Kubrick is one of the rare major directors who never made a crap movie, which renders this list into little more than a verbatim transcription of everything available. I'll see if I can add a little value with some Googling.
Killer's Kiss (1955)
A fairly standard noir thriller which displays Kubrick's photographers eye in its depiction of stark NYC exteriors. In an interview with Terry Southern he said
Kubrick: ...I was able to raise private financing to make a second feature-length film, Killer's Kiss. And that was a silly story too, but my concern was still in getting experience and simply functioning in the medium, so the content of a story seemed secondary to me. I just took the line of least resistance, whatever story came to hand. And for another thing I had no money to live on at the time, much less to buy good story material with--nor did I have the time to work it into shape--and I didn't want to take a job, and get off the track, so I had to keep moving. Fortunately too, I wasn't offered any jobs during this period--I mean perhaps if I had been offered some half-assed TV job of something I wouldn't have had the sense to turn it down and would have been thrown off the track of what I really wanted to do, but it didn't happen that way. In any case, I made that picture Killer's Kiss, and United Artists saw it and bought it.Interesting in the context of his career, and entertaining on its own merits.
The Killing (1956)
His first 'real' movie, another noir exercise and one of the founding pillars of the caper gone wrong crime genre. A step up from Killer's Kiss across the board, and as taut a genre exercise as you're likely to find. Again, from the Southern interview:
Kubrick: ...together we made The Killing. That's the first film I made with decent actors, a professional crew, and under the proper circumstances. It was the first really good film I made, and it got a certain amount of attention...
The source material was obscure noir author Lionel White's novel Clean Break and the screenplay was in collaboration with more prominent noir writer Jim Thompson, a master of weird nihilism. Kubrick apparently hogged most of the writing credit:
Although Thompson wrote most of the script, Kubrick credited himself as screenplay writer, cheating Thompson with only a vague "additional dialogue" writer credit. Nevertheless, they collaborated again in Paths of Glory (mostly written by Thompson, again with little public credit)
What's that apocryphal quote, all artists borrow, great ones steal?
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
How many SF movies that are more than a few years old avoid looking like a kid's backyard puppet show? I caught a bit of Jurassic Park the other day and it was laughable. How impressive that a film from 1968 can not only avoid looking dated, but deliver what is to this point the clearest impression of the majesty and scale of outer space captured on film? I have my issues with the finale, but the bulk of the film is pure visual poetry, as involving, suspenseful and epic as films come.
Checking with Mr. Google I see there is thriving underground trafficking in annotating the acid trip of the ending. Flash slideshows dissecting the action seem absurd, so let's go to the source, a fascinating 1969 interview with Joseph Gelmis:
The final scenes of the film seemed more metaphorical than realistic. Will you discuss them -- or would that be part of the "road map" you're trying to avoid?
No, I don't mind discussing it, on the lowest level, that is, straightforward explanation of the plot. You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man's first baby steps into the universe -- a kind of cosmic burglar alarm. And finally there's a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system.
When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he's placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny.
That is what happens on the film's simplest level. Since an encounter with an advanced interstellar intelligence would be incomprehensible within our present earthbound frames of reference, reactions to it will have elements of philosophy and metaphysics that have nothing to do with the bare plot outline itself.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
On nihilism and the morality of its counter. It's a bit worrisome (but not surprising) how strongly my younger self identified with this film.
Kubrick on Clockwork. This quote is my favorite:
Was the idea of the Milk Bar yours?
Part of it was. I had seen an exhibition of sculpture which displayed female figures as furniture. From this came the idea for the fibreglass nude figures which were used as tables in the Milk Bar. The late John Barry, who was the film's Production Designer, designed the set. To get the poses right for the sculptress who modelled the figures, John photographed a nude model in as many positions as he could imagine would make a table. There are fewer positions than you might think.
Wait. This one may be better..
Alex loves rape and Beethoven: what do you think that implies?
I think this suggests the failure of culture to have any morally refining effect on society. Hitler loved good music and many top Nazis were cultured and sophisticated men but it didn't do them, or anyone else, much good.
