Rating: 
Summary: The [worst] movie I've ever seen.
Review: What was Kubrick thinking when he made this movie!! He's totally ruined Arthur C. Clarke's brilliant book and vision. For starters - he probably only included the best parts of the book - but leaves out all the little details that actually makes sense!!! ... I was left dumbfounded, I've never seen a poorer interpretation in my life. Why stop there - Kubrick also left out the entire ending of the book - that would give you a better insight into the first scenes of the man apes - even those scenes were stuffed up completely. I won't reveal any more - but people please, get the book!! Don't waste your time on the movie, there isn't any point.
Rating: 
Summary: Tapir Eating Space Monkeys Attack!
Review: My fondest memory of 2001 - A Space Odyssey, is exploding out of the Regent in Auckland in '70, throwing peanuts at each other and howling like angry space monkeys. I can still do a convincing hominid impersonation, usually at cocktail functions after too many g&t's.There is no doubt that Mr K made challenging and interesting movies, and having seen all of them I like to pretend that I discovered this. But he never made a movie that people could enjoy on anything but a cold, superior, intellectual level. For example, if he had made the movie 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit", I am sure that Roger would have had some interesting things to say to us about the duality of self consciousness, instead of 'wah,wah,wah!' HAL9000 was our Adam, on 'speed'. God made man. Man made A.I. Man kills god. A.I. kills man. Life's little symetries, are taken exploitively to new levels of sillyness to fill out flimsy PhD submissions and dead film plots. Look at how the Matrix has mercilessly exploited philosophical leanings to rake in the suckers. For goodness sakes, cine', is only entertainment, art only accidentally, and is never philisophy. 2001AD came and went and I never saw one single alien monolith - I was very disappointed. Possibly because NASA's manned space program was killed by Washington accounting. Possibly because the USA wasn't really up to it and the whole space program was a stunt, rather than an agenda. Who really knows? The black slab on the Moon? Is it a metaphor? Search for our origins? I like to think that my humanity was derived from warm, fuzzy guys who liked a bit of Tapir snout for the barbeque and who dressed casually. I would be mortified to learn that parts of me came from that coldest, cruelest place in the Universe.
Rating:
Summary: Leaves you thinking, not entertained!
Review: I just finished watching this movie for the first time and I'm definitly going to need more viewings in order to understand it. I fast-forwarded through a lot of the scenes trying to get to the point. In the end, I was left having no idea what the movie was about, so I read A LOT of reviews. As a Generation Xer, I don't have the same "awe-like" feelings about space exploration that was more common in 1968 and I'm used to more action packed entertainment. However, the movie is not meant to entertain, but is instead meant to be philosophical. If you keep that in mind, I think you'll find more value in it.
Rating: 
Summary: It's very cold in space
Review: Kubrick's anti-romance about space exploration and the role of humanity in a shrinking universe is perhaps one of the greatest films ever made. Special effects that, 35 years later, still stand out as ground-breaking remind us that man is unfit for space travel, unless he puts his survival in the hands of his own creation -- technology and machines. Space is the cold, lonely void, and man's fragile self can only explore it by the grace of an unknown race of intelligent beings who guide us. But guide us to what? Servitude like animals in a zoo or a higher plane of evolution? Kubrick leaves a lot of unanswered questions, but the film itself is feast enough for the eyes. Kubrick postulates that there may be something "out there", but we may not want to know how to find it.
