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Summary: Tom Mercers Review on the shining
Review: Another excellent classical horror film here by Stanley Kubrick. If you think the book is good then watch the film. Set at an isolated hotel set off the family where some years ago a previous caretaker slaughtered his family as he went crazy. The family is still at the hotel as they are ghosts. Through the film the ghosts appear to try and make Jack Nicholson slaughter his family too. Luckily the child has a physic force called the shining which enables him to contact others with this power through his mind, he calls the chef of the hotel but he soon is hacked down by nicholson, in the end they get away into the bush maze where Nicholson gets lost and freeezes. It is a very spooky and tense film which is superb in its television form and people worldwide know the famous saying from the film `HERES JOHNNY`
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Summary: The perfect horror movie
Review: Well, I'd just like to see as psychologically loaded and intense horror movie than this one was ( Cape Fear didn't get SO close)! I mean, just look at the haunting scenes and you'll feel concreticly the presence of the psychopathy. It's pure fear; imagine the mad Jack Nicholson hunting you around empty hotel. I mean, who wouldn't get scared? Also notice the genious scnes happening inside Nicholson's head ( The 20's parties, etc. ) I don't want to give all the Kub-films 5 stars, but he just is so amazing. Blah blah blah...
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Summary: THE ONLY FILM THAT IS BETTER THAN THE BOOK!
Review: You heard me, it's better than the book, and the crappy tv series too. Stanley Kubrick got rid of the unnecessary crap from the book, and stuck to the meat of the story. As well as the blatent subtle hint at the begining. 'now remember if you don't turn this down the whole hotel will explode.' Gee I wonder how it's going to end? Stanley Kubrick dispenses the obvious, and sticks to the unknown, you've read the book sure, but what's the point on seeing something if you know what's going to happen next? The film is a stepping stone, if you want to know more, read the book. But the ending is so much better than the book, because it's so realistic, and tense, and the characters don't seem to be standing around, wondering what to do next like in the book. The dialogues between Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall, are really tense, and scary. That you really feel for the characters. GOd knows why Stephen King wanted to re-make the Shining, it so laughably bad, and so un-scary, i've coughed up far more scarier stuff than that, and the tv series is just talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. I want to be scared to death, not bored to death. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is best Stephen King horror adaptation so far. There have been good adaptations like Carrie, The Dead Zone, and Misery. But the sheer intensity of The Shining is so great, that it makes every other adaptation of his like your average run of the mill horror stories. So stop living in denial, and embrace the real Shining, that was made by Stanley Kubrick.
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Summary: THE TV REMMAKE WAS MUCH BETTER
Review: I now that a bunch of people love this movie but i personally found it kind of boring but it was totally bad. if it had been edited better it could be really good thre are to many scenes of the kid biking down the hall. also it o differnt for the book it is not the wrost steph king adaption ever but defntily not he best. I hope the 1997 version comes to video
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Summary: Still waiting for Widescreen
Review: Replace your VHS -- but not your LD. To paraphrase Nicholson, it's baaack: the same low-end 1:33 edition we all already have two copies of. The movie-- This is Jack Nicholson's second best performance (after Cuckoo's Nest) and perhaps Shelley Duvall's best.
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Summary: It`s an awsome movie
Review: The scariest parts were the woman in 237 and the 2 girls. they should have made the movie with more scary parts. In the book the hotel blows up, they also should have did the same thing in the movie. And they should have added the ending part, when they are in the hospital. Other than that it`s pretty good
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Summary: The Shining is an excellent modern horror film
Review: I am a Jack Nicholson freak, and I thought that The Shining was, maybe not one of his BEST, but definitely a great achievement. Stephen King's novel is shown on the screen wonderfully. It's just plain a great film! If you haven't seen it, see it!
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Summary: Kubrik Shines!
Review: That was the first DVD I ever bought (along with the rest of Kubrik Collection), and let me tell you this is a great movie. Kubrik did not create a horror movie in the classical meaning of the word, he gave us a psychological thriller. If you are watching it for the first time, just concentrate on the story (wonderfully crafted by King). Then watch it again and again to admire the fine details, the electrifying performance of Jack Nicholson, and the wonderful vision of Kubrik. The special feature "The Making Of The Shining" is a wonderful documentary, you can see how much work was there in the background to produce such a masterpiece.
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Summary: Boils down to a good job.
