a stunning companion to King's novel, regardless of what King thinks

Rating: Null/10 (22 July 2004)

The attributes of this movie have been stated by many others so I will just add this pair of pennies:
Some, Stephen King himself most visibly, have griped about the liberties Kubrick took with the original novel, the infidelities to King's pure and unadulterated vision. King even took it upon himself to have The Shining remade...as a made-for-TV miniseries, no less, under his watchful eye so as to have it made exactly as he wanted it.
We've already seen his track record with personally supervising film adaptations of his *ahem* literature. I have two words for you: Maximum Overdrive. Apparently, his authorized remake of The Shining also demonstrates that, protective as he is of his novels' integrity, Steve needs to stick to writing novels, and leave film-making to filmmakers. As truly wretched as some King adaptations are, King himself can't seem to do much better--he's not a filmmaker. He had a lot worse offenders to pick on than Kubrick, one of the greatest of all filmmakers, who any writer should have been honored to have translate their work into film.
True, Kubrick's movie is not rigorously faithful to the book. But that is a good thing in this case. King's work is often not easy to translate into movie terms without looking silly (as they often do). What Kubrick did was see something in there that King perhaps didn't/doesn't. Perhaps he just cherry-picked the parts that moved him. Whatever...what we end up with is a true HORROR movie, a movie that is genuinely frightening in the classic sense, rather than revolting in the pseudo-EC-Comics way that seems to be King's natural environment. And it's done with impeccable production values and craftsmanship, something sorely lacking in maybe 98% of other King movies.
My only complaint is Kubrick's tendency to have actors deliberately, slowly recite lines at each other--kills the believability--and of course Jack Nicholson's overacting comes off as almost comical at times. Kubrick was never really an "actor's director" after Dr. Strangelove...it's one of his maddening quirks that gets shoved aside by his astounding abilities and judgment in just about every other department. Casting, set design, cinematography, music (with all due respect to Wendy Carlos, although her original score would have been interesting to hear inserted into the picture), The Shining is almost the Perfect Horror Movie IMO. Read the book. See this movie. Skip the remake.