Kubrick: An Odyssey by Robert P. Kolker

Kubrick: An Odyssey Reviews

• 
  Chris Rhine

  The book serves as a decent biography of Kubrick but doesn’t detail his life in the one- to two-thousand page range that it would require. Each chapter drags from one film to another at a predictable pace. The basic biographical information with greater precision and tone can be found elsewhere—most being the sources for this. The book reads more like an oral history by quoting others at exhaustive length to do the characterization heavy-lifting. Speaking of which, the authors, most likely intentionally, prefer to keep Kubrick at arm’s length rather than performing the hard work of finding/expressing a more internalized character. It’s also a good example of how two authors cancel out each other’s unique style/specialization rather than unifying to craft a compelling singular vision of a character perpetually residing in film myth. Abrams especially randomly throws in way too many references to Kubrick’s jewishness, which is pedantic and something Kubrick almost never overtly expressed. Would have been much more interesting if they were to comment on Kubrick’s relationship with what it means being American, which finds perpetual renewal in his films and life.
• 
  Marinna

  I always know I have found a five star book when I’m sad it’s over. I did not want this book to end! I found myself dragging my feet for the last 10 hours to savor every bit! I don’t think I can say that about any other book. Kubrick: An Odyssey is a powerhouse of a book. It provides a very detailed history of Stanley Kubrick - the man, the myth, the legend. This book is 100% worth the 24+ hours and it is fantastically narrated by Perry Daniels.
  
  I would classify Kolker and Abrams’ work as a “living book” because of the attention to detail and the ability it provides readers to vividly imagine Kubrick’s life.
  
  Growing up I was exposed to Kubrick’s work early thanks to a few of my eccentric middle school teachers (we watched Spartacus in 6th grade and 2001: A Space Odyssey in 7th) as well as my love of horror. The Shining continues to stand as my favorite horror movie. I was enthralled by the documentary Room 237 and definitely made assumptions about Kubrick based off of it. He seemed very mysterious and intentional. Now I know he was!
  
  In Kubrick: An Odyssey we learn about Kubrick’s start with photography and later his tendency towards privacy due to critical opinions about 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was interesting to learn how the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. gave Kubrick the time to make edits in this film after initial criticism. The times that Kubrick grew up in, being Jewish and avoiding the Vietnam draft all played heavily in his influence.
  
  I loved learning about Kubrick’s obsession with psychoanalytic topics and Napoleon and how the conflict of the 70s set the right environment for A Clockwork Orange to be received. I would not have imagined that Kubrick faced threats and accusations of fascism after making A Clockwork Orange, but he did!
  
  I loved learning so much about one of the most influential directors of all time. I especially loved how much Kubrick focused on his family and animals. I laughed out loud imagining the poor people trying to archive his belongings that were covered in cat urine. I suppose that was Stanley. I am grateful to have a better picture of what he was like outside of the classic assumption that he drove Shelley Duvall mad.
  
  Kolker and Abrams’ bring this book to life, allowing you a very unique view into the life of Stanley Kubrick.
  
  Thank you so much to Tantor Audio, RB Media, and NetGalley for and ALC of this audiobook.
• 
  Joe Handley

  Kubrick: An Odyssey is as you’d expect, information loaded and painstakingly researched, but I think you’ll still be surprised by how packed this book is with information relating to Stanley Kubrick’s life and work. It’s well-documented, and in parts mythologised, how detailed and focused the director could be on set, so maybe a lot of that info will not shock or surprise, but to have the events chronicled and timelined in this full work is a significant thing. The information in this book is not just well-researched in a “What happened on this set?” or a “How did this person fall out with Stanley?” kind of way, it’s also detailed to a level that clearly shows when these events took place, who was there, how did things pan out the way they did, opinions and comments from those surrounding the events thrown in for good measure, and together they paint what clearly comes across as an accurate picture of what it had been like to work and live with the distinguished director.
   
