2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Real talk: the ape section of 2001 drags so hard you start wondering if you put on a nature documentary by mistake. Then a bone turns into a spaceship and you forgive everything. Stanley Kubrick does not care about your attention span. There are long minutes of ships docking to a waltz, an overture over a black screen, and a finale that’s basically a light show with zero explanation. Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood play astronauts so calm they barely seem awake, and the ship’s computer ends up with more personality than both of them combined. HAL 9000 talks in the same soft, polite voice the whole way through, and that voice sticks with you for days. The effects still look better than plenty of what’s streaming right now. A 9.0 because it’s a masterpiece that asks for patience and sometimes takes advantage of it. $35.56 says you ask a smart speaker to open the pod bay doors before bed tonight.

What works: Effects that still hold up, HAL 9000’s calm voice, and images like the cut from bone to spaceship that nobody has topped.

What doesn’t: It is slow on purpose and sometimes slow for no reason, especially the long opening with the apes and the docking waltz.

Who it’s for: Patient viewers who want sci-fi that leaves the explaining to them, ideally on the biggest screen they can find.