The great Stanley Kubrick would’ve turned 90 years old this year. He was 70 when he died during post-production of Eyes Wide Shut, ending the forty-odd year career of a man who emerged from New York City to throw us into a new dimension with a haunted hotel, the depths of space, the madness of war, and our obsession with sex and violence. He was only a photographer with a magazine at 17 when it turned into a career with motion pictures, starting from the bottom in the early 50s before Kirk Douglas called him in as an emergency director for the 1960 epic, Spartacus. This would be the full introductory in large productions we would know Kubrick for.

But like other major directors, the base of their portfolio are pieces homemade and on-the-go, especially when he didn’t come from film school or was connected to any film studio at the time in his native New York. Kubrick made short films for his magazine that was picked up for theatrical release, and with enough confidence and financial support, he decided to forge ahead with making full-length features. Here’s a rundown of his 50s catalog before he became the international director we have come to know and admire.

Fear And Desire (1953)

His first film was an hour long and only had fifteen people in the entire production, including writer Harry Sackler, a friend of Kubrick who would win the Pulitzer for his play The Great White Hope, and a young Paul Mazursky, who would go on to make Harry And Tonto and An Unmarried Woman. Set during an unspecified war featuring two unnamed countries, four soldiers behind enemy lines struggle with their conscience when they capture a young girl who does not know their language and planning a daring attempt to infiltrate the enemy base and kill the opposing general before escaping back. It is a prelude to the making of Paths of Glory in regards to what war is about and an example of low budget shooting; the money came from Kubrick’s family, namely his wealthy uncle. Years later, Kubrick said did not like the overall film, calling it, “a bumbling amateur film exercise.” It is a really good film exercise and in the public domain today.

Killer’s Kiss (1955)/The Killing (1956)

A boxer helps a dancer after she is beaten by her employer gangster and decides to help her get out of town. When they try to get the last of their money owed before fleeing, the gangster sends two of his men to rough up the boxer for interfering with his relationship, but end up killing the boxer’s manager instead. The boxer now has to find the dancer while fending off the gangster and his men from hunting him down. It is only sixty-seven minutes long, but Kubrick nails down the basics of noir and minimalizes the expansion of action with incredible  You may find it for free on YouTube, but if you get the Criterion edition of Kubrick’s follow-up, you will also see it in a gorgeous restored high-definition version. Speaking of his follow-up with the same word in it…

Sterling Hayden plays the ringleader of a group of robbers planning a major heist at a racetrack during the main race. Like the template laid before with The Asphalt Jungle and Rififi and after with Ocean’s Eleven and Reservoir Dogs, one person has one thing else in mind and the plan, while executed, soon falls apart in the end through greed and backstabbing. This would be Kubrick’s way of getting into Hollywood through producer James B. Harris, who later directed The Bedford Incident (1965) and Cop (1988). Kubrick’s noir fell into the hands of United Artists who did the rest, but the critics ate up the hard-boiled, pulp, electric, sharp thriller that is considered Kubrick’s first mature film, synchronized and exciting.

Paths Of Glory (1958)

Set in World War I amongst the vicious trenches, Kirk Douglas, in the first of two collaborations with Kubrick, plays a colonel who fights with the army’s leaders when his men are accused of cowardice after failing to accomplish a mission that was impossible and unrealistic. Three men of the ground are randomly picked out for trial and execution in what is a kangaroo court, but Douglas argues tooth and nail in a stirring courtroom drama of war as so cruel that is so absurd in what the military can do to shield its own interests and save face. It also played out as much in real life when the French government successfully pressured the Berlin Film Festival to drop it and then ban it from France for twenty years.

The long takes going through every inch of the trench and coming face-to-face with a soldier clearly a victim of “shell shock,” of a large room full of memorabilia that labels everything in the empire, and the whole wide angle of the aim and fire of the soldiers’ execution would be the first of multiple shots of a kind in future movies. The last scene in which Kubrick’s future wife, Christine, sings the sentimental “Faithful Hussar,” capping of the anti-war, anti-militant mood which infuriated those who took part. The “talented shit,” Kirk Douglas once described Kubrick as for making the film is what got Kubrick his last-second gig in Spartacus. 

