The Killing - 1956

The Killing, 1956 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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Starring: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook, Jr., Timothy Carey
Director: Stanley Kubrick

A stylish film noir crime drama, and the definitive heist-caper movie - Kubrick's third film and first successful one, although highly under-rated when released. The tale is about a desperate gang of anti-hero misfits and lowlifes (in an ensemble cast) led by a grim, determined, and recently-released-from-jail con Johnny Clay (Hayden). The group devises and executes a complex, carefully-timed racetrack heist of $2 million - that goes terribly wrong, similar to Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950) (also with Hayden). The plan is to cause simultaneous, diversionary confusion by shooting one of the racehorses in mid-race and instigating a bar fight, thereby allowing Johnny to rob the main track offices and seize the day's takings.

The gang includes racetrack teller George Peatty (Cook), a pathetic wimp and loser who is easily tricked by his devious, scheming femme fatale wife Sherry (Windsor) into revealing the details of the heist to pass to her adulterous lover Val Cannon (Edwards, the future doctor Ben Casey on a TV series), who plans to take the loot at the rendezvous point once the robbery has been accomplished. The entire movie is presented non-chronologically in a winding fashion (with flashforwards and flashbacks), and played out in a series of tense, black-comedy scenes with swift transitions. The doom-laden, voice-over dialogue was derived from Lionel White's novel Clean Break.

The film has influenced many heist films, including the original Ocean's Eleven (1960) (also remade in 2001). With excellent cinematography by Lucien Ballard, but ignored completely by the Academy, although this work would influence filmmakers for decades after - most notably Guy Ritchie and crime drama auteur Quentin Tarantino and his film Reservoir Dogs.

Full Metal Jacket - 1987

Full Metal Jacket, 1987 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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Stanley Kubrick's thought-provoking Vietnam War film was partly based on Gustav Hasford's 1979 book The Short Timers, and followed in the footsteps of Kubrick's other anti-war films: Paths of Glory (1957) and Dr. Strangelove, Or: (1964). This was Kubrick's first film after The Shining (1980), and it made an underappreciated appearance the year after Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) won Best Picture. Kubrick's film was unsuccessful at the box office -- lost in the spate of mostly Vietnam-related war films that came out in Platoon's wake, including Heartbreak Ridge (1986) (about the invasion of Grenada), Hamburger Hill (1987), The Hanoi Hilton (1987), Casualties of War (1989), 84 Charlie Mopic (1989), and Born on the Fourth of July (1989).

A two-part drama, the first part of the film takes place at Parris Island training-boot camp in S. Carolina (although the entire film was shot in England), where drill instructor Gunnery Sgt. Hartman (Ermey, a former, real life Marine sergeant) transforms young Marine cadets into killing machines with twisted sentiments, and verbal, psychological, and physical abuse and torment. The first half climaxes with a chilling, dehumanizing bathroom scene between Hartman, Private Leonard Lawrence (dubbed "Gomer Pyle") (D'Onofrio) - an overweight, misfit cadet driven insane by Hartman's bullying, and Private J.T. Davis (dubbed "Joker") (Modine), who is caught between them. "Joker," a cynical Stars & Stripes military correspondent/journalist, is the bridge to the second half of the film on the nightmarish, violent front lines within Hue City - a cool, unemotional look at urban warfare on the eve of the 1968 Tet Offensive at the turning point of the war.

A Clockwork Orange - 1971

Clockwork Orange Poster
26.8 in. x 38.6 in.

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Provocatively adapted from the famous novel by Anthony Burgess. A glossy, stylish, graphically-violent, controversial, futuristic, science-fiction satire about the effects of crime and punishment (aversion therapy and brainwashing against violence) on a British teenaged punk. After a night of hooliganism with his vicious gang of droogs, including gang rapes and beatings, a sadistic Alex (McDowell) is captured. In a grim, unorthodox governmental experiment, he is re-programmed, through his love for Beethoven's music, to reject violence, but he is dehumanized in the process of being cured. Vengeance is revisited upon him by his former victims after he is released into the society. Academy Award Nominations: 4, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay.

2001: A Space Odyssey - 1968

2001 - A Space Odyssey Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.

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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a landmark, science fiction classic - and probably the best science-fiction film of all time about exploration of the unknown. It was released, coincidentally, at the height of the space race between the USSR and the US. It appeared at the same time as NASA's exploratory Apollo Project with manned Earth orbiting missions - a prelude to orbiting and landing on the Moon with Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969. And it prophetically showed the enduring influence that computers would have in our daily lives.

Director Stanley Kubrick's work is a profound, visionary and astounding film (a mysterious Rorschach film-blot) and a tremendous visual experience. This epic film contained more spectacular imagery (about what space looked like) and special effects than verbal dialogue. Viewers are left to experience the non-verbal, mystical vastness of the film, and to subjectively reach into their own subconscious and into the film's pure imagery to speculate about its meaning. Many consider the masterpiece bewildering, boring, slow-moving or annoying, but are still inspired by its story of how man is dwarfed by technology and space.

The first spoken word is almost a half hour into the film, and there's less than 40 minutes of dialogue in the entire film. Much of the film is in dead silence (accurately depicting the absence of sound in space), or with the sound of human breathing within a spacesuit. Kubrick's sci-fi experiment intended to present its story almost purely with visual imagery and auditory signals with very little communicative human dialogue (similar to what was attempted in the surreal, fragmented, non-narrative imagery of the Qatsi trilogy - from 1983-2002, from Godfrey Reggio). All scenes in the film have either dialogue or music (or silence), but never both together.

The film is enriched by stunning, pioneering technical effects, and featured orchestral music, presented in movements like in a symphony, from:

Richard Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathustra
Johann Strauss, The Blue Danube Waltz
György Ligeti, Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna, and Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs and Orchestra
Aram Khatchaturian, Gayane Ballet Suite

Dr. Strangelove - 1964

Dr. Strangelove Framed Art Print
13 in. x 19 in.
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Dr. Strangelove (1964) is the leading producer / director Stanley Kubrick's brilliant, Doomsday satirical, provocative black comedy / fantasy regarding policy and the Cold War that has an accident, inadvertently, preemptive nuclear attack. The undated film history - the first commercial success, political satire on nuclear war, has inevitably been compared to another thriller similar published at the same time - well over-serious and melodramatic Fail-Safe (1964). However, it was a cynical objective response, Monty Python-esque, humorous, biting the apocalyptic fears of the 1950s.

The scenario of mind, co-written by the director (with Terry Southern), was based on the novel by Peter George's Red Alert (the U.S. title). work [George's, under his pseudonym Peter Bryant, was published in England with the title of two hours for Doom. Early versions of the script were titled Edge of Doom and the delicate balance of terror.] The novel's main concern was the threat of accidental nuclear war. Dr. Strangelove himself does not appear in the novel, however - it was added by Kubrick and co-writer of the South.

nightmarish mid-1960s the film, its apocalyptic theme of how technology had gone haywire and had dominated humanity. fears of anti-war film actually became a plausible scenario, shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy's Bay of Pigs and the intensification heated up the Cold War and nuclear arms race. [Release of satirical film was delayed for 12 December 1963 to late January 1964, because of the assassination of Kennedy in late November.]