It all started with my first viewing of Full Metal Jacket.

Like most little boys I was obsessed with anything that had to do with war. I would spent full days in the woods playing guns with my friends. Up to this point, all the war films that I had seen had been pure entertainment. John Wayne killing the "Japs". They made me want to join up and serve my country. The atrocities of war were regulated to non-human bad guys falling to the ground in the distance. When a good guy actually died, it was nearly painless and forgotten quickly.

This all changed one day after school, when I got my hands on copy of Full Metal Jacket . I sat and watched in horror and awe, as I was shown the true nature of war. The "good guys" died horrendously and I actually had empathy for the "bad guys". It was an eye-opening experience to say the least. I went on to watch the film numerous times over the next few years. The opening act, about the torture of boot camp, remains one of the most powerful film experiences of my life. (I sought out Platoon shortly after seeing Jacket for the first time. My dreams of war were squelched forever after these films and my interest in playing with guns was short lived.)

Years went by before my next true Kubrickian experience. (We watched Spartacus in a high school class once, but it didn't have much effect on me.) Now out on my own and going to an art school. Somebody in my building had A Clockwork Orange poster on their wall, being the naive country boy I was I had no idea what meant. I asked a friend of mine what it was, he told me it was a film, and that I HAD to see. We rented it soon afterwards. Once again my film perspective was adversely affected. I had never been so stylistically assaulted by a movie before. It may have been then where I fell in love with "films" instead of movies. I realized that films could also be art, instead of just entertainment. There has been a special place in my heart for Clockwork ever since that first viewing. In fact that same poster hangs on my walls these days.

A few months later, that same friend told me about a Halloween screening of The Shining. I had heard of it, known of its supposed extreme scariness factor, but had never seen it. (I guess it was never on HBO.) A large group of us went to see it as a double feature with Creepshow. The theater was pretty rowdy during Creepshow and we were all having a good time. However, once The Shining began, I can not tell you if the crowd remained rowdy or if it was deadly silent. I don't remember. I was so enraptured by the film that I felt completely alone in a full theater.

As a kid I loved horror films. (Still do.) I was fairly easily scared and I had many a sleepless night after watching countless bad slasher flicks of the 80's. But it had been years since I had been truly frightened by a movie. The Shining, damn, it creeped the hell out of me. I'm not quite sure how, it's hard to explain. For many people this film doesn't work. They are simply bored. Everybody loves Jack Nicholson's over-the-top performance, so do I, but that is not the reason I love the film. But for those of you, who this film does work on, you know of what I speak. The way Kubrick plods along, building the tension, that when the twin girls first appear for Danny, my skin nearly crawled right off my body. Unfortunately, the film has never been nearly effective since, there was something about the first time, seeing it in the theater, that made it magical. This is a film that screams to be seen on the big screen, it doesn't work nearly as well on video.

These three films are the reason I love Kubrick.

I have a love/hate relationship with 2001. It is usually regarded as Kubricks best, while also being held up as one of the best films ever. However, I don't feel that way. I love the truncated version of 2001 that plays in my head. (Where it hits all the highlights and skims past the long scenes of space life.) But I hate actually watching the film. I love the all of the wonderful ideas that the film holds. But I hate how dreadfully slow it reveals them. I think it's an incredibly beautiful and amazingly well crafted film. But it bores me to tears. (The ship is coming in for docking... you have to take it slow in space... still docking... this is great music... still docking... still docking... I get it already!... still docking... end scene, end!...)

I feel about the same way for Eyes Wide Shut. I love a lot of the ideas behind the film, but I'm mostly bored while watching it. The rest of his films I hope to get to know better. I think Dr. Strangelove is hilarious, I'd put it as my 4th favorite Kubrick film, even though I've only seen it once. I think that Barry Lyndon and Spartacus are stupendously well made films, but they don't speak to me.