Stanley Kubrick is certainly the most acclaimed film director of the last forty years. Although many of his movies have been a success at the box office he has never had a major blockbuster on the order of Star Wars or Titanic ( this may be interpeted as a sign of refinement ).
      Many of his films have frankly attacked in the most explicit manner very controversial subjects. His first major success Paths of Glory (1957) is a World War I tale in which the generals and other high officers casually sacrifice the lives of their men to cover up their errors and enhance their reputations. 1963's Lolita studied the taboo subject of a socially respectable middle-aged university professor infatuated with a teen age beauty. A Clockwork Orange (1971) is probably the best known of his films. This film follows the exploits of a gang of juvenile delinquents and explicitly portrays ( some claim glorifies) their nightly quest for gratuitous violence. This movie has been censured by authorities everywhere ( probably with good reason ) for inciting violence among the adolescent population. Full Metal Jacket (1987) , asserted by some to be the best war movie ever made, is an unflattering but brutally honest attempt to portray the trail of a Vietnam era marine from Parris Island to the Tet Offensive.
      The film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), while too esoteric to be appreciated by the general public, is not only Kubrick's most critically acclaimed film, but it may be the most critically acclaimed film of all time. Many cinema experts believe ( again with good reason ) this movie to be a watershed event in the history of cinema. The can be no doubt that many movies since, especially of the science fiction genre, have emulated the model set by Kubrick's scrupulously detached and impartial tale of an earth's government's attempt to investigate a presumably extraterrestial obelisk found on the moon. The film then enigmatically shifts to a space flight which features the famed HAL computer (thirty years later we STILL don't know if the letters HAL were intended to denote IBM; H is followed by I in the alphabet, A is followed by B, L is followed by M ).