2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Dir. Stanley Kubrick
Where do I begin, it's 2:27am.
I feel guilty to admit how high my expectations were going into this movie, I didn't know anything about it except it was old, it was unconventional, and a masterpiece. After watching the movie I can say it fulfilled all those three beliefs, just not in the way I had hoped.
I've broken my rating of this movie down two ways: My personal rating, would I watch this again, hell no. My cultural rating, did this movie influence just about every single movie made afterwards to this very day, yes.
Here are some of the thoughts I had during the movie:
So let's dive in:
This movie is a visually stunning music video. The story this movie tries to tell could've been told in thirty minutes, but you don't watch this movie for the story, anyone that tells you otherwise is stroking their ego. It may be due to my generation's short attention span but I found many shots to grow boring, yes they were visually stunning, yes groundbreaking, but you don't need 9 camera angles and 6 minutes to show someone floating into space, we got the point with the first shot. The amount of time I spent listening to a crappy recording of a man breathing made me, honestly, relieved when he died, something you don't want your audience to feel about that act of unfairness.
With each event in this film I thought, ooo I wonder what this is building to, I can't wait to get some answers, the payoff is going to be amazing, oh man there's two minutes left it must be coming up soon... and then I got a floating baby.
To appreciate much of what I did enjoy of this movie I had to pretend I was living in 1963, computer generated effects were practically unheard of and man had not yet stepped foot on the moon, then, then this movie shines. But a good film shouldn't have to rely on the circumstance of time to be enjoyed.
Let's give credit to where it is due, the actors did a fabulous job with some impactful performances. The score is incredible, and the visuals, the "effects*", and camera work is stupendous, simply groundbreaking. Each shot you can tell is wonderfully crafted. This movie blew open the gates to a genre and will forever remain a landmark, hence the cultural rating of 10/10.
Imagine a book where the pages were made out of gold, they were beautiful, fabulous, stunning, but the story written on them was disjointed, boring, and left more questions than it answered, is this a good book? I believe this film is such a cinema darling because some people are happy to look past the story and at the pages, so to speak, of this movie, I just can't bring myself to.
*Everything was practical, yes everything, this movie could be hailed as the reason VFX was created. It is magnificent and holds up over fifty years later!
- Personal rating: 4/10
- Cultural impact rating: 10/10
Dir. Stanley Kubrick
Where do I begin, it's 2:27am.
I feel guilty to admit how high my expectations were going into this movie, I didn't know anything about it except it was old, it was unconventional, and a masterpiece. After watching the movie I can say it fulfilled all those three beliefs, just not in the way I had hoped.
I've broken my rating of this movie down two ways: My personal rating, would I watch this again, hell no. My cultural rating, did this movie influence just about every single movie made afterwards to this very day, yes.
Here are some of the thoughts I had during the movie:
- "Ten minutes in, just making sure I'm watching 2001 and not some b rated national geographic channel. What does this all mean? Also I'm missing the human voice, wish I wasn't wearing headphones to listen to this movie."
- "There may be no sound in space but there certainly is a lot of singing."
- "If I hear another Opera singer yell he or ah I will lose it."
So let's dive in:
This movie is a visually stunning music video. The story this movie tries to tell could've been told in thirty minutes, but you don't watch this movie for the story, anyone that tells you otherwise is stroking their ego. It may be due to my generation's short attention span but I found many shots to grow boring, yes they were visually stunning, yes groundbreaking, but you don't need 9 camera angles and 6 minutes to show someone floating into space, we got the point with the first shot. The amount of time I spent listening to a crappy recording of a man breathing made me, honestly, relieved when he died, something you don't want your audience to feel about that act of unfairness.
With each event in this film I thought, ooo I wonder what this is building to, I can't wait to get some answers, the payoff is going to be amazing, oh man there's two minutes left it must be coming up soon... and then I got a floating baby.
To appreciate much of what I did enjoy of this movie I had to pretend I was living in 1963, computer generated effects were practically unheard of and man had not yet stepped foot on the moon, then, then this movie shines. But a good film shouldn't have to rely on the circumstance of time to be enjoyed.
Let's give credit to where it is due, the actors did a fabulous job with some impactful performances. The score is incredible, and the visuals, the "effects*", and camera work is stupendous, simply groundbreaking. Each shot you can tell is wonderfully crafted. This movie blew open the gates to a genre and will forever remain a landmark, hence the cultural rating of 10/10.
Imagine a book where the pages were made out of gold, they were beautiful, fabulous, stunning, but the story written on them was disjointed, boring, and left more questions than it answered, is this a good book? I believe this film is such a cinema darling because some people are happy to look past the story and at the pages, so to speak, of this movie, I just can't bring myself to.
*Everything was practical, yes everything, this movie could be hailed as the reason VFX was created. It is magnificent and holds up over fifty years later!