Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

CRCulver September 8, 2018

★ 9/10

Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove is a hilarious film about the nuclear annihilation of the human race. Its plot combines three strands that lead inevitably to this doomsday. In the first, an Air Force base commander (Sterling Hayden) goes insane and launches the go-code for his B52s to drop the bomb on their targets in Russia, while a British captain on an officer exchange program (Peter Sellers) tries to reason with him. In the second strand, we see the crew of a B52 commanded by the cowboyish Major Kong (Slim Pickens) as they prepare to drop the bomb. Finally, there are the scenes from the Pentagon war room, where the American president (again Peter Sellers) harangues a general (George C. Scott) about how this could have happened, until the mysterious German scientist Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers yet again) offers a solution. Originally meant to be a stra…

barrymost November 13, 2019

★ 8/10

A U.S. bomber plane is heading for Russia. Communications are unavailable. The Commie Russians have built a doomsday device. And, according to crazy, (wheelchair-bound?), ex-Nazi scientist, Dr. Strangelove, nuclear destruction is upon us all! Thanks to this eccentric comedy, I now have considerable respect for the talent of Peter Sellers. How he pulled off three totally different roles so convincingly is just beyond me. Especially his portrayal of the U.S. President; I could hardly believe that British Peter Sellers could do an American accent that naturally. This was apparently a very black comedy for its time, as the threat of nuclear war was really a thing when this was filmed. Offbeat, humorous script includes some eyebrow-raising, edgy dialogue and scenes. Would I recommend? Yes, to those with a open mind, or a taste for a truly bizarre kind of comedy.

Filipe Manuel Neto December 19, 2022

★ 10/10

**Sex and war in an extremely sarcastic and intelligent film.** This film is one of the best of director Stanley Kubrick's career, and is also one of the most iconic and acidic satire that cinema has ever seen. Inspired by a tense novel that was published in the same period, and by the political and military events that were taking place at the time, the film shoots in all directions to give us the most absurd and ridiculous image of the rivalry between the USA and the Soviet Union. Despite everything, and all the points in favor, I don't think this film is a true comedy. To me, honestly, it didn't make me laugh, although I absorb and understand the acidic irony that is here. The script begins with a very serious incident that could be true (and the US even reviewed its military strategies in order to prevent something similar from happening in real life): after inventing, in his t…

CinemaSerf June 1, 2024

★ 7/10

Just as "Seven Days in May" was hitting our screens, Stanley Kubrick used a superbly over-the-top effort from Sterling Hayden to depict a rogue general who has decided to use all the checks and balances in place to defend the United States to his own mischievous advantage and launch a pre-emptive bombing campaign on those pesky "Ruskies". It's only his perfectly moustachioed British executive officer "Mandrake" (Peter Sellers) who smells a rat, but he is on lockdown in their air force base that is, indeed, being besieged - but not by the "Reds". Meantime, the American President (also Sellers) is only just finding out that he's about to start a nuclear war and nobody knows quite how to top it - not even his chief of staff "Turgidson" (George C. Scott). A call to his opposite number in the Kremlin reveals that the Soviets haven't been letting the grass grow, and that they have their own sh…

Mland62 July 19, 2026

★ 9/10

Stanley Kubrick's, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is the best satire of all time. The film is over 60 years old and has aged perfectly, every joke, both the layered and the brilliantly stupid, land today just as well as they did in '64. This film is Kubrick at his best, the film doesn't feel cold and detached like some of his other work, if anything this film feels deeply personal. The film's greatest moment is it's final sequence. The collection of real-world bomb explosions paired with Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" is such a beautifully devastating sequence that leaves the viewer with one thought: "War is terrible". It's a horrific sequence paired with such a non-horrific song. It's a song that balances heartbreak and optimism. The film spends its entire runtime making fun of everyone involved in war. Every person in a position of power …