Review: There are two ways to approach 'The Shining' for critical analysis. It can be treated either as a free-standing thriller or as a generic Kubrick work. Either way, it's effectively lensed thanks to Kubrick's rigid and cerebrally born camera technique. Visually, the movie is a brick-by-brick reconstruction of Stephen King's novel. Kubrick wastes no footage in ensuring that there's a nice long runway built for his monster. The only problem is that his movie, for all its exhaustive detail, just can't get off the ground. This is almost entirely due to Stanley Kubrick's failure to transplant the essence of the work from King's book. A thinking man who was firmly grounded in the here and now and whose cold calculatedness always came through on his lens, Kubrick really did choose the wrong book to work with. His film blueprint hadn't altered since '2001 - A Space Odyssey' and its exactly according to this schema that he constructed 'The Shining'. His filming is sincere and milks each set and sequence to the limit; it's just that there's no spirit world for Kubrick, no capacity to consider the supremacy of inference and suggestion over direct representation. From start to finish, 'The Shining' is heavily imbued with images that can be taken at face value and dialogue scenes that sometimes seem perfunctory and even a little 'uninspired'. A problem arises in Kubrick's method of suspense build up and the precipitation of his action sequences. Everything makes sense and works like clockwork (excusing the pun on one of his best films) but there's never any orchestration made toward injecting occult and supernatural terror into the mix beyond much beyond that which is halluncinatory. The violence, when it finally does come, is neat and graphic and is one of 'The Shining's strongest elements as a movie. The suspense, however, doesn't come off the way it happens in the book and that's what's really wrong here. Owing directly to the blatant idiosyncratic differences between Kubrick and King, a fair portion of the potential for terror is lost in the gulf that separates the story's writer's and its film director's personalities. The casting presents mild difficulties also. Shelley Duvall is excellent as Mrs Torrance only in the climactic scenes near and at the movie's conclusion. Elsewhere, however, she's just a quivering heap of jangled nerves and her character's personal weaknesses seem exaggerated at times, almost to the extent of self parody. Jack Nicholson works in the role of Torrance as as much as he doesn't. King purists, naturally, are inclined to leap in to join the attack on his selection for the part, citing blindly that he's messed up from the start of the picture or that he's too fresh from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' to be anything other that a crazy man. Nicholson actually portrays Torrance accurately here: he's burnt out (hence the mild symptoms of lunacy right from the beginning) and is a feather-trigger alcoholic. Sure; his performance makes for some problems as the viewer will find it hard to witness the psychological disintegration of his character from sequence to sequence. Looking back, though, the would-be critic should entertain one notion very carefully before frowning on Nicholson: could any other prominent actor of the era have carried off the role without sacrificing some other aspect of Mr. Torrance? That may sound frivilous and academic until one cringes from the thought of Michael Caine in the part. All things considered, by the movie's action-packed conclusion, Nicholson has thrown his gears quite visibly and he goes wonderfully berserk. His rampage is, in fact, far more appreciable and close to the Stephen King idea than has been given credit. It's a long movie at two and a half hours but then it was a long novel. There are many things at this director's disposal and he uses them to the full. Exquisite sets, staggering images and high grade (though far from perfect) casting all work in his favour on this assignment. Unfortunately, the result is a seamless Frankenstein monster lying still and lifeless on its slab in the laboratory. Kubrick's atheistic outlook just can't give it the all essential spark. 'The Shining' receives four stars by way of mean averaging. Five stars would definitely do it justice for its looks and fine cinematic veneer; four would be fair to indicate its value as a thriller; three stars have to come into play to account for this director's failure to encapsulate in whole or in good-sized part the gist of his source material. Curiously, Kubrick grafted 'A Clockwork Orange' flawlessly from its novella. It just proves that he wasn't accustomed to handling a project created by someone as spiritual as King. Great entertainment, if a little dragging in areas, 'The Shining' is a must-see on the order of its being a rite of passage. Watch it repeatedly for academic study or for pleasure - you're bound to come away better for the experience. It really isn't hard to find the middle ground between those who overapplaud it as 'haute' arthouse cinema and those who decry it as a callous cinematic translation or a massacre of a masterful plan. King hated it and another version has been filmed since. While more faithful, maybe, to the bits of his book King felt cheated out of by Kubrick, 'The Shining' Mark Two (1997?) just can't hope to stand beside this juggernaut. Stanley Kubrick deserves extra respect for this work in the sense that he endowed 'The Shining' with his trademark directorial power. The movie is well armoured to withstand the criticism that it has brought Kubrick. It has become a false albatross for him to wear about his neck, a job for which he has received much harsh and undue criticism over the last twenty years, at times borderlining ridicule.
