#93 2001: A Space Odyssey

1968

Directed by this cool SOB Mr. Stanley Kubrick
(A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket and The Shining)

Lead: Keir Dullea (In noting else famous to be honest)

After the shambles of All About Eve, I had high hopes this would restore my faith in humanity and be a classic. From the director of more quality films than you can shake a stick at, Im hoping this one wasn't in the top 100 on the reputation of the director alone.

So the above paragraph I wrote before I watched this one. Now all along I am trying to keep in perspective and think this was made in the 1960's, so its never going to be a sparkling array of CGI brilliance . With that in mind I pressed play....

The movie begins with 3 minutes of total darkness and a classical score being played out, when a picture does decide to make an appearance, it is one of a sprawling alien landscape, covered with apes.

If you have never seen this movie before like me, you have no idea what to expect, so to mine and my fellow watchers Kidcynic and miss Lumsden, this was a LONG LONG drawn out affair. It takes 24 minutes for the first person to even utter a word, and just 45 minutes for the actual story to be explained. In the first 24 minutes we see the evolution of man, almost in real time. The first hour of this movie is totally pointless and has no real bearing on the rest of it.

After the apes have gone we get slowly transported to a space ship, that is being ran by Hal 9000, a super computer which has a conscious entity and human emotions. Hal proclaims that his type of computer has never made a mistake. Hal decides or is programmed by a mystical timtam / ancient power to kill all the members on board the least ergonomically designed spaceship in the galaxy. The part about the killing should have been the longest part of the film, yet it was just crammed in, in between many wide angle shots of space, where nothing happens, absolutely nothing.

This was also the first movie I have ever watched on DVD that has an intermission, but to be honest the first 90 minutes felt like an intermission. So after a quick toilet break we sat down for the second part with renewed faith that the story was going to kick off. We were wrong.....

The whole thing felt disjointed and the parts that mattered were rushed, while, for example, a ship passing the screen took literally 5 - 10 minutes. The who thing was finished off by a psychedelic 10 minutes of random colour, flashes of different landscapes and a blinking eye that changed colour. The whole thing was finished with the most random end to a movie I think i have ever seen, leaving you just to shout over the credits WTF!

If you cant get a grip on what happened from my explanation, then I wouldn't bother watching the film because you will just be asking yourself the same questions. Even though it was pretty bad, after it had gone off and I started to write this, Im starting to wonder if I did enjoy it, I just didn't know at the time.

Scores

Visual
5/10 - Probably generations ahead with special effects for the 60's. This movie also invented Skype and the Ipad.

Sound
5/10 - Some classic classical tunes

Acting
4/10 - Nothing fancy.

Plot
4/10 - Pretty flimsy and basic

Ending 
2/10 - Totally random, none of the movie indicated this is how it would end, it was if they couldn't think what to do, so they just made you completely confused.

Final Score

20/50

A poor score, maybe I just didn't get it. Ill have to read some stuff about it to see if it makes sense then.

Total Movie Minutes So Far - 1081 
  
Next up is Rashomon.....