🍿 The Shining (1980) came out many decades ago, but from the opening I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-a-drone bird’s eye views through the masterful tracking shots of the Overlook Hotel to the anxiety-inducing stills of Jack Nicholson and his eyebrows it beats any and all of the modern-day perfectly-shot too-slick-to-be-real CGI trickery. I have been rewatching the movie several times over several decades and the cinematography is getting comparably better and better — quite damning for Hollywood.

This time around, however, I could better appreciate what’s truly scary about the movie: not the blood-filled hallway, or the hag soaking in that bathtub, or even the haunted twins*, but rather the ease with which a middle-aged man becomes bitter and starts blaming his family for holding him back. Not everyone is capable of extinguishing a star.