A Clockwork Orange
1971

Okay, so you've all seen it now, and it's not really all that much to get worked up about is it? Wrong! Now that everyone can see the film for what it is, and not what it's been hyped up to be, I think it stands head and shoulders above anything else the overrated Kubrick achieved during his beardy life.
The rape scene is over the top and unnecessary, I'll grant you, but fast-forward through that and the rest of the film still makes sense, and is entertaining (if a bit long).
Alex himself is a nightmare. He's like every out of control teenage hoodlum you've ever seen, rolled into one and zipped into a white boiler suit. And until he arrives back home, you have no idea of exactly how young he actually is. That's the point where the horror hits home, when following a rape and vicious attack, he walks into his mum and dad's house and becomes Kevin The Teenager.
Kubrick was right - he did create a monster. And if people were laughing at it, he may even have been right to pull it. But perhaps the most bizarre thing about the whole film is not the 70s ideas of what the future would look like, the "Confessions"-style speeded-up sex scene with the two girls, or the hideous eye torture, but the way you actually start feeling sorry for Alex. He's a little bastard, a piece of scum with no remorse, yet when they take away his nasty side and start treating him as badly as he's treated everyone else, Kubrick actually wants you to feel sorry for him. Now that's sick.

Clockwork Orange, A (1971)
Director: Stanley Kubrick Writer(s): Anthony Burgess (novel) Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Malcolm McDowell - Alexander 'Alex' DeLarge, Patrick Magee - Frank Alexander, Michael Bates - Chief Guard Barnes, Warren Clarke - Dim/Officer Corby, John Clive - Stage Actor, Adrienne Corri - Mrs. Alexander, Carl Duering - Dr. Brodsky, Paul Farrell - Tramp, Clive Francis - Joe the Lodger, Michael Gover - Prison Governor, Miriam Karlin - Cat Lady, James Marcus - Georgie, Aubrey Morris - P.R. Deltoid, Godfrey Quigley - Prison Chaplain, Sheila Raynor - Mrs. DeLarge (Em)

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