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

Here the cold humor that runs through all of Kubrick arrives at full strength. Peter Sellers plays three roles, the stiff-upper-lip Group Captain Mandrake, the hapless President Muffley and the scientist of the title, while a general's private nuclear strike plays out between a bomber, an air base and the Pentagon's War Room. Coming after the war films sharpens the joke: the same military logic that was tragic in the trenches becomes absurd once the men in charge gather to argue about it. It earned four Oscar nominations and won none, and it is the easiest Kubrick to recommend to anyone who thinks he is all chill and no laughs.