Rating:
Summary: The American Tarkovsky
Review: Enigmatic, powerful, beautiful and prophetic are the ways you could describe this film. It is also very clear, because it sticks to one cluster of themes: life, death and technology. No one in the US, not even Steven Spielberg, has been able to do what Kubrick achieves in this film. He explains the reason for technology (to keep death away) and its result (death approaches). The dialogue and action are spread out over two and a half hours. Things move so slowly partially as a nod to the great Russian auteur Tarkovsky, but also so the audience can digest what it's just seen or heard and connect it to other events in the film. The other benefit of the absence of action and wordiness is that it is immensely easy to connect the dots, unlike the much more wordy Tarkovsky. It's closer to a blockbuster Heidegger feature than an arthouse one. An interesting footnote is that the film's concluding chapter was originally supposed to happen in an appraoch to Saturn. Kubrick couldn't fit Saturn's rings into his budget. So we get Jupiter instead. The Arthur C. Clarke novel has the final sequence happen over Saturn. The ancient god Saturn is the god of death. And at its limit, where death approaches, what does one find? Kubrick doesn't answer in words. But an infant is born. And the film ends with the immense jubilation of the opening of Strauss's Zarathustra. Let anyone who's cracked Levinas think about that.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: Almost anything that Stanley Kubrick touched was magical. In "2001: A Space Odyssey" Kubrick tried to consider a future and deliver a moral lesson on the wages of deception. At the same time he eliminated the fantasy and mental garbage which infested so much Science Fiction. There is no "Force", no magic talismans... just technology, techniques and tact. One regrets that the future did not turn out per Mr. Kubrick's vision. In a sense, his movie evokes a sense of irony and pathos - the future wasn't so glamorous or focused on growth and space flight as it would have seemed thirty five years ago. In a profound sense, though not the intention of either Mr. Clarke or Mr. Kubrick, "2001: A Space Odyssey" is a vision... and an accusation and an admission of failure. A vision of what might have been, and still could be, if enough people judge it important enough to do. The goals are worth purchasing and the DVD is worth purchasing.
Rating:
Summary: NOTHING SHORT OF MIND-BLOWING!!!
Review: When I first saw this as a kid, I didn't quite get it, but watching it now, I understand. This is one of the greatest films ever made. You will not be disappointed. Admittedly, it is a bit hard to follow, but that's the point, you are supposed to think for yourself; that's what makes it so great, Kubrick acknowledges, you get from the film what you what from it. If YOU choose to just stare at the screen, of course you are going to hate it. But if you understand the meanings, man's quest for knowledge and his evolution, then you will understand. No one can truly describe this film to you. Rent it, with a clear head, and I can almost guarantee, you will want to buy it.
(oh yeah, and another thing, special effect/graphics should always take backseat to a good plot/storyline. They did in this movie.) Cheers.
Rating:
Summary: Padded, Bloated, Brilliant
Review: Sometimes I think Clarke and Kubrick got the ideals and policy of American space travel/exploration wrong. Especially given the times in which it was written, Astronauts were of a different sort in the 1960's and not the autocratic astronauts seen in Poole and Bowman. Of course manybe Clarke was not all that wrong. Sometimes predictions wind up being right. As brillaint as 2001 is it is not a perfect movie by far. It is slow and padded. I don't doubt this was deliberate. What really gets me is the last drug inducing / inspired ending. I don't do drugs, nor was I born when the movie came into the world (1969 fyi). 2001 lets us ponder the nature of the universe but without any context or ideas within the movie. Those answers were in the equally good, yet different 2010. Which makes 2001 a bad mystery. It's like a murder mystery with only the murder. I think it could have been just as powerful of a movie without the doped up (and sort of dopey) ending. Is it worth seeing? Yes. Is it a sacred cow? No.
Rating:
Summary: Try the ending with Echoes
Review: This is one of the top ten movies of all time. It is the only movie that I know of where, because space is a vacuum, we cannot hear the roar of engines or the whiz of photon torpedoes. For those who cannot live without sound effects in space, this movie is not for you. Yes. it has a strange and totally bizarre ending that you may find confusing. But could that be the point? Might this not be an expression of the sheer absurdity of trying to capture the birth of a cosmically conscious being in ways we might understand? ... Finally, as to the monolith, I remember back when I was a child seeing this for the first time how hard it was for me to think that a big stone slab could be of any importance to anything. However, today we can see that this stone slab could easily be made of RAM. That is to say, Kubric presaged the computer revolution with a device that no longer looks so hard to believe today. Today we are besieged by stone monoliths! The metaphor has become reality...
Rating:
Summary: The widescreen aspect is wrong
Review: The widescreen aspect on this version seems to be wrong? my old mgm vhs version seems to be in 2:35.1 while this WB version is in a 1:85.1 aspect, am I missing some of the picture? why is this like this? weird!
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