Probably the greatest satire put to film. It's hard not to rank this among Kubrick's best, although, honestly, that's due in part to the intense subject. Great

Probably the greatest satire put to film. It's hard not to rank this among Kubrick's best, although, honestly, that's due in part to the intense subject. Great retrospective in the OP - I've always loved that transformation in production, where Stanley realized that the thriller could only ever be filmed as perfect pitch-black comedy. Maybe a little telling on Kubrick's character, but what a fantastic decision. Every war creates in its climax the perfect weapon for the fighting of that war just past. In World War II, the denouement of the western colonialist systems, exploitation was so perfected that victory became genocide. So, with brutal logic, the war created the perfect weapon for eliminating whole peoples, along with their land, their water, their pets[1], etc. In the 1960s, America had this perfected weapon of WW2, but had not experienced directly the circumstances of total war that had brought it about, and not gained the painful wisdom accumulated[2]. Strangelove is in part a story of medieval generals jousting with dynamite strapped to the tips of their lances. And, as it turns out, that's pretty funny. [1] Hat tip to Oliver Reed's shambling Vulcan in Gilliam's Munchausen here. [2] And had gained a cancerous homunculus in the form of Strangelove himself, the last vestige of colonialism's final form.