Controversial, essential, brilliantly scored, wonderfully shot - a must-see!

Rating: 10/10 (24 December 2011)

"A Clockwork Orange" is an ingenious film-makers's masterclass. It's a captivating high-speed ultra-horror tour de force, a raw, grisly plunge into violence, in-out sex, rape and murder, a fall into nothingness, there and back again, accompanied by doom a-knocking with the sound of the Funeral Marsh of Queen Mary. There's also lots of Ludwig van in between in a central role, making "A Clockwork Orange" one of the best scored pictures of all time. The topic at hand is a sci-fi tale about gruesome violence based on Anthony Burgess' book, which director Stanley Kubrick made too frighteningly real for some, sugared by the film's aestheticism of violence, critics say he thus embellished despicable acts. This forced Kubrick to retract his own movie in the UK in order to prevent copycats from imitating the film - a circumstance, which of course only contributed to its undisputed cult status. "A Clockwork Orange" was a risky undertaking, a film that stirred, shocked, repelled or was loved all for the wrong reasons, but there is no way around it any way you look at it.
From the first hundred percent orange screen in movie history, to Malcolm McDowell's first shot revealing him sitting in the Korova Milk Bar with his droogies, to Jesus statues dancing thanks to changing camera angles and quick cuts and "Singing in the Rain" - in every little moment of the movie there's no doubt that a master is at work.