Great and misunderstood.

Rating: Null/10 (10 July 2000)

**Spoilers Ahead**
This movie in my opinion is the greatest ever to be put on film. Every aspect of every shot is pure amazement, yes I do agree the movie is boring but it was delibratly shot in a very slow fashion, but that obviously was the intent, you're supposed to look at every nuance that is on the screen, from the advertisements on the space stations, the slow docking sequence, in reality docking any moving object into another is probably slow and unamusing and that's the way it was used so you felt the boredom and frustration. Many complain about this factor in the movie but when was the last time you concidered a Scorsese movie as the most entertaining you've ever seen? Or Hitchcock's movies, or the newer movies (Being John Malkovich), these movies are slow because not everyone can breakdown a good plot just by blowing up a space ship (Star Wars).
As for the other aspects of the movie everything was symbolic, you can guess to what everything represented, because no one really knows, it can be argued forever but certain things are there and just requires thinking, obviously the Monolith was somehow constructed by another being because nothing in nature can be formed in that way, a rectangle. The Monolith appear's in every revolutionary moment from the monkey's learning how to use tools, weapons and learn to kill. When mankind find it on the moon and decide to make a deep space voyage towards Jupiter, in the bedroom although someone can argue the revolutionary step it made there but I believe it showed the coming of the end for Bowman and he becomes "bornagain" into a being of space and time (the star child) representing that man must now live outside the confines of earth (using Bowman as the example). Of course all this is my portrayal of the movie, to each his own. Kubrick also constructed the HAL charactor in such an amazing way that it's almost impossible to see how he did it, unlike Darth Vader you can almost feel everything HAL is thinking, and the emotion he was supposed to convey, and he doesn't even have a face or body. HAL is certainly one of the greatest charactors ever made in film.
But in no way does this movie "change my life" that was already done with Citizen Kane.