The Essentials: The Best Stanley Kubrick Film Ranked

3. “The Shining” (1980)
We’re maybe willing to concede that it’s ok if you don’t think “The Shining” is the greatest horror film of all time, as long as you agree that it’s the one “pure” genre horror that rewards repeat watching above all others. Perhaps that is the reason that the initial reaction to this untouchable masterpiece was so muted: It would take time and several increasingly compulsive rewatches before anyone really comprehended the sheer level of exacting detail and precision planning that went into every single pants-soiling moment. Boasting an iconic role for the already iconic Jack Nicholson, it’s based on the Stephen King book (King prefers the three-part 1997 TV miniseries version he scripted — a fact more terrifying than anything he ever wrote). Shot through with unforgettable images (the axe! The photograph! The twins! The bath! The elevator! The bear, oh God, the bear!) as Jack Torrance goes slowly mad in the Overlook Hotel one cold winter and his increasingly terrified wife (Shelley Duvall) and telepath son (Danny Lloyd) try to survive him, it is a film so uncanny that it has spawned a hundred conspiracy theories (all given far too much credence in Rodney Ascher‘s silly doc “Room 237“). The only real explanation you need for the greatness of this sleek, astonishing and eternally terrifying freak-out is Kubrick being at the zenith of his unprecedented talents — though, to be fair, that level of filmmaking genius is so inexplicable that we’re not surprised people might cook up Indian burial grounds or whatever rather than try to comprehend it.

2. “Dr. Strangelove” (1964)
A brilliantly caustic and intelligent satire featuring perhaps the greatest multiple-role performance of all time (at least until Eddie Murphy worked out how to don a fatsuit), Kubrick’s deeply weird Cold War black comedy is simply the best example of cinematic gallows humor ever achieved. Tracking a series of plausible but also lunatic scenarios that lead to the brink of nuclear annihilation and beyond, it’s based on the novel “Red Alert” by Peter George (who co-wrote the script with Kubrick and Terry Southern), but it’s altered significantly, not least in terms of its bone-dry wit. With Peter Sellers in a triple role (originally meant to be a quadruple role, but Slim Pickens stepped in when a sprained ankle prevented Sellers from sitting in the cockpit of the plane), it follows the increasingly unhinged General Ripper (Sterling Hayden) as he brings about a nuclear war based on his paranoid fantasies while President Muffley (Sellers) and his advisors, including the belligerent Gen. Turgidson (George C. Scott) and the mysterious wheelchair-bound Dr, Strangelove (Sellers), try to counsel him by (altogether now!) fighting in the War Room. One of the most quotable and mimic-able comedies of all time (who among us has not done the rogue-hand-trying-to-strangle-oneself schtick after a few drinks?), the greatest thing about “Dr. Strangelove” is how, when the dust has cleared and you’ve stopped laughing, and as Vera Lynn‘s “We’ll meet again” rings in your ears, this portrait of military madness and failed fail-safe procedures is actually absolutely bloody terrifying.

1. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)
Here’s a strange fact: None of us here individually regards Kubrick’s peerless science fiction mindbender as our favorite of his films, yet none of us disagrees that it should be number one on this list. It’s a mark of how deeply ingrained it is in the cinematic psyche: With the passage of time and the accumulation of accolades, the jagged, otherworldly, discomfiting brilliance that so unsettled viewers in 1968 has perhaps dissipated into a kind of omnipresent background radiation. It feels slightly beyond anything as earthbound and prosaic as personal preference anyway: ‘2001’ is so massive it can only belong to everyone on the planet and the next one over, in this life and whatever happens after. But to watch it again is to be struck by just how massively unlikely a creation it is. It’s a psychedelic mindfuck encompassing such extraordinary contrasts in scale and reach that it spans all of human history and stretches wildly into the future, but pivots around that infinitesimal sliver of a cut as a bone turns into a spaceship to the strains of “The Blue Danube Waltz” (the greatest single edit in the history of cinema). And it sits atop this spectacular filmography for the simple reason that where, in everything else he did, there’s an idea of Kubrick as the omniscient, coolly assessing Godhead, ‘2001’ sees him push beyond even what he can know or comprehend. A monkey, a monolith, a bone, a spaceship, a Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea), a HAL 9000, a play of light, a deathless room: This is a film that expands the idea of what cinema can be and can do. And it forcibly expands the consciousness of anyone watching, too: You can almost feel your brain swelling and your synapses going supernova as you try to grapple with the vastness of the new horizons Kubrick wants to explore.

“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” — Stanley Kubrick, interviewed in “Playboy,” September 1968

— with Oli Lyttelton & Rodrigo Perez