The Shining
Of Kubrick's films this is the one I return to most often and which continually reveals new layers of meaning. It was one thing when I saw it on the big screen in my youth, it was another thing when I saw it on VHS in my 20s, it was different still when I returned to it in my 30s after quite a lot of therapy, and I look forward to watching it again with two years of parenting The Fuss under my belt.
Perhaps a Christmas screening, for an extra helping of joie de vivr.
Family, society, masculinity, creativity...what topic does Kubrick's merciless camera not scour to the bedrock of its meaning?
Of course Stephen King hated it:
Later he expressed disappointment in the film. "There's a lot to like about it. But it's a great big beautiful Cadillac with no motor inside, you can sit in it and you can enjoy the smell of the leather upholstery - the only thing you can't do is drive it anywhere. So I would do every thing different. The real problem is that Kubrick set out to make a horror picture with no apparent understanding of the genre. Everything about it screams that from beginning to end, from plot decision to the final scene - which has been used before on the Twilight Zone"
I think it works just fine as a spook story although I'm sure making a mechanically effective horror film was the least of Kubrick's motivations. He saw depths in the material King largely ignored, and he plumbed them fully.
Another of those deeply perceptive films the culture has eroded to an image and a catchphrase, like Lumet's Network.
Nicholson's depraved leer and Heeere's Johnny! provide an undeniable charge, but aren't representative. I'd argue this movie marked the end of Nicholson as an artist exploring roles and the beginning of a guy cashing checks for doing his shtick. He and Kubrick crafted a profoundly strange, energized performance, one that fit perfectly inside the Overlook Hotel. But Nicholson bore Jack Torrence out of the production with him like a tumor with its own hair and teeth, polluting much of the rest of his career.
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
An extremely odd war movie. Nearly everyone I know loves it, and nearly all the people who love it only remember the indelible boot camp scenes that make up the first half. The second half feels like an entirely different film, which must have been intentional.
From a contemporary interview with Rolling Stone:
You feel the real question lurking behind all the verbiage is "What does this new movie mean?"
Exactly. And that's almost impossible to answer, especially when you've been so deeply inside the film for so long. Some people demand a five-line capsule summary. Something you'd read in a magazine. They want you to say, "This is the story of the duality of man and the duplicity of governments." [A pretty good description of the subtext that informs Full Metal Jacket, actually.] I hear people try to do it -- give the five-line summary -- but if a film has any substance or subtlety, whatever you say is never complete, it's usually wrong, and it's necessarily simplistic: truth is too multifaceted to be contained in a five-line summary. If the work is good, what you say about it is usually irrelevant.
Which ties in to my post about books speaking for themselves.
Things largely are what they are, whatever we say about them.
Fitting that a film partially about the 'duality of man' is split down the middle, with the combat in the second half meticulously wrung dry of the vicarious thrills cinema usually brings to gunplay. Kubrick never takes the easy way out and reliably carries the viewer with him.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
The usual reception for Kubrick's work during my cinematic maturity (from roughly The Shining on) was mixed-to-negative critical reaction on release, as not even the professionals could quickly digest and analyze his work, followed by a gradual, nearly imperceptible drifting of opinion until ten years later the film in question was a 'universally admired classic' and nobody remembered the initial confusion and negativity.
I haven't checked, but the timer on this one should have ding'ed by now.
I loved it when it came out and should really watch it again with ten years of evolution under my belt. Kubrick's films all change over time and a movie so concerned with the arc of marriage would sing a much different song to the me pursuing his 12 year anniversary than the one who saw it on the big screen with his not-yet-wife back in the day.
Anyway, hearkening back to what I remember of contemporary critical reaction, yes it's mannered and delicate, exuding a slightly Wes Anderson vibe while taking on a profoundly non-Anderson subject, but that's beside the point. Or rather, it serves to sharpen the point. It helps to keep in mind the title of the source material, Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, 'Dream Story'.
The movie exists in its own realm, one basically unmoored from our except by archetype and the subconscious. If you're going complain that there aren't enough cars on the streets to be a realistic portrayal of a modern city, as one critic did, this isn't the film for you.
It has other aims and concerns.
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