The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

58. 1968 - 2001: A Space Odyssey

2001 A Space Odyssey
MGM

Honourable Mentions: Once upon a Time in the West, Rosemary's Baby, The Swimmer

2001: A Space Odyssey is, ironically, a monolith of cinema - a piece of science fiction that pushed the genre to new philosophical and technical reaches and which remains a seminal effort from one of the 20th century's most fascinating and talented directors in Stanley Kubrick. It's also somewhat obstructive to newcomers, featuring a marathon, dialogue-less prologue that unfurls at a glacial pace before eventually arriving at its iconic and highly influential space-set sequences.

With that in mind, it's no surprise that 2001's reputation remained divisive for years before its strengths were widely recognised. It has of course since been absorbed into the pop culture lexicon through decades of affectionate homage and parody, with its masterpiece status firmly - and deservedly - established.

Is it Kubrick's greatest film? Perhaps not, but as a landmark in genre storytelling and technical innovation, 2001 is one of the greatest to ever do it.

 
Posted On: 
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.