I picked up this film recently when the Ultra HD Blu-ray release came out simply because I didn’t have it, and as a fan of science fiction, not owning 2001 felt like an oversight. The movie was designed to rely almost entirely on its visuals; you could even describe it as a visual symphony. It was filmed using 70 mm film and with six-channel stereo sound, which was quite innovative for the time. Because of the quality of the original materials, transferring this film to Ultra HD Blu-ray made sense, despite its creation in 1968. I recall watching this as a child and being deeply disappointed. I remember thinking, “Where’s the adventure? Where's any action?” Now, I can better appreciate it for what it is: a visually impressive film. I also understand that the movie strives for scientific accuracy rather than pure fantasy. The depictions of gravity—or the lack thereof—were incredibly advanced filmmaking techniques at the time. Re-watching it, I’ve noticed that all the screens are flat, which was still quite futuristic even in 2001. However, even now, I find the movie excruciatingly dull. It runs for two and a half hours and moves very slowly. It takes fifty minutes of screen time before we actually get to the main part of the film and board the Discovery, for example. No matter how impressive the visuals are, there’s only so much boredom I can tolerate. During the last thirty minutes or so, the movie becomes quite psychedelic. The sequence where Bowman is pulled into the vortex, the stargate, seems to go on forever, ultimately becoming a headache-inducing blur of colors. The final scenes featuring the three Bowmans of different ages are just strange. As this is a personal and informal opinion about the film, I can’t really justify giving it more than 3 out of 5 stars. I hadn't intended to review this movie; everything has already been said about it. However, after reading what appeared on Rotten Tomatoes, I couldn’t resist: Critics Consensus: One of the most influential of all sci-fi films—and one of the most controversial—Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 is a delicate, poetic meditation on the ingenuity—and folly—of mankind. It's widely known that Rotten Tomatoes is a terrible movie rating site, and their so-called critics are pretentious culture elites with an inflated sense of self at best, and politically motivated social justice warriors at worst. Still, what’s controversial about it? Let’s be realistic; there’s really nothing controversial about it at all—it's just a fictional story set in the future. Then there's this "folly" nonsense. What folly exactly? If anything, the movie portrays a much better future than we currently have, one where politicians apparently supported advancements in science and space exploration – the opposite of how money and resources are wasted today. Of course, if you overindulge or are politically motivated, you can probably interpret any film however you want and “find” whatever message you’re looking for—but it's still nonsense. So, that was my (controversial?) perspective on 2001.

Source on TMDB