Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
The incredible story of the Italian Emilio D'Alessandro, personal driver of the great director Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), who met Emilio by chance in London in 1971 and hired him, thus establishing a deep friendship that lasted thirty years and helped create four masterpieces of cinema. A moving tale about two seemingly opposing people who found their ideal travel companion far away from home…
S Is for Stanley earns its distinctiveness through an unusually intimate angle on Kubrick — not from a collaborator or critic but from his personal driver, Emilio D'Alessandro, whose outsider-insider perspective yields genuinely fresh insights into one of cinema's most mythologized figures. The film's novelty lies in this unconventional vantage point and the warmth of an unlikely 30-year friendship that humanizes Kubrick without demystifying him entirely. Plot and structure are solid documentary fare — chronological, interview-driven — without great formal ambition. Cinematography is competent but unremarkable for the genre. The ending is emotionally satisfying but not particularly surprising. Acting is a non-category in the traditional sense; D'Alessandro is a natural, engaging on-screen presence as himself.