Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi classic had apes, astronauts (some hibernating), a mysterious monolith — and HAL, a talking computer. Despite the presence of a verbally active machine, there isn’t much dialogue in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The emphasis is on the visuals, whose grandiosity is matched only by the film’s symphonic soundtrack. As TIME notedwhen the movie came out — in suitably trippy and pre-moon-landing 1968 — “Kubrick turns the screen into a planetarium gone mad and provides the viewer with the closest equivalent to psychedelic experience this side of hallucinogens.” The film, based on a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, won an Oscar for visual effects.
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