Prepare to be dazzled.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
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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
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.
Awesome, influential, mind-blowing, cool, obsessional, pretentious -- 2001 is all of these.
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.
Now, seen in the actual 2001, it's less a visionary masterpiece than a crackpot Looney Tune, pretentious, abysmally slow, amateurishly acted and, above all, wrong.
2001 compares with, but does not best, previous efforts at science fiction.
The film creates its effects essentially out of visuals and music. It is meditative. It does not cater to us, but wants to inspire us, enlarge us.
A cold, majestic motion picture, a movie that seeks to remind us of the vastness of space and our relatively insignificant place in it.
A beautiful, confounding picture that had half the audience cheering and the other half snoring.
Its intelligent attempt at exploring human development is as relevant today - long after the date the movie's climactic events are set - as when it was released in 1968.
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.
It was a freshening attitude then, though its long-term effects haven't been all to the good.
If you can surrender to it, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is a mind-shaper.
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