Room 237

This scrappy, intense doc is a compendium of voices-off musing on the meaning of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film, ‘The Shining’ (which will be re-released at Halloween). Have you ever thought the entire film was an apology for Kubrick’s faking of the moon landings? Or that Kubrick really had the Holocaust on his mind? Well, you’re not alone. The ideas – sometimes bonkers, sometimes convincing – flow like the escalating chat round a pub table (we never know, or see, exactly who’s saying what) and are presented over ample footage of the film itself. What’s attractive about ‘Room 237’ is how it demands that we look more closely at films, and think about motives and subtexts. And that’s surely a good thing – even if we don’t actually believe that that’s Kubrick’s face up there in the clouds at the beginning of his movie.