Almost completely unwatchable.

Rating: 4/10 (14 July 2010)

This was not a 'brilliant' film. This is a bandwagon film. It's cool to rave about how life changing and beautiful of a masterpiece it is. Some even go so far as to say that this is the greatest film ever made (or one of them at least).
Sorry, but the emperor has no clothes.
I'm a fan of Kubrick. He does amazing work in general. A Clockwork Orange, however, is not a very good example of his talent. It is self-indulgent and shallow, with violence purely for the sake of shock and no greater lessons to be learned. Ah, but you say, therein lies the brilliance! Nope, I don't buy it.
This films' entire world is patently two-dimensional (to its discredit) and, quite frankly, boring. I had to attempt to watch the film several times before I finally made my way through its entirety, as I found myself simply turning it off out sheer boredom. The visual style is interesting, I'll grant that. But nothing else about the characters, story or message (such as it is) was able to hold my attention at all. Its gibberish, then violence, then more gibberish, then more violence, The End.
I don't see how any intelligent individual can walk away from this film thinking it was good in any way. And I'm not making a moral judgment at all, mind you. Yeah, the characters are reprehensible... but that is beside the point. You can have a great movie with reprehensible characters... just not when you hang the entire premise of the film on some pornography of violence, then wrap it up in pseudo-intellectual claptrap and hope people are so confused that they mistake laziness for brilliance.
In this case, that particular gambit seems to have worked, as 'smart' and 'cool' people all agree in unison that Clockwork Orange is a great film. Unfortunately, it is not.