Horrifically boring and usually pointless

Rating: 6/10 (7 March 2006)

This movie had about 45 minutes of greatness strewn throughout a 2 1/2 hour movie. In these 45 minutes the pacing, the visuals, the dialogue (when applicable) was magnificent. The rest was a hodge-podge of (usually beautiful) scenes thrown in there to make it look like a cool sci-fi movie.
In one scene of the movie they retrieve a piece of equipment off the top of the spaceship because the computer says it will fail soon. In doing so, we hear 10-15 minutes of the same hissing sound from the man's oxygen tank and his breathing while the pod flies slowly, gracefully over so he can get the damn thing. How does this further the story? How does this say anything? I can get the feeling of isolation in space without having to hear 15 minutes of breathing and a hissing oxygen tube. Actually, I got it plenty well before that thank you very much.
Another example is a 45 minute long sequence (if I'm exaggerating it isn't by much) where it shows a bunch of pretty colors flashing by interrupted by a picture of his eye, occasionally. These would have been magnificent scenes if they had done something for the story or highlighted some type of theme that actually applies. I guess it's supposed to represent the infinite, but I don't see the infinite as being a bunch of random effects shots all streaming together in the most lethargic fashion possible. Maybe that's just my opinion.
It's almost as if they are going for this artsy style which includes only a few brilliant moments of actual human emotion strung together by a bunch of effects sequences that show the same things, with the same noises, for such a long time that I felt like shooting myself in several instances (notably the ones I mentioned).
In summary, I'd give those 45 minutes I mentioned before a 9.5/10 because I could imagine them being magnificent with decent support from the rest of the movie, while the rest of the movie gets a 1/10. Which averages out to about 4/10.