  Myth surrounds Stanley Kubrick - widely regarded as a recluse for the final 10-or-so years of his life – and the book shows that outside of his work he was relatively normal with his family. He loved his pets, he was a family man at home, and quite plainly he just didn’t enjoy being in the limelight. He was averse to stepping in front of the camera, ironically, whether that be for an interview to promote his next film release, or just a lowly paparazzi shot lingering on the outskirts of his stately home. It’s clear that he wasn’t weirdly hiding himself away from the public in a fashion that the press aimed to drum up at the time. The crux of the matter, however, is that rarely would the work be separated enough for this side to come out. You’re not going to hear much about purely personal matters here. They flicker in the background of certain sections of the biography, but they’re never prominent enough to override the work that Stanley was doing. He was enfolded in his work and creative endeavours at every waking moment. Even during his well-documented hiatuses, he would be circling and looping on ideas that he’d carried since adolescence, in the hopes of just cracking the code on how to put his thoughts and ambitions to the screen. Reading the book, it’s impossible to not be in awe of how much effort and energy he gave to his art.
   
  Particularly enjoyable reading came in the chapters that focused on the sets of his movies. Myth may surround the man, but his sets were always fiery. Rushing to meet deadlines, overrunning said deadlines, forcing a 123rd take, cutting sleep to a single hour per day, bringing five writers onto a script and not allowing any of them to have contact, nor even be aware of the others’ involvement, some of the tales that comes out of this book match, and even at times surpass, the many notorious stories that echo around the film world today.
   
  For the most part, the book does well to refrain from any personal opinion, purely sticking to facts and first-hand accounts given by those around Kubrick. It’s only towards the end of the book, minus a littering of authorial voice in select chapters, that Kolker and Abrams add their own thoughts and feelings to what’s been documented. Here, the author/s allude to the reason for Kubrick’s behaviour, his ferocious personality, his commitment to completing things in a specific way, as being driven by a need “to make genuine works of honest art”. This does encapsulate Kubrick and his way of working in its totality but feels quick and easy to point out. I don’t believe anyone thinking clearly would not come to that ultimate and overarching opinion themselves, without having to read the book. What is rarely touched on, and is something that I felt could’ve been explored more, is Kubrick’s shyness and his personal aversion to public appearances. It is mentioned frequently in the book, but rarely is it explored beyond brief mentions and kooky anecdotes. This character trait seems to come from a deeply held insecurity, and while I don’t expect, nor want, a biography to mutate into pages upon pages of psychoanalysis, I feel said insecurity was a driving factor in why he treated certain individuals the way he did on set. He was so critical of himself, so perfectionist in nature, that the intense fault-finding side of Kubrick seeps out into his relationships on set. The actors seem to be the main hurdle to him reaching his artistic goals, and he can lash out and show a cutting nature when he feels that the actor isn’t performing to a level that matches his ideas.
  
• 
  Steve Gross

  Despite the authors' spin, Stanley Kubrick comes across as cheap, paranoid, unfair and selfish. He may indeed be genius, but i did not enjoy spending 600 pages with him.
  The basic recipe is Kubrick gets a project, he reads everything, he photographs everything, he collects items, he engages writers and then stiffs them, works like a dog and obsesses over the final result. Then he thinks about Traumnovelle. Rinse and repeat.
  The writing is amateriush and repetitive. I'm also baffled as to why they used British spellings throughout in an American book, even if one of the authors comes from Wales.
• 
  David Snower

  Kubrick is one of the most enigmatic artists of the 20th century. It’s very difficult to understand what he was trying to say with his movies. If you were to watch any scene at random from one of his movies it would take about 2 seconds to know it’s a Kubrick film, but it’s difficult to say exactly how you know.
  
  There are some common threads in Kubrick’s work: the moral ambiguity, the complex psychologies, the way he makes you sympathize with or see the world from the perspective of deeply unsavory characters, the robotic coldness that defines the universe, the logical mixed with the absurd. The atmosphere in his films is best described in the book as a mixture between “a chess game and a seance.” Also revealing is that Kubrick wanted his movies to work mostly on a subconscious register ‘so they could be experience in the same way by a college professor and a truck driver.’
  
