Kubrick was the master of color man I swear. I think he had some sort of ADD because of his excessive attention to detail, which led to infamous amounts of takes during filming. Lots of complaints over the years of his grueling re-shoots.
Anyways, I have a few favorite uses of color in film.
#1 for me is Wes Anderson. I won’t post every example, but I love the way he pics a color pallet for his film, then he uses that pallete in almost every single frame of the movie. It’s like his mission to maintain that little trademark of his.
#2 my favorite alltime movie is O’ Brother Where Art Thou? One reason besides the awesome script/funny lines is the color. Coen brothers went back and edited the entire film post-production because the filming location they picked out had an unforeseen rainy season prior to filming. This resulted in an unusually GREEN summer. Bright green grass. Bright blooming flowers. Movie was set in the depression era so it didn’t fit the dust-bowl setting of their movie. Long story short, they edited the film to give it a sepia tone making it look like drought conditions. Made the colors look so aged and REALLY made it fit that old-timey feel they wanted. My favorite use of color in film.
#3 Although this movie gets a lot of hate, I really liked the use of color in The Shape of Water. Guillermo Del Toro did something similar to Wes Anderson. He picked a palette and tried to use those colors in almost every scene. I like re-watching and trying to find those colors.
Sometimes it’s really obvious
Other times it’s more subtle