Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962). Vladimir Nabokov’s novel was less than ten years old when Stanley Kubrick took a swing at it, so he was working with a best-selling sensation instead of a revered part of the canon. That–combined with the significant detail that he was Stanley Kubrick and he plainly did want he wanted–gives the director great latitude in his adaptation. Nabokov himself is the credited screenwriter, but much of that material was jettisoned by Kubrick on the way to making his own distinct, darkly comic work. James Mason is marvelous as Professor Humbert Humbert, the man who becomes smitten … Continue reading Altman, Clements and Musker, Gordon (and others), Kubrick, Weir