S tanley Kubrick, despite making just 13 full-length films in a near 50-year career, excelled in so many genres: horror, film noir, comedy of the pitch-black type, historical romance, war and more.It’s just a shame he couldn’t rub along better with Marlon Brando on One-Eyed Jacks (1961) from which he was fired, just to see what he would have made of a western.Painstakingly meticulous to the nth degree, and a true auteur, Kubrick had a well deserved reputation as a perfectionist, insisting on multiple takes, selecting the ideal music to illustrate scenes and building expansive sets while enjoying a huge degree of artistic freedom like few directors before or since.From extras.Controversy was no stranger to Kubrick – he took on the “unfilmable novel” ( Lolita ) and brought Anthony Burgess’s dystopian nightmare A Clockwork Orange to the screen and was condemned for its explicit violence, but he rarely compromised.Kubrick’s 13 films make for a challenging, thought-provoking body of work that stands in comparison with any of the giants of cinema, and he was responsible for so many iconic images – think of the aerial tracking shots over no-mans land in Paths of Glory , Major Kong riding the nuclear bomb in Dr Strangelove , the space station docking in Space Odyssey to the strains of “The Blue Danube”, and so many more.Here are Stanley Kubrick’s 13 films ranked. Feel free to disagree, I’m sure Stanley would. However, this allegorical anti-war movie following four soldiers caught behind enemy lines has more going for it than its reputation would suggest. New Yorker Kubrick made good use of authentic, shadow-filled Manhattan locations for his first outing in dark city which has many classic noir tropes – the film is told in flashback by a world weary narrator, there’s love, deception, murder and revenge, and a striking denouement as hero and villain battle it out in a warehouse filled with mannequins. Starring then husband and wife Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Eyes Wide Shut was impossibly hyped as art house porn featuring Hollywood’s golden couple and as the master’s final masterpiece. It’s neither of course, merely a fairly interesting erotic drama that crawls at a snail’s pace at times, even by Kubrick’s standards. Kubrick later claimed if he had known beforehand how severe the censorship restrictions would be, he wouldn’t have made Lolita, but Nabokov revealed that Kubrick had incorporated several things into the film that he wished he had thought of for the novel. Star and director didn’t always see eye to eye either. Douglas, exasperated by Kubrick’s meticulous attention to detail, reckoned that he spent longer making Spartacus than the slaves’ rebellion lasted. Spartacus remains a great spectacle however, if a bit wordy, and won four Oscars, none of them for Kubrick. Kubrick explores the dehumanising effect that not just combat but the brutal training regime under a profane, bullying instructor has on the recruits. Coming after a succession of highly regarded Vietnam movies, The Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Platoon (1987), Full Metal Jacket perhaps suffered by comparison. Disturbed by reports that the stylised violence in the film had provoked copycat crimes, Kubrick withdrew the film in Britain in 1973 and it wasn’t made available again until 2000, a year after Kubrick’s death. Kubrick shot all but a few scenes by natural light and candlelight, investing the film with the authentic look of the period and evoking the works of Hogarth and Gainsborough – exactly the look that Kubrick desired The caper goes to plan perfectly but the aftermath gradually and inexorably unravels in spectacular and bloody fashion. Don’t let the clichéd Dragnet-style narration or the B movie status put you off – this is top notch film noir with a lean, mean approach that proved hugely influential in the years to come, serving as the blueprint for Reservoir Dogs (1992). However, The Shining still works as a chilling horror movie with Kubrick putting his own indelible stamp on proceedings – the jaw-dropping tracking shot of the child on his tricycle, the shocking image of torrents of blood flowing from an elevator. Kubrick was also happy to give his actors full latitude to improvise and Jack Nicholson is in full scenery chewing mode, his descent into madness making for mesmerising viewing. It is certainly his first masterpiece and may well be the greatest anti-war film ever made, with its shattering portrayal of the slaughter in the trenches of the First World War and the jockeying for promotions of the self-serving army generals who view the men on the frontline as mere cannon fodder in their own quest for advancement. Winston Churchill considered Paths of Glory to have been the most realistic depiction of trench warfare, but the film’s themes could have been set to any war and told from the perspective of any nation. Perhaps only Kubrick would dare make a film about nuclear Armageddon as the Cold War was intensifying and so soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis, as he speculates on the consequences of the wrong person with their finger on the trigger. With fantastic sets courtesy of Ken Adams, outstanding black and white cinematography, a devastating script with lines quoted ad infinitum, (“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”) and a uniformly brilliant cast, allied to Kubrick’s fearless approach throughout, climaxing in the montage of mushroom clouds to the strains of “We’ll