  This book is incredibly well-researched, and gives a great play-by-play of how his films developed. It also gives a great overview of how a poor student who barely graduated high-school became one of the world’s leading filmmakers. Most impressive is that this book contains a great deal of what Kubrick was reading and researching during the development of his films. And Kubrick read A LOT. I came out of reading this book with a whole new reading list based on the massive number of stories Kubrick was inspired by.
  
  This book also does a great job of highlighting Kubrick’s obsessive and meticulous drive to reach his artistic goals. The director often went through tens of thousands of photographs to choose set locations (the Kubrick archives have 302 boxes of photos and floor plans used as inspiration for Eyes Wide Shut sets alone), built tons of scale models of sets to test different lighting arrangements, would force his actors to spend months on a single scene, and came up with ingenious solutions to a vast array of technical problems.
  
  This book does a great job on the what and the how of Stanley Kubrick, but not a great job on the WHY. I came away knowing little more about what vision drove him to create such great art. It isn’t any more clear exactly what he was trying to say, why he carries such a Rabbinical air of old secrets around him, or why all his films seem to have a coldness which masks an inner depth or turmoil. 600 well-researched pages later the man remains a complete mystery.
• 
  Alex Robinson

  An interesting contrast to the Jim Henson biography I just finished. Ultimately for all the respect Kubrick gets (and deserves) this book illustrated how obsessive Kubrick would be to get things exactly right (for instance, for Eyes Wide Shut he sent out teams of photographers to take photos of NYC and came back with 302 boxes worth of photos) and part of you thinks he could probably made another six or seven great films if he wasn’t so fixated on getting one Perfect one.
• 
  Robert

  I already have a small collection of books on Kubrick. I was hoping this bio would offer something a little different and avoid the myth building that seems so prevelant. Frankly, seeing that the bio was co-written I was a bit skeptical of the books potential, as I am sure Mr. Kurbick would have been. I was pleasantly surprised. This bio is well written and well constructed. Much of the book naturally flows in the path of his film projects. The focus is not so much a critique of his films but rather the process and his internal challenges he faced completing his art. This is a nice addition to the Kubrick literature.
• 
  Mark Matheson

  Kubrick: An Odyssey tackles one of film’s most notable directors (a large task, given the intimidating curation of his “genius” reputation). Kolker and Abrams do outstanding work, presenting a definitive history of his filmmaking that—thanks to the variety of his filmography—never loses itself among the massive scope. Though the focus on Kubrick the human is less finite than that of Kubrick the artist, Kolker and Abrams allow themselves to make contextual inferences (all in good faith) that give a rare glimpse at his humanity. This is a must-read for cinephiles.
• 
  Bram Macgregor

  Not nearly as in depth as I thought it was gonna be. That being said, what’s presented here is a very good book.
  
  This isn’t necessarily as much biography as it is analysis of why he made the movies he made and what they mean. I feel like people watch Kubrick’s films and want a hard explanation of what it all means. I like the way he doesn’t explain anything and makes you interpret it however you do.
  
  If you love Stanley Kubrick’s films as much as I do then I’d strongly recommend this book (it’s the only book I’ve been able to find that’s not a dissertation on 2001 😂) but if you don’t like them then may I ask?, why are you reading this review?
  
  4/5
• 
  Kris Michaud

  I read John Baxter’s excellent biography in the 90s, but this one is superior. For one thing, it has the benefit of hindsight, having appeared 25 years after Stanley’s passing. “Odyssey” is able to encompass his entire filmography (including Eyes Wide Shut and even A.I.), his life, death, and continuing legacy. Certain insights (similarities between the Epstein conspiracy and Eyes Wide Shut, for example) are only accessible now, and this book is all the better for it.
  
