Consistently listed as one of the greatest directors of all time, Stanley Kubrick redefined the language of cinema with a series of original movies that spanned four decades and nearly all the genres of contemporary film. His works, often misunderstood upon initial release, just as often gained stature and appreciation as the years wore on. Any reputable list of the greatest films of all time will include several of his films.

Trained as a photographer, Kubrick was a perfectionist, notoriously asking for take after take on a set until he had captured on celluloid what he saw in his mind's eye. Kubrick was also fiercely independent. His autonomy was hard-won and largely of his own making. He had early financial success with Spartacus, the sword and sandal epic under the yoke of star and producer Kirk Douglas, and Lolita, the adaptation of Nabokov's infamous novella. The experiences on the two films made him wary of the movie studios and determined to free himself from their control of his creative output. Luckily, the money that those two films made allowed him to produce all the rest on his own, largely releasing him from the cursed reporting to the motion picture bureaucracy.

Kubrick had a startlingly wide range of interests and, even more amazing, a savant-like, deep comprehension of the most arcane bits knowledge on those disparate topics. His meticulous attention to detail was legendary, his scope so all-encompassing it often led those around him to compare him to a computer.

But no computer could have created the epic, evolutionary vision of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the violent dystopia of A Clockwork Orange, the chilling descent into madness found in The Shining, the wholly original deconstruction of the military mindset of  Full Metal Jacket or the bilious scenes of marital distrust and sexual and emotional fantasy in Eyes Wide Shut.  In the end, time and tide have allowed us to see that Stanley Kubrick was, above all, a most human director.