Breathtaking masterpiece from genius Kubrick

Rating: Null/10 (4 February 1999)

A grand experience of sight and sound, 2001: A Space Odyssey is handily one of the most sumptuous, opulent, magnificent motion pictures ever made. A worthy example if one was ever called upon to defend film as art, Kubrick's perfectly paced masterpiece manages and manipulates the film grammar in ways unseen since Citizen Kane. Wholly original in its execution of the texture of space travel, its technical achievements are virtually unsurpassable. No film before or since has so fully realized the majesty of the reaches beyond the earth nor the fragility of our own concepts of such places. Additionally, the eerie, frightening, ghost in the machine we call artificial intelligence is rendered through the HAL 9000 with unforgettable results.