Not one of Kubrick’s best, but I still got my money’s worth. Solid performances, beautiful cinematography, and either a rip-roaring ghost story or a guided psychological tour of a descent into madness. What’s the difference?

Now, if you really want an example of High Strange from the Master, try “Eyes Wide Shut”

My favorite Kubricks:

Paths of Glory
Full Metal Jacket
Clockwork Orange
and my favorite of all time, the incomparable
Barry Lyndon.

This latter film was not a commercial or critical success, and it makes no pretensions of any deep philosophical or artistic pretensions (It’s a film treatment of a minor Thackeray novel). It has two things going for it. First, for two hours you are time traveling in the 18th century, the illusion is complete. Second, it may very well be the most beautiful movie ever made, any single frame cut out at random could be blown up and framed to make a gorgeous poster.

I first saw “2001: A Space Odyssey”, when it first came out. About 10 years later, I learned one of my colleagues at work had never seen it, so we went to the show to check it out when it came to town on a revival. On the way down, we smoked a few bowls of some really righteous Mexican to get into the right frame of mind. It worked just fine.

We staggered into the show thoroughly hammered and found our seats just as the film was getting started. The last words my friend uttered, in fact, the only words he spoke for the next 2 hours were “So what’s this all about, some kind of science-fiction thing, right?”

For me, not being into the fantastic and ridiculous, I thought that Kubrick made a movie for himself, not the public and I couldn’t understand how it made it into the public arena.

If there is a “code”, if it was a puzzle, that could have been made known. It certainly wasn’t a movie for entertainment for folks like me.