One of the best.

Rating: 9/10 (14 August 2007)

Can you find another film where the music complements the movie so splendidly? How about using the strength of sound to tell the story, whether it be Poole's breathing or HAL cutting off the life support of the survey crew? Will another scene ever top, let alone challenge, Kubrick's vision of The Dawn of Man? 2001 has everything going for it. Even more so now that we can look back at this movie forty years later and can comparatively draw our own conclusions on how we have succeeded and failed, this movie kind of being its own measuring stick on how well we have advanced and changed.
Three main stories make up 2001. We begin with The Dawn of Man, where humans earliest ancestors are trying to survive on the young planet. We skip to 2001 where business and exploration is part of life in space, and a new discovery is found on the moon. Finally, a mission to Jupiter is underway with a hibernating survey team, two astronauts and HAL 9000.
One of the best conflicts of all time is obviously between Bowman and HAL. From when Bowman uses the now-infamous line, "Open the pod bay doors, HAL," to when he goes straight to HAL's Logic Memory Center, the conversation is sharper than most movies I can currently recall. The length of the film is always something to be desired, but I still watch this movie, never really tiring of it. How the Space Station moves to the music like a ferris wheel, not to mention the ever alien presence of the Monolith, there'll never come a time when something new fascinates me from 2001.