2001: a Space Odyssey

A tribe of proto-humanoids encounters a huge, perfectly smooth monolith that seems to be communicating something to them. Hundreds of thousands of years later, a surveying team of astronauts discover the same monolith, buried on the moon. A team of men is sent to one of Jupiter's moons to investigate, in what is mankind's most ambitions adventures. This sprawling framework contains "2001: A Space Odyssey".

           

Written by Arthur C. Clarke, a respected scientist and futurist, the story is, by turns, insightful and enigmatic. It concerns nothing less than the rise of intelligent life on earth and the evolution of homo sapiens from the dawn of history to the near future.

           

Stanley Kubrick's direction was flawless, and the fine ensemble cast gave perfectly nuanced performances. The art direction is breathtaking.

            

Surely one of the greatest films of the Twentieth Century, "2001" still looks modern today, three decades after it was made.