Kubrick is among the greatest ever and in my personal Top 5 all-time greats behind the camera with Scorsese, Hitchcock, Kieslowski, and Truffaut. (Discuss among yourselves of your Top 5 filmmakers worldwide.) I always like to look at the start of a career to pick up the genius of a legend because it constructs the growing craft of a director and how they expand their grip on the art years later. We don’t get his colored epics without creating the characters and the expanded wide shots from this time. Besides shooting in LA and finding the place distasteful, he experienced European locations and found England fitting for his style. Like Scorsese’s Mean Streets, Hitchcock’s The Lodger, and Fellini’s Variety Lights, these early works laid the foundation of our admiration all these decades later.

Follow me on Twitter: @BrianSusbielles (Cine-A-Man)

*Warning: This article contains graphic content.

Horror does not always have to be a slasher type film. Horror does not always have to have nudity presented in a sexually attractive manner. Horror can feature a political bent to it and a style that forces the viewers to endure if they choose, the gratuitous and the indecent, the immoral and the deprivation a human can think of. For Marquis de Sade and his original transcript to The 120 Days of Sodom, his shocking, repulsive story of libertinism, power, and pleasure had the idea of one director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, to actually take it to the screen and not flinch on what is depicted. As noted, the notes below are not for the faintest of heart; it has produced anger and continuous condemnation for it being “art,” for the most graphic depictions of fetishism for sex and violence that makes A Clockwork Orange tame in comparison.

Salo Or The 120 Days of Sodom has a simple premise. Four wealthy fascist libertines in the ill-fated state in Northern Italy in 1944 – Mussolini’s last stand before his capture and execution – decide to engage in their ultimate fantasies of sadism and masochism by kidnapping 9 handsome young men and 9 beautiful young women, all mid to late teens (Marquis de Sade’s story had them younger), and force them to endure the humiliation of horrific practices before meeting a quite violent end. It is between the kidnapping and their killings that make Salo a different type of picture, making the boundaries almost limitless, especially with the aftermath of its production.

Between the extensive sexual abuse, the psychological manipulation, and acts of coprophilia, what is the purpose of enduring something that is not sexually arousing and more exploitive of human cruelty? For Pasolini, it is a message of the corruption of power and the punishment Italy received for bowing to fascism. It is self-flagellation for the sins of many, but it was the young that took the punishment. The four men and the four middle-aged prostitutes who tell graphic stories of depravity and then strip their prisoners naked are survivors who use their power to make the young metaphorically – and literally – eat the shit of the authoritarianism. They are degraded to be mere objects and never seen as a human being in their prison of horrors that is just too real to even think of.

There are four chapters to this parade of degradation: the Antiinferno, the Circle of Manias, the Circle of Shit, and the Circle of Blood. The first is mild and only the simple setup to what comes after, the prelude, if you may call it. They go to an isolated palace where the fun and horror takes place. Within this segment, Pasolini is critiquing the bourgeoise of then and now, condemning Italy’s return to a society of individual pleasure that is also taken in by corruption. As he said, “this new Fascism, armed with new means of communication and information . . . has not only scratched the soul of the Italian people but has lacerated, raped, and besmirched it forever.” Religion is not allowed, nor would it have helped.

The latter three stages is an examination of the socio-political power in which the four libertines use their sick minds over their middle-class slaves as, to put it mildly, a piece of meat. They are trophies who like to see how far they can go with them because the men have no limits. One of the men likes to anally rape his prisoners, but also likes to sodomized in return, disliking having regular intercourse with women. Another takes gratification in verbally abusing them and has his eye on two of them specifically. One prostitute says she enjoyed being molested as a child, another recounts bizarre instances with her tricks, and the four “studs,” four young men who guard the captured, are chosen only because they are well hung. Again, they are naked, unabashed top to bottom, but it is not of any pleasure to viewers. In the end, the four men don’t kill but watch from afar as the see their captured youth killed in horrific ways. I can’t even describe it; you just have to watch it to see it. None of this should be shown or done, yet Pasolini forces us to be the voyeurs to everything that goes on – and then see two studs dancing slowly to a waltz as if nothing else happened.

