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Kubrick's problem doesn't have enough respect for other people's material. Yes, according to George Steiner's linguistics text After Babel, enhancement can be an important part of translation, but Kubrick prioritizes enhancement OVER translation. His adaptations don't take the original into consideration enough. His Shining camps up the story of a child in jeopardy to the point at which it loses a lot of the frightening aspects. Doctor Strangelove is incredible. A Clockwork Orange is a noble effort, but one that doesn't give the viewer an opportunity to explore the moral questions native to its setting, instead choosing to give a pretty straight answer to them. It's visually stunning, it's well acted, but it's easy. The answers are too pat. He asks "is it bad to take personal freedom from anyone, regardless of how bestial they might behave?" and then answers it almost without debate. The message of mankind losing its humanity from Burgess' novel is conveyed well, but there's not a dialogue. Movies should make people think instead of telling them head on what to think. Pretty ironic for a movie like A Clockwork Orange.
As for Gump, it's a maudlin sack of crap that's an insulted to every learning disabled person in America. The idea that a disabled person gains glory by stumbling through life on a blissfully ignorant odyssey through contemporary history is not a humanitarian one, but rather just as backward as thinking SPED kids should be smacked until they concentrate. As a person with a major learning disability, I was told by a teacher that Forrest Gump would be an inspiration, instead I was disgusted. The next time I came to school, I asked the SPED teacher "is THAT what you think my options look like?" If any, the movie should be seen as a barometer for American hypocrisy.
Scream is also terrible. You want a self-informed parody of horror cinema, see Young Frankenstein for a comedy, or Opera for a REAL self-reflective slasher film. People forget that Opera means work, so Argento uses the movie to examine it. The killer's comment "I can take you anytime I want" is far more eloquent than any of the downright scatological metafiction in Scream. Just thought I'd boost a slightly underrated entry on the top 100 lists as I cut into some overrated movies.
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