Great film that must be seen in a theater

Rating: 10/10 (17 August 1998)

This is such a unique movie, relying almost totally on mood, abstraction and sensory experience rather than plot, that it can really only be properly experienced in a theater, preferably with a lot of other people. It is certainly one of the great movies and I have seen it many times. But it really falls flat on a TV screen. My wish has always been that more of what is in the Arthur C. Clarke novel could have been made more explicit in the film. Sadly, with the many in your face SciFi films made since 1968, this is not a movie that is going to appeal to the majority of modern film audiences, but any film buff must see this.