Memorial Day signals the unofficial start of summer, and what does that mean? A glut of popcorn movies, for one, and another season of the American national pastime. Baseball may not hold sway over the U.S. collective consciousness the way it once did, but you know what – it still makes a very pliable framing device for a light-hearted “welcome to summer” blog post. In film, as in baseball, everybody wants a hit as often as possible. Ted Williams was the last professional ball player to bat a .400 average. Artistically, who is cinema’s Ted Williams? And which director is batting 1.000, if any?

Hmmmm. Steven Spielberg has an admirable selection of excellent films, but there are undoubtedly a lot of duds (1941, Hook, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and A.I. to name only a few). Hitchcock had a heck of a run during his Hollywood period, but you’d need Bill Buckner on first base to claim Topaz or Family Plot as a solid hit. Sidney Lumet’s 1970s output is an enviable string of classics (Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Murder On The Orient Express, Network et al), but let’s face it, he basically went 0 for the ‘90s and ‘00s. Billy Wilder was a master of most genres, but The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes is headache-inducing for even the most devoted mystery fan. David Lynch? Erase Dune and we’ll talk. So, whose directorial record is unblemished by an ill-conceived WWII comedy, tonally unbalanced caper, or over-budget Western (no, Michael Cimino, I haven’t forgotten Heaven’s Gate, much as you would like me to)?

(Cue the 2001 theme). Why, Stanley Kubrick’s, of course.

Not only is every feature-length film in his directorial canon a masterpiece (from The Killing on), I think he can claim to have crafted the crowning achievement in at least four genres. The Shining? Its mounting sense of dread is unmatched by any other horror film. 2001: A Space Odyssey? Best sci-fi – find a cinema projecting it in 70mm and they’ll be scraping your brains off the ceiling by the movie’s end. Barry Lyndon? No period film is better (as much as I love Amadeus, Milos Forman definitely stole the look and tone of the Mozart quasi-biopic from Kubrick). Dr. Strangelove? The standard by which all dark comedies are judged, to my mind. (And just try to tally how many times you’ve heard that film’s subtitle – “Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb” parodied and spoofed. It’s enough to make General Jack D. Ripper go insane once again!) And I’d love to claim that Full Metal Jacket is the top Vietnam war movie, but, well . . . Apocalypse Now. Sorry, Stanley, but don’t fret, it’s still a classic. Ditto The Killing, Paths Of Glory, Spartacus, Lolita and A Clockwork Orange.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Have I clamped my peepers down to Kubrick’s final screen venture, Eyes Wide Shut? Surely that was the moment that, as the Ernest Thayer’s famous poem puts it, Mighty Casey struck out. Color me contrarian (Color me Kubrick?) but I consider Eyes to be another S.K. classic. Perhaps not genre-defining and -transcending the way 2001 and The Shining are, but an eminently watchable treatise on the nature of desire, nevertheless.

So, step aside, Joe DiMaggio – Kubrick has a record as seemingly untouchable as your famous 56-game hitting streak. 11 at bats, 11 home runs. The upcoming Blu-ray collection will no doubt offer Kubrick’s oeuvre in its most spectacular picture quality yet, so have a Kubrick marathon! As a certain Johnny Carson-loving ax-wielder reminded us, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!