Starring: Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Hellen Mirren, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea, Douglas Rain, Madolyn Smith Osborne, Dana Elcar
More info: IMDb
Tagline: The year we make contact.
Plot: In this sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, a joint American- Soviet expedition is sent to Jupiter to discover what went wrong with the U.S.S. Discovery against a backdrop of growing global tensions. Among the mysteries the expedition must explain are the appearance of a huge black monolith in Jupiter's orbit and the fate of H.A.L., the Discovery's sentient computer.
My rating: 7.5/10
Will I watch it again? Yeah.
It has got to be incredibly daunting to make a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968). That director/screenwriter Peter Hyams attempted it (based on the author of both books, Arthur C. Clarke) takes HUGE balls, like asteroid-size nuggets. And that it turns out to be this good is great craftsmanship. It's probably worth nothing that he wrote and directed the AWESOME sci-fi flick, OUTLAND (1981). I love everything about it except the ending and it cheeses me off like nobody's business. The message is so ham-fisted and rammed down your throat. UGH. It's not unlike James Cameron's beat-you-upside-the-head-with-a-message of an ending in the director's cut of THE ABYSS (1989). I loves me some outer space flicks, especially ones that are based in reality so I'm all over this flick. That it stands pretty solid next to Kubrick's film is remarkable. If you're expecting something that's going to be full of grandiose ideas and deliver a mind trip like the '68 film then you're going to be disappointed. If you're in for a good sci-fi flick that hits the right beats (even if the ending is too 'let's all get along') then this is it. Don't put off seeing it because of what came before it.
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