  Meticulously researched, this book gives us access to the master’s private thoughts, conversations, home life and work habits. Stanley was a world-class autodidact, and the book provides aspiring autodidacts with a long syllabus of Stanley’s influences and respected peers — plenty of novelists, film directors, painters, photographers, nonfiction writers and historians to keep you busy for the rest of your life, if that’s your thing.
  
  I don’t see this one being outdone for another fifty years, at least. A must for every serious Kubrick scholar!
• 
  Eric Gilliland

  
  Now almost a quarter into the 21st Century, the films of Stanley Kubrick continue to captivate and provoke. The latest biography of Kubrick, written by two film scholars who've written extensively on Kubrick in previous works, Robert F. Kolker and Nathan Abrams, is both comprehensive and engaging. With access to Kubrick's archives, the authors compiled a detailed narrative of their subject, objective in both approach and tone.
  
  The vast scope of the biography covers the many lives Kubrick led. He took to photography and was hired by Look magazine when still a teenager, gaining a reputation for his artful photos of scenes and people from all walks of life. While he would eventually leave the city and become an expat in England, he often longed to return. Feeling limited by the standards of the magazine, he set off to become a filmmaker, starting out with short documentaries and eventually a low budget war film Fear and Desire.
  
  He spent the 1950s as a fledgling filmmaker, paying the bills by playing chess and poker in between projects. His low budget film noir Killer's Kiss was mostly ignored but showed promise. Then came The Killing, a more sophisticated noir made for a studio. His follow up, Paths of Glory, was an early masterpiece. Now based in Hollywood, he continued developing scripts and hustling around the studios. At the request of Kirk Douglas, Kubrick was hired to direct the Roman epic Spartacus. A droll adaptation of Nabokov's Lolita followed, then the quotable Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove.
  
  By the mid-1960s, Kubrick's star was on the rise. The amount of research and preparation he put into his films was already becoming the stuff of legend. For Dr. Strangelove, he read hundreds of books on nuclear strategy and geopolitics, consulting with experts to make sure every detail was right. Initially conceived as a thriller, with writer Terry Southern the script was refashioned as a dark comedy.
  
  A dedication to details and ambitious ideas served him well for 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that would take on cosmic questions on the origins and fate of humanity. Working closely with Sci-Fi author Arthur C. Clarke to develop the script, Kubrick assembled the technicians whose job was to make space travel look realistic. After four years working on the project Kubrick was aghast when audiences initially rejected it, so he cut 18 minutes after it was released. Soon enough 2001 became a cultural phenomenon, it captured the zeitgeist of the late 1960s like few other films.
  
  The success of 2001 earned Kubrick a three-picture deal with Warner Brothers and complete creative control over his films. He settled permanently in England at an estate outside of London, building his own kingdom, leaving only on special occasions. He then began work on Napoleon, which he planned to film in Yugoslavia with the full cooperation of its army! But the funding fell through at the last minute. Instead, he adapted the Alex Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange, still controversial over 50 years later. He pulled the film from distribution in the United Kingdom after a string of copycat crimes were allegedly inspired by the movie.
  
  With Napoleon still on the backburner, Kubrick spent the next few years on Barry Lyndon, based on the William Thackeray novel set in 18th Century Europe. While filming in Ireland, threats from the IRA forced the production to flee. The book describes the extended shooting schedule as sometimes chaotic with egos running rampant. Kubrick's unrelenting perfectionism took a toll on everyone. A three-hour costume drama was not what audiences wanted in 1975, but critics were knocked out by its historical accuracy and Kubrick's further exploration of humanity's self-destructive tendencies.
  
  In a pivot towards more popular entertainment, Kubrick set out to make the scariest movie ever made. Kubrick was fascinated with horror movies of the '70s, repeatedly screening Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining fascinated him on many levels, drawing upon many recurring themes in his oeuvre. Despite its cool reception by critics and horror fans in 1980, The Shining transcended genre. Stanley's daughter Vivian filmed him at work on the set, notoriously browbeating Shelley Duvall, setting up shots and joking with the crew.
  
