Barry Lyndon (1975): Redmond Barry is a young, roguish Irishman who's determined, in any way, to make a life for himself as a wealthy nobleman. Enlisting in the British Army, fighting in the Seven Years War in Europe, Barry deserts from the British army, joins the Prussian army, gets promoted to the rank of a spy, then becomes pupil to a Chevalier and con artist/gambler. Barry then lies, dupes, duels and seduces his way up the social ladder and enters into a lustful but loveless marriage to a wealthy countess named Lady Lyndon, takes the name of Barry Lyndon, settles in England with wealth and power beyond his wildest dreams, then slowly falls dramatically into ruin.
A Clockwork Orange (1971): Alex, a teenage hooligan in a near-future Britain, gets jailed by the police. There he volunteers as guinea pig for a new aversion therapy proposed by the government to make room in prisons for political prisoners. "Cured" of his hooliganism and released, he is rejected by his friends and relatives. Eventually nearly dying, he becomes a major embarrassment for the government, who arrange to cure him of his cure. A pivotal moment is when he and his gang break into an author's home: the book he is writing (called "A Clockwork Orange") is a plea against the use of aversion therapy, on the grounds that it turns people into Clockwork Oranges (Ourang is Malay for "Man"): they are not being good from choice (sentiments later echoed by the prison chaplain). The film reflects this: many bad scenes in a Clockwork Orange are accompanied by jolly music; if we are to experience them as we should, we have to do it consciously, by realising they are bad, and not because the director tells us so through the use of music and images.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999): Sexual jolts disrupt Manhattan physician Bill Harford's equilibrium. At an elegant Christmas party, two "models" hit on him, he watches a Lothario try to pick up his tipsy wife, he aids a woman sprawled naked in a bathroom after an overdose. The next night, his wife reveals sexual fantasies with a stranger; a dead patient's daughter throws herself at him; as he walks, brooding, six teen boys hurl homophobic insults at him; a streetwalker takes him to her flat; he interrupts men having a sex party with a girl barely in her teens. His odyssey, which next takes him into a world of wealthy sex play at a masked ball of hedonism, threatens his life, his self-respect, and his marriage.
Full Metal Jacket (1987): A two-segment story that follows young men from the start of recruit training in the Marine Corps to the lethal cauldron known as Vietnam. The first segment follows Joker (Modine), Pyle (D'Onofrio) and others as they progress through the hell of USMC boot-camp at the hands of the colorful, foul-mouthed Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (Ermey). The second begins in Vietnam, near Hue, at the time of the Tet Offensive. Joker, along with Animal Mother (Baldwin), Rafterman (Howard) and others, face threats such as ambush, booby traps, and Viet Cong snipers as they move through the city.
Lolita (1962): Middle-aged novelist Humbert Humbert rents a room in Charlotte Haze's house after he falls passionately in love with her daughter Lolita. There are three slight problems, though - one, Charlotte is madly in love with him (unrequited, needless to say); two, Lolita is only fourteen; three, there's a very peculiar figure by the name of Clare Quilty who keeps popping up in the most unexpected places (and sporting equally unexpected accents), who seems to have a similarly unhealthy interest in Lolita...
The Shining (1980): Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) gets a job as the custodian of the Overlook Hotel, in the mountains of Colorado. The place is closed down during winter, and Torrance and his family will be the only occupants of the hotel for a long while. When the snow storms block the Torrance family in the hotel, Jack's son Danny - who has some clairvoyance and telepathy powers - discovers that the hotel is haunted and that the spirits are slowly driving Jack crazy. When Jack meets the ghost of Mr. Grady, the former custodian of the hotel who murdered his wife and his two daughters, things begin to get really nasty.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): When the world is ruled by apes, one particular group discovers a mysterious rectangular monolith near their home, which imparts upon them the knowledge of tool use, and enables them to evolve into men. In the year 2001, a similar monolith is discovered on the moon, and is determined to have come from an area near Jupiter. Astronaut David Bowman, along with four companions, sets off for Jupiter on a spaceship controlled by HAL 9000, a revolutionary computer system that is every bit mankind's equal, and perhaps his superior. When HAL endangers the crew's lives for the sake of the mission, Bowman will have to first overcome the computer, then travel to the birthplace of the monolith, where whatever alien intelligence controls them decides that humanity is ready to take the next evolutionary step.
Dr. Strangelove (1964): U.S. Air Force Colonel Jack Ripper goes completely and utterly mad, and sends his bomber wing to destroy the U.S.S.R. He suspects that the communists are conspiring to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people. The U.S. president meets with his advisors, where the Soviet ambassador tells him that if the U.S.S.R. is hit by nuclear weapons, it will trigger a "Doomsday Machine" which will destroy all plant and animal life on Earth. Peter Sellers portrays the three men who might avert this tragedy: British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, the only person with access to the demented Gen. Ripper; U.S. President Merkin Muffley, whose best attempts to divert disaster depend on placating a drunken Soviet Permier and the former Nazi genius Dr. Strangelove, who concludes that "such a device would not be a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious". Will the bombers be stopped in time, or will General Jack Ripper succeed in destroying the world?
Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures (2001): The career and life of Stanley Kubrick is explored through pictures, clips from his films, his old home movies, comments from his colleagues and a narration by Tom Cruise. |
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