Kubrick, Lair Of The White Worm, The Original Transformers Movie, Happiness

The genius of Stanley Kubrick is indesputable, its always there, particularly evident in the 1980 masterpiece The Shining. However, some of his stuff can be a bit hit and miss for me. He's sort of known for this very measured steady cam, but it doesn't always quite suit the subject matter of his films. Full Metal Jacket is a good example of this. I think it's a film which looks dated now because it was already alluding to another film made 50 years earlier, one of my favourite war films, All Quiet on the Western Front. You could say Kubrick's fluid camera style and his reliance on dolly's and tracking shots during the later battle scenes is a sort of homage to the earlier film. Also like All Quiet, FMJ's first segment deals with an army training school and a slightly over zealous instructor, but while in the earlier film the instructor is pompous, foolish, a harmless baffoon, in Kubrick's film this character and the entire segment have a darker edge. Whether this works or not is debatable. Another film that seems, in my opinion, to miss its mark is his adaptation of A Clockwork Orange from the novel by Anthony Burgess. It's not a bad film in my opinion, I don't think he could make one if he tried, but nevertheless the plot seems clunky, pointless. The amazing art design and iconic costumes of Malcom MacDowell's "Droogs" do little to distract from the unconvincing shallowness of the characters. It leaves me cold, but maybe thats the point. Kubrick wiseley used the inventive narration of the novel to carry the story and MacDowells performance is remarkable and iconic, bringing to mind his earlier role in Lindsey Anderson's If.

Stanley Kubrick's best films are well known as some of the greatest ever made. Classics like Paths of Glory, Lolita, Dr Strangelove and Barry Lyndon are among them. Here are my top Three.



3. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)



2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1978)



1. The Shining (1980)


























Here is the trailer for another classic by a very differnt filmaker, Ken Russell's The Lair of the White Worm.

I've ordered it from America but I don't know why more film's like this aren't available here.

Another Ken Russell film that looks quite interesting and funny is Whore.


























I Recently re-discovered the film oddity that is the original Transformers movie. Offcourse, it has some of the cynical feeling of the franchise, rather like the Harry Potter films, but nevertheless it is rather entertaining and funny. The plot never lets up and is basically a bizarre childrens adventure about a giant spherical entity, played by Orson Welles (!), who travels through space devouring technology in much the same way the giant whale in a Baron Munchausen story swallows ships. The Transformers flee to Earth after their planet is destroyed by it. Eric Idle and Leonard Nimoy also appear. The use of eighties pop rock songs in the soundtrack is fairly innapropriate and random, the film seems to have been knocked together. It's good in the same way as a Jess Franco film, a stylish accident.

































Re-watched Happiness recently, definateley my favourite Todd Solondz film. Its full of scenes like this: