The Shining

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" -- or, rather, a homicidal boy in Stanley Kubrick's eerie 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel. With wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd) in tow, frustrated writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the ...more

Eliminating most of the supernatural episodes from the original Stephen King novel, Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining is at once a coolly ironic near-parody (with a Jack Nicholson performance that defines "over the top") and a genuinely chilling dissection of how a family breaks down when the father cannot (or does not want to) perform his duties as provider and protector. Making the most of the then-new Steadicam technology for intricate camera movements, Kubrick renders the hotel and ...more