  Kubrick would make two more films, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, but many more projects were in various stages of development through the 1980s and 1990s. The Second World War always interested him, and he considered making a film about the airdrops preceding D-Day. The Holocaust was another subject he obsessed over. He was prepared to adapt the Louis Begely novel Wartime Lies in the early 1990s. With casting and location scouting in Europe nearly complete he canceled at the last minute. Steven Spielberg's own holocaust film Schindler's List had come out and Kubrick felt he could not make a better film on the subject, especially since his script was more cynical. He also feared for his own sanity, being away from home for a year and making by far his most depressing film was too daunting.
  
  His daily life during the 1980s and 1990s was consumed by his projects. Despite his reputation as a recluse, Kubrick was constantly communicating with other directors and always entertaining guests. He indulged his fascination with technical gadgets, poured through books, screened movies, compulsively watched CNN, and spent hours on the telephone. He also developed a passion for cooking for family and staff, he would often be seen doing the laundry. An animal lover as well, he devoted hours to his dogs and cats. With such a vibrant home life, he hated being away for just a few hours. He ran the estate like a benevolent emperor, although he could also be quite the taskmaster.
  
  His domestic life was mostly harmonious. His wife Christina, an artist in her own right, and relationship with his daughters were warm. A falling out with his daughter Vivian, who showed early promise as a filmmaker and composer, added a tragic dimension to his last years. She cut her family off after falling into Scientology, in recent years she's made social media posts endorsing Qanon conspiracy theories.
  
  A friendship with Steven Spielberg also shaped the later years, even collaborating with him on A.I. Kubrick fell in and out with several writers in his Sci-Fi tale he called Pinocchio, a fairy tale/dystopia about a robot boy destined to become a messianic figure. Eventually, he passed it on to Spielberg, believing it was more to his sensibility. One gets the sense he was both in awe and a little envious of Spielberg's gift for connecting with audiences - and for cranking out so many movies.
  
  Kubrick would pass away during post-production on Eyes Wide Shut, another story he'd been working on since the 1960s. The dreamlike tale about marriage and infidelity, among other things, was perhaps his most personal. Shooting took over a year and many noticed Kubrick was aging. A lack of sleep and unhealthy dieting contributed to his decline. Ominous rumors also swirled around the production about marital tensions between the two stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman to salacious details of orgy scenes. Once released the film was hardly the erotic thriller everyone expected, but a Kubrickian odyssey into the depths of the human soul. Predictably, the film's reputation has skyrocketed since 1999.
  
  Kubrick got lost in labyrinths of his own making in the later years, always agonizing over how and when to proceed. His attention to detail and craft left behind movies that will always be watched and debated. The book did a fantastic job of bringing the reader close to the subject. Many who worked with him spoke of the experience as life-changing, some walked away ambivalent. There's no doubt his outer world reflected the inner world, and it's in his movies we continue to find a rich landscape.
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Raistlin Skelley

  Overall, I really enjoyed this book but there were two points that bothered me or I disagreed with.
  
  First and most importantly, the writing style of the book shifted significantly during the chapter about The Shining. In once sentence, the voice of the author began talking to the reader directly using phrases such as "as we talked about before" rather than "as previously stated in the text" or "as mentioned earlier". It may not sound like much, but it was a strange and jarring shift.
  
  Furthermore, it was profoundly obvious that the writers have absolutely no love for horror or horror films at all. Which in and of itself isn't necessarily bad. However, the background they provided on The Shining and the landscape of horror leading up to its release made things abundantly clear to the reader that they wouldn't even pretend to be democratic about it. They hate horror, thank you very much. Even going so far as to refer to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as "torture porn" which, the obvious literal backhand aside, is equivalent to calling Out of the Past "neo-noir". It's patently wrong. The genre didn't even exist when The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was released, not to mention it doesn't even fit into the genre.
  
