2010

Hyams has not come up with a climax to match Kubrick's rush through the star-gate; but this is still space fiction of a superior kind, making the Star Trek movies look puny by comparison. Read full review

2010 is an essential text of the late Cold War. Read full review

You have to make some distinctions in your mind. In one category, "2001: A Space Odyssey" remains inviolate, one of the handful of true film masterpieces. In a more temporal sphere, "2010" qualifies as superior entertainment, a movie more at home with technique than poetry, with character than with mystery, a movie that explains too much and leaves too little to our sense of wonderment, but a good movie all the same. Read full review

Almost paradoxically, 2010 may be unnecessary, but it is nevertheless a worthwhile effort. Read full review

The major difference between films is "2010's" greater emphasis on people. The performances are all excellent, but Helen Mirren is utterly convincing as the formidable commander of the Leonov. Roy Scheider costars as the former head of the Space Agency, with John Lithgow as the enginer of Discovery and Bob Balaban as the father of H.A.L. [7 Dec 1984, p.39]