaining boss.”

You might know Bond’s title — or extra like­ly, rec­og­nize his voice — from the numerous film-relat­ed video essays of his (underneath the ban­ners of Chan­nel Criswell, The Cin­e­ma Automotive­tog­ra­phy, and now The House of Tab­u­la) we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture, includ­ing an exe­ge­sis of Kubrick he made close to­ly a decade in the past. It says some­factor that even some­one as auteur-obsessed for so long as he’s been can’t resist anoth­er journey to the nicely.

Over the two-hour course of his stream, Bond dis­cuss­es every one in all Kubrick­’s movies whereas rank­ing them towards every oth­er. It is going to laborious­ly professional­voke a lot con­tro­ver­sy that he begins on the bot­tom with the ram­shackle thriller Concern and Want, the debut fea­ture that even Kubrick him­self try­ed to strike from the document. What actual­ly will get cinephiles discuss­ing are the rel­a­tive mer­its of the pic­tures excessive­er up the listing: Does The Shin­ing tran­scend hor­ror, or Dr. Strangelove tran­scend com­e­dy? Is the sen­sa­tion­al­ism of A Clock­work Orange or the state­li­ness of Bar­ry Lyn­don to be depend­ed for or towards these movies? Is Eyes Huge Shut a late mas­ter­piece or, as some thought in 1999, a late mess? Bond jokes that his is the objec­tive­ly cor­rect rank­ing of Kubrick­’s fil­mog­ra­phy, and per­haps it does align with crit­i­cal con­sen­sus on many factors. However few film-lovers can be total­ly freed from the temp­ta­tion to look at via it and decide once more for them­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Stan­ley Kubrick Made His Mas­ter­pieces: An Intro­duc­tion to His Obses­sive Approach to Film­mak­ing

How 2001: A Space Odyssey Became “the Hard­est Film Kubrick Ever Made”

The Invis­i­ble Hor­ror of The Shin­ing: How Music Makes Stan­ley Kubrick’s Icon­ic Film Even More Ter­ri­fy­ing

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

“Kubrick/Tarkovsky”: A Video Essay Explores the Visu­al Sim­i­lar­i­ties Between the Two “Cin­e­mat­ic Giants”

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films: The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the writer of the newslet­ter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly generally known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.