That leads us to Pasolini himself. He had built a reputation of shocking films and adding his Marxist beliefs within the confines of his stories. As a gay man, he was unafraid to have homoeroticism in his works, let nudity be free and attacked everyone who he felt was sending Italy to its violent climate. At the time, Italy’s “Years of Lead” was taking place between far-right and far-left organizations that the Italian government struggled to stop in the decade. Just before the film’s release, on November 2, 1975, Pasolini was beaten to death. A male prostitute was convicted for the killing, allegedly disturbed by Pasolini wanting to rape him with a stick, but many now believe it was a hit job, trying to silence Pasolini for opening a can of worms into the establishment’s past. In a sense, there was one more killing left to do in the story of Sodom and that was of the director himself.

So, why does this movie remain a piece of our collective thoughts when one sees it. Besides the shock value, Salo has a permission to be artistic while allowing the most depraved behavior to be committed on celluloid. Every time someone on Twitter says they are watching it for the first time, I warn them to be attentive for what is coming. This is a film not for the weak stomachs – it is thought to be a great date movie and I hope people are joking – and those who have not seen a Pasolini film would think of has the Ewe Boll of his time. Even with everything being seen, people still regard it in positive terms. Michael Haneke, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and John Waters have ranked it among their favorites. “Salo is a beautiful film…it uses obscenity in an intelligent way…and it’s about the pornography of power,” said Waters. It is this dehumanization that does not leave us and its something that will not tear us away from the events.

Follow me on Twitter: @BrianSusbielles (Cine-A-Man)

All good things must come to an end and thus day 6 of South by Southwest was my last day covering the Austin based film festival. So being that it was my last day, I went all out and saw four films to complete a six day, twenty-one film journey that I consumed me and made me feel more inspired about film and filmmaking than any other week of my life.

The first film of the day landed me at the Zach Theater to catch Them That Follow, which premiered at Sundance, carried over to SXSW and is the debut film for directors Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage. The film follows Alice Englert’s Mara, who is the daughter of a preacher who runs a small community of people that are isolated from the outside world. When she becomes pregnant, it sets off a chain of events that could tear the fabric of the community apart and change their lives forever. The film has a ton of star power behind it that support Englert with Kaitlyn Dever, Walton Goggins, Thomas Mann, Jim Gaffigan and recent Oscar winner Olivia Colman. So with all of this talent, one would assume that the film they are in is worth their time but instead the film seems to waste most of their talent and feels like something we have seen before and can be slow in a lot of parts. The script, which is written by the directors, left a lot to be desired and left their actors out in the cold, leaving them to have to pick up a lot of the slack and thus the film became an exercise in patience and my biggest disappointment of the festival.

Once Them That Follow ended, I grabbed some lunch and then made my way over to the Paramount Theater for the documentary The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story. The film, produced by former NSYNC member Lance Bass who also is in the film, is about Lou Pearlman, the man that built the two biggest boy bands in the history of music in NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys and conned not only those bands and many more bands out of millions but also conned investors into various other businesses he owned as well. Anyone that was born and grew up in the 1990’s to early 2000’s will be very interesting in seeing this film because it gives the true story behind all the music you love and the man that manipulated all it into existence. While the film doesn’t do anything to stylistically different than any average documentary, it is a good companion piece to Leaving Neverland because of its conversation about people in power and how they pray on the weak to do what they want them to do. The film will come out later this year on YouTube and I really think everyone should give it a watch because it is a nostalgic yet sad trip down memory lane.

Once the film was over, I jumped next door to the Stateside Theater for The Peanut Butter Falcon, which upon reflection, is one of my favorite films I saw while I was at the festival. The film, directed by Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz, follows Zak, a down syndrome kid who escapes from the nursing home that he lives in to go and find a wrestling academy and his favorite wrestler that runs it. While on the run, he encounters Tyler, a fisherman that has burned he last bridge and is on the run from the people that he has crossed. Tyler promises to help Zak out and they set out on an adventure that is extremely charming and moving. Nilson and Schwartz’s script and direction are top notch and you feel completely immersed into this world that they have created and makes you feel that every decision is real and authentic. The cast are on their A game, with what could be my favorite performance from Shia LaBeouf and Dakota Johnson. But the reason to see this film is for Zach Gottsagen’s lead performance, which is the biggest discovery I found at the festival. I don’t want to give too much of this film away but I challenge you to catch this film when it comes out later this year because it’s one that won me over on its charm and fairytale like storytelling that made me think this could be this year’s Mud or Beast of the Southern Wild.

