Kubrick Sucks

Rating: 1/10 (20 September 2011)

His films have impact. So does a sledge-hammer. Many years ago they used to knock me out; nowadays they give me a serious headache. They are bad, bad, bad, poisonously negative and painfully unreal.
Trawl the net for a few useful, truthful quotes: "Are his films pleasant and enjoyable to watch ? No. Are they works of genius ? No." Bang on. (I've rectified the last word from "yes" to "no".) "All his movies suffer from having horrible characters". That's right on the button, and it applies to Clockwork Orange, just as much as to the rest of them. Or more so. Horrible, horrible characters. I can hardly think of a single person in any of his films who is at all attractive or worthwhile. They are almost always pathetic and/or despicable, empty and ugly inside. There must have been something wrong with Stanley: obsessive-compulsive, depressed and depressing. Someone to avoid.
Burgess explained that "clockwork orange" means a man ("orang") wound up and driven by clockwork. That was Kubrick's vision of existence and humanity. Man at the mercy of machines, and little more than a machine himself, an apparatchik in a bureaucracy, a cog in a system, manipulating other machines, by trickery or force. Clockwork Orange is also even more visually disgusting than some of the others. The overall design is hideously dated and thoroughly nauseating.
Memorable, even if I'd prefer to obliterate the lot. One star. Nurofen, please. Can't decide who is worse: clumsy, clunky Kubrick or silly, phony Spielberg.