thelistislife42’s review published on Letterboxd:
10/10
Almost all I hear about this film is praise. Everyone just loves it so much. They say it's brilliant, transcendent, beautiful, and everything in between. But I didn't see that movie, apparently. No, that sounds way worse than the one I just watched.
Seriously, though. Almost anything good someone says about this film is an understatement. I absolutely loved it, and it's so phenomenal in IMAX. I went with three friends, and we entered the surprisingly and sadly unpopulated theater excitedly. We sat through two and a half hours of sheer brilliance and walked out with our minds blown (despite that three of us had already seen it). Every emotion I felt during the film was just an insanely enhanced version of the normal emotion.
I will admit that when I first saw this film, I wasn't the biggest fan. I mean, I knew it was influential so I respected it in that sense, but personally I was a bit bored by it. Fast forward to about two and a half years later, and I'm a sixteen year old who has a dissertation worth of thoughts on Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Tarr, and Yang, about to walk into an IMAX theater. After revisiting bits and pieces in this film, as well as reading the novel and watching other similar movies, 2001 made its way to about #50 on my all-time favorites without a complete second viewing. And, yeah, this experience bumped it up. It's now at #17. This is easily among the best movie experiences of my life. 2001 is just about tied with a few others as the best film ever made. 2001 is everything they say and beyond. 2001 is the definition of the excellence of the cinematic experience.
Happy 50th.