Rating: R
Length: 144 minutes

Widescreen 1.78:1 Color (Anamorphic)

ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1
FRENCH: Dolby Digital 5.1
SPANISH: Dolby Digital 5.1

English, French, Spanish

A man (Nicholson) takes a job as a caretaker for a large remote resort that closes for the winter due to expenses; he plans to spend the time writing a novel. He brings his wife (Duvall) and his young son to join him on this six month adventure of living in a huge hotel isolated from the world by large quantities of snow. Oh, by the way, the son has a gift of being able to "see" things and the resort has a rather violent past.

You have to start with the young actor that played the son, Danny Lloyd. No matter how crazy Jack gets (look at the cover, I don't believe I'm giving anything away), this movie goes nowhere if this kid doesn't pull off the job he did. The visuals in this film are stunning for two reasons; Kubrick making them so with the designs and colors he chose and the excellent job they did remastering the picture. And last, but not least, this is a prime example of how to make a movie scary without the need for gore every 5-10 minutes.

I only have two complaints with this film. First, Nicholson's character never seems to be "normal" even in the beginning. Seeing him go nuts shortly into the film really isn't any surprise and his spending most of the film acting over-the-top loses some bite after awhile. Second, Kubrick decided to alter the story a lot from the novel that Stephen King wrote. Fans of the novel, like myself, will simply have to forget about the book and watch this film with an open mind. For fans of the book, they did come out with a "Shining"e; TV mini series in 1997 that is available on DVD and, unlike this film, Stephen King was directly involved in it's making and it shows (apparently King was not a fan of what Kubrick did to his book).

• Commentary by Steadicam Inventor/Operator Garrett Brown and Historian John Baxter
• Vivian Kubrick's Documentary "The Making of The Shining" with Optional Commentary
• "View from the Overlook: Crafting The Shining" Featurette
• "The Visions of Stanley Kubrick" Featurette
• "Wendy Carlos, Composer" Featurette
• Theatrical Trailer

This film is considered by many to be the best horror movie of all time and who can argue. I'm not sure where it would fall on my list, I'm too lazy to put that much thought into it, but I know it would be very near the top. Fans of this film that own the previous dvd release will want to replace it with this one for no other reason than the video and audio quality (extras wise there's not a lot more on this disk that wasn't on the previous release). And, while you're at it, check out the behind-the-scenes featurette that was shot by Kubrick's daughter Vivian. The actors admit to admiring Kubrick after the film is shot but he definitely comes across on the featurette as a real prick (Duvall stated that he treated her poorly so she could be emotionally where she needed to be to shoot whatever scene they were doing at the time).

Stanley Kubrick   [2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, Spartacus]

David Baxt - Forest Ranger #1

Lia Beldam - Young Woman in Bath

Lisa Burns - Grady Twin Daughter

Tony Burton - Larry Durkin

Scatman Crothers - Dick Hallorann

[One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Shootist]

Barry Dennen - Bill Watson

Shelley Duvall - Wendy Torrance

[Annie Hall, Tale of the Mummy, Time Bandits]

Billie Gibson - Old Woman in Bath

Anne Jackson - Doctor

Danny Lloyd - Danny Torrance

Barry Nelson - Stuart Ullman

Jack Nicholson - Jack Torrance

[A Few Good Men, Batman, Broadcast News, Chinatown, The Departed, Hoffa, Mars Attacks!, Reds, The Witches of Eastwick, Wolf]

Manning Redwood - Forest Ranger #2

[A View To A Kill]

Philip Stone - Delbert Grady

[Flash Gordon, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom]

Joe Turkel - Lloyd the Bartender

[Blade Runner, Paths of Glory, The Sand Pebbles]