Meet Again”, Dr Strangelove is peak Kubrick, finding humour in the most chilling of subject matters. What, for example, is the head-scratching ending all about, and what is the true purpose of the mysterious black monolith that pops up on Earth, then the Moon and finally in outer space as the spaceship heads for Jupiter? These conundrums all add to the mystery and aura of a film in which Kubrick’s legendary attention to detail with regards to the sets stretched to importing just the right type of sand and washing and painting it to accurately portray the moon’s surface. However, this allegorical anti-war movie following four soldiers caught behind enemy lines has more going for it than its reputation would suggest. New Yorker Kubrick made good use of authentic, shadow-filled Manhattan locations for his first outing in dark city which has many classic noir tropes – the film is told in flashback by a world weary narrator, there’s love, deception, murder and revenge, and a striking denouement as hero and villain battle it out in a warehouse filled with mannequins. Starring then husband and wife Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Eyes Wide Shut was impossibly hyped as art house porn featuring Hollywood’s golden couple and as the master’s final masterpiece. It’s neither of course, merely a fairly interesting erotic drama that crawls at a snail’s pace at times, even by Kubrick’s standards. Kubrick later claimed if he had known beforehand how severe the censorship restrictions would be, he wouldn’t have made Lolita, but Nabokov revealed that Kubrick had incorporated several things into the film that he wished he had thought of for the novel. Star and director didn’t always see eye to eye either. Douglas, exasperated by Kubrick’s meticulous attention to detail, reckoned that he spent longer making Spartacus than the slaves’ rebellion lasted. Spartacus remains a great spectacle however, if a bit wordy, and won four Oscars, none of them for Kubrick. Kubrick explores the dehumanising effect that not just combat but the brutal training regime under a profane, bullying instructor has on the recruits. Coming after a succession of highly regarded Vietnam movies, The Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Platoon (1987), Full Metal Jacket perhaps suffered by comparison. Disturbed by reports that the stylised violence in the film had provoked copycat crimes, Kubrick withdrew the film in Britain in 1973 and it wasn’t made available again until 2000, a year after Kubrick’s death. Kubrick shot all but a few scenes by natural light and candlelight, investing the film with the authentic look of the period and evoking the works of Hogarth and Gainsborough – exactly the look that Kubrick desired The caper goes to plan perfectly but the aftermath gradually and inexorably unravels in spectacular and bloody fashion. Don’t let the clichéd Dragnet-style narration or the B movie status put you off – this is top notch film noir with a lean, mean approach that proved hugely influential in the years to come, serving as the blueprint for Reservoir Dogs (1992). However, The Shining still works as a chilling horror movie with Kubrick putting his own indelible stamp on proceedings – the jaw-dropping tracking shot of the child on his tricycle, the shocking image of torrents of blood flowing from an elevator. Kubrick was also happy to give his actors full latitude to improvise and Jack Nicholson is in full scenery chewing mode, his descent into madness making for mesmerising viewing. It is certainly his first masterpiece and may well be the greatest anti-war film ever made, with its shattering portrayal of the slaughter in the trenches of the First World War and the jockeying for promotions of the self-serving army generals who view the men on the frontline as mere cannon fodder in their own quest for advancement. Winston Churchill considered Paths of Glory to have been the most realistic depiction of trench warfare, but the film’s themes could have been set to any war and told from the perspective of any nation. Perhaps only Kubrick would dare make a film about nuclear Armageddon as the Cold War was intensifying and so soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis, as he speculates on the consequences of the wrong person with their finger on the trigger. With fantastic sets courtesy of Ken Adams, outstanding black and white cinematography, a devastating script with lines quoted ad infinitum, (“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”) and a uniformly brilliant cast, allied to Kubrick’s fearless approach throughout, climaxing in the montage of mushroom clouds to the strains of “We’ll Meet Again”, Dr Strangelove is peak Kubrick, finding humour in the most chilling of subject matters. What, for example, is the head-scratching ending all about, and what is the true purpose of the mysterious black monolith that pops up on Earth, then the Moon and finally in outer space as the spaceship heads for Jupiter? These conundrums all add to the mystery and aura of a film in which Kubrick’s legendary attention to detail with regards to the sets stretched to importing just the right type of sand and washing and painting it to accurately portray the moon’s surface.Kubrick suppressed Fear and Desire’s availability for decades, and given his well documented disdain for his first full-length feature, you would be forgiven for thinking that any trailer for Fear and Desire should have the rider “For Kubrick completists and cinephiles only”.