As I left Stateside, I got back in line at the Paramount for my last screening of the festival for the new action-buddy comedy Stuber starring Dave Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani. The film, which is about a cop who hires an Uber driver to get him from point A to B to get solve a big case, was the perfect film to end the festival on. Though I’d love to get into the film more, the film was “a work-in progress” and thus we can’t fully review the film or talk about plot points or moments within the movies due to studio asking for us to wait for a full review till the film is one hundred percent ready. Though the film played all the way through, it was a director’s cut and it will be interesting to see what they keep in and what they cut out in the final theatrical cut. What I can tell you is that Bautista and Nanjiani are comic gold together and are having so much fun and the action in the film, directed by Goon director Michael Dowse, is some of the best that has appeared in a comedy in years. I look forward to seeing the film again and seeing if the next big buddy cop franchise like the 21 Jump Street films.

Thank you for following my SXSW recaps and I am so sad that the festival is over for me. But I had so much fun covering this festival for the website and can’t wait till next year to do it all over again! Continue to follow me on Twitter @ryanmcquade77 for more film coverage throughout the rest of the year.

The weather in Austin for Day 5 of my coverage at South by Southwest was muggy and damp but yet it was the perfect day to stay in the theater and catch up on titles that had already premiered at the festival. Film number one for the day found me back over at the Alamo Drafthouse watching the newest thriller Villains from directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen. The film follows a couple who are on their way out of town after just robbing their last gas-station before they head to Florida. When the car they steal runs out of gas, they head to a house that is abandoned to look for gas or something to get them back out on the road. But once they enter the house, they realized they aren’t the only ones in the house, and must play a game of cat and mouse in order to leave. The film is a lot of fun and the cast are top notch with good performances from Maika Monroe, Bill Skarsgard and great performances from Jeffrey Donovan and Kyra Sedgwick, who steal the show the moment they come on the screen. I love the world that this film creates and it feels like a great companion piece to last year’s Bad Times at the El Royale, only I like this film more because the themes and overall approach to the story is better executed here by Berk and Olsen and will make for a highly enjoyable discovery for audiences later this year.

After getting out of Villains, I was able to get over to the Long Center, which is one of the premier theaters in Austin, to catch a screening of the Sundance breakout hit Little Monsters. The film follows Stephen Peacocke, who volunteers for his nephew’s field trip after seeing that Lupita Nyong’o is the teacher. But what turns into a regular field trip to a petting zoo turns into an all-out survival when a zombie breakout at the government lab to them goes on lockdown and the zombie outbreak reaches the zoo grounds. The film is a dark, hilarious action comedy in the vein of Shaun of the Dead with some very over the top language like something out of a Scorsese movie. It is a film that feels so real even though we have seen a lot of send ups to action-comedies over the last couple years and the direction of the action scenes are just a strong as the humor. I can feel this become a cult hit with it being a lot of fun to take your friends to a 9:30 screening at night and laughing a lot while also finding a lot of heart from these characters. Little Monsters might not be for everyone, and your enjoyment of the film could be judged by how much you like Josh Gad’s performance in the film. But for me this film was an absolute trip that I could see myself going on again and again like a lot of other films of its style.

My last stop of the day landed me back at the Drafthouse to see Christopher Morris’ The Day Shall Come. The film is about how a preacher of a small congregation starts to be investigated by the FBI, and their efforts to turn him into a home grown terrorists without him even knowing it. The film harkens to the ideas that Spike Lee brought up in Malcolm X along with the comedic timing of In the Loop or The Death of Stalin. It is a political film that talks about what someone will do to protect what they have while also being a film about what we will do to convict someone of something they didn’t even do. The films cast does a fine job, and it takes a while for the film to get going but by the end, the film is so heartbreaking and real that it makes you start to wonder how many of these incidents happen each day. Overall I would recommend the film, though I wish that it was tighter in the script but I liked it overall.

Check back here tomorrow for my day 5 recap and follow me on Twitter @ryanmcquade77 for more coverage of SXSW.

