A Master's Masterwork

Rating: 10/10 (28 March 1999)

In my opinion, simply the greatest motion picture ever made, period. If you haven't seen it, you've never seen cinema. If you haven't seen it on the big screen... well, you haven't seen it. I first saw "2001" at the Cinerama Dome in its first re-release in the early 70s, and it was the movie that made me want to make movies. Every time I've seen it since, it just reconfirms that feeling.
As he always did (the saddest past tense of the Century), Kubrick took a genre and made it his own. What could have been routine science fiction was pure genius in his hands -- and he did it by paying acute attention to reality. No other film that I can think of has had the cojones, for example, to have **silence** in outer space, and the only other film I can think of that didn't get lazy and use "Star Trek Gravity" is "Apollo 13." (One moment in "2001" involves a sort of explosion in a vacuum. It's done in real-time (no Slo-Mo), without sound. In other words, accurately -- and the effect is amazing.)
Comparison: the vastly inferior "2010." Everything Kubrick worked so hard for was thrown out in the sequel. Apparently, in nine years, outer space developed both sound and gravity. (And, Irony department -- in "2001," the US and USSR (remember them?) are not really enemies any more. In "2010," they're on the brink of war. Another indication that Mr. Kubrick was a visionary in more ways than one.)
But, there really aren't words to describe "2001," other than to say that the scope of the story is enormous, the implications thought-provoking -- and every single effect in it (all of which still stand up today) was done without benefit of digital or CGI. Take that, George Lucas...