Shining, The (HD DVD)

My friend is a film teacher, director, and Kubrick expert, and he thinks The Shining is not only Kubrick's best film, but also the best film ever made.



I'm not as keen on it. I merely think it's one of the 20 greatest films ever made. And probably Kubrick's 2nd or 3rd best.



Shelley Duvall is just phenomenal in this, and I feel tremendous violence towards people who make fun of her performance here simply it is far more "real" than the usual so-called acting they are used to seeing. It's really the only time I can recall seeing an actress on film actually BE terrified rather than merely ACT terrified. Duvall is just a tremendous physical actor, she brings an authenticity to the role that no Hollywood diva could have matched. She's just amazing.



Nicholson's great too. So what if he's already crazy when they arrive? Of all the things I like about Kubrick, I think what I might enjoy the most is his way of handling actors. He liked performances at both ends of the spectrum: way over the top (Lolita, Strangelove, Nicholson in the Shining, bit characters in many of his films) or very restrained and carefully modulated 񢉑, Barry Lyndon, Cruise and Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut). He had no interest in the middle ground where those vile method actors usually make their livings. :)

I guess many people feel terror in different ways. For me there wasn’t a sense of global scare where I could feel openly affected, therefore the film did very little to scare me. I will admit the performances were good, even though I felt Duvall’s part seemed expected of her and almost typecast in my opinion. Nevertheless, the part seemed to fit her persona yet being very upstaged by Jack.



Kubrick certainly did a great job on defining an atmosphere of horror but it just wasn’t enough to captivate me, and did very little in giving me that sense of chill afterwards. Perhaps it was a number of things that John mentioned in the review, and for me it may have been the overall length. I felt it did take a substantial amount of time to get to the point, but for some people that’s what made it good.



“The Shining” is undoubtedly not my favorite Kubrick film, nor do I consider it one of the horror greats. In fact, I would consider it one of my top 20 films to take a long nap to. I like it as a film in character study and I did like Kubrick’s directing style, but when all is said and done I just didn’t feel the overall affect. It doesn’t mean it’s a terrible film in any way, just one that was a bit more elusive in making that terror connection in me.



Films like “Night of the Living Dead” or “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” I find a lot more terrifying because I can feel directly affected in a global sense. If the movie makes me afraid to go to sleep at night then it did its job well. “The Shining”, even though the acting is superb, had a commonly safe ending for a horror film and therefore gave a sense of relief, thus the fright was long gone once the credits rolled. I mean, here I am down here in my cozy little home 1400-miles away from Timberline Lodge (which I’ve been to many times), what’s there to be scared of?



6/10

Yeah, you've mentioned that 'global scare" before. I have to admit I don't understand. What's scary about something so big and phony? I mean, I like both "Night" and "Invasion" quite a bit - but neither film scared me, precisely because it was on a global, not a personal scare.



The disintegration of a single family in an isolated, self-contained space is vastly more frightening than "Aliens are attacking!" or any other global-scale story.



The most powerful parts of "Night" had nothing to do with the Zombies, and everything to do with the interaction of the people in the farmhouse.

Chris,



What’s there to not understand? A good example might be nuclear holocaust. You grew up in the cold war era and certainly many of us were in fear of nuclear devastation when we thought about it. I can’t think of anyone who would deny the horror of nuclear war was not in the back of their mind during that time, and even kept them up at night in fear and worry. For some of us, it still is a huge fear and certainly a foreseeable horror. Thus a global scare such as that can make it personal, how can it not? Even the “end of the world documentaries” I watch on the History Channel are more affective in putting the fright in me, even though all of it is silly paranoia.



Where you don’t understand my theory of horror, I really don’t understand yours. So what, a family gets torn apart in ski lodge, where and how is that supposed to frighten me on a personal level? The terror is happening to a family 1400-miles away from me, therefore it doesn’t affect me nor does it make it personal. Now, we see crap like this all the time in the news and I find it very disturbing, but never frightening in the sense of horror. I really don’t see anything that would make a personal connection with me when I know I’m safe here in my little suburbia. To be honest, I have more fear of my neighborhood turning into a “hood” with drug dealers and gangs than I would of a haunted house, so to speak.



“The Shining” for me was suspenseful, once it finally got there, but scary in the terms of sheer horror it just didn’t do it for me. The performances were good and the elusive sense of terror that Kubrick directed was there, but the overall story just didn’t do the trick. Watching Jack turn insane from cabin fever I’d equate to a thriller, and I’ll admit it is fun watching him play the role, but I just don’t consider it a horror film.

I don't see anything as "movie-ish" as an alien invasion or a zombie attack as being particularly scary.



Trauma on a personal level is far more frightening. Losing your family, losing your sanity. What the hell is scarier than that? Bring on the goddamned pod people - they got nothing on what humans can do themselves.

If the thought of losing your family or sanity is truly horror then cable television's Lifetime channel would no longer be considered the women's channel. (=

once, my arm fell off while i was walking on the beach. i picked it up, but the doctor said that he couldn't do anything for me. blows.