text: Kubrick again puts on display his stunning ability to craft a perfect ambiance for a film. Mainly through cinematography, but also using an ingenious score, he creates a chilling and ominous tone that resides over the entire film and thoroughly gets my spine tingling from the start. It really is this flawless ambiance that makes The Shining the masterpiece that it is, in my eyes. Of course it doesn't hurt that Jack Nicholson gives one of the greatest performances I've ever seen. A frighteningly authentic portrayal of a mind gone mad. Duvall and Lloyd are artificial, to be nice, but it's easy to look past those two when the rest of the film is so brilliant. Plus it features the actor with the greatest name of all time (Scatman Crothers).