Steineded How sad is this?

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) This one is from over 60 years ago and belongs to the very early years when Kubrick filmed short documentary features on seafarers or boxers. The center of this one is priest Fred Stadmueller and his activities in the parish and I wish I could even say that Kubrick just directed it and was forced to go with the terrible script. But no, he wrote it himself. Really hard to believe. In these eight minutes, the film quickly switches effortlessly from completely uninteresting to over-the-top re-enacted.The scene with the little girl and the bully boy was so bad it surely had MST 3000 potential. Of course, they lacked the balls to include a Kubrick film into their show, but it just wasn't a good sight at all. In any case, I'm fairly certain that this short film would have sunken completely into oblivion by now (where it belongs) if it wasn't for the famous director behind it. It's one to watch for Kubrick completionists and that's it.

cgyford Professional photographer turned budding filmmaker Stanley Kubrick ("Day of the Fight") follows up his self-financed directorial debut with a rather uninspired documentary commission from RKO which the filmmaker himself would later describe as silly.The film supposedly documents two ordinary days in the life of Catholic priest Father Fred Stadtmuller as he pilots his plane between his 11 mission churches spread out over a 4,000 square mile area of Harding county in north-eastern New Mexico but the whole thing feels staged .Father Stadtmuller makes a surprisingly insipid presence behind the controls of the Spirit of St. Jospeh as we follow him from the solemn funeral of a ranch hand to evening devotions to pastoral duties to canary breeding to an emergency flight all to the dulcet tones of news reader Bob Hite.The future filmmaking legend seems constricted by the news reel format and although he manages to build some convention defying atmosphere there is little of the visual or structural flourish that marked out his previous "day in the life of..." documentary as being from an emerging talent."There's no brass band here, no cheering crowds, no newspapermen clamouring for a headline..."

MartinHafer Had Stanley Kubrick never gone on to become a famous director, three of his early films would never have been packaged together for sale on a DVD. That's because these films are cheap shorts made by an eager and unknown director--hardly works of art. They show none of the director's expert touches--they are just standard short films you might have seen in the early 1950s.THE FLYING PADRE is not a bad film nor can you really blame Kubrick for it not being all that interesting. It tells the story of a priest who covers a huge region in New Mexico by plane! It's from a long series of "Screenliner" shorts from RKO and were intended as filler when people went to the theater to see a feature. As such, this film is pretty typical of this style of film and nothing more.If you really want to see one of Kubrick's early seminal films, try KILLER'S KISS or THE KILLING.

Atavisten Its 8 minutes long and is about the flying priest who helps wherever he is needed, he just jumps into his plane and flies there. The main focus is about the kind and understanding padre that teaches the kids to not bully each other and a episode with a mother having a sick child on a ranch many miles away from a hospital. Padre is to the rescue.This is only for curiosity value, being made by Kubrick it has none of his mark on it. Its just for getting a foot in the industry I guess, or money. Situations are clearly staged and not so very well done, the voice-over is one sided and the shooting is diverse, but serves no special purpose. Kubrick the perfectionist turned up later I guess.