It is a performances centric movie

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

To be quite honest, and I say this as a major Kubrick fan, hoping to direct films myself one day, that I learned more about the man from this one documentary than I have any other. It is short, yes, but it describes the genius and eccentricity of Kubrick so well.I really can understand Jon Ronson when he says he was privileged by the experience, going through the so called "kubrick boxes" getting an incredible insight in Kubrick's mind. Also I was relieved when they in the end said that the boxes where now stored in a London film school for preservation and educational purposes.There really isn't anything wrong about this documentary, other than Jon Ronson's bad habit of giving some rather silly and stupid movie references in the middle of interviews and as I said earlier, it was a little short. If Jon Ronson ever decided to make a longer cut of this documentary, I would love too see it.

Of course Kubrick is the best director of all time; this should be obvious even to the most deluded Bunuel-sniffing film student. But I'm not going to sit here and write a sniveling, awe-filled adoration piece, making a god out of a mere mortal. There is quite enough over-the-top idolatry as it is in Paris Hilton's Age Of The Idiot...SKB has a very unusual approach to tackling a dead human subject: by digging through his numerous boxes clues are found as to how insanely perfectionist Kubrick had become post-"Strangelove" (fittingly enough, the weakest movie after "Spartacus" - not counting those early 50s films, naturally).Evidently, Kubrick was a collector, not a thrower, which I can perfectly understand. But unlike the kind of garbage I keep lying around my flat, Kubrick's is rather fascinating and worthwhile.As the documentary gradually drew to a close there was a sense of disappointment because there's enough material in those boxes to make a 10-hour documentary, as opposed to the pitiful 45 minutes we're given here; mere breadcrumbs. Ronson just scratches the surface. There should be a docu series on these boxes, with each episode tackling a specific subject: an entire episode could be easily dedicated to the crank letters, for example. A two-part episode should be about the footage his daughter shot of Kubrick filming "FM Jacket". Another episode could be about his meticulous search for props, yet another could be about the hunt for ideally suitable locations, etc. Unfortunately, Kubrick destroyed all his out-takes (a fact that made me grin a bit), but there's easily a whole episode somewhere in those boxes about screen tests. I even sense that an episode could be made about his numerous pets, and if you think there are no viewers interested in a subject as narrowed-down as that, think again... Kubrick was one of the last true eccentrics of the movie world, and as such he's interesting to non-fans as well. The pet episode could be aired as an Animal Planet special.We're all peeping toms, and what could be more fun than to have such relatively intimate sneaks into the private life of a semi-loon as interesting as Kubrick... So open all of those damn boxes and make more documentaries, frcrissakes! I'm sure the Kubrick estate headed by his widow wouldn't mind.

Documentary from Sundance and Channel 4 about Stanley Kubrick's boxes. The boxes contain all of the research for all of his films from 2001 to Eyes Wide Shut. It's the story of a man who was obsessed with the films he made and all of the tiny little details involved in making them. Its a tribute to the depths that Kubrick would go to to make a film. It also shows why in the later years so few films were made as his planned film on the Holocaust was sidelined when Steven Spielberg planned and shot Schindler's List while Kubrick was still wading through the research. We see the Fan letters, the crank letters, reports on books and scripts as possible subjects (including a pass on the Killing Fields), film of Kubrick shooting films, the odd memos, the stationery, and everything else that Kubrick collected when he made (and tried to make) films. It'a an intriguing portrait of a man, or at least a man's obsessions through his detritus. It's more a side bar portrait to the man rather than a full portrait and actually would make a nice companion piece to the short documentary thats on the Eyes Wide Shut DVD The Last Movie: Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut. Worth a look if you've ever wondered about the man and his obsessions which were always oddly reported in the media.

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes (2008) **** (out of 4) I've often wondered what type of genius or madman someone like Kubrick would have to be in order to create the masterpieces that he did and this documentary tries to uncover some of that. Director Ronson was invited to the Kubrick Estate to go through thousands of boxes that Kubrick had saved up throughout the years and what we see are some rather amazing items, which show why it took the director so long to make movies. In his final 19-years Kubrick only made three films and the reasons why are discussed here. If you're a fan of Kubrick then I don't see how it would be possible not to love this documentary even though, sadly, it only runs for just under an hour. Some of the things we see and learn are rather shocking and mysterious. The mysterious figure that Kubrick was is certainly going to be even more mysterious after this film but it does give us a close look at how the genius worked. The most amazing section were notes from fans that the director collected. Apparently he read them all and would mark them as being positive, negative or crank meaning threatening. He would then take the letters and put them together by the movie and then break them down into the cities where they came from. Even more astounding is how much pre-production he would do when making movies. He had his nephew, a photographer, spend a year taking pictures of stuff that would eventually go into Eyes Wide Shut and that includes thousands of photographs for gates, which would end up only being seen for a matter of seconds in the movie. Fans of Full Metal Jacket will also get a kick out of learning that Vivian Kubrick's documentary is still safe and at the estate in the form of 18-hours worth of footage. We get to see a few clips here including one with Kubrick debating when tea breaks should happen. There's a lot of wonderful footage in this documentary and it's great to know that the Estate has turned all of this stuff over to the London University of Arts where anyone can go and look through them. The bad news is that it's apparently true that Kubrick destroyed all the outtakes from his films, which is strange since this documentary shows that he saved everything. There's also some great talk about his Holocaust movie, which he worked on for nearly three years before giving up on it after the Spielberg movie started production.