Top 3 for March 20, 2014

Room 237 directed by Rodney Ascher

I actually saw this about a month ago, but the recent news brought it back to mind.

The film presents five persons giving their theories about the secret subtextual messages hidden in Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining. As the theories themselves are abjectly ridiculous, what I enjoyed about the film is the way the interview subjects' theories seem to exist in search of a vehicle to convey them. I mean how else would somebody happening upon a movie poster with generic advertising copy that goes something like "the wave of terror that's sweeping the country" have a reaction that goes "well neither this movie, nor the book on which it's based is all that popular, so this is obviously a reference to the slaughter of the Native Americans." The fact that The Shining is a movie by a director with a reputation for meticulousness which happens to be riddled with continuity errors can only mean that he is sending secret messages. (Well, some of the Native American stuff is kind of interesting, but since the setting is a desecrated Indian burying ground in Colorado, not as much of a stretch as the claim that the film is Kubrick's obvious confession to fabricating the Moon landing footage.)