Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent, but Unimpressed!
Review: I am an adult, not a teenager, with an IQ score of around 150, and I did NOT like this movie. It amazes me that so many who DO like it must assume that those who don't are braindead. Believe it or not, there are some people who aren't fond of CHOCOLATE (which I adore), and there are others who positively love licorice (which I think should never have been invented.) As the old saying goes, "There is no accounting for taste." We all have different interests and even though I found 2001 fascinating at times, overall I found the slowness frustrating, even with the beautiful Strauss music. Without having read the book I could only draw my own conclusions at the end that "David" was being reincarnated or something equally impossible. I also think it's amazing that the NEGATIVE reviews are not picked as "helpful" simply because someone disagrees with them! The fact is that most people won't even come to this web page unless they LIKED the movie, and the "average star rating" for any given movie is most likely going to be slanted toward the favorable side. Go take a look at the reviews of a movie that you DON'T like and see for yourself--it will no doubt have a high "star rating."
Rating: 
Summary: Wait for a widescreen version
Review: I love this move! I love it! And I was thrilled to death to see it on DVD. And MAN was I disappointed. It looks like a digitized version of a standard videotape. It still has all the artifacts of video such as contrast lines and color that is not up to the snuff of DVD. DVD can handle a much better much clearer picture than this seemingly quickly done version of this beautiful film. While the DVD does look better than videotape only by comparison, it just does not look good enough to warrant a purchase in my opinion. I cannot imagine this DVD being the DVD I watch the movie on in 5 or 10 years. Someone is going to have to come out with a remastered widescreen anamorphic version with better compression, I'm hoping before the beginning of the new year. Have patience. This is not the DVD the film should be viewed on.
Rating: 
Summary: 2001
Review: Despite this movie confused me a great deal and seemed slow at times, I found the movie overall to be very thought provoking. If you're really philisophical, you'll like this movie a lot. But even if you want some good action, the part of the movie with Hal is really suspensful. The ending of the movie, however, I found to be uninspiring. Kubrick, I think, got caught up in his own way out there image and didn't give a logical, comprehensible ending. It was open to too much personal interpretation with not enough guidance. The point of the movie doesn't really hold together at the end. But except for that, everything else, including the opening seen with the apes, it incredible. I wouldn't reccomend this movie to everyone but only those who enjoy an allergorial movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Oh, Stop it. Enough Already!
Review: Yes, it's one of the great films of all time. And yes, it's offbeat enough that not everyone will enjoy it, even though everyone should at least see it once. But after 191 reviews, if the next viewer doesn't get it, any more reviews is just an excercise in ego or boredom. So, enough already!
Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: Basically, '2001' is the finest science-fiction film that we are ever likely to see, one that relegates the 'competition' to distant second places, or entirely different genres. Typical of Kubrick, '2001' is utterly uncompromising, and more than a little misanthropic - there is no dialogue for the first thirty minutes, and when it comes the people sound flat, lifeless and drained, as if they were merely peripheral to the big picture. Kubrick's obsessive attention to mathematically-precise composition, definitive effects shots (which no amount of CGI work could improve) and technical plausibility mean that '2001' presents a vision, not of the future, but of an alternative present, one in which the space race didn't fizzle out. It's not about that, though. It's not really about anything - the 'plot' could be condensed into a couple of sentences, and the entire middle section is more or less irrelevant, which is ironic, as it contains the only 'action' in the film. Too many people try to read too much depth into the film - my advice for the new viewer is to take everything at face value. Arthur C. Clarke's co-developed novel/outline 'explains' most of the mystery, and is therefore not as compelling. Anyway, this is the kind of film that changes your life forever if you watch it at the right time. Anybody who has looked at the stars at night, or who has marvelled at the purity of a single diagonal line on a piece of white paper will take this film to heart instantly.
Rating:
Summary: 2001: A Space Odyssey
Review: I think that 2001, the movie, goes beyond Arthur C. Clarke's book in a synergistic leap of genius. This film does not seem dated even from my vantage point of the new millenium. Just as Homer's Odyssey is the seed story of western civilization, Space Odyssey is the seed story of the modern world. After 32 years the only thing about this film I don't understand is how Kubrick was able to talk the studio big-wigs out of the money to make it. One of my all time favorites.
Rating:
Summary: A Liturgy for the Space Age
Review: I grew up hearing my mother say how 2001 was a really stupid, boring movie. Now, my mother is neither "brain dead" nor a "moron," and I think it's a bit unjust to label anyone who didn't like this film as such; honestly, whether one likes it or not has as much to do with aesthetic preferences as it does with intellectual capacity. Some people just don't get into extended musical meditations upon slow, drifting visual imagery. Myself, I was wholly entranced by the aesthetics, not to mention the philosophical themes evoked by the sequences and scenes. It strikes me that this film is perhaps best approached as a sort of "liturgy," in which symbol and movement and music are orchestrated to evoke wonder, awe, reflection, inspiration. If you have a strongly contemplative, introspective bent, and approach 2001 as a visual-musical-verbal-symbolic symphonic work rather than expecting a traditional "story" movie, you will very likely enjoy viewing 2001. Rent it first (I recommend the widescreen edition); believe me, if you like it, you'll be coming back to buy a copy for your personal collection. P.S. -- I didn't get the ending at first, either, so don't worry if you don't understand it all on the first viewing. Just sit back, relax, and drift on Kubrick and Clarke's strange and wonderful journey. It's O.K. to come away from this film with more questions than answers.
Rating:
Summary: Still the best.
Review: I don't know that this supreme example of film making will ever be surpassed. The DVD is not quite as sharp as the CAV laserdisc version by Criterion, but at least the aspect ratio seems accurate - with this film, that's important.
Rating:
Summary: rewarding for those who can appreciate it
Review: There's no doubt about it: this film was deliberately assembled so that the viewer could take an almost unlimited number of conclusions from it. The problem is, very few of those conclusions lead to enjoyment. Most of the people I know who dislike this film expected something else before they watched it, perhaps kind of a Star Wars-type movie with lots of special effects and noise and very little thought. But 2001 is nothing like that. It's a two-and-a-half hour journey, and where it will take you depends on who exactly you are. I am a very philisophical person, and I think about things like human behavior, extraterrestrial life, and the other mysteries of our existence on a regular basis, so this film was great for me. (I've seen it around five times now, each time getting something new out of it.) I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should walk into the film the way Kubrick would have wanted you to, with an open mind and a great deal of patience, much as you would with a novel or a work of art. If you stay focused and pay attention, it can be a life-changing experience.
Rating:
Summary: Boring, Boring, Boring
Review: Is this the film that made current film critics think they had a talent at picking good films because they liked this one. Maybe I'm off my rocker (actually I slept through most of this one in my rocker) but this film can't be the seminal moment in science fiction movies. This one makes almost as much sense as that other "great" science fiction epic, Rocky Horror Picture Show.
|
