It’s always Stanley Kubrick season around these parts, but fall 2026 abounds especially with renewed obsession over the master behind “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Paths of Glory,” “The Shining,” and more.
First up, Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz has launched the latest season of his celebrated podcast, “The Plot Thickens,” with an 11-episode run focused on Kubrick. Then, in a few weeks’ time, a Criterion Collection box set featuring all 13 of Kubrick’s films, going back to “The Killing” and ending with “Eyes Wide Shut” restored, will pop on shelves beginning October 20. (IndieWire did a whole week of stories surrounding “Eyes Wide Shut” and its 4K Criterion debut last year.)
IndieWire’s “Screen Talk” podcast hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio wanted to join in on the fun this week. And so, Mankiewicz joins the episode for a special edition where all three podcasters rank their top five Kubrick movies — and the results range wildly, with Mankiewicz hewing toward Kubrick’s black-and-white early classics, Anne and Ryan landing on only the same #1 movie, and Ryan revealing his cards with what he calls the “basic millennial choices.” The color movies, in other words, where he had final cut. (His gayed-up swords-and-sandal epic “Spartacus,” after all, was a job for studio hire.)
Listen to the episode below as we count down our top five Kubrick films, with Mankiewicz’s canny insight (including dishy stories about Todd Field and Steven Spielberg and Kubrick’s habit of a long, late-night phone call) along the way. His latest season of “The Plot Thickens” launched this week.
Elsewhere on this episode, Anne and Ryan catch you up to speed on the latest developments in the WarnerMount merger, which, since recording, has seen even more developments: a judge-granted delay on behalf of the Block the Merger coalition. We also put last weekend’s TIFF winners into broader awards-season context and look ahead at the New York Film Festival, which kicks off today.
Listen to the latest episode of “Screen Talk” below or on your preferred podcast platform.
