2001: A Space Odyssey

It reviews better than it plays — admired more than it is enjoyed.

• “This is the way this ground-breaking monument was meant to be seen: in mind-boggling 70mm.”

  Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle · 100

• “Its special effects are used so seamlessly as part of an overall artistic strategy that, as critic Annette Michelson has pointed out, they don't even register as such, and thus are almost impossible to trivialize, a feat unmatched in movies.”

  Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader · 100

• “Only a few films are transcendent, and work upon our minds and imaginations like music or prayer or a vast belittling landscape...Alone among science-fiction movies, 2001 is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.”

  Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times · 100

• “A masterpiece that can still leave you dizzy with wonder. As much as any movie ever made, this visionary science-fiction tale of space travel and first contact with extraterrestrial life is a spellbinding experience.”

  Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune · 100

• “Its faults - sketchy narrative, overblown abstraction - are counterbalanced by its gripping engagement between man and machine, and its rhapsodic wonder at heaven and earth and the infinite beyond.”

  Angie Errigo, Empire · 100