Stanley Kubrick ranks among the most important American film makers of his generation, but his work is often misunderstood because it is widely diverse in subject matter and seems to lack thematic and tonal consistency. Thomas Nelson's perceptive and comprehensive study of Kubrick rescues him from the hostility of auteurist critics and discovers the roots of a Kubrickian aesthetic, which Nelson defines as the "aesthetics of contingency." After analyzing how this aesthetic develops and manifests itself in the early works, Nelson devotes individual chapters to Lolita, Dr. Stangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and The Shining. For this expanded edition, Nelson has added chapters on Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, and, in the wake of the director's death, reconsidered his body of work as a whole. By placing Kubrick in a historical and theoretical context, this study is a reliable guide into—and out of—Stanley Kubrick's cinematic maze.

Seventeen essays examine the career and films of director Stanley Kubrick from a variety of perspectives. Part I focuses on his early career, including his first newsreels, his photography for Look magazine, and his earliest films (Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss). Part II examines his major or most popular films (Paths of Glory, The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey). Part III provides a thorough case study of Eyes Wide Shut, with four very different essays focusing on the film's use of sound, its representation of gender, its carnivalesque qualities, and its phenomenological nature. Finally, Part IV discusses Kubrick's ongoing legacy and his impact on contemporary filmmakers. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Whatever people think about Kubrick's work, most would agree that there is something distinctive, even unique, about the films he made: a coolness, an intellectual clarity, a critical edginess, and finally an intractable ambiguity. In an attempt to isolate the Kubrick difference, this book treats Kubrick's films to a conceptual and formal analysis rather than a biographical and chronological survey. As Kubrick's cinema moves between the possibilities of human transcendence dramatized in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the dismal limitations of human nature exhibited in A Clockwork Orange, the filmmaker's style "de-realizes" cinematic realism while, paradoxically, achieving an unprecedented frankness of vision and documentary and technical richness. The result is a kind of vertigo: the audience is made aware of both the de-realized and the realized nature of cinema. As opposed to the usual studies providing a summary and commentary of individual films, this will be the first to provide an analysis of the "elements" of Kubrick's total cinema.

Kubrick and Control is an examination of authority, order, and independence in the films directed by Stanley Kubrick, as well as in his personal life and working habits. This study explores the ways in which these central preoccupations develop and reformulate through the course of Kubrick's career, as he moved from genre to genre and shifted stories, locations, time periods, scope, and technical facilities. Separating the productions in accordance to their wider filmic classifications, the individual chapters examine a variety of productions, allowing for a categorical as well as a developmental approach to the works. In addition, following concurrently with each individual film discussed, details about Kubrick's life and evolving directorial practice are recounted in relation to these same concerns. In studying the stylistic and narrative features of his work, examples illustrate how Kubrick took these themes and applied them consistently yet with significant variation, manifest in relation to mise-en-scène construction (how Kubrick composed his images); characterization (individuals establishing, exerting, seeking, and/or abusing their authority); narrative (stories about characters and situations dependent upon order and control); and the actual filmmaking processes of the director (Kubrick was both praised and damned for his authorial management and obsession with order and perfection).

A provocative re-reading of Stanley Kubrick’s work and its focus on masculine desire The work of Stanley Kubrick amounts to a sustained reflection on the male condition: past, present, and future. The persistent theme of his filmmaking is less violence or sex than it is the pressurized exertion of masculinity in unusual or extreme circumstances, where it may be taxed or exaggerated to various effects, tragic and comic—or metamorphosed, distorted, and even undone. The stories that Kubrick’s movies tell range from global nuclear politics to the unpredictable sexual dynamics of a marriage; from a day in the life of a New York City prizefighter preparing for a nighttime bout to the evolution of humankind. These male melodramas center on sociality and asociality. They feature male doubles, pairs, and rivals. They explore the romance of men and their machines, and men as machines. They figure intensely conflicted forms of male sexual desire. And they are also very much about male manners, style, taste, and art. Examining the formal, thematic, and theoretical affiliations between Kubrick’s three bodies of work—his photographs, his documentaries, and his feature films—Kubrick’s Men offers new vantages on to the question of gender and sexuality, including the first extended treatment of homosexuality in Kubrick’s male-oriented work.

Taking at its starting point the idea that Kubrick's cinema has constituted an intellectual, cerebral, and philosophical maze in which many filmmakers (as well as thinkers and a substantial fringe of the general public) have gotten lost at one point or another, this collection looks at the legacy of Kubrick's films in the 21st century. The main avenues investigated are as follows: a look at Kubrick's influence on his most illustrious followers (Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen Brothers, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, and Lars von Trier, to name a few); Kubrick in critical reception; Kubrick in stylistic (camera movements, set designs, music), thematic (artificial intelligence, new frontiers- large and small), aesthetic (the question of genre, pastiche, stereoscopy) and political terms (paranoia, democracy and secret societies, conspiracy theories). The contributions coalesce around the concept of a Kubrickian substrate, rich and complex, which permeates our Western cultural landscape very much to this day, informing and sometimes announcing/reflecting it in twisted ways, 21 years after the director's death.

Stanley Kubrick is one of the most revered directors in cinema history. His 13 films, including classics such as Paths of Glory, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and The Shining, attracted controversy, acclaim, a devoted cult following, and enormous critical interest. With this comprehensive guide to the key contexts - industrial and cultural, as well as aesthetic and critical - the themes of Kubrick's films sum up the current vibrant state of Kubrick studies. Bringing together an international team of leading scholars and emergent voices, this Companion provides comprehensive coverage of Stanley Kubrick's contribution to cinema. After a substantial introduction outlining Kubrick's life and career and the film's production and reception contexts, the volume consists of 39 contributions on key themes that both summarise previous work and offer new, often archive-based, state-of-the-art research. In addition, it is specifically tailored to the needs of students wanting an authoritative, accessible overview of academic work on Kubrick.

A survey of criticism on King's book and Kubrick's film adaptation "The Shining."

An updated and expanded version of this classic study of contemporary American film, the new edition of A Cinema of Loneliness reassesses the landscape of American cinema over the past decade, incorporating discussions of directors like Judd Apatow and David Fincher while offering assessments of the recent, and in some cases final, work from the filmmakers--Penn, Scorsese, Stone, Altman, Kubrick--at the book's core.