Now without doubt a classic

Rating: Null/10 (11 January 2003)

This is one of those films that age well. Very controversial in its time, I think it is now clearly a classic.
Should Nicholson have gotten an Oscar over DeNiro's performance in *Raging Bull*? No, obviously not--Nicholson is borderline hilarious in this, as is Shelley Duvall and for that matter even the great Anne Jackson (Scatman Crothers is, unambiguously, intentionally hilarious). But Kubrick's movies are not about "good" acting in the usual sense, and Nicholson's most over-the-top, eyebrow-popping, tongue-flicking, scenery-chewing mugging here works like a charm in a way it could not in any other movie because Kubrick was a complete original and a genius.
This movie simultaneously amuses, engrosses, terrifies AND alienates. I'm not here to say it's Kubrick's best movie, but it's certainly the one I've gone out of my way to see the most times so I suppose it's my favorite. It's not the scariest movie I've ever seen (that would be *Halloween,* and at least half a dozen movies rank above this one on that scale), but I defy anyone to genuinely watch this film with an open mind and not have the snot scared out of him/her at least 20 times. And it is certainly more artistically ambitious than all but two or three of the films I've seen that are scarier than this one.
I hope my review displaces the absolutely boneheaded one that was up on this movie's page when I checked it out (what exactly is a "prodding" screenplay?). This is not one of the 10 best movies I've ever seen, but it may be one of the 100 best, so it deserves more respect than it's getting on this site at the moment.