2001: A Space Odyssey Reviews
Top CriticStanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is some sort of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor. Technically and imaginatively, what he put into it is staggering.
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.
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.
It is an extraordinary, obsessive, beautiful work of art.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Yup, you guessed it -- a religious experience.
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.
[Retains] its artistic magnificence after more than 30 years.
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.
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| Original Score: 4/4
A cold, majestic motion picture, a movie that seeks to remind us of the vastness of space and our relatively insignificant place in it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
I assumed that this was what all movies ought to be: treasures for moral and aesthetic contemplation that did not provide all their answers on first contact.