  Lastly, there is a narrative that runs through the entire book concerning Kubrick's Jewish heritage, that basically states that every artistic choice Kubrick made was somehow fueled or influenced by the fact that he was Jewish. I found this odd on the authors' part. To draw another parallel, it would be equivalent to saying the reason Martin Scorsese made Taxi Driver is because he is Italian, the reason Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore was set and filmed in Arizona is because he is Italian and the reason Shutter Island had the ending it did and dealt the with characters and subject matter it did is due to his Italian heritage. It seemed a stretch. I have no doubt that Kubrick's heritage played into his art and some of his artistic decisions, but to imply that his entire career was a shadowy game of Semitic subterfuge seemed more of an agenda on the part of the authors than the reality of Kubrick's life and career.
  
  All in all, I did enjoy the book and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about the life of Stanley Kubrick. It's something I will carry with me for a long time.
• 
  Michael Heyn

  The thing about Kubrick is that no two people share the same opinion of him or his films. Perhaps not even Kolker and Abrams, the two authors. Further, perhaps not even the individuals who knew and worked with Kubrick could land on a singular opinion, as they often wrestled with the contradictions that defined him as a person. Upon the grounds of this difficult position, I think Kubrick: An Oydssey is a great book.
  It is composed in a coherent chronological order (although the overlapping dates between chapters often causes mild confusion) and depicts a fleshed-out portrait of the man and his working style in a relatively compact form; concluding at 599 pages, it could easily have gone into the thousands and it sustained my interest throughout. Segmented into chapters defined by two-three years at a time, the biography incrementally traces Kubrick from his origins in the Bronx to his peaceful death in Childwickbury; that is, from his life as an unmotivated teen, to his adolescent moviegoing and photography, through his directorial beginnings and struggles, and eventually to his later legendary status and fully-blossomed career. While it’s incredible to follow the decisions and approaches he took as a director pre-Lolita, with all of the struggles and limitations he endured, I found the second half of the book, from Dr. Strangelove and on, to be the most fruitful. The trust he was given by the studio figures after his initial successes, in addition to his own confidence as an artist, contributed to his highly personal and unique approach to filmmaking that can never be replicated.
  Reading other reviews, it seems many find this thorough account of Kubrick’s life to be too painstakingly detailed - one reviewer even notes that there is “an awful lot here about Kubrick's household arrangements that I didn't need to know.” I find that the detail and quality of Kolker and Abram’s research, however, is one of the book’s greatest strengths. Kubrick’s work, after all, was defined by his own meticulous, abundant detail, and it is appropriate that his biographers approach his own narrative arc similarly.
• 
  Michael Samerdyke

  Probably four-and-a-half stars. There was an awful lot here about Kubrick's household arrangements that I didn't need to know.
  
  A very interesting book. Kubrick remains an enigma after reading this book, but somehow a bit more understood. He was obsessed with the story that became "Eyes Wide Shut" from the Fifties, and he wrestled with "A. I." for decades and insisted on the Pinocchio/Blue Fairy theme for almost the whole time.
  
  Is it me, or do "A. I." and "Wartime Lies/Aryan Papers" sound parallel, both stories about a boy on the run in a hostile world?
  
  Kubrick's wife sounds enormously important to him, and the reader is happy that Kubrick had someone like her in his life.
  
  What if Kubrick had made "Napoleon" after "2001" and it had flopped?
  
  I kept comparing Kubrick to Orson Welles. Welles makes his grand masterpiece first and then everything afterwards is seen as a failure. Kubrick gradually builds to his "masterpiece" ("2001," a film I don't really like) and then becomes a prisoner of its success/reputation. Neither is an inviting fate.
  
