Stanley Kubrick: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best

1. Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is widely considered - rightly - to be one of the funniest films ever made. It revolves around a mad General who orders a nuclear strike on Soviet Russia and the ensuing events. Formerly my favourite thing about Dr. Strangelove and what first attracted me to watching it wasn't Kubrick's involvement or the comedy but instead it was the name of one of the actors, Slim Pickens. I thought, there's an actor called Slim Pickens in this film? I'll give it a go. The film features a wide array of eclectic performances by Kubrick-favourite Peter Sellers who shows himself as a man of wide talent in this film. He stars alongside the aforementioned Slim Pickens, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden and a young and thin James Earl Jones. Not only does Sellers play different characters but he also plays different accents, demonstrating again his glorious skill; accents include Tory-English, American and an insane German. Dr. Strangelove has a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has received "Great Movies" status from Roger Ebert, who also called it "the best political satire of the century." The film ends with Vera Lyn's "We'll Meet Again", a testament to Kubrick's use of music in his films to create certain moods towards certain scenes. Another prime example of this is the rape and assault scene in A Clockwork Orange when Malcolm McDowell's character Alex DeLarge sings "Singin' In the Rain". Dr. Strangelove, to me, is one of the greatest films for many reasons but primarily because it makes the viewer feel a little lighter about topics which at the time were very important and highly feared.