This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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.

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.

When a man who was as smart - not entirely nuts, there's something of a difference when looking at an artist - as Stanley Kubrick made a film, it became like erecting a skyscraper: lots and lots of planning, researching, more researching, writing and re-writing, very long casting sessions, long (definitively Kubrickian long) shoots, editing, and finally, more often than not, perfect film-making. For those who may on a given day say out loud that Stanley Kubrick is the greatest filmmaker post-silent era (which I myself have uttered on occasion), a documentary like Stanley Kubrick's boxes realizes on this man's obsessions and passions and curiosities and singular attention to detail that it also revealed a tragic flaw: in a career that spanned over 40 years, he directed only 13 feature length films, and in the last 30 years of his life directed 4. One of the things that will endlessly interest me is how a man had such a wealth of knowledge about one thing that if it got turned off or something happened with the project it was like literally losing a child. And, oddly enough for such a (compared to, say, Woody Allen) un-prolific man, he never went on "holiday" or even really recognized what it was to take a holiday.This documentary is essential if only for highlighting this and other parts to Kubrick, the actual man as he was as well as the "mythology" that surrounded him for being so reportedly reclusive and eccentric (the opposite was really the case, as a married man with a bunch of kids and cats and dogs who merely enjoyed privacy and creative independence as earned luxuries), with the aid of so many boxes full of "stuff" that it took the director 4 years to look through it all. As meticulous as he was in his everyday life, so was he in storing everything. We see the stills of various hats tried on for Clockwork Orange. We see the legal paperwork Kubrick fired out over a mid-70s sci-fi show that ripped off 2001. We see a handful of the hundreds of hours of audition footage of the grunts for Full Metal Jacket. Hell, we even get to see one or two "looney" videos from pranksters-cum-stalkers who sent Kubrick videos parodying his films.We also get some touching and funny anecdotes from his family (wife and kids) and those closest to him like his assistants (Leon Vitali has some particularly good ones), all unearthing stories to go along with what's pulled out. Some of it, indeed, comes close to unbelievable. But at the same time it can range from insightful without having anything to do with movies (i.e. long transcripts about how to deal with feline behavior) and the mountains of research dedicated to Napoleon and Louis Begley's Wartime Lies. The real hardcore Kubrick fans might not find a whole lot to look at- not sure who they are as I'm possibly one and didn't bicker much- but everyone else, even casual fans, would do very well to seek this out (it's finally aired in the US on Sundance channel). At the least, we get some stuff for film-buffs to geek out on like super-duper rare behind the scenes footage with FMJ.

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.