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Summary: The music IS the Shining!
Review: Throughout Kubrick's creative life as a filmmaker he was drawn to using pre-existing music as an ingredient to heighten emotional effect. Most strikingly his use of Johann Strauss and Richard Strauss in "2001 Space Oddessy" amongst others has given this element popular appeal and been a memorable aspect of his works power. In "The Shining" Kubrick use the music of Bella Bartok, Gyorgy Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki in a more precise and detailed way than in his previous films. The music here cannot in any way be regarded as a film score in the traditional sense. The music by the three composers aforementioned are well established and parts of the contemporary orchestral repertoire, and were written with no connection what so ever to Stanley Kubrick's film. It is unlikely that anything other than a small minority of filmgoers would be familiar with the music of Ligeti or Penderecki, and so would not recognise immediately, if at all. that this work exists successfully in itself in its own right. It sounds very much like an ordinary successful film score with the usual subliminal and emotional effect that a composed score is designed to produce. Kubrick's use of Bartok is however a little more risky in this effect. Though not a popular piece of classical music it is one which a good many people would be familiar with. It is a masterpiece of 20th century musical composition. It is probable that Kubrick was aware of this in his credit of the pieces full title at the end of the film, which he fails to make with regards to Ligeti or Penderecki. The Bartok piece here in question is his "Music for strings, percussion and celesta". It was written in 1936 and has no programmatic element. As a music lover, it is likely that Kubrick would have been very familiar with this piece. Bartok's music has a particular sound world which comprises a number of elements, particularly in the third movement of this piece which is a fine example of what is known as his "Night Music". The Night Music often made up the intense slow movements of his most important works, particularly his string quartets, regular features of which are atmospheric special effects produced by string instruments (Glissandi, Pizzicato, Harmonics and Tremolos) which contribute to a feeling of dreamlike unreality. This music has often been described as "nightmarish" or "supernatural" in its effect. It is likely that Kubrick was drawn to this expression of psychological darkness as part of his creative process. Ligeti and Penderecki have also developed the use of these musical techniques in their own work using Bartok as an antecedent thus making their music relevant and organic as the score to this film. The composition of a film score is normally the very last creative part of a project. A film composer would compose music timed, frame by frame, second by second, to an existing edited version of the completed film, which impose particular limitations upon the artists creative expression. No such limitations however were imposed upon the composition of the music already mentioned, which reflects in its complex quality, so in choosing particularly the Bartok, Kubrick would have to reverse the process and create much of his film around an already established dramatic concept. In a documentary film "The Making of The Shining" by Vivienne Kubrick, there are examples of rehearsal and shoots where the actors are audibly aware of the music that they are acting with. In this sense Kubrick could be described as a choreographer and his actors as dancers. It is likely that Nicholson and Duvall would have familiarised themselves with the music in order to better time certain actions and lines and rehearsed intensely in order to achieve the precision required. There are several examples of this precision which could not have been achieved in any other way and are beyond coincidence: the swiping out of paper from Jack's typewriter; Jacks waving of hands through the hotel corridors; the punctuation of Danny's question to his father in the bedroom; Danny's ice-slide from the bathroom window (illustrated with help from Penderecki's Glissando, itself a slide on string instruments). These are just some examples of the relationship between the actors and the music. In other parts of the film the relationship is between film editor and music and would have been achieved in the editing studio. The whole general effect of these techniques is one of precision and power and must certainly have been a fundamental element of Kubrick's entire creative process in this project. It was a unique and original way of working with film. As a result of this process Kubrick was able to produce scenes in relation to particular sections of music which look very much like tableaux, like scenes from ballet. The emergence of the ghostly nude woman from the bath in room 237 to Penderecki's music is a particularly fine example of this choreography. Kubrick's choices, understanding and directional mastery with regards to the music make these techniques absolutely successful in their effect. Without this musical element "The Shining" could not have had its full effect. The music chosen has a surrealism all of its own. When it is heard the viewer knows that something supernatural is about to develop. The narrative steps out of reality and enters its own dream world. Kubrick owes a debt to the genius of his composers.
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