Barry Lyndon 1975

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: All of Stanley Kubrick's features look better now than when they were first released, but Barry Lyndon, which fared poorly at the box office in 1975, remains his most underrated. It may also be his greatest. Read more

John Hofsess, New York Times: Maybe the only abstract maxim that one can derive from Kubrick's new film is: 'Openness is everything.' Read more

Vincent Canby, New York Times: Another fascinating challenge from one of our most remarkable, independent-minded directors. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Barry Lyndon isn't a great success, and it's not a great entertainment, but it's a great example of directorial vision: Kubrick saying he's going to make this material function as an illustration of the way he sees the world. Read more

Wally Hammond, Time Out: One of cinema's most heartfelt and sustained (it runs over three hours), if cynical, visions of an individual's powerlessness. Read more

Variety: Ryan O'Neal's excellent performance captures the shallow opportunism endemic to the title character who is brought down as much by his own flaws as by the mores of the ordered social structure of 18th-century England. Read more

Jim Ridley, Village Voice: Stanley Kubrick's magisterial Thackeray adaptation now stands as one of his greatest and most savagely ironic films, not to mention one of the few period pieces on celluloid so transporting that it seems to predate the invention of cameras. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: The loveliest of Stanley Kubrick films. Indeed, Barry Lyndon is the one Kubrick movie that could even invite that adjective (or epithet). Read more