Jack Torrence vs. The Overlook; Stanley Kubrick vs. Stephen King

Rating: 8/10 (11 July 2000)

While I was watching The Shining I kept thinking why this movie is probably the most slammed Kubrick movie (maybe Eyes Wide Shut, but every Kubrick movie is disliked upon release then is regarded as a masterpiece down the road). I looked through the rest the rest of his movies and saw that all of his "best" movies had been atapted from novels. I read A Clockwork Orange and thought it was somewhat different from the novel, the book even had a different ending (and I've heard that Kubrick never read the ending when he decided to do it, but he heard about it during production, so...) It's because Anthony Burgess, Gus Hastvford, William Thackery, all the authors of the novels his films are based aren't names themselves. Kubrick always overshadowed them. In this case, Kubrick has to battle over a respected author over who was right. To me, King just wrote a horror story about a haunted house, though it was a little more than that, but, Kubrick made, sorry if it's cliche', a psychological story. It was his most metaphorical film (besides EWS maybe) and used over the top performances to enhance that idea. I don't think Kubrick films should be viewed in the same way as any other movies. He is definitely a latter day Freud.