Customer Reviews for
2001: A Space Odyssey
visually revolutionary pic that jammed theatres to the roof when it was released, nevertheless lost best picture to the filmed broadway show, oliver!....!, indeed, as ollie (a very nicely done collection of song and dance numbers, but already traditional stuff long before kubrick's wonderful breakthrough) probably attracted no more than half of odyssey's audience....unfortunately unwinds into something close to anarchy, beginning with doug trumbull's virtually endless landing sequence (thanks, doug)....with all its' defects, odyssey still holds its' rank as one of the best of all scifis.
(Read More Customer Reviews...)Reviewed by: lgriffin on 11/16/2006 9:50:45 AM
Whether true to the book or not (I guess I'd agree "not") the movie is an amazing classic with imagery and symbolism infrequently seen in today's movies.The set up for a sequel (done about 20 years later) is great, even though Kubrick didn't really mean for that to be the case.This is much less sci fi than it is cinematic art.Some may find it boring, but hey, it's almost 40 years old!
Reviewed by: TheScreenSaver24 on 11/5/2006 3:56:21 PM
This movie does no just to the book. The book is much more descriptive and doesn't waste time with slow moving scenes and 3 mins of blackness with classical music. This movie is also missing narration, their is litterly a total of 50 mins of talking and everything else is either slow moving actors doing nothing, monkeys eating, long scences of nothing. The only reason i give it 2 stars instead of 1 is because of its graphics for its day its ships, control panels, pan scenes of planets were done nicely. If anybody sees this movie without reading the book first they will be out of their mind confused. I like sci-fi but this movie should of been based more of the book and not leave it for the book to fill in the blank spaces.
Reviewed by: Tom McBaum on 10/14/2006 9:47:47 PM
In the post-Star Wars era of "adventure/sci-fi"-style filmmaking, one might be inclined to see this slow-moving film as slow-moving, even a bit boring. But, as the old song says, "turn off your mind, relax and float downstream" -- this film is a near-perfect blend of "hard sci-fi" story-telling, inspired music scoring, and groundbreaking special effects that still hold up -- at least until the "Beyond" part at the end -- as one of the greatest achievements in cinematic history. I've seen this film at least a dozen times and I always find something new to appreciate. Sure, it's not perfect -- the liquid slips back down the straw in zero-g, for example -- but it's a must-see movie for anyone who believes we might not be alone in the universe, or who thought we might be living on the moon by 2001, had the political climate been different in the last 35 years.