The Nolan vs Kubrick debate is an uninteresting one. They are from completely different generations of film. However, Kubrick's success in humor is something Nolan has yet to achieve.
I revisited Kiyoshi Kurosawa's CURE (βοΈβοΈβοΈβοΈ) last night in order to prepare for this weekend's release of THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER. CURE is about a detective trying to unravel a series of identical murders, committed under the same bizarre circumstances. This film is a very slow-burn. It has glimpses of horror, but lives mostly in the psychological thriller space, and will absolutely get under your skin. The creepiness lies in knowing what is about to happen to the peripheral characters who meet the killer, and Kurosawa takes his time in letting each character meet a grisly demise. The motive for the killer is impenetrable in this film and leaves the audience in a psychologically macabre waste.
Kurosawa's genius is the classic art of what makes a great filmmaker or a great writer: the recipient of the medium is not told the story directly, but discovers it through incremental detail; he finds it and has to decide for himself what to do with it in the end. Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of Japan's master storytellers and I hope you give it a shot.