Prepare to be dazzled.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:50
Fresh:48
Rotten:2
Average Rating:8.8/10
Consensus: One of the most influential of all sci-fi films -- and one of the most controversial -- Stanley Kubrick's 2001 is a delicate, poetic meditation on the ingenuity -- and folly -- of mankind.
Runtime: 2 hrs 39 mins
Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Synopsis: A four-million-year-old black monolith is discovered on the moon, and the government (while hiding the situation from the public) sends a team of scientists on a fact-finding mission. Eighteen... A four-million-year-old black monolith is discovered on the moon, and the government (while hiding the situation from the public) sends a team of scientists on a fact-finding mission. Eighteen months later, another team is sent to Jupiter in a ship controlled by the perfect HAL 9000 computer to further investigate the giant object--but on this trip something goes terribly wrong. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is a masterpiece of filmmaking. Director and (with Arthur C. Clarke) co-screenwriter Stanley Kubrick has created a visual and aural spectacle that stands as one of the greatest achievements ever put on celluloid. The film begins with the "Dawn of Man" segment, about the evolution of apes, and then ventures into the future, taking a look at what the world might be like in the first year of the 21st century. Kubrick's film is a triumph of technological storytelling, with stunning sets and a brilliant, overwhelming soundtrack. Long dialogue-free scenes sparkle with indelible images backed by powerful orchestral music, culminating in an unforgettable, inscrutable tale of birth and rebirth, human evolution and artificial intelligence, the past and the future. [More]
Starring: Keir Dullea, William Sylvester, Gary Lockwood, Daniel Richter
Starring: Keir Dullea, William Sylvester, Gary Lockwood, Daniel Richter, Leonard Rossiter, Robert Beatty, Douglas Rain
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Screenwriter: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke
Reviews for 2001: A Space Odyssey
For all the essential coldness of Kubrick's vision, it demands attention as superior sci-fi, simply because it's more concerned with ideas than with Boy's Own-style pyrotechnics.
Awesome, influential, mind-blowing, cool, obsessional, pretentious -- 2001 is all of these.
Its triumph lies in its scope of cinematic splendour and the attempt to marry some of man's most beautiful music to the infinite mystery of space.
Kubrick set out to make "the proverbial good science-fiction film," but he came out the other side with something far more ornery and profound.
Central to the profundity of the film is the notion that few things are more meaningful than a child's first steps, the emotive impact of this scenario manifest in every one of the film's dizzying set pieces, albeit multiplied to epic proportions.
2001 certainly is a colossal bore, unless you're on its wavelength, in which case it's one of the greatest films of all time.
The film's projections of the cold war and antiquated product placements may look quaint now, but the poetry is as hard-edged and full of wonder as ever.
It was a freshening attitude then, though its long-term effects haven't been all to the good.
It has reached the status of Art, meaning that it's going to go on provoking strong opinions.
Part space opera, part cinematic symphony and part horror story, the film is a shape-shifting painting.
The most influential sci-fi film ever made, 2001 caused culture shock when released, forever changing the conventions, style, and prestige of the previously debased genre
2001 speaks by monolith -- that is, by image, metaphor, poetry, and suggestion.
Doesn't just depict a quantum leap forward in human consciousness it practically requires such a leap, on an individual scale, from the viewer.
A beautiful, confounding picture that had half the audience cheering and the other half snoring.
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