  Essential reading for the Kubrick fan.
• 
  Steve Williams

  Kubrick, An Odyssey, co-written by film historians Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams, is a compelling deep dive into the life and, mainly, work of the brilliant film maker Stanley Kubrick. If you love movies, as I do, you probably are well aware of Mr. Kubrick's oeuvre which includes such masterworks as 2001: A Space Odyssey; Dr Strangelove; The Shining; and Barry Lyndon. A fascinating man who was often mislabeled a recluse, Kubrick was, in fact, an obsessive, perfectionistic, genius workaholic who couldn't understand why others needed vacations or even regular sleep schedules. We get plenty of background and detail on his early life, growing up in the Bronx and his early years as a photographer for Look magazine, and on every picture he made in his 47-year feature film career (he only made 13 full length films), with invaluable insights from some of the actors and technicians he worked with, as well as from his wife of 40 years and friends like Steven Spielberg. If you love Kubrick films, or you love movies, or you relish biographies of fascinating, creative artists, read the book. You'll be happy you did.
• 
  James

  A serviceable biography of one of cinema's greatest geniuses and enigmas. It details his filmmaking and family life, his intense working relationships (especially with some long-suffering writers), touches on his beliefs, paranoias, obsessions, and interests. The financial and legal sides of his practice as a producer (some might say malpractice) are explored. There are some fairly good insights into the films, and good explorations of the unmade projects. I am a great Kubrick admirer, and I found the book readable and interesting. But it falls short of its subject in a profound way - it is written in a flat, journeyman style which feels unbefitting of its subject. Kubrick, his films, and his genius stand close to mystery, and should be explored as such. Not to elevate him into a saint, which he clearly was not, but to acknowledge that this was a quite extraordinary human being who elevated the possibilities of his art form. This book is the drudging, journalistic epitome of its form - Kubrick needs a Roger Lewis to do for Kubrick's life what he did for his art.
• 
  James

  Perhaps no fault of the authors but there seem to be gaps in this biography. Chronologically written, the gaps in the biography have to do with motivations and the intimate details of projects. Insights usually gleaned from private correspondence that in another era were conducted through letters. Whereas in Stanley’s case much of these were exchanged during hours long phone calls with other directors. This is a MAJOR nitpick (again in no way possible to uncover unrecorded conversations) in an otherwise comprehensive biography of Kubrick. I could have read an additional 200 pages of this terrific book.
  
  One of the most interesting aspects of this book are the discussions of all the projects he explored but that never came to completion. For example, Kubrick paired with Brando, The Beatles and John le Carré.
• 
  Josh

  Kubrick: An Odyssey is an exhaustive behind the scenes account of Kubrick's legacy, and it's endlessly fascinating in that regard. It is not, however, much of a biography, leaving the man just as much an enigma as ever. At the other end of the spectrum, the book doesn't offer much other than fleeting glimpses of actual film criticism, mostly reporting on various interpretations by others. It is then, in the end, little more than a film history, though a fascinating one, full of trivia and minute detail, but offering very little actual insight into either the man or the films. That said, it was remarkably readable and for all of teh book's bulk, moved very quickly,
• 
  Miguel

  Such a solid and thoroughly enjoyable biography. A deep portrait of one of the great auteurs of cinema bringing him down to earth with a bevy of interesting overarching themes and also entertaining ephemera. Was talking about this with a friend who had recently seen ‘Filmworker’ about Leon Vitali and my friend said that Kubrick would only communicate with Vitali through notes. Kolker’s biography breaks down a lot of the mystery and nonsense that built up around his personality and quirks and in the end he simply comes across as a whip smart and film obsessed kid from the Bronx. Simply wish it were longer.
• 
  Matt Vaughan

  If any filmmaker deserves a big ol’ brick of a book like this, it’s Stanley Kubrick. His life and genius is laid out well here, though his flaws and the way he hurt people is also fully on display here. The chapters, particularly later ones, roughly line up with the projects he worked on, including some of the films he didn’t get a chance to make. This is the portrait of a singular artist, an unrepeatable man who, though full of flaws, brought incredible works to the public.
  
  I think I’ll go watch A.I. again now.
  
  (Probably closer to a 4.5/5.)