The only film in history worth seeing for the special effects alone

Rating: 10/10 (7 November 1999)

... And it ALSO has an intelligent script. Conventional wisdom has it that no film needs both at once.
The special effects have never been surpassed. Remember this: unlike their digital counterparts, those gracefully sliding model spaceships look better, the bigger the screen. I gather that Kubrick was still holding out against the digital tide at the very end of his life, insisting on animatronics rather than animation in his unfilmed `AI'. Good for him.
There IS one flaw - or at least, it appears to be a flaw at first. It's the lighting. The parts of the spacecraft in shadow ought to have been all but pitch black, since they are never exposed to anything stronger than Earthlight, and sometimes not even that. Instead the shadows are the pale blue ones we'd expect to see at mid-afternoon on Earth. Kubrick surely knew this was a mistake. I suspect he simply wanted a very bright sunlit look that inky shadows precluded: and since we certainly feel the how pitilessly harsh and pure sunlight is in outer space, he probably made the right decision.
What else can Kubrick do, apart from design the world's best special effects? He's one of the few people who can use classical music in the score without making a fool of himself; and the only one, so far as I can tell, who can use Ligeti in the score at all. He can deliver moments of pure dispassionate terror. Most important of all in this kind of epic, he can make us feel that we're watching history itself. I admit you may find it next to impossible to work out what happens at the end. Not that it matters. I gather it can be done: and you can always cheat and look up the answer in Arthur C. Clarke's book. You'll probably be glad Kubrick was so elliptical.
Did I mention the importance of a big screen? Well, I'll mention it again. Travel to another city, if you have to, in order to see `2001' in a cinema.