"Sitting on nearly everyone’s perennial list of the greatest antiwar films, Stanley Kubrick’s classic, set amid the ranks of a decadent French army command during World War I, offers breathtaking filmmaking on every level: acting, directing, writing, technical. A piercing Kirk Douglas shows up with his reliable blend of machismo and conscience. Veteran actors like Adolphe Menjou and George Macready are magnificent. However, Wayne Morris, Timothy Carey, and Kubrick regular Joseph Turkel bring a grit and suffering to offset the spit and polish of the debauched French commanders. Calder Willingham and the great novelist/screenwriter Jim Thompson wrote the script. The film features incredible photography by George Krause. Along with The Killing, Paths of Glory marks the critical onset of Kubrick’s now legendary career."

"My first favorite film is The Shining by Stanley Kubrick. I am a huge horror film fan. I love them so much. I’ve always loved them. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been attracted to scary stuff; I don’t know why. When I was younger I would watch a lot of the cheesier process-of-elimination slasher ’90s films. And then I feel like, as my tastes matured a little bit as I got older, I found The Shining, which is a movie that my dad had always spoken about with this weird fear, because he’d never finished the movie. He’s like, “The one film I’ve never been able to finish in my life is The Shining.” So I grew up like, “What is The Shining?” And then, finally I watched it, and it was just incredible. Well, Stanley Kubrick’s my favorite director, so you’ll probably see a lot of his films in the top five. I just love that movie so much, and it’s my favorite on-screen performance of all time, from Jack Nicholson. I think that he’s absolutely incredible. I’m ready to play a role like that."

"Then I would say the next time I remember going and seeing a movie and having my mind f—ing blown was A Clockwork Orange. I was probably about 15 or so when I saw that. At that point in time there were no DVDs, there was no VHS. As a movie fanatic, I could only look at pictures and go, “Oh my god, A Clockwork Orange! I have to see this movie!” But how do you see it? It’s not playing anywhere. Eventually it was playing at a college, and I went to go see it at this college. I was only fifteen years old and it was all college people and they seemed real cool. And it just f—ing blew my mind. And ever since then I’ve been fanatic for Kubrick and Malcolm McDowell. That’s why I love working with Malcolm, because he loves talking about that stuff. You can ask him anything, and he’ll give you all the dirt on how… What is amazing for me too, hearing the stories about the movie, is just how much time they had. Now you have, “Oh, you have an hour to shoot that thing.” And he’ll go, “Oh, we shot that in five days.” That Singing in the Rain scene. They didn’t even figure out the song until eventually he said that Kubrick was like, “Do you know any songs?” And when Stanley would be at a loss for what to do, he would go up to Malcolm and go, “You’re probably going to be sick tomorrow. You won’t be able to make it to work for probably about a week.” And they would shut down and Malcolm would pretend to be sick so Stanley could figure out what he was going to shoot next."

"I kind of briefly threw The Shining out there, so that gets its own due, which means I can fall back on 2001, I suppose? I think that film speaks for itself, if I could explain that film to you, then I’d be… I don’t know what I’d be, one in ten who could explain it to you, but there was a followup called 2010 with Roy Scheider, which wasn’t a great film, but if it did anything, it helped explain 2001 a little bit, but 2001… I remember my father took me to see that in the theater, and that was so awe inspiring, and just to see where the imagination and creativity could go on screen as an 11-year-old kid, or however old I was. And to have seen that film over and over and over again and ask new questions every time I do, it’s been a pretty profound staple in my house for years. Then you get into all the conspiracy stuff. You attach the lunar landing — Kubrick shot the lunar landing stuff in it, and the rear screen projection that was used in the space scenes and in the ape scenes in the beginning, and how conspiracy theorists surmise that that’s what he used to shoot the moon landing. Did you hear all that? The theory is that NASA got a hold of the footage from 2001, saw it, and got Stanley Kubrick to shoot all the moon landing stuff in his studio and broadcast it across the country. Now, they’re not saying that we didn’t go to the moon, they’re saying that what the people in America saw was shot in a studio, because at that time we didn’t want to broadcast to the world what we may or may not have found on the moon — which actually makes more sense then it just being… It’s not, “We didn’t go.” We went. But we didn’t want the Russians to see, or we didn’t want Japan to see, or China to see what we’re discovering, you know? In case there’s anything there, or anything that we could weaponize, so Kubrick shot all this stuff in a sound stage, and that was the agreement. That’s why NASA gave Kubrick a super, super special space lens that he used for Barry Lyndon, because Barry Lyndon wasn’t shot with any lights. It was all natural light… candles, or sunlight, or whatever, so he used the lens, and that’s what allowed the light to get in for the film process, but there’s so many layers to the Kubrick stuff and I just, as a conspiracy theory fan, I like to have that in the back of my brain while I’m watching those films."

"Dude, where do I start? I am a Kubrick fanatic. I think that there may never be another director like Stanley Kubrick. Just the meticulous care that he takes in not only the preparation, but the execution of what he’s doing. The fact that there are Christmas lights hidden in every single shot in Eyes Wide Shut, it’s supposed to be this dreamlike sequence. Just the fact that Tom Cruise’s character wants to have sex so badly, and the only time in the film where it’s actually offered to him and he turns it down, that person later turns out to be HIV positive. There’s just so many little things in that film that are so genius, that can only… none of those things can happen by accident. Those are the manifestations of genius, the manifestations of years and years and years of preparation and work, and you can feel that in every single set up, in every single shot, in every single scene, in every single line of dialogue. You can feel that, and you feel how much Kubrick put into that movie. Not only that movie, but every movie. I mean, even Barry Lyndon, all of them, all of his movies are incredible, but Eyes Wide Shut to me is this beautiful meditation on what it is to be sort of like a frustrated man. I just think that movie is absolutely incredible. Then you get into, well, what about the conspiracies about it? What about the fact that it’s about this or that? What about the fact that he’s alluding to this or that secret thing, that everyone knows is happening but no one will admit? All that stuff, there’s just so many layers to that film, that every time I watch it, I feel like I just enjoy it for a different reason. And it’s not regarded as Kubrick’s best work, but I absolutely love it, I think it’s a great film. And look, I just watched 2001 again maybe a month ago, and just sat there marveling again. It’s just like, “Who the hell was this guy? Who gave him the goddamn right to be so good?” But I don’t know, I think that I like the fact that Eyes Wide Shut is like the redheaded stepchild of the Stanley Kubrick films, but it’s amazing. There’s something about the tone of Eyes Wide Shut that, as you’re watching it, it sucks you in, and you really feel like you’re there. Like all of his films. I mean, The Shining wouldn’t be as scary as it is if it didn’t feel like you were actually there in the hotel, but Eyes Wide Shut, there’s just something… It’s a dream. It feels like a dream. It feels like you are watching a dream, and I just think it’s excellent."