Stanley Kubrick has created a real mind-bender. "2001" is at once believable and astounding, intriguing -- if not boggling -- to the mind, dazzling -- if not bewildering -- to the eye, and wax-loosening to the ear.

| Apr 9, 2025

Discussion will rage for months to come around 2001: A Space Odyssey, which, for size, cost, imaginative brilliance and perplexity, is light years ahead of any space film yet made.

| Apr 9, 2025

This film is as exciting as the discovery of a new dimension in life.

| Apr 9, 2025

I'm not so sure many of us in the audience knew what Kubrick's enigmatic tableaux were all about, but I do know that few of us would ever look into the night sky again without a new sense of wonder about man and the universe.

| Apr 9, 2025

While [Stanley Kubrick] dazzles, bewilders and overpowers the viewer with gadgetry and technology, he has utilized cinematic form in a distinctive non-verbal way. The experience of seeing "2001" is like being in a symphony, a poem or a sculpture.

| Apr 9, 2025

It's a bad, bad sign when a movie director begins to think of himself a myth-maker, and this limp myth of a grand plan that justifies slaughter and ends with resurrection has been around before.

| Apr 9, 2025

If there was any doubt that space travel will be the most spectacular of mankind's future, "Space Odyssey" is the definitive affirmation that every last coin spent on the space race will be worth it.

| Apr 9, 2025

The stupendous accomplishment of the movie lies in the exceptional quality of its special effects. On the Cinerama screen, the episodes in space create thrills and involvement that I never thought possible.

| Apr 9, 2025

The first loss in Kubrick's fantastic winning streak. A decided disappointment in every respect except the visual, "Space Odyssey" perhaps will convince the extraordinarily-talented director to leave the future to Dr. Carlson, and come back down to earth.

| Apr 9, 2025

It may seem ponderously pretentious to assume that man will be up, up and away like that, but Kubrick's foreplay is enriching and extraordinarily perceptive, if nothing else. Indeed, he tells it like it possibly will be -- with authority.

| Apr 9, 2025

With space-travel it takes an exceptional film to stop me yawning. But then 2001: A Space Odyssey is an exceptional film.

| Apr 9, 2025

Great blobs of brilliant color smear and splinter into each other, giving birth to seemingly endless varieties of new shapes and shades, in this flight on the wings of Stanley Kubrick's wild, wild, wildest imagination.

| Apr 9, 2025

Notwithstanding the rather tiresome middle sections, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a sight for the eyes and a bolt to the cerebellum. The opening and the closing see to that.

| Apr 9, 2025

After seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey a second time, I'm convinced it is a masterwork. Take it from one who mistrusts superlatives... this awesome film is light-years ahead of any science fiction you have ever seen.

| Apr 9, 2025

It took four years to complete, £4 million to produce, and precisely two hours and 42 minutes to confirm that it is uncommonly painful not to laugh when you feel like it.

| Apr 9, 2025

Kubrick becomes so involved with his science, so enamored of his effects, his use of color, his absorption with his tricks and dazzling flights of imagination, that he forgets about us.

| Apr 9, 2025

It is the photography which sets 2001: A Space Odyssey apart from any other movie ever made. The story may puzzle the mind... but be assured nothing in Cinerama or any other projection has ever presented such a wonder to the eye.

| Apr 9, 2025

Stanley Kubrick's 2001 is a space-age origin of species. It's an epic of evolution. Like Homer's Odyssey its primary function seems to be to give its audience a sense of their history.

| Apr 9, 2025

Though this experience can hardly be considered either profound or -- for the science-fiction addict, I suspect -- particularly enlightening, it is interesting and often exciting.

| Apr 9, 2025

To this viewer, the depiction of man's first expedition to Jupiter was an awe-inspiring trip, a mindstretching achievement in special effects and cinematography that captured the imagination as no motion picture has in memory.

| Apr 9, 2025