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The Shining Movie Review in Film Criticism Course Forum

Last updated on March 27th, 2023 by | Category: | 67 Views | Reading Time: 14 minutes
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    • #115856

      The Shining movie review and analysis in Film Criticism Course forum at LELB Society for advanced ESL students to immerse themselves in English every week with a great English film. Join LELB Society’s students to analyze best English films on a weekly basis.

      The Shining movie review

      Stanley Kubrick’s cold and frightening “The Shining” challenges us to decide: Who is the reliable observer? Whose idea of events can we trust? In the opening scene at a job interview, the characters seem reliable enough, although the dialogue has a formality that echoes the small talk on the space station in “2001.” We meet Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a man who plans to live for the winter in solitude and isolation with his wife and son. He will be the caretaker of the snowbound Overlook Hotel. His employer warns that a former caretaker murdered his wife and two daughters, and committed suicide, but Jack reassures him: “You can rest assured, Mr. Ullman, that’s not gonna happen with me. And as far as my wife is concerned, I’m sure she’ll be absolutely fascinated when I tell her about it. She’s a confirmed ghost story and horror film addict.”

      Source: https://www.rogerebert.com/

      The Shining movie trailer

      If you cannot see the embedded video below, click here to watch The Shining movie trailer directly.

      The Shining movie analysis

      Like a lot of Kubrick’s work, especially the films toward the back half of his career, The Shining was greeted first with bafflement and hostility before people started to come around on it. The hostility has faded as the film has gotten more widely recognized as a horror staple; the author Stephen King still famously dislikes what Kubrick did with his book, but the recent adaptation of King’s sequel, Doctor Sleep, leans heavily into the film’s iconography. But the bafflement is baked into the pie – it’s what makes the film so primally terrifying and unsettling to experience, and what teases the brain into trying to solve it.

      Source: https://www.theguardian.com/

    • #115887
      Armaghan Houshmand
      Participant

      For me Shining was a really fascinating movie with a lot of sense of thriller. I also liked the plot and the actings were amazing. But sometimes I got confused by some scenes and I felt I had some unanswered questions at the end. Also, I didn’t get the meaning of the ending.

      • #115891

        The ending of the film meant that Jack was supposed to be dead in the hotel and it was a part of his destiny. That’s why his picture in a black suit alongside the other dead residents of the hotel was hanging from the wall of the Overlook Hotel.

    • #115888

      The Shining movie has borrowed its name from our shining instinct of intuition that was more shining and stronger in Danny compared to his parents. In fact, Danny’s imaginary friend who lived in his mouth was so clairvoyant. In addition, the film centralizes the concept of déjà vu as Jack said he had seen the hotel before. In Danny’s case, it was premonition or prewarning.

      The shining could be classified as both horror and psychological movies. It is a horror movie because at the beginning of the film, we realized that the hotel had been built on a burial ground. On the other side, from a psychological point of view, any person in their situation could develop some mental disorders, like hallucination, schizophrenia, and so forth.

      Furthermore, the English proverb of “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” was reechoed in this film when Jack had written nothing but this phrase on the typewriter.

    • #115986
      Soroosh Houshmand
      Participant

      I give this movie 10 out of 10.
      It was the best scary movie I ever had, the characters and reactions was realy amazing and real.
      Like that part when the mother of Tony hit Joney with knife , the reactions of the two of them was like in real life.
      And also Tony was a really smart . Like that part when Tony scape from he’s dad in that maze , he literally broke he’s dad mind . But I didn’t get those two gosts in the last of the movie .

      • #115991

        I’m glad you liked this movie so much that you ranked it 10 of 10. As you said, Danny was so smart and acted so well in his role. In fact, Danny and the cook were the only people who could see the Shining. Danny’s parents were literally blind to the shining, and therefore, couldn’t see the menace or threat that was just in the corner.

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