2008: A Film Review

As much as I hate it when critics condense a whole movie into a simple number rating, to start off this review that's what I am going to do. 8.5/10 is what I would give 2001: A Space Odyssey. I particularly enjoyed the subtlety of the dialogue, and how important each and every shot is (with the exception of the final scene(s)(I'll get to it in a minute.)) I saw some very interesting

parallels between the beginning with the early humans, and the first monolith, and behavior of the modern humans with the finding of the second monolith. In the earlier one, the "apes" used what they gained from the monolith to win a dispute over a water hole, while in the present, the  quarreling parties are, instead of rival tribes of chimps, the USA and the Soviet Union, and instead of a simple water hole, is the whole world. the movie as a whole was very good. the last 15 minutes or so made NO sense what so ever. I've tried looking up exactly what is suposed to have happened, but it still is really confusing. it has been said that sci-fi speaks not to what things will be, but to what they were when the piece was made. for example, as forward thinking as much of the movie was, there was nothing even close to cell phones, and noone thoughtg that the ussr could possibly crumble. there was no question that the us would hide almost everything from them, and there was no question that they would hide every bit as much. the idea of the consumer spaceflight was a shoo in, as it OBVIOUSLY would be in the future, yet in the breifing room, full of government officials, there were only middle aged white men. as time has moved on, the truth of the sixties have become more and more obvious.