Day Four of my coverage at SXSW didn’t start the way that my other days began because I didn’t see a movie. I was invited to a roundtable discussion run by Leonard and Jessie Matlin to talk about film criticism and bounce off ideas about what makes a critic, how should someone write reviews for film, criticism in general and how to make the internet a more positive place to combat the everyday negativity we read. It was such an enlightening conversation and I got to talk to the Maltin’s after for about twenty minutes and they are truly some of the nicest people you will ever meet. Note to anyone out there going to their first film festival, go to panels or rounds tables because the information you can gather from those events are huge. Also don’t be afraid to talk to people, like the Maltin, because I’ve talked to a lot of people throughout the festival and they have all been so nice and open to speak if they have the time.

So once the roundtable concluded, I made my way back over to The Paramount to check out an “in progress” documentary from Morgan Neville, the Academy Award winning director who last directed the smash hit Won’t You Be My Neighbor. What I mean by “in progress” is that the project is not done by they should be finished with it soon. The project is called Shangri-La and, to my surprise and many in the audience, we weren’t going to be watching a film, we were going to be watching the first episode of a four-part documentary-television show. The show follows the life of one of the most influential music producers Rick Rubin and his one of a kind studio that has housed some of the biggest names in music, as well as some of the best album and songs to come out of all types of genres. The artists that were presents in the document included musicians of The Avett Brothers, Vampire Weekend, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Lil Yachty as well as director David Lynch, producer Mark Ronson and magician David Blaine. To that this documentary doesn’t have big stars is an understatement but it’s not about the cameos, this film is about Rick and that studio that everyone comes from all around the world and based on the first episode, I can tell this is going to be Neville’s most experimental documentary yet. From what we get in the episode, he really takes a look into Rick’s life with such a visual style instead of words because Rick’s is such a private guy, thus making for some interesting choices. Overall, while I was disappointed it wasn’t a film, I will be checking out the rest of the series once Showtime releases it later this year, even though I know how they are going to end it.

Once the Q&A was over, I got in my car and drove to the AFS (Austin Film Society) theater to catch a screening of actor turned director Logan Marshall Green’s new film Adopt a Highway staring Ethan Hawke. The film follows a just release convict who has nothing to his name because he has been in prison for twenty years for committing his third strike, possession of a ounce of marijuana. One night, as he is taking the trash out at the fast food place he works at, he discovers a baby wrapped up in a bag, cry and coughing for her life. What then ensues is a story about how we should do the right thing and take care of each other regardless of the circumstance, while also being a film that is about second chances, not just for the baby but for Hawkes character too. This is a very good debut by Logan Marshal Green, who really gets the melancholy tone down that he is looking for, and thus leads to a very moving ending. Along with Green’s direction, the score by folk singer Jason Isbell is easily one of my favorites of the year so far and is used beautifully to tell this story and complements the characters. But the star of the movie is also the reason to go see it because just like last year’s First Reformed, Ethan Hawke gives another commanding performance in such a different film and with such a different character. With this performance, I can say with confidence that he is the best working actor on the planet and we are witnessing someone at the height of their acting talents.

Once I was done with Adopt a Highway, I decided to skip out on the headliner for the evening in Good Boys and went to the convention center to see a film that already premiered two nights before in Lynn Shelton’s Sword of Trust. The film follows a couple who comes home to find out what the grandfather of one has left them in his will. What they discover is that all that was left to them was a sword and nothing else. Without getting into spoilers, I will not tell you how the sword plays into the film and its backstory but what I can tell you is that it’s one of the funniest concepts I’ve seen here at this festival. So when the girls try to pawn off the sword, they, along with the pawn shop owner and his assistant, get wrapped in something that’s far over their heads and completely entertaining to watch. The movies script is downright perfect, with humor oozing all over the place and also real moments of sorrow for these characters, especially Mark Marin’s pawn shop owner Mel, who gives the best performance of his career while also bringing his same style of humor that goes so well with this story. It’s a film that also feels super timely considering how it ties in the major reveal of the film with our society and how we consume facts. The film starts off a little slow but once the reveal is made, the movie shines and becomes an unexpected delight and gives another show case as to why Shelton is one of the best comedic directors working today.

Check back here tomorrow for my day 5 recap and follow me on Twitter @ryanmcquade77 for more coverage of SXSW.